THE Chief Justice of India compared unemployed youth to “cockroaches,” saying that “some of them become media, some become social media, RTI activists” and “start attacking everyone.” The remark was made by Justice Surya Kant on May 15, 2026, during a Supreme Court hearing on a lawyer’s petition concerning senior advocate designation.

The comments triggered widespread backlash from young Indians, many of whom viewed it as insulting and dismissive. In response, social media users turned to satire, reclaiming the remarks by calling themselves “cockroaches.” What began as a meme quickly evolved into the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP). The movement soon developed social media pages, recruitment posters, a dedicated website complete with a manifesto and eligibility criteria, and, most importantly, an audience eager to participate in the joke.

On May 16, the CJP launched its Instagram page, claiming that 25,000 people had joined the party. Within four days, the page had amassed more followers than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), from which it drew its satirical name. It reached 8.8 million followers in that period and, at the time of writing, has grown to 20.6 million.

Like many internet phenomena, the Cockroach Janata Party began as a meme. It has since become the subject of intense debate: is it merely a viral joke, or could it emerge as a genuine political force capable of challenging the current political order? The answer remains unclear. Whether its members, organisers, or founders have a definitive vision is uncertain. For now, it is more useful to begin with what we do know.

THE RECENT SCRUTINY OF THE CJP

In the age of information, people now know that whatever happens one has to dig deeper than what it looks like on the surface. There is a nice contradiction here – the social media that creates a storm of false information and peddles lies for propaganda has ended up creating a more aware audience, an audience that doesn’t believe the realest of the images created through the most expensive Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs, an audience that is well aware of the online scams, an audience that knows nothing can be easily trusted.

It is not easy to carry out not just fake propaganda but any kind of propaganda without being scrutinized by the people. It is only when you are a party that participates in coordination with global capital that you can exist on the internet peacefully and carry out your propaganda. It requires a monopoly over both media and social media. Basically, it is easier for the BJP and the central government to peddle lies and false information on the internet. They have a system in place where they control the mainstream media, various alternate media platforms, influencers, and an army of trolls, both automated and manual. With a complete system in place in cahoots with global capital and its national cronies along with an organised army on the ground, in every street and corner, it becomes possible to manipulate the truth to the farthest extent possible.

So naturally, the CJP, having none of it, quickly came under scrutiny from other young people who align themselves differently on the political spectrum, opposed to the objectives of the CJP. Soon after their meteoric rise, we now have a lot of influencers, of varying ideologies, being critical of the CJP and its founder Abhijeet Dipike. People are making videos, “digging dirt” on those who are behind the idea of the CJP. They are criticising the founding president and others who are behind the CJP for being supporters of other parties like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Trinamool Congress (TMC). Such critics were expected and are not meant to be taken seriously in our analysis but then there are a lot of other people who have raised the question if the CJP is a movement or a trend. People have made reels, carousels and different social media content saying that the CJP is just a reaction from a section of middle class youth who got hurt from a brutal system that had been brutalising the marginalized sections and working class people for long. This is something worth investigating.

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SOCIAL MEDIA TODAY

“Is the CJP a movement or simply a trend?” Before we dive into this question and make it a zero sum game it is important to understand that the posed question in no way means that a phenomenon is either one or the other. The posed question is framed this way because that is the question being raised by many on the internet.

Throughout history, social and political movements have relied on the powerful forms of mass communication available in their era to spread awareness about their movement and rally people for its cause. In ancient civilisations, rulers and religious reformers used handwritten scrolls, public inscriptions, and oral storytelling to communicate ideas across communities. During the Protestant Reformation, figures like Martin Luther used the printing press to distribute pamphlets and translated texts that rapidly spread religious criticism throughout Europe. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, revolutionary movements in France and the United States relied heavily on newspapers and political essays to inspire citizens and organize resistance. By the twentieth century, radio and television became central tools for movements such as the American Civil Rights Movement, where leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. reached millions through televised speeches and broadcasts.

The rise of the internet in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries transformed activism again, enabling global communication through websites, blogs, and online forums. Today, social media platforms have become the dominant medium for communicating and spreading ideas, allowing movements by the youth such as climate activism and social justice campaigns to spread messages instantly, mobilise supporters worldwide, and shape public opinion in real time. At the same time, it is a medium being used by the ruling classes to enable their propaganda while heavily injecting capital, as social media platforms themselves are controlled by monopoly capital.

While one might say that social media, just like the other forms of mass communication in history, is only meant for delivering information and spreading ideas to a large section of the audience efficiently, this is not the case. Unlike earlier forms of mass communication such as pamphlets, newspapers, radio, or television, social media is not simply a tool for distributing information; it is part of a massive digital industry driven by profit, data collection, and algorithmic control. Earlier communication systems were often limited by physical production, editorial structures, or state regulation, whereas modern social media platforms operate through real-time engagement economies controlled by a small number of powerful technology corporations. Companies such as Meta, Google, and TikTok dominate global flows of information, concentrating the power and capital in corporations that decide which content becomes visible through algorithms designed to maximise user attention and advertising revenue. I don’t mean to say that other forms of mass communication, like newspapers and television, aren’t under capitalist control but the flow of information on social media is heavily dominated by it.

