Content Tagged “asia”
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The Cockroaches Get Modi to Back Down
Well, it looks like those cockroaches really got some stuff done. What a success story! Amazing what the internet can do.
Indian youth protesters have called off weeks of demonstrations and celebrated in the streets after the education minister quit and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government bowed to demands including calls to fix a cheating-prone exam system.
The worst political crisis of Modi’s third term in office had peaked this week when thousands of protesters marched on parliament, with police using tear gas to control them. Young voters form a critical base of his Bharatiya Janata Party. But youths calling themselves “cockroaches” had taken to the streets since late June, after national exam papers were leaked, forcing a resit that affected 2 million students and galvanising anger about the lack of prospects for young Indians. The resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, the students’ primary demand, came as a surprise because Modi has a reputation for refusing to act under pressure.
Modi’s party faces key state elections next year. Similar youth-led protest movements brought down governments in neighbouring Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh in recent years.
→ India’s “cockroach” protesters claim surprise victory as government accepts their demands, The Sidney Morning Herald
It seems these “Discord revolutions” are a new factor on the political scene that has to be reckoned with going forward.
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Cockroaches Caned
Speaking of the cockroaches … this is getting out of hand:
Supporters of India's youth-led “cockroach” movement were caned by police on Monday as they sought to march on parliament in the capital, New Delhi, despite authorities denying permission for the protest. The months-old movement and the planned protest are seen as the biggest public challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his third term in office, drawing millions of supporters on social media before broadening its appeal.
A police decision to forcibly move hunger-striking activist Sonam Wangchuk to hospital on Saturday has galvanized the movement, with thousands of supporters arriving through the night at the protest site of Jantar Mantar in the heart of New Delhi for the march on the opening day of parliament's monsoon session.
→ Police cane “Cockroach” movement youth protesters marching to parliament in New Delhi, The Jerusalem Post
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The Cockroach Janta Party
Today I learned that there is a Cockroach Janta Party in India. I first thought this was an Asmongold reference, since he is also known as the “Roach King” among his viewers.
Abhijeet Dipke has barely slept in the last 72 hours, fielding waves of messages on social media after a casual joke took an unexpected turn. The 30-year-old, a recent graduate in public relations from Boston University in the United States, finds himself leading a sweeping satirical political movement — the so-called Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), where “janta” means people in Hindi — being joined online by thousands of people with each passing day.
On Friday, the Supreme Court of India’s chief justice, Surya Kant, said during an open court hearing that “parasites” were attacking the system, and equated the youngsters “who don’t get any employment and don’t have any place in a profession” to cockroaches. “There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists, and they start attacking everyone,” he said.
Kant later clarified his remarks, saying his comment related to some people acquiring fraudulent degrees and did not target India’s youth, whom he called “the pillars of a developed India”. Yet, his remarks drew considerable ire, mainly from Gen Z internet users, as they battle large-scale unemployment, inflation and bitter religious divides after 12 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government. As outrage escalated across social media, Dipke posted on X on Saturday: “What if all cockroaches come together?”
He followed up on his joke and the desperately frustrated emotions behind it by setting up a website and social media accounts for the Cockroach Janta Party — a play on Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — on Instagram and X.
(This story is from May, I just now learned about this party, though.)