They came with the delayed rains, a flood of humanity that suddenly marched into the capital. There were young school and college students crying and shaken. Why did they hit me, I just want clean exams, they smashed my phone. There was another demographic too, hardier youth who had travelled long distances on trains and buses. They spoke of their search for jobs; how one government post sees thousands converging for it.
On July 20, the day Parliament resumed for the monsoon session, I met many such young people, from Other Backward Classes and Dalit backgrounds, from educated, forward caste backgrounds, from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, the Hindi heartland. They had degrees that had got them nothing beyond jobs as salespersons in Delhi stores selling fashionable clothes they could never afford for themselves. They had taken the day off to protest for their lives, their blocked futures. “I too am fighting for my country,” one said.
They were all met with police batons, barricades, and tear gas shells.
The spiralling jobs and education crisis has made what started as a meme, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), into a storm that culminated in one of the largest gatherings of protesters in the capital in recent decades. Delhi has been central to protests, from the Anna Andolan of 2011; to the lightning protests against the rape and murder of Nirbhaya in 2012; to the anti-CAA agitation of 2019 that converged in Shaheen Bagh; to the year-long farmer’s agitation on the three borders of the city from 2020 to 2021.
In 2026, just when it seemed that democracy had more or less been put to sleep through the SIR, the engineered splits of rival political parties, and the bending of institutions, suddenly the earth split and people emerged from the cracks, exactly like cockroaches, the metaphor the protesters use for themselves.
There are three big reasons why the CJP movement suddenly took off. First, there was already widespread awareness online. The cockroach meme has had a butterfly effect on a young audience that is frustrated, over-tested, and cheated, on both tests and jobs. They are watching an India where inequality keeps growing.
Second, the sociologically significant aspect when the CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke returned to India on June 6 and started a protest in Jantar Mantar. That Dipke is a Dalit cannot be ignored although it is not the central story of this agitation. That first day of protest was shaky and tentative, and here another element comes in, less mentioned in media accounts. The AISA (All India Students’ Association) affiliated with the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation is influential on university campuses. The AISA cadre provided the agitational format, quick gatherings in a circle, a certain verve to the tentative protest, the rhythmic slogans and music. Eventually, six AISA students went on a hunger strike, with three, Neha Bora, Manish Kumar, and Aameen Amitoj, continuing it for 23 days until July 20.
The third factor was the arrival of the Ladakh-based engineer, environmentalist, and education reformer Sonam Wangchuk who joined the CJP and launched a hunger strike on June 28. The protest now had a moral figure at its centre in the persona of someone who has worked on educational reforms besides other constitutional battles. Indeed, the police forcibly picking Wangchuk up from the site on the 21st day of his fast is what lit the last spark. The CJP said Wangchuk’s call for a march to Parliament was still on.
Suddenly, something shifted, people were touched, everyone wanted to converge at Jantar Mantar and head to Parliament. Only when the rage became palpable did the government invite representatives of the CJP for a talk on July 20. It was too late. A violent police response added to the outrage, changing a manageable protest into something huge. A self-goal for New Delhi.
The final outcome
The issue now is beyond the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. And one waits to see what final outcome this movement will have. The Anna movement, for instance, began with a demand for an effective anti-corruption law, but instead created the AAP in 2012, decimated the Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, and launched Narendra Modi as Prime Minister with the BJP winning a simple majority. The movement had intended and unintended consequences.
The farmers’ agitation actually had the neatest trajectory of achieving its stated goals. One year after the protest, the three farm laws were rolled back. The anti-CAA protests were shut down partly by the 2020 north-east Delhi riots, but entirely by the COVID-19 lockdown. The city’s Muslims were demonised as COVID-19 spreaders, even as their homes were burnt down and looted and they moved to refugee tents. The protest, however, did not achieve its objectives—the law was eventually notified, and the BJP has since only hardened policies and ground action against Muslims.
A student at the Cockroach Janata Party protest with a poster that reads: “When Modi is afraid, he hides behind the police”, in New Delhi, July 22, 2026.
| Photo Credit:
Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg
So which direction will the cockroach groundswell go? The slogans raised on the streets of Delhi on July 20 were about Prime Minister Narendra Modi too; the movement has tapped into something beyond revamping the education system. Some political parties appear to have stepped into the movement. Aazad Samaj Party leader Chandrashekhar Azad, who has pockets of influence in Uttar Pradesh, visited Jantar Mantar and is now on dharna at Parliament. Dimple Yadav, MP and wife of Akhilesh Yadav, who heads the Samajwadi Party, helped wounded students at Jantar Mantar and sharply criticised police brutality.
And finally, there is the conspiracy theory that the CJP is a front for the AAP, because Dipke once worked for the party’s social media cell. The Congress cold-shouldered the movement and Rahul Gandhi stayed far from it. Then, the Congress began to unbend. First, its spokespersons made statements of support, then Seva Dal members visited the site with food, now the Congress has taken up the issue of police brutality on protesting students in Parliament, and its leaders courted arrest by protesting in front of Modi’s house.
While it is true that AAP founder Arvind Kejriwal understands agitations and spearheaded the Anna movement, his role in the CJP movement seems far-fetched. The most consistent conspiracy theory over the past 15 years is that the Anna movement was an RSS creation. Certainly, RSS cadres were there in the movement, openly so, as was AISA, but it is reductionist to imagine that Kejriwal choreographed the movement on behalf of the Sangh. He was his own man in Delhi politics, which has now been destroyed, but his party remains in power in Punjab.
Meanwhile, the fact that Punjab’s farmers are now trying to make common cause with the students is something that will not make New Delhi happy, and it could have political impact.
Hovering over all this are the right-wing influencers on television channels, who suggest that the protest is the work of anarchists backed by foreign powers, perhaps even Pakistan. They claim that foreign powers orchestrated regime change in Bangladesh and Nepal, and now want to do it in India. Their thoughts are brittle, and they seem to imagine that the Indian government is brittle too.
Saba Naqvi is a Delhi-based journalist and author of four books who writes on politics and identity issues.
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