Shikha Mukerjee | Old Parties, New Politics: The ‘Cockroach’ Upheaval

With the power to shock and awe the old parties into awareness of their limitations, the emergence of the online Cockroach Janata Party with a clear agenda and more online followers than the world’s largest party, the BJP, and India’s own Big Old party, the Congress, with over 13.8 million followers on Instagram, outnumbered the BJP within five days of its birth. The newest unregistered parties have identities and agendas; HKP’s identity is short, sweet and value-based; It is secular, socialist, democratic, lazy.

It had already caused a stir, albeit a minor one, but it shook up the ruling establishment enough for complaints to be made, prompting X to close the original account. Like the invincible cockroach, the online party has reemerged with a cheeky twist: The Cockroach is Back.

In other words, are they actually Rabindranath Tagore’s “ambassadors of youth” who devote themselves to being impatient, restless and crazy, determined to break down barriers and bonds in the magnificent dance drama Tasher Desh; determined, violent and indecisive?

Conventional wisdom warns against patience regarding the future and prospects of the HKP. The point is that HSK is not a traditional entity. For now, he says: “We are not the BJP. We are not the Congress. We are not the AAP (whose founder Abhijeet Dipke once worked for). We are not anyone’s B team, C team or volunteer cell. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.”

This statement about his identity is a statement of purpose. It is also an indictment, a brief public opinion survey of what is wrong with the political establishment. The new party accuses the old parties of being transactional, of turning politics into the art of the final deal, and declares: “Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.” Who can blame young people for thinking that politics is undemocratic through an election process that they (or at least 14 million of their followers) think was distorted by an untrustworthy institution, the Election Commission, and a head election commissioner who should be prosecuted under the frightening UAPA? The number of Indians wrongfully deleted from the voter list by the EC is exactly the same.

And it means “political literacy and civic infrastructure for young people.” This is perhaps the best expression of the frustration that generations of voters in India have felt about the old political parties and the way they divide voters into Hindu, Muslim, Dalit, Backward, Marginalized, Women, Unemployed, Youth, Sanatan, Middle Class, Poor and other categories. What kind of political literacy is needed or lacking is the big question. The request is being suspended for now. It highlights the nature of political discourse that manifests itself in campaigns where voters are bombarded with messages and promises, fueling emotions and diverting attention, without any explanation or accountability for how government or governance actually works.

If millions of young people who are subscriber-followers of the CJP do not identify with the BJP, Congress and AAP and prefer an online party that started life as a satire and a meme, and also in response to Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s harsh criticism of the youth sections, calling them “cockroaches” and “parasites”, this will perhaps be the biggest vote of no confidence in the old political order. This raises the question: Have these millions ever voted in elections?

If they voted, how did they make their choice because they believed themselves to be politically illiterate?

What impact will this minor uprising have if it maintains its “anti” position in the next round of elections in 2027, when voters in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Goa will have to decide? If this has an impact, the resilient coalition of the National Democratic Alliance and the crumbling structure of the INDIA bloc may need to readjust the well-traveled paths on which they travel.

And they traveled: on foot, by buses, by trains, in modified vehicles resembling the chariots of old, the Ram Rath, by planes, by helicopters, by cars, and once, famously, on an elephant, as Indira Gandhi did on her way back after 1977. Their messages were always about ‘vikas’ or development, be it the slogan ‘Sabka Saath’, ‘Garibi Hatao’ or ‘Mera’. The slogan “Bharat Mahan” or “Amrit Kaal-Vishwa Guru”.

The BJP is stronger after its victory in West Bengal and re-election in Assam than it was after the decline in public support in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, when it lost its single-party majority and the majority the NDA coalition now enjoys became a lifeline. The Congress and the INDIA bloc are visibly weaker than ever; Mamata Banerjee lost her seat in Bhowanipore and the Trinamul Congress was defeated; MK Stalin lost his seat and DMK was defeated. For the first time after the 1957 elections, the Communist-Left is not in power in any state and their presence in the Lok Sabha has fallen below 10 seats. Earlier, the Rashtriya Janata Dal was defeated in Bihar.

In eight months’ time, the Opposition parties to the BJP will face a test of survival as a stronger BJP will surely struggle to finish off all its rivals, big or small. These parties have a choice; They can also fight against the BJP alone and alongside other INDIA bloc parties, as the TMC did, or they can do what the DMK did in partnership with other parties, including the Congress. In both cases, the ruling parties lost.

Even though the CJP is a small blip on the Indian political scene, it has done what the traditional parties in Opposition to the BJP failed to do after the May state Assembly elections; Focus on the Electoral Commission deleting voters from the electoral rolls. This also raised the question of voters’ political illiteracy. These are signs of what Opposition parties should be talking about instead of raging against the BJP and its destructive politics of identity and divisiveness. Following defeats in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu in May and the Congress-led United Democratic Front’s victory in Kerala, opposition parties are likely to hesitate to make an issue of the Special Massive Revision of electoral rolls in the next round of state elections that also include Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. The time has come when Congress must decide how to proceed; particularly regarding his objection to the Electoral Commission and its processes.