In Episode 1842 of Cut The Clutter, ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta explains the rise of the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’. He also examines how social media is fuelling a new wave of non-ideological politics in India and across South Asia. He examines how a remark by the Chief Justice of India sparked the phenomenon, why it resonated with young Indians, and what it reveals about growing anti-establishment sentiment, distrust of institutions, and the rise of non-ideological politics shaped by social media virality.
Here is the complete transcript, edited for clarity.
There is a new bird painting on the political radar screen in India. In fact, it’s not a bird. It’s an insect. An insect that only occasionally can fly just a little bit. Just flutter a little bit. Not going to a flight.
A cockroach. Now what exactly is this cockroach phenomenon? Cockroach phenomenon is something called the Cockroach Janata Party.
On 16 May, somebody called Abhijeet Dipke, just 30 years old, a political communications specialist, a student at Boston University, and somebody, for clarity, who had worked on the social media team of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) between 2020 and 2023. He started this website. Now, the Cockroach Janta Party had followed an ill-guarded or maybe an unthinking or maybe a casual comment by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Justice Surya Kant, who compared people coming in as activists or who claim to be the media or who claim to be lawyers, but don’t have real qualifications, with cockroaches.
That was a dismissive comment he made. He tried to clarify later by saying that he didn’t want to insult anybody. By that time, however, I would not say the damage was done because he had said something, he had clarified it, that issue was over as far as he was concerned, but something had got sparked. Something had got sparked, or maybe this comment touched a raw nerve somewhere and that raw nerve is that of young Indians.
Now what happened: Cockroach Janta Party. This is a self-deprecatory idea that look, you call us cockroaches, cockroaches can never go extinct, cockroaches will fight. In fact, there was a time when Aroon Purie, my former editor in India Today, whenever he was asked will news media survive, he used to say we are like the cockroaches, we will always survive. So it may be self-deprecatory but cockroach also denotes strength and indestructibility.
Anybody who has tried to eradicate cockroaches from their homes, even after spraying all poisonous things, you can never be sure that all cockroaches are gone and even if you think they are gone, they make a comeback. So there is a certain resilience to the cockroach as well. You combine all of that and the idea clicks.
Idea clicks at a time when a lot of young people in India are unemployed or underemployed and spending a lot of time online. That is the impulse that Abhijeet Dipke caught. See what happened as a result.
On 15 May, the CJI made this comment. On 16 May, Abhijeet Dipke put up this Google form for membership to the Cockroach Janta Party and also put out a five-point charter which I will read out because it is quite interesting.
By 18 May, this had become an international talking point. By 21 May, his Instagram following had gone to 109 million. Why is that number significant? Because at that point, it had exceeded the following of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) official handle.
In fact, as we record today, that is 22 May, it has already crossed 20.5 million and chances are by the end of the day, it will be 21 million. That is the pace at which it is growing. This makes it two and a half times as big as the BJP’s official handle already.
For comparison, I can tell you it is more than one and a half times of the Congress party, which is 13.4 million. More than 10 times of the AAP, which is 1.9 million.
He also started a handle on X which within three-four days got up to 13.4 million followers. That compared with 23 of the BJP, 11.5 of the Congress party, and 6.1 of the AAP.
So this was already within three days, more than twice as much as the AAP and more than 60 percent of the BJP and this was rising very fast. That’s the Twitter handle that the government got blocked using Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, basically claiming that this was a threat to national security.
That is something in India that can be done quite easily. India does issue blocking orders on a lot of X handles. For some reason, it hasn’t happened with the Instagram handle of the Cockroach Janta Party.
One reason could be that this Instagram handle is registered in America but the government has the power to block access to it in India. That hasn’t happened. Now if Abhijeet Dipke claims to be a political communication specialist, he actually is quite smart because he knows his audience.
The essential requirement for a communication specialist is to know your audience. In this case, he says, look at his website. It says the voice of the lazy and the unemployed.
Lazy is again self-deprecation. Unemployed is a reality because once he goes to the unemployed, he gets a large enough constituency. Lazy and unemployed is a very important political statement in today’s environment given the mood. Because in India, besides being unemployed, the problem is also being underemployed.
