What is India's cockroach movement?

What is India’s cockroach movement?

Over the past few months, you might have seen a few stories about a cockroach movement in India. What started as a parody political movement has, over time, turned into a genuine one - and this week, it successfully forced the resignation of the country’s Education Minister. It’s a story of economic inequality, social media and youth vs establishment - and it’s become a major deal in the most populous country in the world. So in this Squiz Shortcut, we’ll explain:

• Why the cockroach movement started

• Why it took off so quickly

• And the changes it might bring…

🙋🏻‍♀️ This newsletter was written by Andrew Williams and Larissa Huntington

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Squiz the Shortcut

Back it up… Does India have a large insect problem…?
It’s possible you’ve seen lots of headlines about cockroaches and India recently, and without the backstory it can be difficult to appreciate exactly what’s going on. But in short, no, they don’t need a extra big shipment of Mortein. The cockroaches are a political movement…

OK… Wasn’t India’s Prime Minister in Australia recently?
Yep… Just a couple of weeks ago, India’s PM Narendra Modi visited Australia and promised increased co-operation and trade between the two countries. It’s a country with a massive population, so what goes on there very much affects us here in Oz, and the rest of the world…

How big is the population?
India passed China to become the most populous country in the world a couple of years ago - more than 1.47 billion people live there. For context, the US has nearly 350 million people. So, as you might imagine in a country with so many people to feed and house, millions are doing it tough…

Is that where the cockroaches come in?
It is… The movement goes back to May, when India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant (he’s their most senior legal voice) was quoted as describing unemployed young people as “cockroaches” and “parasites of society”. He also complained about young people joining social media to air their gripes, rather than working hard. But it’s important to note that Kant says he was misquoted.

What did he actually say?
He says he was talking about people who join the legal profession with fake degrees, not unemployed young people as a whole. But whether it was a direct quote or a misquote, it’s had a huge butterfly effect… 

What happened?
Shortly after Kant made the comments, a political communications graduate called Abhijeet Dipke asked online what would happen if “all the cockroaches came together.” The idea went viral, and he took it a step further and turned it into an online-only political party, called the Cockroach Janta Party…

What does it mean?
It basically translates to the Cockroach People’s Party - which is a parody of the Bharatiya Janata Party, meaning Indian People’s party. That’s the one that’s in government at the moment… In very GenZ style, Dipke made their cockroach mascot image via generative AI - it’s a cockroach wearing shades - and it’s been hugely effective.

So what does the cockroach movement stand for?
Dipke says that the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) would serve as a voice for what he called the “lazy and unemployed” people - or cockroaches - in India. He says it was designed as a movement for young Indians who feel as though mainstream politics isn’t doing them any favours…

How big are their numbers?
The CJP gained 10 million Instagram followers in under 5 days; it had over 350,000 people sign up to be a member and it rapidly went from a satirical political party to one that had some real people power behind it…

Go on…
Protestors took to the streets in cockroach costumes - but even though that might make it seem like a bit of a joke, the movement is tackling some serious issues. In particular, there’s one around the NEET - that’s the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, which is the medical school entrance exam for Indians…

How does the NEET come into it?
It’s a high-pressure exam for the students who want to study undergraduate medical courses like medicine and dentistry. This year, there were 2 million students competing for around 130,000 places, so it’s really high-stakes, but there was a huge uproar after it was found that the questions for the exam had been leaked. 

What was the fallout?
It meant that the results for all of those students were voided and they had to sit the exam again. After that happened, there were reports that at least 13 students died by suicide - and it’s thought that was likely because they couldn’t bear the pressure of re-sitting the exam. The students are right in the demographic of the Cockroach Janta Party. So it’s put a heap of pressure on India’s Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan…

What do the cockroaches want?
The tagline for the CJP is “a political party for the people the system forgot to count”. And they’ve homed in on the perceived failings of India’s Education Department. In a nutshell, the movement’s main objective was the resignation of its Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan - they thought he ought to take the fall for the shortcomings of the education system. 

How did they go about getting that message across?
When this all took off, Dipke was living in the US - he’s 30yo and graduated from Boston University last year with a masters in public relations. But he came back to India and spearheaded the movement, staging a sit-in for a month in central Delhi. It was getting some headlines, but it gained even more prominence when a well-known engineer and activist named Sonam Wangchuk joined.

How did he affect things?
Wangchuk staged a hunger strike which he only ended after 26 days. Police forcibly took him to hospital after 20 days - a move that caused widespread anger among the cockroaches. After that, on 20 July, the protestors took to the streets en masse to march to parliament - we’re talking more than 20,000 people according to some reports…

Did they get to parliament?
No, they were stopped by police who cracked down hard on them, using canes, batons, tear gas and pellet guns to break up the crowd. Dozens of the protestors were detained and the cockroaches claim that around 150 people were injured - and some reports say police officers were hurt too… But rather than calming things down, the protests grew even more in popularity - and that saw the Prime Minister Narendra Modi get involved.

What did Modi say?
He made an address on social media - where he knew he’d reach the target audience of Gen Zs - saying his government is committed to protecting students’ interests, and anyone found to be involved in exam leaks would be punished. Still, the protestors said they wouldn’t budge until Pradhan resigned - which happened on Saturday. But as many experts have pointed out, his leaving is likely to be a bandaid fix because this whole situation hasn’t come out of the blue. 

What’s the background to it?
The country has been facing major issues with the education system and rampant unemployment, particularly in northern India, since the early 1970s. And one reason analysts are pointing to is that the economic growth that India experienced in the latter half of last century didn’t come with a wide investment in education at the same time. Reports about that time say that young people quickly became disaffected and quite bitter that the government wasn’t doing enough to help. They say there wasn’t enough places for students, and not enough jobs for graduates who managed to get a spot at university.

Are there similarities today?
Yep… Like the graduates of the past, today’s students are angry about being stuck in limbo - but they’ve got social media now to get their message across and AI to help them generate highly effective comms. And a chief concern of the cockroaches is that they’re forced to put all this effort into preparing for exams and studying - many through expensive tuition centres known as cram schools - only to find the system is rigged by corruption and ultimately that it doesn’t necessarily lead to a better life.

So what’s next for the cockroach movement?
Now that they’ve got the government’s (and the world’s) attention, experts say they’re likely to shift their focus to broader questions of fairness in the education system and employment. There’s a new Education Minister - Pralhad Joshi has taken the job - but he’s got a task ahead of him to address the issues the movement has raised and restore the trust of Gen Zs. 

What is he turning to first?
Experts reckon changes to the way exams are managed are coming, as well as tougher penalties for anyone involved in cheating and exam paper leaks. But in any case, by forcing a senior minister to step down for the first time in Modi’s 12-year government, the cockroaches have shaken things up and fundamentally changed the way young people are thought of in India.

Onto our Recommendations

Reading: This piece from The Conversation which gives some context for the movement and what could be next...

Reading: This article from BBC online which talks about how the language of Gen Z, so terms like FOMO and delulu, have been used in India’s parliament for the first time in the past week - it’s a bit of a sign of the changing of the guard. 

And before we go: A special shout out to Aphra who emailed us requesting this Shortcut - and a reminder that if you’d also like us to cover a particular topic, you can send it to us at [email protected]…

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