India’s youth is now being represented by cockroaches in a rising political parody protest.
Wearing a pleasant suit like a gentleman while having the head and body of a cockroach is the new face of India’s politics after a political satire movement earned 19.6 million followers on Instagram in just a few days.
The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has become a huge meme and protest following the controversial comments of India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant, who compared unemployed youth to “cockroaches” and “parasites”.
In a hearing, the chief justice allegedly compared the youth who are unemployed or gearing towards journalism, law and activism as parasites and cockroaches.
He later explained that his comments were made for young people who are taking “fake and bogus degrees” and not the country’s youth in general.
His statement earned public outrage and mockery online, hence the birth of the satire-turned-online-protest Cockroach Janta Party or Cockroach People’s Party.
The roach in a suit
CJP is a satire of the prime minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party, the country’s ruling party for 12 years.
While CJP is not an official political party, the qualifications to be a perfect member were listed by people online.
The list is long, but more than anything, the party will require you to be “unemployed”, “lazy”, “chronically online” and have an impeccable ability to “complain in a professional manner”.
There was even a Google form that gathered over 10,000 participants with a hashtag #MainBhiCockroach, which translates to “I’m a cockroach too”.
The meme was first coined from a casual joke on social media by Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old public relations graduate of Boston University.
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‘Voice of the Lazy & Unemployed’
The political party may not be real, but the voice behind the movement reflects the youth’s dissent in the country’s affairs, where political opinions online are facing censorship.
The youth do not feel represented and understood by the political climate, and transparency to the public is unsatisfactory.
“Build a party for the young people who keep getting called lazy, chronically online and – most recently – cockroaches. That’s it. That’s the mission. The rest is satire,” the CJP website’s mission page said.
Meanwhile, their vision stated: “We are not here to set up another PM CARES, holiday in Davos on the taxpayer’s salary slip or rebrand corruption as ‘strategic spending’. We are here to ask – loudly, repeatedly, in writing – where the money went.”
The website also included a manifesto, where five demands were listed as a call for the government to provide actions on issues related to judicial independence, election integrity, transparency, women’s reservation, youth and media accountability.
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