So, the people have a lot of time which makes them lazy and which makes them also spend a lot more time on social media or a lot more time online than those with a full 9-hour job in a day. That is also the outcome of having nearly free data. That is something that the Prime Minister spoke about in Bihar during the elections when he said that young people of Bihar can now make reels and earn their living using free data.
To which Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor responded by saying, the voter of Bihar does not ask for free data. The voters want their sons back because his entire campaign was again out-migration of Biharis working elsewhere in the country.
So this free data also becomes an aid for underemployed or unemployed young people. And that is the demographic that this Cockroach Janta Party, I don’t know how far it goes or how far the phenomenon goes or how far the idea or the mood goes. But that is what it is riding right now.
Look at the qualifications for joining his party. Qualifications are quite simple. Number one, you should be unemployed. Unemployed by force, by choice or by principle. We don’t ask. Second, he says you must be lazy. But must be lazy physically only. Your brain may continue to spiral. So active in your mind, physically lazy. Physically lazy means you will be online. Which is his third requirement that you should be chronically online at least 11 hours a day, including bathroom breaks. So, a sense of humour is there. Number four, you can rant professionally. Shout but be honest and say something that matters. Those are the four qualifications that he lists.
The point is how did something like this get such a lot of support right away. And the key to this might lie in the manifesto they issued.
Because that might tell you something about the issues that are assailing the minds of young Indians. How do you get 2.1 crore followers just like this? The five-point agenda is number one, if the party comes to power, no Chief Justice shall be granted a Rajya Sabha seat as a post-retirement award.
Call this the Gogoi Amendment. Because Justice Ranjan Gogoi was given a Rajya Sabha membership. So, if CJP comes to power, no CJI will be granted a Rajya Sabha seat. This is playing to the anti-establishment impulse among the young people.
Number two, if any legitimate vote is deleted, whether in a CJP or opposition-ruled state, the CEC shall be arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or the UAPA. Right? As taking away voting rights of citizens is no less than terrorism. So, number one, skepticism about the higher judiciary.
And second, playing into the current mood among a large section of population and voters, that election process is not fair. Number three, women shall receive 50% reservation, not 33, without increasing the strength of Parliament. Additionally, 50% of all cabinet positions shall be reserved for women. That’s a motherhood and apple pie kind of agenda.
Number four, all media houses owned by Ambani and Adani shall have license cancelled to make way for truly independent India. Bank accounts of ‘Godi media’ anchors shall be investigated. This, again, is playing into the current mood among young Indians against what they see as compromised media.
Compromised media or immature media or media that gives you that gives you entertainment or cheap entertainment in place of news or is very loaded and also is very pro-government. So, once again, it’s appealing to the anti-establishment mindset among the youth.
And number five, any MLA or MP who defects from one party to another shall be barred from contesting elections and from holding any public office for a period of 20 years. Once again, everybody is irritated by defections.
Everybody is irritated also by wholesale, mass-scale defections. One party today becomes another party the next day. We’ve just seen the split of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in Tamil Nadu. So, you can imagine how are the voters who voted for the AIADMK are feeling now.
Now, more than half the party has gone in one direction and the rest are in this direction. And this happened earlier with the Nationalist Congress Party, the Shiv Sena, etc. None of this is possible to implement. Definitely not under our current Constitution. This will need a revolution and maybe a new republic. No such thing is going to happen.
But remember, when the AAP was formed, the movement, anti-corruption movement preceding that had demanded a Jan Lokpal Bill, which also would not have been possible under this Constitution. However, that anti-corruption movement created a mood which led to the creation of the AAP and its immediate success in Delhi and later in Punjab as well.
That might also be the reason why the government got so alarmed and got the X handle banned. And there is a lot of word coming out from the government and circles close to the government that this is some kind of foreign subversion. Dipke put out a post from his handle where he says 94% of his followers are in India, 1% are in America etc. That’s his claim.
I know you are desperately trying to hack the account but since you have failed to do so. Let me share the real data.
Why would you call 94% of Indian youth as Pakistanis? https://t.co/547NtEP934 pic.twitter.com/9DRTx6l96e
— Abhijeet Dipke (@abhijeet_dipke) May 21, 2026
We have no way of judging where his followers are coming from. We can just see who they are what their names are. The important political point we are making in this episode of Cut the Clutter on this CJP phenomenon is that this becomes significant because in today’s environment of virality and widespread youth anger and general disillusionment with the establishment space has opened up for non-ideological politics.