This leads to a situation where a lot of people, especially those making curated content or those who aspire to do it, also regularly jump on algorithmic trends in order to facilitate their own objectives building a bigger reach for their social media handles. In this sense, social media users become both consumers and unpaid producers of content for digital platforms, constantly generating data and attention that can be converted into profit. Such a situation makes it difficult to see these trends that start through memes with no ideological basis as revolutionary. As Himanshi Dahiya explained in one of the subheadings in her article on the Quint, “You cannot meme your way past an ideology.” And that ideology she says is Hindutva, an ideological project expanded through electoral expression. And I say, alongwith Hindutva, it is the project of Neo-fascism. Neo-fascism is the all encompassing term that defines the relation between Hindutva and global capital.

SO, IS IT A MOVEMENT OR IS IT A TREND?

I thought I would know an answer to this final question by the end of this article, that the question would answer itself while I collected my thoughts on the overall context. It is not a movement, at least not yet. It is a trend, for sure, but that doesn't mean that trends are something unserious or to be dismissed. It is an online trend that was born out of the concrete reality of our society, especially of the young people in our society.

This reality is directly related to the advent of neoliberalism in India in 1991. Since then, India has recorded high GDP growth without a corresponding expansion of secure employment. This situation from 2002-03 to 2007-08 is described by many economists as “jobless growth”, now we are in an era of a “jobloss growth.” In this era, as per the central government data, the unemployment rate reached 6.0 per cent in 2017–18, the highest in decades. Independent estimates from CMIE have frequently placed unemployment between 7–10%, with youth unemployment often exceeding 20 per cent. This crisis is more severe amongst youth with formal education and degrees. An Azim Premji University report found that 1.1 crore out of 6.3 crore graduates aged 20–29 were unemployed in 2023, while unemployment among graduates under 25 has been estimated at over 40 per cent.

There is also a deepening insecurity of work in the public sector in India for which every Indian family aspires. A Reuters report noted that between 2014 and 2022, nearly 220 million applications were submitted for central government jobs, but only around 722,000 candidates were ultimately recruited, reflecting the enormous gap between demand and available positions. At the same time, delays in recruitment cycles, long waiting periods for results, and the contractualisation of public employment have deepened insecurity among aspirants. Examinations conducted by agencies such as SSC, railway boards, and various state commissions have repeatedly faced allegations of paper leaks, technical failures, cancellations, and administrative mismanagement, often forcing students to spend years preparing for exams that are later postponed or invalidated. Investigations and media reports have documented dozens of paper leak incidents across India since 2019, affecting over a crore of aspirants and undermining public faith in the recruitment system.

This trend is born out of this grim reality of the Indian youth.. So really, the question isn’t if the CJP is a movement or not. The question is how can the frustrated youth of our country build a movement? Till now they have been expressing their frustration mostly through memes, reels, blogging, anonymous commenting, reddit discussions, gaming, making parodies, comical sketches, mimicking, and the list goes on. A few amongst them have organised themselves and from time to time they take to the streets demanding better education, jobs, affordable living, justice, rights, etc. It is the latter that is needed right now. Everything else is a tool that can help the youth in organising themselves which they should use but at the end of the day they need to fight neofascism which can only be done when they take to the streets, when they participate in democratic procedures, and when they organise themselves in effective units from their respective streets and corners to whole villages and cities. That is the only way all young people, the Gen-Z, the cockroaches, can actually make a political difference and effectively make a claim over a good life for themselves and good society for everyone.

Recently, a study circle titled ‘Youth and Building Politics Beyond The Ballot’ was organised by a youth organisation in central Delhi. In that discussion, the example of the Chilean Social Uprising of 2019 was brought up. In Chile, high school students, 14-18 years old, began a movement demanding a reduction in the metro fares increased by 30 pesos. This led to a realisation amongst the youth that their problems do not end at a reduction of 30 pesos but it is the whole system of governance, that imposed neoliberal austerity on the Chilean people for the last 30 years, which is the real problem. Soon after that, the young and the old, and all the different social groups came together and delegitimised the right-wing regime of Sebastián Piñera.

This is the task in front of the Indian youth today, just like the Chilean youth realised: No son 30 pesos, son 30 años (it’s not 30 pesos; it’s 30 years). The youth in India have to organise themselves around their immediate demands and eventually hit the core of the problem which has caused them, the workers, peasants and agricultural workers, women, marginalised social groups, years of suffering. And the core of the problem is the crisis of mass unemployment and underemployment created by the neoliberal regime collaborating with the fascistic elements that holds up the (non)-logic of capital. The core of the problem is Neofascism.