Where do ‘cockroaches’ come from?

Few developments in India’s political history are as intriguing as the rise of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). What began as a satirical social media response to a remark by the Chief Justice of India quickly morphed into a nationwide youth movement, taking its anger from cyberspace to the streets. Its campaign against irregularities in the NEET examination culminated in the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Now, the cockroaches appear ready for their next act: taking their movement beyond protest politics with a nationwide ‘Kya Bolti Public’ outreach campaign from September.

The most striking feature of this year’s Independence Day addresses by the President and Prime Minister was their recognition of the Gen Z anxieties driving the ‘cockroach phenomenon’. The movement’s real strength lies in its ability to turn a crisis at the heart of young Indians’ lives – the corruption and dysfunction surrounding competitive examinations – into a political force. The CJP protest at Jantar Mantar has rattled the seemingly unshakable Modi regime not merely because Gen Z is leading it, but because it has tapped into a vast reservoir of youth anxiety in a country where the overwhelming majority of people are under 35.

A nation of aspirants
For many young Indians, education is no longer about acquiring knowledge and skills; it has become a relentless race to clear competitive examinations. Every year, millions of aspirants sit for national-level exams such as NEET, JEE, UGC-NET and the UPSC Civil Services Examination, alongside a vast array of recruitment tests conducted by State Public Service Commissions.

Perhaps nowhere is the obsession with competitive examinations more visible than in our public libraries. Many libraries in Kerala have quietly ceased to be libraries in the traditional sense. They have become study halls, where competitive-exam aspirants now outnumber readers browsing the shelves. Recent visits to the historic State Central Libraries of Mumbai and Bengaluru revealed much the same. Their majestic reading halls, once sanctuaries for readers and scholars, are increasingly occupied by young people seeking something scarce in India’s crowded cities: a quiet place to prepare for an exam. At the National Library in Kolkata, the irony is even starker: students sit before laptops, surrounded by thousands of books they rarely seem to open.

As Shashi Tharoor aptly observed in his recent Lok Sabha speech, most of these young people “leave the comfort of their homes at a very young age to spend years in unfamiliar cities chasing a single opportunity.” For countless families, competitive examinations have become, in Tharoor’s words, “the locus around which everything revolves – their savings, their sacrifices, their anxieties, and their dreams of a better future.”

However, the tragic reality is that only a small minority of Indian youth succeed in competitive examinations for higher education or employment. The vast majority spend years in coaching, draining their families’ savings, and eventually have to find other ways to make a living.

Beyond question-paper leaks, what has the Narendra Modi government fundamentally failed to address for India’s youth?

Unlike India, many developed countries do not make a young person’s educational or career prospects hinge on a single, high-stakes entrance examination. Their systems typically combine school performance, continuous assessment, interviews, aptitude tests and institution-specific selection. In several European countries, for instance, admission to medical programmes considers students’ secondary-school performance alongside other criteria, rather than allowing a single nationwide examination to determine their future.

True, transplanting a Western-style decentralised admissions model to medical and engineering education in a populous and corruption-prone country like India could be an open invitation to chaos and malpractice. But that does not absolve the government of its responsibility to reform the existing system – and, more importantly, to create alternatives.

After more than a decade in power, the Narendra Modi government has failed not only to build a reliable entrance-examination system but also to provide compelling alternatives to careers in engineering and medicine. It is alarming that the basic sciences remain largely unattractive to India’s youth, as research careers are both scarce and unappealing – an especially worrying situation in a country that continues to lag in research and innovation despite its ambition to become a global superpower.

Dismal scenario
A few days ago, a friend called one of the authors to discuss higher-education options for his son. The boy’s NEET score fell short of the cut-off for MBBS admission in Kerala but was good enough to secure a seat at a less sought-after medical college outside the state. He had, however, scored exceptionally well in the IISER Aptitude Test, enabling him to pursue physics – his passion – at one of India’s leading Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs).

I suggested my friend let his son pursue a passion for physics, despite the pervasive social pressure to study medicine at any cost. Studying basic science is a wise choice in the age of artificial intelligence, as AI can displace many jobs traditionally associated with professional degrees. But recommending IISER came with an uncomfortable caveat: science graduates may increasingly have to look abroad for career opportunities as research positions in India continue to shrink.

The haunting realisation was that even a passionate science student could not be assured of a good career in India, despite earning a PhD from one of the country’s premier institutions. The bleak employment landscape largely stems from the systematic neglect of India’s scientific research institutions, including some of its most prestigious ones, many of which have suffered severe cuts in staffing and funding.

One sobering statistic, shared by a researcher who earned his PhD from the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) in Pune, captures the scale of the problem. NCL’s full-time scientific workforce is now barely half of what it was in the early 2000s, when he was a doctoral student. There has also been a sharp decline in centrally sponsored research projects led by professors, further narrowing opportunities for promising students to gain valuable research experience. The very fact that a world-class research laboratory like NCL – envisioned by legendary scientist Dr SS Bhatnagar, opened by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1950 in the presence of six Nobel Laureates – is today struggling with staff shortages and inadequate funding is a stark indicator of the depth of India’s scientific and research crisis.

The grim employment prospects at the country’s top institutions become even graver at lower levels and across the wider economy. India’s unemployment rate may compare favourably with that of many economies, but the real crisis lies in the shortage of good-quality jobs for its young population. AI now threatens to shrink an already inadequate pool of such jobs even further.

No wonder so many young people aspire to the so-called “sure-bet” career paths – a medical degree, a place at an elite engineering institute, or success in a nationwide competitive examination such as the civil services.

Disillusioned youth
Successive Modi governments have undoubtedly transformed India’s road, rail, aviation and port infrastructure, with these investments serving as powerful engines of economic growth. Yet they have failed miserably to build a higher-education and employment ecosystem capable of giving India’s young people hope for the future.

It is only natural that young people in a country plagued by a corrupt entrance-examination system and scarce job opportunities become disillusioned and take to the streets. Their anger is no more surprising than finding cockroaches in a mismanaged, neglected house – however impressive its exterior may be.

The forces behind the emergence of the ‘cockroach phenomenon’ in Indian politics run far deeper. Measures announced in the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech, such as mass AI skilling and free online coaching for competitive examinations, may sound reassuring, but they offer little more than a cosmetic response to a crisis rooted in deep systemic failures.