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‘There Is Zero Accountability’: India’s ‘Cockroaches’ Question Modi and a Broken System

The Cockroach Janata Party is leading a youth-heavy protest movement that embodies the public anger with the BJP.

India is witnessing a mass movement seeking accountability for education scams.

“Modi, your dictatorship, won’t last, won’t last,” yelled Abhijeet Dipke as he motioned at the crowd to repeat the slogan.

Dipke, the founding president of the Cockroach Janata Party, meets thousands of faces every day. At first glance, the party’s name sounds like a joke. In many ways, that is precisely the point.

On May 15, during a hearing in India’s Supreme Court, Chief Justice Surya Kant said that unemployed young people in India move toward activism and attack the system like “cockroaches.” Kant also said that it was the “unemployed” who questioned the government like cockroaches. So Dipke came up with the name “Cockroach Janata Party” – combining Kant’s epithet with the name of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – and invited people to join the parody political brand, with the cockroach embraced as a proud political metaphor. 

What began as a viral digital movement quickly evolved into something more revealing. After garnering more than 20 million Instagram followers through memes and satire, Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) began raising questions about unemployment, governance, accountability, and political representation. It is creating an alternative form of political participation and digital dissent that is thriving largely outside traditional party structures. 

People of all ages have been reaching New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, a popular protest site, seeking answers from the Modi government. Photo by Tarushi Aswani.

A Conflict With Cockroaches

Since June 6, the road near New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, a popular protest site, has echoed with the anger, frustration and damage that the 12-year-old government of the BJP has caused.

Under New Delhi’s blazing hot skies, Indians from all sections of society, all religious lines, and all walks of life, have been protesting with one primary demand: the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. 

Since its inception, the CJP has demanded that Pradhan be held accountable for what it describes as systemic failures in India’s examination system. The CJP argues that repeated controversies – including paper leaks, the cancellation and rescheduling of key entrance examinations, and alleged irregularities in On-Screen Marking valuation process – have severely undermined the credibility of high-stakes government-run exams that determine the futures of millions of Indian students.

It is this lack of accountability that is drawing masses to the protest. Indrija Singh, a retired philosophy professor from north India’s Uttar Pradesh, took an overnight train from her home in Allahabad, some 700 kilometers from Delhi, to reach Jantar Mantar. 

Singh, 65, explained that as a professor – someone who has invested decades in empowering young minds – the BJP’s actions felt like fraud. “This is unethical at all levels. The government’s actions in the last decade have eroded our trust in the way they deal with the citizenry. Students are the future of any country and the BJP is pushing this future to ruin. It must accept its failures,” Singh told The Diplomat.

Singh is one of the many common citizens who are traveling to Delhi and making the protest site their home, proudly calling themselves cockroaches.

Ashutosh Ranka, national spokesperson for the CJP, is outraged at the way the government has dealt with the education cams and even those protesting against them. “This is the most ridiculous government, they don’t believe in dialogue, they only believe in harassing, jailing and robbing the rights of citizens,” Ranka told The Diplomat. “Millions of futures are at stake, but for them [the BJP], students, their stagnant lives, and painful suicides don’t seem to matter.”

As day turns to night, and night brings another day, more and more cockroaches join the movement in what they call a “peaceful strike” for their demands to be heard.

Since June 6, the road near New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar echoes of anger and frustration toward the BJP government. Photo by Tarushi Aswani.

United in Uncertainty

Since the cockroaches arrived at Jantar Mantar, the protest site doesn’t sleep. Volunteers serve food donated by supporters. Protesters camp at the site, sleeping in New Delhi’s extreme humid and hot weather. Those who want to support the movement in their own ways bring to the site home-cooked meals, chilled sherbets and lemonade, India’s tricolor flag, India’s constitution, and unique posters that serve the Modi government some Gen-Z sarcasm.

“We have come here to let Modi know, we understand his politics and we won’t be fooled anymore,” said Prerna, who traveled from Maharashtra, 1200 km from Delhi, to protest against the injustice unfolding in the education sector.

Prerna is a member of the Rashtriya Yuva Sangathan, a national youth organization based on Gandhian ideology. Though the protest began to highlight the ecosystem of evasions in the education sector at the hands of the BJP, today, she views the movement as larger that those primary demands.

Cooling herself with a hand fan, Prerna said that protesters here have shown utmost commitment to the ideas that the Constitution of India embodies. “We won’t leave till Pradhan resigns. This site has become our home, fellow protestors our family. Their tactics cannot break our resolve,” she said.

But the man in question, Pradhan, has refused to resign and even dismissed the movement and its protesters as the “B team of terrorists.” Modi, who has not held a news conference in more than 12 years but is active on social media, has not reacted to the protests yet.

Under New Delhi’s blazing hot skies, Indians from all sections of society, religions, and........

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