An Introduction to The Cockroach Janata Party

Cockroach Janata Party: How a Joke Became a Youth Movement | Takaro Kids

This Takaro Kids episode uses cockroaches as a lens to explain civics and political movements in India, sparked by a May 15 remark attributed to the Chief Justice of India comparing unemployed youth to “cockroaches,” which he later said was misquoted and aimed at people using fake degrees. A political communications strategist, Abhijeet Dipke, leaned into the insult by creating the satirical “Cockroach Janata Party” on X and Instagram, which quickly gained massive followings amid frustration about unemployment (including a cited figure that 40% of Indian graduates under 25 are unemployed). The episode explains satire as a tool for serious critique and outlines CJP’s demands, including 50% women’s representation, penalties for politicians who switch parties, safeguards against electoral fraud and concentrated media ownership, limits on retired judges entering politics, and a call for Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation over exam paper leaks. It also describes a peaceful protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar and ends with a quiz asking the meaning of “Jantar Mantar.”

00:00 Cockroach Cold Open
00:36 From Insect to Insult
01:43 Misquote and Backpedal
02:28 Birth of CJP Satire
03:21 Why It Went Viral
06:25 Satire as Strategy
07:28 Serious Demands List
10:11 Jantar Mantar Protest
12:17 Bigger Political Moment
13:53 What Happens Next
15:04 Wrap Up and Quiz

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Transcript

Kiran 0:00

Mics, camera, action. Welcome back to Takaro, and this week we're gonna be talking about an insect. Is that right, Debbie?

Debkanya 0:09

A very, very popular insect and a very hardy insect. If you haven't guessed it already, we're talking about cockroaches. The insects that survive, supposedly have been known to survive a nuclear fallout.

Kiran 0:24

Correct. They survive everything. They have been known-- I think they, they've been, uh, identified to the dinosaur era as well, right? They, they're the remnants of the dinosaur era. And in fact, today, what we're gonna be talking about, which is cockroaches, uh, actually gonna be connected to political science and civics. So that's interesting

Debkanya 0:46

Yep. This insect, this very, very humble insect that can be found everywhere, especially in your kitchen, came into the limelight very, very recently, as recently as May 15th, when, a very important man, which is the Chief Justice of India, actually said that the youth in our country today, some of the youth in our country are like cockroaches because they run Unemployed youth are like cockroaches because they run into things like activism and journalism and try to, you know, be part of the media.

Kiran 1:17

Basically, they They're just doing random other things.

Debkanya 1:20

And you can imagine that did not go down well with a lot of people, especially the youth, you know, people who generally tend to go into the media or generally go-- tend to go into activism. They want to do things for the country, so they felt really bad that they were being compared to the cockroach. But then someone decided, "Hey, you know what? It's probably not a bad thing at all. Let's lean into it."

Kiran 1:43

So the person who actually called, you know, who made this statement of unemployed young people being like cockroaches or parasites, is the Chief Justice of India. And the Chief Justice of India is basically one of the most important people, the highest judge in the country. And later on, he came back saying that, you know, he was misquoted. He did not mean that. Um, He was mainly meaning people who use fake degrees, you know, certifications and, uh, enter professions like law or medicine, which is dangerous. That was his whole point, is that those are the people I was basically calling cockroaches. But it was already too late because, you know, when you use words like this and you're such a powerful person, it immediately catches on. And so what happened is, like you said, within basically hours of, um, the Chief Justice saying this, a young whose name is Abhijeet Dipke. He now is a political communications strategist, which in very simple terms basically means he works with political organizations, and does communications and for and He posted a very, very simple question on X, which is a social media platform which was known as Twitter, and he just asked a very simple question: if all these cockroaches together? That's it. Not an angry statement. Nothing, you know, uh, special about it, but a very, very simple statement

Debkanya 3:20

That's right. And I think one of the things that kind of made the cockroach capture everybody's imagination is A, of course, because it's, it's a insect that is usually, you know, people find them very disgusting, but they're also found everywhere. But also it's the timing, right? We are at a time when a there aren't enough jobs. People are highly educated. There aren't enough jobs out there for them. They're unhappy with the way the country is run in certain ways. Or they just want to be heard more and they feel like they're not getting enough options to be heard

Kiran 3:51

You were talking about the, you know, unemployment actually 40% of Indian graduates under the age of 25 are unemployed today, that's a pretty large number, right? So there's that sort of frustration building up. There's sort of that, you know, anger that's building up slowly. So this, uh, this guy, Abhijeet, he basically took the name cockroach and he immediately founded a called the Cockroach Janata Party,

Debkanya 4:18

It's not a real party though. What Abhijeet did was it was a joke party, right? He wasn't-- He didn't really mean to float a political party. I mean, it's not so easy to just, you know, up and say, "Hey, you know, here's my political party and I'm gonna fight elections." That was never the point. The point was just to make a fun account, and he started off, like you said, on X and on Instagram. Uh, but what happened is people identified with this issue so much that they actually got a huge number of followers, more than the BJP and more than the Congress accounts as well. The Congress is the opposition party, the largest opposition party. They had more followers than both of them. So can you imagine how many people got excited about this idea of a cockroach Janata party?

