India’s Cockroach movement shows when people stand up against corruption and authoritarianism, they can win

The youth-led Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) movement forced education minister Dhamendra Pradhan to resign over exam and admission paper leaks and corruption in the education system.

Isaac Nellist spoke to Manish Kumar, Uttar Pradesh State President of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) and PhD student at Allahabad University, about this powerful expression of dissent against the Narendra Modi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Kumar was one of three students and AISA members who participated in a 23-day hunger strike at the Jantar Mantar protest site in Delhi, alongside well-known activist Sonam Wangchuk. They also discussed the police brutality against youth protesters in Delhi on July 20 and the next steps for the youth movement.

What sparked this powerful movement? How did the National Entrance Eligibility Test leaks affect students?

To access education or government employment in India you have to go through an examination process, and these exam papers have been leaked.

While people who have money have easy opportunities to get their admission, many families spend their life savings or go into severe debt to give their children opportunities to sit these exams.

The National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET), which is the exam for medical programs, was leaked in 2024, and again this year. In 2024, an unprecedented 67 students received a perfect score because of the leaks.

This year, 22 students committed suicide because of feelings of despair and hopelessness caused because of the mismanagement of the examination system. It is not only the NEET, there are several other examinations, including the post-graduate eligibility tests, that were also leaked.

This also includes recruitment exams. For example, I am from the state of Uttar Pradesh, a northern Hindi-speaking state. The paper for admission as a constable, the lowest ranking police official, was leaked. This went up to admission papers for top administrative posts and higher examination papers for the position of assistant professor, which were also leaked.

Not a single exam has gone through a transparent and fair process and this led to a strong resentment among students, and all people who are concerned about education and employment.

There are already minimal vacancies for government positions, because there are less public funded government jobs. Students and youth, who are experiencing the golden era of their life from their 20s to their 30s and should be getting opportunities for education and employment, are instead getting paper leaks, corruption and loot prevailing in the system.

This despair and hopelessness has led to some to commit suicide.

This dysfunction has created a strong resentment among the people which culminated when Surya Kant, Chief Justice of India, compared the youth and those who are speaking out for justice and demanding accountability to cockroaches and parasites.

Abhijeet Dipke made a social media page called Cockroach Janata Party as a satirical response, playing on the name of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, and that got millions of supporters within a few days.

From there they started demanding accountability, fairness and transparency in the education system, they started raising the question of corruption. People started questioning the government policies and its insensitivity, having not said a single word about the people who committed suicide.

Why did you decide to join a hunger strike at the Jantar Mantar protest camp in Delhi?

The cockroach label that was put on unemployed youth and the political and social activists started to generate social momentum, which became a mass movement centred around a site called Jantar Mantar, about one kilometre from the Parliament of India in Delhi. There we staged a protest, which continued for weeks.

Sonam Wangchuk, a renowned scientist, educator, scholar and climate activist declared that if the government is not listening to the CJP movement he would start a hunger strike. A hunger strike is the ultimate, last form of political communication we have to make this system accountable.

We, as AISA student activists, decided that if Wangchuk, who is not directly involved as a student, is concerned enough to go on hunger strike, then why are we not? Six AISA members joined the hunger strike: Neha, AISA National president and PhD student at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU); Danish Ali, PhD scholar and Joint Secretary of the JNU student union; Ameen Amitoj, PhD scholar at Ambedkar University Delhi; Deepak from Delhi University; and myself.

Several other individuals who have no political or ideological affiliation, but have decided that our system has been polluted by corruption, also decided to go on hunger strike.

Myself, Neha and Ameen continued our hunger strike for 23 days. We lost a lot of weight. I personally lost 11.5kg of weight and became underweight. My body started the ketosis process where it begins to consume not only fat but also muscle. Our gums started bleeding because of lack of nutrition, our glucose levels dropped below safe levels. It was a very alarming condition.

While our hunger strike continued, we heard that more papers had leaked in several states including Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The government was not taking any kind of accountability, it was not listening to us or paying attention to what we were saying.

Delhi Police grabbed Sonam Wangchuck from Jantar Mantar and threw him in the back of a white van, it looked like a dead body was being picked up, and he was detained in a hospital in the name of medical treatment.

Delhi Police tried to vacate the Jantar Mantar site, but our comrades and colleagues showed us solidarity both physically and on social media, they continued their strong support for this movement and the government had to step back, they could not vacate us from the Jantar Mantar site.

There was a march on parliament on July 20 which was met with brutality and repression from the police. What happened on that day?

July 20 was declared a march on the parliament because the government was not listening, we had lost dozens of kilograms but the government was totally ignoring us.

