The future of the CJP will ultimately depend on whether it can transform its momentary popularity into a sustained democratic movement capable of bringing meaningful changes to India’s education system.

By Dr. Prantik Basak and Ayushiba Jadeja

The sudden and unexpected resignation of the Education Minister of India, Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, highlighted a major victory for student politics in India. The resignation was unexpected if we study the general attitude of the current regime. The victory for the Cockroach Janta Party was, however, quite significant. Not only did it highlight the role of students as an agent of democracy but also shed light on the evergreen role of student movements in the healthy functioning of a democracy. Every democracy requires certain checks and balances on the government, which, if not carried out by the political institutions in place or the media, the responsibility then falls upon the youth of the nation, especially the students. Students, therefore, can be reimagined as Gramsci’s organic intellectuals.

Two major challenges are, however, quite apparent in the present scenario. Firstly, the snowball rise of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) raises a lot of concerns. The CJP is unstructured internally and operates externally in an unstructured manner. It started out as a meme, which led to an Instagram page that went viral, amassing lakhs of followers within a few days (currently 26.8M followers on its main page along with several regional CJP pages with 200k+ followers each). Overwhelming popularity led to the birth of the CJP on the streets and social media support translated to support on the streets, with lakhs of youth joining the protests at Jantar Mantar in Delhi for weeks. These street demonstrations gained a massive boost with the addition of Shri Sonam Wangchuk, who led a 26-day fast until his demand for Shri Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation was met. Matters escalated when the Delhi Police picked up Shri Sonam Wangchuk on medical grounds as per a court order by the Delhi High Court, keeping in mind his deteriorating health. The fast ultimately ended when Wangchuk received written promises from the government that the police would not file criminal cases against the demonstrators at Jantar Mantar and that the government would hold a detailed discussion on the accountability and flaws in conducting national-level examinations.

The matter did not remain restricted to the streets. The Opposition demanded a statement from the government on the police action against the protestors during the 20th July march. Therefore, the police action became another major question of accountability. The involvement of the Opposition and the raising of the matter within Parliament also showed how a movement that started as a meme was able to enter the formal political institutions of the country.

Coming back to the first challenge, the birth of the CJP on the streets saw massive participation, especially from Gen Z, but the question arises whether this is just the current trend or, in post-modern terms, a ‘fad’, like most occurrences in this current generation. A follow-up question is, was the resignation an apology from the regime or a way to neutralize the boiling blood of the youth and dissipate their revolutionary energy? If the crowd behind the CJP scatters post-resignation, the larger objectives of the movement would not be achieved. The resignation of the Education Minister, instead of becoming a pedestal for further incremental changes, would simply turn into a matter of symbolism.

The second challenge emerges from a core element of the first challenge itself, i.e. the unstructured nature of the CJP. Managed by mainly three faces who do not possess political training, it was only with the involvement of certain leftist student unions and certain political parties in the opposition that acted as a lubricant for the movement. Therefore, there always remains the concern of co-optation of such movements by political parties wherein the main leaders of the CJP might let go of the agenda and join a political party for the sake of larger selfish interests, thereby drowning the movement.

The victory of the CJP with the resignation of Shri Dharmendra Pradhan is itself contestable irrespective of whether it is symbolic or concrete. The victory, if at all a victory, is incomplete, as the demand itself was incomplete. The demand was for the resignation of one minister, but what outcome would a …