This is the Guardian on the recent protests in Delhi-
It started as a sardonic joke. On 16 May, Abhijeet Dipke,
who was part of Kejriwal's IT cell under Ankit Lal who has branched out as a freelance Political Strategy Consultant. Dipke was doing a Masters in Boston and probably had similar plans.
an Indian student at Boston University, posted on X: “What if all cockroaches come together?” It was a tongue-in-cheek response to India’s chief justice, who had called unemployed young Indians “cockroaches”.
He says he was referring to bogus lawyers who didn't have degrees or legal qualifications. However, many young Indians do want to rise as politicians or 'activists' or agitators of some sort. They don't want to study hard or become wealth creators. Who can blame them? The problem is that being a brown Greta Thurnberg, like Rahul Gandhi, is only feasible if you have inherited great wealth and ownership of a major political party.
Online, thousands of people responded to Dipke’s message. Realising he had tapped into something big, Dipke flew to Delhi on 6 June and went to Jantar Mantar, its famous protest ground.
The money was there for a 'silly season' campaign of this sort. Kejriwal has lost Delhi but wants to return. Rahul has gained Kerala and some Kerala businessmen are sending their employees to participate in the 'protests'. The Communists too hope to profit from the 'tamasha'.
The protests drew young people from across the country,
some paid their own way. One or two got their 15 minutes of fame.
and the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) – a play on the BJP’s name – created a website listing their demands, including reform of India’s education system.
What the majority want is an end to Reservations. This is a hot potato. What will the caste census reveal?
India has a young population who are better educated than ever before, but it has proven a weak point for the BJP, with the country’s universities crumbling and its economy failing to provide jobs for many graduates.
The typical graduate earns less than an illiterate manual laborer in Delhi. But it is State Government's which must address the issue. The Central Government's National Testing Agency has been a disaster because it gets the blame for the inevitable paper leaks. In any case, the elephant in the room is Reservations. That's what brought down Sheikh Hasina's government in Bangladesh.
Millions of young people spend years prepping for gruelling public exams in the hope of securing a decent job,
a Government job. But most aren't decent at all. It costs a lot of money to purchase a lucrative posting. But this is also true of getting elected. You have to pay to play. On the other hand, if you join the RSS and work your way up, you may end up in the Cabinet.
What if you aren't interested in politics? What if you just want to set up a small business? Again, RSS membership is helpful. Why? Its volunteers have a good reputation.
and their parents go into debt or sell their land to fund these studies.
They would prefer to fund their emigration. Studies destroy your brain and your capacity to earn. Working abroad is the great Indian dream.
To make matters worse, these exam papers are routinely leaked and sold to the highest bidder.
The Education Minister who has just resigned got his start protesting against an exam paper leak some thirty years ago. But he was an RSS man and rose through his organizational talent.
“Anyone rich enough can buy the answers,” Hannah tells me.
Hannah is wrong. Anyone rich enough can buy a Caste certificate so as not to need a good score.
This is devastating for millions of young people, forcing them to retake tests for which they’ve already studied.
It doesn't greatly matter. Two million people retook the exam and about a million passed the NEET exam. India's population is 1.4 billion.
After a medical entrance exam was leaked in May, at least 12 students took their own lives; some left notes behind saying they could not bear the thought of resitting the test.
Fourteen trillion people committed suicide to protest against Biden's sodomization of disabled Netan-Yahoos. Anyone can tell lies.
The leaks are a potent symbol of institutional corruption, inflaming the anger that young people feel towards a political system that is failing them.
No. They don't matter. The sensible thing would be to screen for cheating and do limited retesting. What gets young people mad is reservations. Will the BJP grasp the nettle? No. Still, if no party gets a majority in 2029, Reservations may not get renewed in 2030.
Thief, thief
Sonam Wangchuk,
a publicity hungry shithead whose new wife is Indian & ambitious (the last one was American)
an engineer and education reformer from Ladakh, joined the protest on 28 June
after his Ladhakh based protests were ignored. Muslims now outnumber Buddhists in Ladakh. The guy is as stupid as shit.
and declared he would go on indefinite hunger strike until the education minister resigned.
