'Cockroach' Protesters Aim To Upend Assumptions About Democracy
The movement was formed in May 2026 to protest the government's cancellation of medical school entrance exams and after India's Chief Justice Surya Kant likened unemployed youth to cockroaches. By July, the largely Gen Z movement had scored an early victory with the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
The CJP has since moved on to a much larger political issue: critics' claims that the Election Commission has deleted approximately 130 million names from the voter rolls. Since October 2, protesters have descended on the streets of Delhi, Mumbai and other cities demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, halting the deletions pending an independent inquiry, and the restoration of the old electoral rolls before the next elections.
In the process, the CJP has encountered strong government resistance.. Amid a crackdown on protests, two of the movement's spokespersons – Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das – were detained. Meanwhile Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-wing populist Bharatiya Janata Party have refused to bend on the voter roll issue – instead accusing protesters of undermining democracy.
Nonetheless, as a long-time scholar of Indian political parties and social movements, I believe the CJP's protests have revealed people's deep-seated anxieties over democratic erosion in a country of nearly 1.5 billion. Through courage and acerbic wit, the CJP has done something that has eluded conventional opposition parties over the past 12 years: puncturing the ruling party's aura of invulnerability. In doing so, I believe the protests have challenged the government's view of who“the people” are, what democracy means, and who speaks for youth, women and the politically marginalized.
Defining 'democracy' and 'the people'Modi often describes India as the“Mother of Democracy,” a reference to its civilizational heritage and to Bharat Mata, the Hindu mother goddess. Democracy, he insists, is not a Western import but a native inheritance. The implication is meant to be reassuring: Modern India has always been democratic and always will be.
But some outside monitors disagree. Sweden's V-Dem Institute classifies India as an“electoral autocracy,” meaning that although it regularly holds multiparty elections, it fails basic democratic benchmarks such as legislative and judicial checks and balances and citizens' active political participation.
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