Kiran 5:03

Within days, they basically had a bigger Instagram following than the two biggest political parties in India, which have been around for, like, right? And in fact, uh, if you think about it, you know what he did very cleverly, and, and this is very common in politics, is, or in social movements, if I will, if I were to rephrase that, is that you take an insult and you make it your identity, is very, very interesting, right? Because when you insult someone, there is a group of people, and you make that your identity. And that's happened many times in the past through various different kind of movements where people have, you know, taken on that insult and made it their own and made it their real motivation or mission to kind of go down that path, right? So why did it catch fire so much? Is because of that un-unemployed rate that we have in India today, and we're starting to see there's more and more, you know, conversation about, oh, what's happening with the IT industry, which is one of the largest employers with AI coming in. Are there gonna be jobs? What kind of jobs? So there's a lot of uncertainty, and I think even from an economy perspective, you know, all of you all I'm sure have of the Iran war and that's creating a lot of, concerns globally. There's, there's a lot of unrest and, you know, the unknowns happening in the world today, which really lends itself to this.

Debkanya 6:25

One of the other interesting things to note, and this is something that if you ever decide to study politics and if you want to go into the history of how movements are built, the other interesting thing about this is, I mean, when you say cockroach, it's funny, right? It's supposed to be, um, you know, it's, it's a tool. It's actually a popular tool called using satire. Satire is basically when you make fun of something, but are trying to make a very serious point, and that's what is happening here. They are leaning into satire as a tool to make their point. It's, it's been used very popularly. In fact, you find a lot of cartoonists, if you've ever looked at the newspaper, there'll be a little cartoon, a little drawing that will usually comment on something that's happening in the world around you. And the cartoon usually can say things that most other people can't, right? Because you're leaning into humor and jokes to make a very, very serious point, and that's exactly this as well. The Cockroach Janata Party is using a joke is using satire. It's using something that is not so serious to make a very, very serious point about how the youth want changes to happen in the country. Uh, and they've actually created a list, right? They've created a list of demands, that they want the government to take seriously.

Kiran 7:34

So actually those demands are quite serious, right? While the satire piece is to kind of bring people together because it automatically disarms you, right? So once they got all these people, and I think it was a surprise even for Abhijit to get so many people, but once that happened, he used the platform to kind of talk about some very serious demands. One is, um, you know, there should be 50% women's representation in the government, in the parliament and in cabinet, 50%. We are drastically lower than that percentage today as a current reality. He basically also looked at, one of the initial demands was 20 year bans for politicians who switch parties personal gain. And this is very interesting because I don't know if you've been following it, but, um, every time a government is formed in India, in a state or on the, at the center level, there are politicians who jump from one party to another to try and create that majority. And it's just kind of become almost, you know, almost become a joke because of the number of times people jump parties and, you know, they'll say, "Oh, now I'm going from one to the other because the other one has more votes," and blah, blah,

Debkanya 8:45

Because decisions are taken in our country based on majority, right? Majority wins in, in a democracy, and that's exactly why people move around so much. They're like, okay, you know, imagine if you are, uh, trying to make a decision about, uh, what you should get for lunch tomorrow in your class. One group wants, mm, I don't know, burgers. The other group wants biryani. Say it's a class of 100. 50 people who want biryani, 50 people who want burgers. That's a tie. How do you make sure that one group wins? You move from one group to the other, right? So you try to get more people maybe in the biryani group, and that's exactly what keeps happening in Indian politics. And that's what they said, that we cannot allow that to happen because that's unfair, so we're gonna ban any politician who jumps around like this.

Kiran 9:28

Now, that biryani and burger talk sounds yummy, uh, some of the other things that he was also talking about was, uh, you know, vote tampering, electoral fraud. He was talking about media ownership, the fact that no big entity should own the media so that it's, it's actually free and, neutral. He also basically talked about fast-track appointments for the retired judges into political roles. So someone who

Debkanya 9:55

should not be allowed

Kiran 9:56

coming into the political role, it shouldn't be allowed. So while the entire thing was, a satire and Cockroach Janata Party as a name, which is funny, some of these demands are actually very, very serious because, you know, it's exactly what's happening in our country. And in fact, they actually had a protest which was extremely successful. No one expected it, basically, the Cockroach Janata Party asked all of its supporters to come to Delhi.

