CIVICUS: CJP Biggest Challenge yet to Strong-Arm Rule

JOHANNESBURG / DELHI Global civil-society platform CIVICUS Lens frames the Cockroach Janta Party as more than a viral meme: a Gen Z-led street movement that forced Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign on 25 July after weeks of protest met with state violence — and, it argues, "what may be the biggest challenge yet" to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's strong-arm rule.

The package is two pieces on the same platform: an analysis essay, India's young people find their voice, and a full interview with Delhi protester, poet and storyteller Harshit Singh. Together they track the arc from Chief Justice Surya Kant's 15 May courtroom insult to cabinet exit, then warn that the concession did not end repression.

From insult to nationwide name

CIVICUS opens on the line that lit the fuse. On 15 May, Chief Justice Surya Kant told a courtroom that unemployed young people who protest and speak out on social media are "like cockroaches." The remark, the analysis says, revealed the establishment's contempt for the country's young and "spectacularly backfired." Within days it had spawned a nationwide movement under the name Cockroach Janta Party — a playful echo of the ruling Hindu nationalist party.

India has more Gen Z people than any other country, CIVICUS notes: around 407 million Indians, some 30 per cent of the population, aged between 14 and 29. They face extraordinary competition for education and struggle to find jobs. In that atmosphere, Kant's walk-back the next day — that he had meant only those entering the legal profession with fake degrees — came too late.

Communications strategist Abhijeet Dipke asked on social media what would happen if all the cockroaches came together. Within 24 hours, Singh told CIVICUS, Dipke had set up an Instagram page, a website and a manifesto that said if you were lazy, unemployed and had time on your hands, you qualified as a cockroach. Artists and creators began promoting the platform; within weeks, Singh said, over 20 million people were following it.

Exam leak as cause, not only the name

The analysis is clear that the insult supplied the brand; the national medical college entrance exam leak supplied the cause. The paper leaked in advance; the exam was cancelled for over two million students who had spent years preparing. Students despaired, then got angry.

Singh put numbers on the human cost: at least 21 students died by suicide; every morning, he said, protesters woke to news of another death. "And this was not an isolated case. Every other day we hear about another exam paper leaking somewhere."

The Cockroach Janta Party's central demand was Pradhan's resignation. Protesters camped for weeks in central Delhi. Volunteers supplied food, water, medicines and camping equipment. The movement broadened well beyond Gen Z — people of all ages, Singh said, of different castes, gender identities and religions, under one umbrella. Environmental and education-reform activist Sonam Wangchuk, previously jailed for protesting, raised the profile with a weeks-long solidarity hunger strike.

Seven weeks, then pellet guns

For seven weeks, CIVICUS writes, the government tried ignoring the protesters; when that failed, it turned to violence. After authorities forcibly hospitalised Wangchuk, thousands marched from the protest site toward parliament. Security forces responded with pellet guns and teargas, beat protesters and bystanders with batons and wooden sticks, and detained many.

Singh's interview is more granular. For seven weeks at Jantar Mantar — within a five-kilometre radius of the Prime Minister's Office, the President's house and every ministry — "not one official came to meet us." Instead, he said, authorities tried to dilute the protest by dividing it: mocking queer people, spreading hatred between Hindus and Muslims. "The unity held and we stood together."

On 20 July, they marched from Jantar Mantar to parliament. Delhi, Singh said, "hadn't seen a peaceful protest this massive in 15 years" — thousands including children, teenagers and grandparents, carrying flowers, banners and posters. Security forces met them with repression: pellet guns, teargas and batons against anyone, "even if they were just standing nearby." There is, he said, "a girl who's in intensive care on a ventilator."

The violence, widely documented on social media, was "shocking for a country that prides itself on the world's biggest democracy," CIVICUS writes. It sparked solidarity protests in other towns and cities. The government was finally forced to hold talks at a neutral venue.

Pradhan quits; other demands unmet

On 25 July, Pradhan quit. CIVICUS calls the resignation "a remarkable event": the government had not before responded to pressure by sacking an unpopular minister. But Pradhan, both pieces note, framed the exit as a way of ending the protests and violence rather than an admission of failure. Singh said he even cast it as a way to "stop the protests and prevent terrorist activity."

The government promised fast-track courts for exam leakers and a review of the exam and education systems. In return, the movement called off the protests, having also secured a promise that no protester would face repercussions.

That promise, CIVICUS says, is not how this administration has treated dissent. "Since the cockroach protests ended, police have detained and harassed hundreds of students and reportedly targeted families."

Singh listed the movement's other two demands as unmet:

1. Compensation of 10 million rupees (about US$115,000) for every family that lost a child to suicide — "families haven't received anything, not even an apology."
2. No legal action against anyone who took part in the protests — instead, "police have spent the past days tracing protesters and opening cases against them."

There is, he said, "a lot of rage about it," and Dipke and others have said they may have to protest again.

Media bypass, Watchlist, what CIVICUS wants

Singh's account of why social media mattered is blunt: "The media here is compromised. If you say anything against the government, mainstream television and print media will not carry it." There was a protest in the heart of the capital for weeks, he said, and "you wouldn't find a single headline about it in the newspapers or magazines." On the ground with phones, "you become your own media."

CIVICUS places the episode against a longer civic-space decline: India has recently been added to the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, which flags countries where a severe deterioration in the quality of civic space is taking place. The analysis argues that rather than its "usual practices of criminalisation, vilification and violence," the government should "respect the right to express dissent and engage constructively."

Singh's closing ask is smaller and harder: young people to keep showing up; artists to stop staying silent so that "art must become the mode of resistance"; support from abroad, because when people elsewhere talk about the movement "it creates pressure on the government"; and holding the agenda — "diluting the agenda is what the government will try next."

Modi, CIVICUS concludes, "may have bought breathing space, but the underlying problems remain" — economic (high youth unemployment, inequality) and political. If the state "goes after protest leaders," it warns, that will be "a recipe for further protests and a repeated cycle of state violence and criminalisation."

Cover image via CIVICUS Lens (Debarchan Chatterjee / NurPhoto via AFP). Full analysis and the Harshit Singh interview are linked in sources above.