Cockroach democracy: Unarmed and dangerous

For the first time in years, it feels wonderful to be Indian. Just when hope seemed lost, they came. Young roaches riding in on the rain. The progeny of the unholy union between a judge and a joke.

We all know the story, but here it is, for the record. In response to an arrogant, contemptuous comment by the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, calling some unemployed young Indians cockroaches, Abhijeet Dipke, a student living in Boston, posted a comment on Instagram: “What if all cockroaches come together?” Millions responded. And thus was born the Cockroach Janta Party. Dipke became the Pied Piper of cockroaches. Its first demand was the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the education minister who sits smugly atop a corrupt, rotten ministry under which public exam papers are regularly leaked. An estimated 152 since 2014, according to opposition parties.

These leaks have devastated the lives of millions of young people who spent years preparing for these exams, some of whose parents have had to sell their land or homes to support their children’s studies and pay the fee for the right to appear for these exams. A novel form of legal extortion. After the recent leak of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) paper, 12 distressed, wrecked students died by suicide. As Cockroach anger grew into an online tsunami, Dipke returned from Boston on June 6 and went straight from the airport to Delhi’s famous protest grounds at Jantar Mantar. Sonam Wangchuk, the well-known activist and education reformer from Ladakh joined him and declared an indefinite hunger strike. Six university students, Neha Bora, Manish Kumar, Aameen Amitosh, Danish Ali, Hrishikesh and Deepak, members of the All India Students Association (AISA), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Liberation), declared they would fast too, and took up position on an adjacent stage. Protests began in other cities.

As the condition of those on fast grew critical, the young roaches who had swamped the internet began to show up at Jantar Mantar for real. The Cockroach Janata Party announced that on July 20, the day parliament was to open for its monsoon session, they would march on Parliament. Two days before the planned march, Sonam Wangchuk was snatched off the stage by the police and held in detention, first in a government hospital, and later at his wife’s insistence, in a private hospital. He still remains on fast. On the morning of July 20, the day of the march, the AISA students ended their fast. The cockroaches took the capital city by storm. They came by train, by bus, by air, by metro, their numbers increasing by the hour. Hours before the first rays of sun lightened Delhi’s monsoon skies, they began to pour into Jantar Mantar in the tens of thousands. By sunrise it was clear that a generation of desperate and furious young people who have seen their future snuffed out before their eyes, was going to reclaim what their parents and grandparents’ generations had conceded: ou

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What if all cockroaches come together?