In India, “Cockroaches” Are Leading the Fight for Democracy
It started as an online joke after a top judge compared jobless young people to cockroaches. It has become the most serious challenge to Narendra Modi’s rule in years.
Abhijeet Dipke posted a comment on X, “What if all the cockroaches came together?” and millions responded. The result is a movement challenging Narendra Modi’s authoritarianism. (Arun Sankar / AFP via Getty Images)
On October 10, India’s capital city, New Delhi, was turned into a fortress as protesters tried to oppose a countrywide exercise to revise the electoral rolls. The protests were called by the Gen Z movement known as the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), working with left-wing student groups, which forced the resignation of the minister of education in July.
In response, the Indian government deployed more than twenty thousand police officers and paramilitary personnel, suspended internet access in central Delhi, and barricaded the city center. Thousands of protesters, including the leaders of the CJP and prominent opposition politicians, were detained.
The protests stem from a massive government effort, known as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), to revise India’s electoral rolls by removing dead, duplicate, and ineligible voters. Concerns intensified in the last month that under the SIR eligible voters are losing their right to vote, with 130 million names left off the draft electoral rolls since the start of the program.
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