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PM Modi and BJP should thank cockroaches. They have done them a lot of good

The Cockroach Janta Party jolted the Narendra Modi government out of its comfort zone, reminding it that slogans, window-dressing and patchworks won’t impress students.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi must be hurting. Never in his 25 years at the helm in Gandhinagar and New Delhi did he have to sacrifice a minister under duress. What to speak of those working directly under him, he wouldn’t let go of chief ministers even if they become real estate moguls like Mohan Yadav in Madhya Pradesh or use their offices to allegedly award government contracts worth hundreds of crores to family members like Pema Khandu in Arunachal Pradesh. 

Not that PM Modi doesn’t sack people. When needed, he has dumped CMs and Union ministers more often than people usually change their cooks and drivers. But he doesn’t sack them on public demand—not immediately, for sure. It’s a question of his Iqbal or authority.

That’s why Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s ouster is so unusual. Why did PM Modi capitulate before Gen Z so easily? I guess he must have been briefed about cockroaches. According to a study on “little mighty” cockroaches, published in the scientific journal The Innovation, they have four biological traits—heavy appetite and starvation tolerance, robust innate immunity and detoxification ability, developmental plasticity, excellent fecundity and strong regenerative capacity.

Think of each of these traits figuratively and metaphorically, and you will know why these ‘little mighty’ cockroaches at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar shook up a titanium-coated PM. When Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar called him a neech aadmi (petty person), Modi and the BJP made this a huge issue in the 2017 Gujarat election. Rahul Gandhi was convicted and sentenced to two years of imprisonment for associating the ‘Modi’ surname with thieves. 

And here these cockroaches were using the worst expletives against the PM and making them viral on social media, but the BJP and the government bore it in silence. PM Modi must have realised that while Gen Z was out there demanding the education minister’s resignation, their real target was him (the PM). It had to be contained right there.

I am sure every minister in the government and every BJP member must be seething with rage. They should look at the brighter side, though. Gen Z have done them a favour, jolting them out of their comfort zone probably in time to smell the coffee. The........

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