Rebellion does not always declare its arrival with guns and slogans. Last week the Cockroach Janata Party declared its arrival waving a CBSE admission card. Unlike the usual hobby-lobby protestor or trade union pandal-ist, the CJP seems to have thought through its agenda. Unlike AAP—the closest parallel that exists—founder cockroach Abhijeet Dipke and his merry men and women are not asking for Prime Minister Narendra Modi or his government to resign. They just want one head to roll: education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s.
The CJP is perhaps the most intriguing political phenomenon to emerge from India’s rhetoric- and religion-obsessed campuses for one simple reason: it isn’t, for now at least, a political movement. It is not an Opposition echo chamber where the pet peeve is that the BJP has captured every institution. This distillation of rebellion is based on the correct assumption that examinations are personal to every family. The paper leaks are the theft of every student’s future, every parent’s dream: years taken from a young person’s life by a cabal that stole the questions even before the exam bell rang. However, history counsels caution in the field of political kinetics. Bangladesh and Nepal have had their youth fighting corruption and winning. Movements succeed only when they reflect public anxiety; one broad enough to survive the establishment’s inevitable attempts to capture, dilute or ridicule them. To arrive at a workable solution, a combination of a consensus on the problem, and a unanimous action plan is a must. Every generation inherits its predecessor’s political clichés. Gen Z is returning the envelope unopened. Because, words like socialism and secularism do not relate to Indian youth. Jobs do. So does the freedom of choice of what to eat, wear, and say.
The CJP must know every movement sets sail with barnacles stuck to its hull. The drifting opposition, naturally, is eager to cash in. Retired judge Markandey Katju lampooned Mahua Moitra—a social star without a political sky—to join his newly formed “Ishq Karo Party” that makes love, not war. Rahul Gandhi enjoyed a photo op with a student who exposed the rot; the boy whom a detestably sycophantic TV anchor called ‘“Pakistani”. It is noticeable the CJP is tempted to convert protest into electoral ambition. But cockroaches must know who they are dealing with. Narendra Modi is not rattled easily. He doesn’t give a damn what his foes think of him. His political career reflects the endurance to absorb, redirect, and outlast every emergency. A government that has survived economic shocks, border crises, and sustained Opposition campaigns will not be defeated by slogans, however photogenic the protest. Identifying a problem is easy. So is demanding a resignation and leading a march. The CJP’s hard work is to follow up its initial success by offering credible solutions: How should examination security be reformed? How should recruitment be restructured? How should the catastrophic mismatch between Indian degrees and Indian jobs be addressed? The moment cockroaches address these issues seriously, CJP will cease to be a Facebook-Instagram kerfuffle, which merely spilled over to Connaught Place as a bunch of pissed-off students. It could become a genuine power to reckon with. The students at Jantar Mantar did not gather for revolution. They gathered because someone stole their examination. If CJP gets that, it may yet become the first youth-led movement in modern India to be remembered for something other than its obituary. That, in the current ideological climate, will be genuinely revolutionary.
Whether the Cockroach movement succeeds or not, it created a significant byproduct: calling out godi media with amplified public contempt for its information laundering tactics. Well-known anchors were too afraid to show up. Their reporters were booed away. The depth of youth derision directed at individual anchors and correspondents was of the acidic kind reserved for dummies who have forfeited the right to be journalists. There was a time when the Indian press was feared because it did its job. Ramnath Goenka took on Indira Gandhi at the height of the Emergency, when lesser men crawled. When the Odisha super-cyclone killed thousands and chief minister Giridhar Gamang did squat, the press punned a single headline: Go, Man, Go. He went. That press is gone. Nothing of consequence is communicated now. The CJP protest demonstrated that Gen Z has not inherited the Millennial assumption that anyone with a microphone deserves a hearing. Indian youth has spent its formative years on internet platforms where every claim is checked, every clip is replayed and every taken-down-meme is reconstructed and reposted. Even if the draconian IT Bill is passed, youth in totalitarian societies like Russia and China always find a way around state censorship. The young Indian knows the difference between a journalist and a television personality who has decided in advance what the story is. In Ramnathji’s time, the government listened to the media. Now, the media listens to the government. Gen Z has figured it out. And it isn’t afraid.