In India, a political movement with an unexpected name has emerged: the Cockroach Janta Party. It all started with a slip of the tongue: during a hearing, the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, compared unemployed young activists to cockroaches and parasites. The judge later clarified that he only meant holders of fake degrees.
The name CJP is a direct parody of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, which has been in power since 2014. This is not an official political force, but an online movement built on satire. The membership conditions are simple and provocative: be unemployed, lazy, constantly online, and express dissatisfaction professionally.
The party was founded by Abhijit Dipke, a political communications specialist and student at Boston University. According to him, it was a joke. But the joke spiralled out of control: within a few days, the movement gathered thousands of sign-ups through a Google form, launched the hashtag #MainBhiCockroach (“I am also a cockroach”) and gained the support of opposition leaders. Supporters began appearing at rallies dressed in cockroach costumes.
The growth of CJP’s Instagram account proved phenomenal. On May 21, the number of followers exceeded 10 million, compared to 8.7 million for the BJP. By the next day, the Cockroach Party had nearly 21 million followers, while the BJP had just over nine. Meanwhile, the CJP’s account on X was blocked “in response to a legal request.”
Behind the satire lie very concrete demands: government accountability, media reform, electoral transparency, and the expansion of women’s rights. These demands sit alongside self-deprecating jokes about doomscrolling, unemployment, and political burnout. The party describes itself as “the voice of the lazy and unemployed” and calls on those who “are tired of pretending that everything is fine.”
The CJP phenomenon is no accident. Youth occupies an enormous place in India: roughly half of the country’s 1.4 billion inhabitants are under 30. Yet their actual participation in political life is minimal — a recent survey found that 29% of young Indians avoid politics altogether, and only 11% are party members. The CJP has become a symbol of the pent-up frustration of a generation that constantly encounters politics online but rarely feels like a participant in it.
Critics are more sceptical. They point out that the movement’s founder was previously linked to the opposition Aam Aadmi Party, and dismiss the CJP as political theatre. In their view, the movement will likely disappear as quickly as it appeared. Real power still belongs to the BJP and the Indian National Congress, with their millions of active members. Cockroaches on the internet is one thing. Cockroaches at the ballot box is quite another.