He resigned. Modi heads a coalition government. Anyway, the BJP needs to keep its powder dry for 2027. If Yogi can defeat Akhilesh & Rahul for a third time, he could be the next Modi.
“The idea of a hunger strike has a particularly powerful resonance in India,” says Hannah.
It really doesn't. Fasting is considered meritorious for religious reasons. Modi went on a 11 day fast before the consecration of the Ram Mandir.
“Gandhi put his life on the line several times with his hunger strikes for independence.”
He failed every time.
Delhi police forcibly removed Wangchuk from Jantar Mantar on 18 July and took him to hospital, supposedly for the sake of his health.
Normal people suppose that people who go to hospital do so for the sake of their health. Helen isn't normal at all.
Footage of his hospital stay went viral, and the Cockroach party called for a march on parliament. On Monday, tens of thousands of people started to fill Delhi’s streets. “In my whole time covering India, I’ve never seen so many people turning out,” Hannah says.
This is like Kipling's
‘In August was the jackal born;The Rains fell in September;
“Now such a fearful flood as this,”
Says he, “I can’t remember!”’
The mood was jubilant, but by the afternoon, things had turned violent as the police began firing teargas and using batons on the protesters.
Why don't the police just sit quietly and let themselves be beaten?
Despite that, many of the protesters stayed put, and Hannah went back to Jantar Mantar in the following days. “It was the place to be in India,” she says. “There were people camping out, delivery guys bringing pizza and biryani, people cooking food.
So, the thing was well financed. Akhilesh & Rahul did get involved but were wary of the 'cockroaches'. Might it be a Machiavellian ploy by the ruling party? Or was it just a silly season story?
It had become about more than just the education minister resigning. More, even than education.”
But there are no elections due till February next year. So it really isn't about anything at all. But, if the Hormuz crisis drags on, there could be other protests about fuel prices or fertilizer shortages, etc.
The protesters’ very public displays of contempt – graffiti of Modi’s name under the image of a urinating dog;
Rahul & Priyanka stayed away. That was smart.
people stamping on a poster of his face and chanting “thief, thief” – would have seemed unimaginable just two weeks ago.
Only if you have no fucking imagination. The question is whether the thing was as counterproductive as the anti-CAA agitation. I think not. This is just a case of cockroaches being cockroaches.
“People were just revelling in the opportunity to speak their mind,”
Everyone can do it at any time. Publicity is what these guys were seeking.
Rahul Bhatia, a writer and author of The New India,
who has monetized his hatred of Hindu India.
who attended the protests on Saturday, tells me. “It was delightful. It made people think: things are possible.”
What is possible is that Yogi wins a third term in UP. He rules India in the 2030s & 40's thanks to the greatly expanded proportion of seats going to the Hindi belt.
Modi lost control of the narrative
This is a silly season story. There is no narrative.
Pradhan’s resignation is a major victory for the Cockroach protesters.
It is meaningless. The BJP won Orissa. I imagine he would be anxious to get back there.
He is a Modi loyalist and former organiser for the RSS, the Hindu supremacist group closely affiliated with the BJP (for more on its sinister ideology, it’s worth reading this fascinating 2020 piece by Samanth Subramanian).
Hindus are the majority in India. They have been supreme there since 1947. This makes the Guardian very sad.
“It creates a crack in the BJP’s armour,” Hannah says.
No. Education does not matter. Reservations do. Older people think that this works in favor of the BJP but the last thing the RSS wants is to alienate Dalits. I think the only way Reservations could be in danger is if no party gets a majority in 2029. That way nobody votes to renew them but pretends they would have done if the thing was even more generous.
Modi has projected an image of total authority, but
heads a coalition government. It may be smart for him to send the message that the Nation is paying the price for not giving him 400 seats in 2024.
this is one of the first instances where he has bent to popular will.
He bent to the farm protests. Farmers matter. Education does not.
He demands unflinching loyalty from his ministers.
Who doesn't? Modi does have the reputation of protecting loyalists but if things turn to shit everybody accepts that some Ministers should be given a dignified exit. After COVID, Modi got rid of Harsh Vardhan.
They may now be questioning whether their positions are quite as secure as they thought.
Previously, Hardip Puri was targeted because of some supposed association with Jeffrey Epstein. Since the allegations were bogus, Puri remains in the Cabinet.
