By IWU-FI
23 July 2026. Since mid-July, the student movement, alongside working-class youth, have taken to the streets of India to mobilise against the university policy of President Narendra Modi and to reject the manipulation of medical school entrance examinations. While the demands sought to guarantee equality and transparency in university admissions, the country’s Chief Justice, Surya Kant, branded young people looking for work and failing to find it as “cockroaches”. The rejection of his statements sparked a wave of condemnation that heightened anger against the government, leading students to launch a massive movement they named the “Cockroach People’s Party” – Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) – creating a pun on words between the Chief Justice’s remarks and the name of the ruling party. It was 30-year-old Abhijeet Dipke who started the movement on social media under the premise of “What would happen if we cockroaches came together?”, which quickly enabled the organisation of thousands of young people, transferring the anger and frustrations of youth from social networks onto the streets.
The mobilisations have not stopped growing since it became known on 3 May that high-ranking government officials were leaking medical school entrance examination answers in advance. Investigations confirmed the suspicions: answers were published ahead of time in exchange for money so that a group of elite academies could guarantee admission for a small group of privileged students. The entrance exams are brutal and exclusionary: more than 2 million students compete for just 130,000 places. In India, more is spent on private tuition than the entire government budget for higher education, and families spend their savings and mortgage their properties to pay for preparation.
The demand for and defence of education is not an isolated grievance. In India, with a population of 1.4 billion, half of the population is under 30 years old, and university is the fundamental mechanism to secure employment and escape generalised job insecurity and poverty. For this reason, thousands of young people took to the streets, and the student protest transformed into a mobilisation against widespread corruption, elite privileges, and repression.
The mobilisations became radicalised after the government forcibly transferred activist Sonam Wangchuk to a hospital on Saturday 18 July. Wangchuk was on a hunger strike to repudiate the government and demand the resignation of the education minister; a hunger strike that hundreds of students have joined. Since 20 July, the mobilisations have not stopped growing in the streets of the capital city, and thousands of people have mobilised in New Delhi and other cities. The demonstration called towards Parliament was declared illegal and repressed with tear gas and batons by the police after authorities labelled the mobilisations as “anti-national”, leaving more than 150 people hospitalised. Despite the repression, the fighters regrouped and spent the day at Jantar Mantar, a site near Parliament where hundreds camped out.
The repression heightened anger, and a new mobilisation was called for Tuesday 21 July, which was again blocked by the government. On the same day, a mobilisation marched to Modi‘s residence to demand his resignation. There, the police detained Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition party, who was quickly released due to public pressure.
The persistence of the mobilisation opened a door for dialogue, and the health minister received representatives from the Cockroach People’s Party to defuse the protests, but has not committed to providing any solution. Consequently, the mobilisation demands the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who is identified as the key responsible for the entrance exam scandal.
The movement that has been set in motion expresses the reality of unemployed working youth and the student movement seeking a way out to face the increasing precarious life. The “cockroaches”—the student youth representing that 40% of university graduates who are unemployed, those at the bottom without jobs or rights, impoverished and manipulated by government corruption and nepotism, the young people without a future who daily swell the pandemic suicide rates—are today seeking to conquer their trampled claims and rights through mobilisation. Once again, youth express themselves in the same way that “Generation Z” did in previous mobilisations across different parts of the world, facing repression and fighting against capitalist governments that plunge the popular majorities into misery while turning education, health, and people’s rights into a business.
