‘I’m a cockroach’: Gen Z protest movement lands in Indian capital

New Delhi, India – Saurav Kushwaha, 17, packed just a change of clothes and boarded an overnight train with his elder brother to reach New Delhi early on Saturday from their village in central India’s Madhya Pradesh.

The brothers rested on a footpath, waiting for Abhijeet Dipke to arrive from the United States.

The anger in Indian youth – where half of the country’s 1.4 billion population is under 25 – has been simmering for a while now, exacerbated by paper leaks and discrepancies in the country’s largest school boards.

And that anger seemed to have found an unexpected outlet in a satirical political party, the so-called Cockroach Janata Party (Cockroach People’s Party, or CJP), born out of taunts and jokes.

The Indian chief justice’s comments last month equating the youth with cockroaches drew widespread ire. In turn, Dipke, a recent graduate of Boston University, pondered on X at the time: “What if all cockroaches came together?”

It became a sensation on the Indian internet, making way for the launch of the CJP, a play on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Dipke’s casual joke attracted more than 22 million followers on Instagram, double that of Modi’s party, which has been in power since 2014.

But Dipke and hundreds of others who turned up in New Delhi on Saturday, demanding that Modi’s education minister resign, are not joking any more.

“The warning to the Modi government is simple: get the education minister to resign,” Dipke said, addressing a swelling crowd. “Or we will not leave from here.”