Not ideology of the Left or the Right but just the ideology of disillusionment and anger, etc. We saw that happen with the AAP. We know that it’s also difficult to sustain non-ideological politics. That’s the struggle that AAP is having now but it’s possible now for non-ideological parties to come and rule not just states but entire countries.
See what happened in Nepal. Balen Shah is just 36. He had no ideology. He was just angry and he rode the anger of young Nepalese who were seeing reels and pictures of children of Nepalese politicians, ministers, top officials who were having fun overseas, who were buying expensive bags and dresses and flaunting them on Instagram while Nepal was suffering in poverty.
They were able to ride that resentment and Balen Shah became their leader and became the Prime Minister. Similarly, we saw in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, it was anger over the lifestyle that the Rajapaksas had. They had half the Cabinet positions between themselves, the family. They were leading a very lavish lifestyle while the country was suffering.
The currency was collapsing. Inflation was going up. The Rajapaksas had also by law enforced organic farming which had led to agricultural collapse. All of that anger then led to a wide public protest and storming of the presidency and the end of the Rajapaksa regime.
It’s the maturity of the Sri Lankan system that after that they still landed on their feet, held a fresh election and a new leader came into power. Who was this new leader? This new leader in a way was an outsider. He had an ideology.
He had a hard Left ideology in fact but his party was marginal. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) was marginal. However, the people had got so fed up of the existing parties and ideologies that in this mood of anger, they just chose a newcomer.
They just wanted a new face. That’s how Anura Kumara Dissanayake became president of Sri Lanka and then his party swept the parliamentary election as well. He is 57 now. He was an outsider. He was not from the usual United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in Sri Lanka. A new force was born in the country.
In Nepal and Sri Lanka, a new force was born. In Bangladesh too, the student movement that led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina who was otherwise so well entrenched with dictatorial powers.
That was by a young man called Nahid Islam just 28. They brought the government down but he did not quite have gas in the tank to go and win elections in the country. There the conventional parties came in. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) came in with a two-thirds majority. Nahid Islam’s National Citizens Party got only six seats.
So three countries in our neighbourhood, we have seen some equivalent of a Gen Z protest bringing down an established government. Within our own country, there was the Ahmadi Party in the past and now, we have just seen Joseph Vijay. In the political system, there have been varied reactions to his rise.
Shashi Tharoor of the Congress party has said that the CJP should be allowed to exist. This is a pressure valve in a democracy. This is not a foreign conspiracy. This is satire reflecting the frustration of young Indians. He also says that democracy needs these pressure valves and it’s better to allow them to be there.
Akhilesh Yadav’s party has been a bit more bitty and politically loaded. They put up a Instagram handle, a Twitter or X handle, a Facebook page, whatever. And if there is enough of you or if you have an idea that goes viral, then you can build a force. That is what also produces a challenge now for conventional politics.
And what it does is it reminds me also of something. In fact, a movie that I saw in 2014 on a long flight when I was going to Melbourne from Delhi.
Bird Man. It is a 2014 film which won the Oscar that year with Michael Keaton and Emma Stone as father and daughter with a disturbed relationship. This was a part satirical and part dark film. While the father is explaining to her why the play that he is trying to create and act in is important for him, she is counter attacking him by saying that you are not doing it for art, you are only doing it for relevance because you become outdated and irrelevant now.
And she says there is a whole world out there who fight to get relevant every single day and you act as if it doesn’t exist. You hate bloggers, you mock Twitter, you don’t even have a Facebook page. You are the one who doesn’t exist. She mocks her father.
Now, it made a little difference to my life. Until then, I used to mock at social media as well, particularly Twitter. Twitter was the common thing then, Instagram had not yet come in. And I did not have a Twitter page. Once I heard this, I thought I’ll listen to those friends of mine.
I was between jobs then, I had just left the Indian Express and when I came back from Australia, I thought maybe I shall get myself a Twitter page. And that’s how I got my presence on Twitter.
In fact, a friend of mine, Amit Prabhu, set up a X account. Rahul Kanwal ran it because I was briefly in India Today and then I took charge of it. And then, I learnt my own little lesson about virality, the power of social media from this movie. And I thought this is a good story to share with you today.
The film was directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, and the film won an Oscar that year.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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