Cockroach Janta Party: Is the Modi Government Wary of a ‘Gen Z Revolt’?

Midway into Narendra Modi’s third prime ministerial term, just as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is steadily increasing its strength through winning elections and engineering defections, a new phenomenon has struck it like a bolt from the blue: hints of a Gen Z revolt.

On June 6, thousands of students, youth, parents and activists assembled at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. Wearing cockroach masks and carrying placards and flowers they chanted slogans calling for the resignation of Union Minister for Education Dharmendra Pradhan. A series of scandals have emerged over question paper leaks in examinations for entrance to universities. Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk and several leftist student organizations also joined in.

This was the first on-the-ground mobilization of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which began as a satirical political movement and has hitherto drawn millions of followers online.

It all started with Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s comments on May 15 equating unemployed youths engaging in different sorts of activism with cockroaches.

“There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI [the Right to Information Act, an important tool for transparency and accountability, which the Modi government has severely weakened] activists, and other activists, and they start attacking everyone,” he said.

Kant subsequently claimed he was misquoted. He was targeting individuals using fake degrees rather than the nation’s youth, he said.

But the “cockroach” label had already struck a sensitive nerve with millions of educated, yet unemployed, young Indians. Nobody imagined what happened next.

Abhijeet Dipke, an Indian living in the U.S., started a parody entity on social media two days later, named the “Cockroach Janta Party.” The word “Janta or janata” means “people” and finds itself in the name of several parties, including the BJP.

The CJP described itself as the “Voice of the Lazy and Unemployed.”

In just four days, the CJP’s Instagram following overtook the 9-million-strong handle of the BJP, which proudly calls itself the world’s largest political party.

Memes, satire and angry posts flooded social media.

Issues like affordable education, transparent entrance examinations to universities, and employment opportunities have been brewing resentment for a while and when Kant made his insensitive comment, youth frustration erupted online.

The satire-born, youth-driven “cockroach” movement started off as a joke but soon gathered momentum. It rattled those in power.

Leaderless or loosely organized youth uprisings have unsettled governments in several countries in 2025 — from Indonesia to Nepal and Madagascar — signaling a broader crisis among youth over issues like unemployment, corruption, nepotism, poor governance, economic hardship, education and exam issues, and inequality.

And in South Asia, Gen Z movements ousted governments in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka in the recent past. Consequently, the Modi government wasn’t taking any chances. It acted swiftly to silence the CJP. It got their social media handles and website blocked, allegedly for posing a “national security threat.”

That only further fueled the outrage online.

Then Dipke announced he was returning home to India.

In a bid to avoid outright confrontation, the Delhi police allowed the digital warriors to hit the streets on June 6.  The rally at Jantar Mantar followed. What started as a joke has turned serious.

The CJP’s popularity is particularly high among students and young job seekers and its Instagram followership soon surpassed 22 million. They have highlighted concerns about unemployment, examination scams and scandals, the disconnect between policymakers and ordinary young citizens as well as eroding trust in the judiciary.

“As many as 65 percent of our population, as per the last census, comprises youth. Mass unemployment, high inflation, stock market uncertainty and foreign investment withdrawal — everything is affecting the youth and their future,” CJP spokesperson Saurav Das, a journalist, told The Diplomat.

There is little clarity about what the CJP’s ideology is or whether and what its long-term plans are.

According to political scientist Ranabir Samaddar, while the CJP’s future will become clear only after some time has passed, the chain of events reflects social grievances, especially over inequality and mismanagement in the education sector.

Some in the opposition camp are taking the movement with a pinch of salt. One of the reasons is founder Dipke’s background. Currently a political communications strategist, Dipke was previously associated with the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement that led to the formation of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which majorly contributed to the fall of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2014.

The IAC is now widely acknowledged as a front backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological-organizational parent.

Rubbishing “conspiracy theories,” including those that allege that “the CJP is receiving funding from George Soros” (the billionaire philanthropist has been accused by the BJP of funding initiatives aimed at destabilizing India), Das said the movement is currently at a nascent state, with only five persons coordinating most of the activities — one founder, three spokespersons and a media coordinator. “It’s a leaderless movement and we intend to keep it so even as we grow,” he added.

The RSS initially launched a scathing ideological attack on the CJP, calling it a “politically engineered” operation part of the “freebie-centric, Left-leaning political ecosystem.” The CJP’s manifesto contained a “terrifying blueprint for institutional collapse, masquerading as youthful digital rebellion,” an editorial in the RSS mouthpiece alleged. It argued a nation is weakened when its youth are “deliberately lured into manufactured despair rather than productive labour.” However, later the RSS downplayed the CJP.

Following the Delhi demonstration, the CJP plans to hold similar protests in other cities, culminating in another rally in Delhi. It has said it will persist until the education minister resigns. It has not announced a timetable for the nation-wide rallies yet.

Psephologist-turned-political activist Yogendra Yadav has argued that the CJP offers a rare glimpse of an energy that can reclaim the republic from authoritarian assault.

“This is not a wave, but an undercurrent. It would be a mistake to dismiss it. Or use the calculus of conventional political analysis to measure its impact,” he wrote.

While the movement seems to have successfully tapped into genuine frustrations among young Indians regarding employment opportunities, competitive examinations, and economic uncertainty, maintaining momentum after the initial wave of publicity could prove challenging for the CJP in an era of “15-minutes of fame,” where public interest in issues dwindles fast.

People lose interest quickly. Building local networks, fundraising, volunteer management, and sustained grassroots engagement require a great deal of dedication and resources. Whether the CJP has the stamina for such efforts remains to be seen.