Debkanya 10:21

Yeah, that's right. They, they all congregated in a place called Jantar Mantar. Now, Jantar Mantar is a very, very famous spot in Delhi, which is a designated spot for protests. Now remember, protesting is actually a very important part of who we are as Indians, right? That's how it played a big role in the, in, in our independence struggle against the British, and we continue to build that as a democracy, as a, as an essential part of who we are and how we, uh, make our voices heard. So Jantar Mantar is a designated spot for peaceful protests. We are allowed to do it, uh, as per the Constitution as well. Under Article 19, we're allowed to come together you have the freedom of speech and you have the freedom to congregate. So thousands of people turned up and they were told to just show up with, I think, a couple of things- they were told to bring a book and they were told to carry the national flag, the Tiranga, to showcase their patriotism. And they were also told that everything has to be as peaceful as possible because this is not to fight, this is not about anger, this is about being heard. Thousands and thousands of people turned up. They had these cockroach masks that they printed out, and they wore those and came. They made fun posters, and it actually was a really, really successful, uh, congregation. Um, and that's where these demands were made

Kiran 11:29

Yeah. And I think one of the other things that they also started demanding is about the education minister, right? The resignation of the education minister,

Debkanya 11:37

Yep

Kiran 11:37

so many scandals, uh, about university entrance exams, about, you know, many of the state and board-level exams as

Debkanya 11:46

Paper leaks, yeah

Kiran 11:48

that they kind of leaks, one of the new demands that they came up with was the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan. Now, again, is not an official political party. CJP is not an official political party as yet. Whether it will become one, maybe. Um, but, you know, it's a congregation of people who all have same sort of, uh, problems, thoughts. They want the same kind of change to be seen. So that's what's kind of bringing everyone together. And this is a really, really important moment in, I would say, the Indian political environment as well, right? Because been one ruling party for a long while. Not much of a, opposition. It's always been struggling at the central level. There is a huge economic change that's happening. India was always known to be the place where there are tons of jobs and a lot of growth. The world is suffering. India is also suffering, a lot of unemployed youth. So I think all of this coming together really spurred this growth of the Cockroach Janta Party, and I think it's very important for us to understand that from, from a geopolitical, from a political science perspective and, uh, you know, how change, civic change can possibly take shape as well.

Debkanya 13:06

And this has not just happened in India, it's happened all over the world in different, different countries as well. I mean, Fridays for the Future is one example of, you know, how students came together and started protesting. It started with Greta Thunberg, remember her?

Kiran 13:18

In. Yep

Debkanya 13:19

know, it's all about coming together and making their voices heard, saying that you guys need to do something, take the climate seriously, take climate change seriously, and make policies and rules around it so that we can have a safer planet, a better planet. Um, there have been many such movements. There have some movements that took place in Hong Kong, in Myanmar. There's more recently, we've covered it on Takaro as well. It happened in Nepal, it happened in Sri Lanka. But of course, this is not the same thing because those protests kind of went a little too far, and that's what the difference is right now. This is a peaceful movement. And it's, like I said, not a political party, it's a satire, right? It was a joke that became bigger than they expected to ever, ever become.

Kiran 13:57

So no one knows where it's gonna go from here, but a lot of people are very interested to see what this Cockroach Janta Party will do. Whether they will continue to just be, you know, something that brings people together to talk about issues, or does it actually become a political party? Does it fade away? Does everyone forget about it in the next two weeks, two months? Um, but it's made a few changes already. It's made us sit up and start talking about the youth India, you know, what's happening, the, the opportunities or the lack of opportunities. And I think, um, it's important for all of us to kind of understand where we are at from a country perspective. And so next time someone in power uses a word to insult or demean another group, you may want to rethink it. You know? It may actually turn out to be a complete, mess because of what you started, uh, and then you'll be

Debkanya 14:52

Unintentionally or whatever, yeah.

Kiran 14:54

Correct.

Debkanya 14:55

Absolutely. Absolutely. As we keep saying, the beauty of being in a democracy is the opportunity to have your voice heard, and there are different ways for that to happen, right? Great. With that, we will wrap up this episode of Takaro Kids. We hope you've, we've given you a good understanding of, of political movements and how they could start and what they, what they mean, uh, in a country like ours. But we will not go before we give you our quiz question for this week. I hope you're ready The quiz question this week is: What is the meaning of Jantar Mantar? The place where the Cockroach Janata Party held its protest. Okay. I'll give you options. This is super interesting. I want you to go back, and I want you to research this yourselves and learn about what Jantar Mantar means. The options are, one, magical garden. Option two, calculating instrument. Option three, people's meeting place, and option four, protest park. Okay, go back. Look it up

Kiran 15:58

sound like abracadabra? Jantar Mantar, abracadabra.

Debkanya 16:01

That's why I said magical garden. Maybe it's that. Maybe it's that, Kiran, if that's your choice.

Kiran 16:07

that. Huh. is

Debkanya 16:09

But

Kiran 16:09

choice?

Debkanya 16:10

look it up. Look it up, and you'll be surprised to find that the Jantar Mantar in Delhi is not the only one in our country. So that's enough information for you for now. Go look it up

Kiran 16:20

go figure out where, what the Jantar Mantar means and send in your answers to takarokids.com or ask your parent to direct message us on Instagram with the answer. And until next week

Debkanya 16:35

It's time for us to say bye-bye

Kiran 16:38

Bye-bye.