India has taken a sharp turn towards autocracy under the BJP.
No. It has taken a sharp turn away from Dynasticism. Why? Because, in India, autocracy is tempered by assassination. Rahul refused to step up to the plate because he didn't want to go the way of his Daddy or Granny.
Its main media channels are controlled by (or intensely favourable to) the government, and most of them gave minimal coverage to the protests,
if the protests will bring down Modi, they deserve more coverage. If they will have no effect, such is not the case.
so young people resorted to sharing information and anti-government memes on social media.
they are also sharing dick pics. Why is the media giving minimal coverage to dick pics?
The party is no stranger to social media (its “troll army” is adept at smearing digital opponents, and the government tried to shut down the Cockroach party’s X account in early July), but it has lost control of the narrative.
Nothing has been gained by those who controlled this silly-season narrative. Cockroaches don't matter. Hormuz does.
Modi’s last-ditch attempt to engage protesters with two reels he posted to his then 101 million Instagram followers on Thursday night (after which he gained over 1 million more, an impressive number, though still fewer than Beyoncé’s 299 million) seemed contrived and stilted. “He has been crucified online for those videos,” Hannah says.
Hannah may have been sodomized online. So may Andy Burnham. But nobody noticed.
Modi posted a 'selfie'. By then the decision had been taken to replace the Education Miniser. The big worry is the ethanol protests.
Is this the start of something bigger?
No. Both BJP and Congress made gains in the elections held earlier this year. Akhilesh is feeling the pressure. Kejriwal, too, turned up at Jantar Mantar because he has yet to make his come-back.
The big question is whether the Rahul-Akhilesh jugalbandhi can defeat Yogi. If not, it may be a case of 'three strikes & you are out' for Akhilesh. He sinks to the status of a Mayawati.
It’s tempting to compare the Cockroach protests to other youth uprisings that have led to regime change in south Asia.
This is tempting only to those who are tempted to eat their own shit. In India, if protests are sufficiently strong in a particular State, there will be President's rule followed by elections.
But “a quick look at the outcome of people’s movements in India is not encouraging,” the novelist Arundhati Roy wrote in a recent piece for Equator magazine.
She has shit for brains. If a 'people's movement' is popular, either mainstream political party's take up its agenda or else its leaders are coopted by them.
“Revenge is surely being planned and will be visited on those [the government] sees as the main instigators.”
Arundhati herself was beaten, sodomized and forced to commit suttee by George Bush.
After people took to the streets in 2019 to protest against the BJP’s controversial new citizenship act,
Muslims protested that Kaffirs were getting assylum in India. This lead to Hindu consolidation from which the BJP benefited.
the government swiftly outlawed gatherings in several places and detained protesters.
Which government? Mamta's? Kejriwal's? Stalin's?
The real test of the BJP’s power will come at election time.
It one West Bengal because voters had come to hate Mamta's goons.
It is one of the world’s richest and most formidable parties, and has attempted to capture India’s electoral machinery, pushing for reforms to its voting map that would tilt power further in Modi’s favour.
The Indian Constitution provides for periodic redistribution of seats. This was frozen for 50 years but has to be renewed, otherwise it lapses. It now appears that the redistribution will go ahead on the basis of the completed caste census. Will the BJP gain from the extra seats alloted to the Hindi belt? Maybe not. If the Akhilesh/Rahul alliance prevails in UP next February, then no party may get a majority in 2029. But this also means that Reservations for SC/ST won't be renewed.
In West Bengal, a state the BJP had never won before,
till Mamta's right hand man ditched her because she was promoting her gormless nephew
it “revised” the electoral roll
deleted fictitious votes controlled by Mamta's goons.
and excluded more than 9.1 million voters from the register,
If Bangladeshis are fully eliminated, there may be 20 million deletions.
securing a decisive victory earlier this year.
Mamta's party has imploded.
“It seems like the BJP has much less support than people actually think,” Bhatia says.
It seems likely that Bhatia eats his own shit.
But after these protests, Modi will be doing all that he can to maintain his party’s grip on power.
Other politicians do all they can to lose any power their party may have acquired. That is why the Guardian is so obsessed with Modi.
