'Cockroach' youth group founder leads first street protest after arrival in India

NEW DELHI: The founder of India’s viral Cockroach Janta Party led a street protest in New Delhi on Saturday demanding the resignation of the federal education minister, taking the online youth movement from social media to the streets for the first time in a show of dissent against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Abhijeet Dipke, 30, who has lived in the United States for the past two years and had not previously travelled to India since forming the movement, carried a copy of India’s constitution as he left New Delhi’s international airport for the protest site, greeted by hundreds of supporters chanting his name.

The group, which has amassed over 22 million Instagram followers since launching in mid-May, is the largest online expression of dissent against the Hindu nationalist Modi’s 12-year rule, fuelled by persistently high youth unemployment.

Anger over exam paper leaks

A few hundred protesters gathered near Jantar Mantar in central New Delhi as police barricaded some of the surrounding roads. The protesters shouted slogans demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over recurring leaks of examination papers and errors in marking that have threatened to derail the careers of millions of students.

Hundreds of thousands of students have joined the movement in just a few days, Dipke said at the protest site. “Cockroach Janta Party is not a planned party. This is a voice of those students that are angry with the government,” he said.

Modi’s government has blocked the movement’s X account in the country, a move the group has challenged in a Delhi court.

Senior cabinet minister Kiren Rijiju has accused the group of seeking followers from arch-enemy Pakistan and the “anti-India gang”, a slur used by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party against those it sees as unpatriotic.

Dipke has publicly shared data showing about 95% of followers of the movement’s Instagram account are based in India, followed by countries such as the United States, home to large groups of overseas Indians.

Political analysts say the group’s popularity has begun to dent Modi’s image despite his party’s recent victories in key state elections. Frustration among many Indians has deepened as rising fuel prices and gas shortages brought by the Iran war squeeze household budgets.

India has nearly 400 million people aged 15 to 29, and generating non-farm jobs for them remains one of its biggest challenges, despite rapid growth. The urban youth jobless rate was nearly 14% in April. Many educated young people are also stuck in low-paid or insecure jobs that do not match their skills, economists say.

“This movement will go nationwide,” Dipke said on Saturday.