Shikha Mukerjee | Old Parties, New Politics: The ‘Cockroach’ Upheaval
Even if the CJP is a blip on the Indian political scene, it has done what the conventional parties in Opposition to the BJP have failed to do after the May state Assembly elections; focus on the Election Commission’s deletion of voters from the electoral rolls
With the power to shock and awe old parties into consciousness about their limitations, the arrival of the online Cockroach Janata Party with a clear agenda and more followers online than the biggest party in the world, namely the BJP, and India’s own Grand Old party, the Congress, that is, over 13.8 million followers on Instagram, overtook the BJP’s numbers within five days of being born. The newest unregistered parties have identities and agendas; the CJP’s identity is short, sweet and value-based; it is secular, socialist, democratic and lazy.
It has already caused an upheaval, albeit minor, but it has rattled the ruling establishment enough for complaints to be lodged that pushed X to shut down the original account. Like the invincible cockroach, the online party has reemerged with a cheeky handle: Cockroach is Back.
In other words, actually Rabindranath Tagore’s, are these the “messengers of youth”, who committed themselves in his glorious Land of Cards (Tasher Desh) dance drama to be impatient, restless and crazy, bent on breaking barriers and bindings; undeterred, vehement and erratic?
Conventional thinking would caution patience about the CJP’s future and prospects. The point is the CJP is not a conventional entity. For now, it says: “We are not BJP. We are not Congress. We are not AAP (for which founder Abhijeet Dipke had once worked). We are not anyone’s B-team, C-team or volunteer cell. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.”
This statement about its identity is a statement of purpose. It’s also an indictment, a concise opinion poll on what is wrong with the political establishment. The new party effectively slams the old parties for being transactional, of turning politics into the ultimate art of the deal by declaring: “Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something”. Who can blame young people for thinking that politics, pursued through an election process that they think (or at least 14 million followers think) is distorted by an institution, Election Commission, which is not trustworthy and a chief election commissioner who should be prosecuted under the fearsome UAPA, is not democratic? More Indians, wrongfully deleted from the voters’ list by the EC, feel exactly the same.
And it stands for “political literacy and civic infrastructure for the young”. That is perhaps the best articulation of the frustrations that generations of voters in India have felt about old political parties and their ways of slicing and dicing the electorate into segments: Hindu, Muslim, Dalit, Backward, Marginalised, Women, Unemployed, Youth, Sanatan, Middle Class, Poor and other categorisations. What kind of political literacy is required or is missing: is the big question. For now, the demand arresting. It draws attention to the nature of the political discourse that manifests itself in campaigns where the voter is bombarded with messages and promises, stoking sentiments and diverting attention, without explanations or accountability for how government or governance has actually worked.
If millions of possibly young people, subscribers-followers of the CJP, don’t identify with the BJP, Congress and AAP, and prefer an online party that began life as a satire and a meme, as well as a reaction to Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s diatribe against sections of youth, describing them as “cockroaches” and “parasites”, it’s perhaps the largest vote of no-confidence in the old political setup. It raise the question: have these millions ever voted in an election?
If they have voted, how did they make their choices, since they believe themselves to be politically illiterate?
Should this minor upheaval sustain its “anti” position into the next round of elections due in 2027, when voters have to make up their minds in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Goa, what impact will it have? Should it have an impact, then the durable coalition of the National Democratic Alliance and the crumbling edifice of the INDIA bloc may need to recalibrate the much-travelled tracks on which they have travelled.
And they have travelled: walking, in buses, on trains, in modified vehicles resembling the chariots of ancient times, namely the Ram Rath, in aircraft, helicopters, cars, and once upon a time, famously on an elephant, as Indira Gandhi did on her comeback trail after 1977. The messages they delivered were always about “vikas”, or development, be it in the “Sabka Saath” slogan, or “Garibi Hatao” or “Mera Bharat Mahan” or the “Amrit Kaal-Vishwa Guru” slogan.
The BJP, after its West Bengal triumph and re-election in Assam, is stronger than it was after its decline in popular support in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, when it lost its single-party majority and the NDA coalition became its lifeline to the majority it has now. The Congress and INDIA bloc are visibly more rickety than ever before; Mamata Banerjee lost her seat in Bhowanipore and the Trinamul Congress was defeated; M.K. Stalin lost his seat and the DMK was defeated. For the first time after the 1957 election, the Communists-Left are not in power in any state and their presence in the Lok Sabha has declined to less than 10 seats. Earlier, the Rashtriya Janata Dal was trounced in Bihar.
In eight months, the parties in Opposition to the BJP will face a survival test, because an even stronger BJP is certainly going to fight to finish off all its rivals, small or large. These parties have a choice; fight alone and against other INDIA bloc parties as well as the BJP as the TMC did, or they can do what the DMK did in partnership with other parties, including the Congress. In both cases, the ruling parties lost.
Even if the CJP is a blip on the Indian political scene, it has done what the conventional parties in Opposition to the BJP have failed to do after the May state Assembly elections; focus on the Election Commission’s deletion of voters from the electoral rolls. It has also raised a question about voters being politically illiterate. These are pointers to what the Opposition parties need to talk about instead of raging against the BJP and its destructive politics of identity and divisiveness. It is likely that after the May defeats in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu and the Congress-led United Democratic Front’s win in Kerala, the opposition parties will fight shy of making the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls an issue in the next round of state elections that includes Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. The time has come when the Congress has to decide how it will lead; particularly on its challenge the Election Commission and its processes.