India’s ‘Cockroach’ activists won a minister’s resignation. Now they are targeting unsafe schools and housing

India’s youth political movement, the Cockroach People’s Party, is widening its campaign after forcing the education minister to resign over corruption allegations linked to the medical entrance exam.

The group held a news conference in New Delhi after seven people died when a private accommodation building collapsed. It called for an independent investigation into what it described as the “PG mafia,” referring to illegal student-housing operators allegedly connected to political and administrative power.

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The government has left young people to live like cockroaches.

The party also demanded comprehensive safety inspections of student housing, more public dormitories, the disclosure of safety information and punishment for those responsible. Spokesperson Saurabh Das said, “The government has left young people to live like cockroaches,” and called for an independent criminal investigation into ties between landlords, powerful figures and politicians. He said Delhi University dormitories could house only 7,000 students, while the university had hundreds of thousands of students.

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An independent criminal investigation must also be conducted into the collusive ties between landlords, powerful figures and politicians.

The movement is seeking compensation of up to 10 million rupees for the families of those killed and 2 million rupees for those injured. Local media reported that most of the victims were students who had moved to Delhi from elsewhere in search of better lives through education and employment. The Indian Express linked the tragedy to students’ reliance on expensive private education and privately run housing whose safety had not been verified.

The Cockroach People’s Party is also running “School Thik Karo,” or “Fix the Schools,” a campaign allowing citizens to examine staffing, facilities and budgets at public schools. In Rajasthan, the group began rebuilding a school after exposing its poor conditions. The movement previously led protests over entrance-exam corruption, securing the education minister’s resignation, the withdrawal of criminal complaints against demonstrators and a pledge to compensate affected families. But an academic warned that social-media-based movements can grow and disappear quickly, and must connect individual grievances to broader structural problems if they are to survive their first victories.

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Social-media-based movements can grow at an astonishing speed and disappear just as quickly.