We began our march and the government started to crack down on the students and youth, those who were demanding fair examination processes, transparent education system and accountability from those ministers who were invisible, inefficient and incompetent to prevent the paper leak.

Those students who are demanding this accountability had to face the brutal lathi (baton) charge, water cannons and tear gas. That created a stampede situation, where many were crushed. Even pellet guns were used to demoralise us, and to say that our dissenting voices will not be tolerated.

This was a very heavy crackdown. It was disgusting, many students had their hands broken, their legs broken and were hit directly on the head. Women had their clothes torn off by the male police.

It was a scene in which this government was treating us like cockroaches, they were hitting us just like how you might hit a cockroach in your house. They want to show that this would be the outcome of protesting against the Modi government.

But even after this barbaric cruelty, students and youth haven’t stopped. Their heads, legs and hands might have been broken, but their commitment, resilience, valour was not broken. They continue to protest. Protest camps like Jantar Mantar began to rise in many different parts of the nation. In every district, every state, every city, people came out on the street and demanded the resignation of the incompetent education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

Finally, on July 24, this government had to step back and the lead minister had to resign from his post.

What is next for India’s youth movement?

The CJP is not a political party, it is a movement in which people from all different identities are all involved. We collectively participated and have beaten back this authoritarian regime. Students and youth will not tolerate more. Our demand for Pradhan to resign was achieved, but this was not our sole demand, our protests must continue for accountability, but also for structural reforms.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) is the private agency that conducts the NEET and other exams. It only has two dozen permanent employees, it has no office, it conducts more than 2.2 million students exams without permanent employees, without permanent structure. That results in corruption and paper leaks. We are demanding urgent structural reform to scrap the NTA, and our demand is not fulfilled.

We are also calling for the repeal of the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP), which is directly dictating that the government not take any more responsibility for education. That’s why you see the fees for courses going higher, dropout rates are rising, and the government is stepping back and giving the private players more opportunities to rot these institutions and get more profits by extracting more money from the masses. The government is creating favourable conditions for these private institutions while destroying public universities, destroying secure, guaranteed, dignified employment.

This shows our democracy is being bulldozed, and this government, with a nexus of media, corporate goons, top-elite bureaucrats, have created a scenario where they have manipulated the democratic mandate. WIth a manipulated mandate they are winning elections, manipulating the election commission and putting their political puppets in top positions in many institutions.

They are tearing down our democracy. They are not listening, they are not showing accountability. They are creating a humanitarian crisis.

India is the most populated country in the world and has the highest youth population. The disgusting thing is we have unemployed youth who are starving, malnourished and bound to be living in tents. They live their life without opportunity to work, and often fall into depression, frustration and, being alienated from the society, feel compelled to commit suicide.

This is the overall scenario of the education system against which Gen Z has risen up and decided to resist this government. Gen Z has taken the social media platforms that the Modi government used to pollute the minds of the Indian youth and turned it into a weapon against their propaganda.

From the start the government labelled us as terrorists, anti-nationals, viruses, but the youth of this nation has strongly expressed their solidarity, has stood with us, and all of that propaganda has failed. They participated physically and on social media, and while the language was diverse, the message was the same, that this government has to go down.

This was the victory of the student youth movement in our nation. When people stand up against corruption and authoritarianism, they can win.

The women of this nation have shown, when the BJP was threatening citizenship rights against Muslim people, they stood up in the anti-CAA movement and the Shaheen Bhag Delhi movement, and forced the government to step back.

When the land and agriculture of the country was being destroyed and given to the big corporations, the farmers stood up and forced the government to repeal the three farm laws it had passed. It was a historic, unprecedented moment in parliamentary democracy that in the same parliament a bill was passed, it was taken back. It was the power of the movement and the united struggle.

An authoritarian regime, a monarch-like regime, a person who portrays himself as a Superman-like authority, who controls the resources, the media, the bureaucracy and the military, but had to step back because the people stood up and protested against him.

This is not only a matter of education and employment, but also of democracy. We are facing a humanitarian crisis. It is a drastic contrast we are seeing: on one side we have a $5 trillion economy, but on the other side our students are committing suicide, and are not able to go to schools. Two crore (20 million) of students are not in the education system. We are reaching Mars but our students are not able to go to school. That is the stark reality of our system.

Students are ready to reclaim our socialistic, secular, republican democracy, we are fighting even though we face heavy crackdowns and they are bulldozing our constitution. We want to consolidate this energy and focus on the demands to abolish the NTA, repeal NEP2020 and force the resignation of home minister Amit Shah, who is responsible for the brutality against protesters on July 20.

The government has to take responsibility or it has to go.