India’s ‘Cockroach Party’ Is the Protest Nobody Saw Coming

On 15 May 2026, India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant compared unemployed young people to “cockroaches” during a Supreme Court hearing. He was dismissing a routine petition when he remarked that youngsters who can’t find work become “social media activists” and “start attacking everyone”, parasites, he called them. He later walked it back. The damage was done.

The next day, Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old Boston University graduate and former political strategist, posted on X: “What if all cockroaches came together?” Then he actually built a party.

The Cockroach Janta Party launched on 16 May with a website, a manifesto, and eligibility criteria requiring applicants to be unemployed, lazy, and “chronically online.” Its name is a deliberate jab at Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. Its headquarters: “wherever the wifi works.” Its corporate donors: zero.

Within a week it had 19 million Instagram followers, nearly double the Indian government’s own audience, and over 350,000 sign-ups. Memes, protest videos, and cockroach costumes flooded social media. Opposition MPs Mahua Moitra and Kirti Azad publicly “joined.” International outlets from CNN to Al Jazeera picked up the story.

The joke landed because the pain behind it is real. Nearly 40 per cent of Indian graduates aged 15 to 25 are unemployed. India has the world’s largest youth population, and for a generation promised opportunity after 12 years of Modi’s government, the Chief Justice’s word, cockroach, felt less like an insult and more like an accidental confession.

The manifesto reflects that anger directly. The party demands cancellation of broadcast licences held by billionaires Ambani and Adani, both seen as close to the ruling government, in favour of genuinely independent media.

The authorities took notice. On 21 May, India blocked the CJP’s X account citing a legal demand. It only made the movement bigger. Supporters are now reportedly considering fielding a real candidate in an upcoming Bihar by-election.

The cockroach, it turns out, is very hard to exterminate.