First, it was a meme with weird AI-generated cockroach pictures. Then, it became a youth movement that is genuinely freaking out the Indian political establishment. So how far can the Cockroach Janata Party take it?

For this episode, I hit up documentary filmmaker Angad Singh and asked him why young people are putting on cockroach masks and getting into the streets.

In short, it started with an official calling unemployed young people parasites and “cockroaches.” But then this combined with exam leaks, botched test results, and a cartoonishly hackable test portal (combined with a bunch of government lies) to fuel young people angry at a system that keeps failing them.

Links:

Here’s the ‘hacker’ on how he got into the CBSE system (and what happened afterwards) https://ni5arga.com/blog/posts/hacking-cbse/

An article on the journalist who accused a student of being Pakistani (he later apologized): https://thewire.in/education/doordarshan-anchor-calls-delhi-student-pakistani-for-raising-cbse-marking-grievance

And make sure to check out Angad's post on the CJP: https://www.patreon.com/Angadgsingh/posts/do-cockroaches-160900961