"Cockroaches Don't Get Employment": The Chief Justice's Insult That Backfired — How 15 Million Jobless Indians Built a Parody Party That Terrorizes the Establishment

22 May 2026 | New Delhi — 18:30 GMT

Scene opens on a cramped room in Lucknow. A 24-year-old with a bachelor's degree in commerce stares at his phone. The screen glows blue at 2am. Inbox: 0. Calls: 0. Hope: 0.

Across town, a young woman in Patna refreshes a government jobs portal. The page loads. "Results delayed due to paper leak investigation." She throws her phone on the bed. It bounces once. Silent. No one hears.

At the temple, the boy lights a diya. "Please, Ganesha — just one job." The idol's stone eyes don't blink. At the mosque, the girl presses her forehead to the carpet. "Allah, why?" The ceiling fan hums the same indifferent tune.

Nobody came. Nobody answered.

Then the Chief Justice spoke.

NEW DELHI – India's Supreme Court chief justice, Surya Kant, did not intend to start a revolution. He was trying to defend institutions. He was criticizing what he called "parasites" — activists, social media agitators, the disillusioned unemployed who, in his words, "start attacking everyone."

Then he used the word that broke the dam.

"There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don't get any employment or have any place in a profession," Kant said during a hearing last week.

An entire generation heard him. And instead of crying, they laughed. Instead of retreating, they built a political party — with the cockroach as their symbol.

The Birth of a Party (Joke. Unless...?)

The Cockroach Janta Party — CJP — was never supposed to exist. It began as a satirical Instagram account on a Saturday, the kind of thing a tired political strategist creates when he's had one too many chai and one too many headlines about another exam paper leak, another protest, another government denial.

Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, is a political communications strategist and a student at Boston University. He has worked with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the scrappy anti-corruption movement that shook Delhi's establishment in 2012. He knows how movements start. He also knows that this one — this ridiculous, absurdist, cockroach-themed fever dream — was not supposed to be real.

"Nothing of this was intentional," Dipke said.

But by Thursday — five days after launch — the CJP's Instagram page had amassed more than 15 million followers. That's 15 million. In five days. For context, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling political machine of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has 8.8 million Instagram followers.

A parody account with a cockroach logo beat the establishment. On metrics alone.

"It is the younger people who were actually very frustrated," Dipke said. "They didn't have any outlet. They were really angry at the government."

When the Chief Justice Became a Meme Lord

The backstory matters — because no one wakes up one morning and decides to worship a cockroach.

For months, India's young job seekers have been drowning. The unemployment rate among educated youth hovers at crushing levels. Government recruitment exams — the golden ticket to a stable life — have been plagued by paper leaks, cancellations, and delays. In May alone, at least three major state-level exams were compromised. Protests erupted. Students clashed with police. Tear gas choked the streets of Patna, Lucknow, and Bhopal.

The government's response was slow. The opposition's was theatrical. Neither offered a job.

Then Chief Justice Kant spoke. His "cockroach" comment was supposed to condemn those who "obtain fraudulent degrees" and "attack institutions." But that's not how it landed. On social media, the clip was clipped, repeated, and remixed.

"There are youngsters like cockroaches."

Loop it. Add a beat. Drop a sarcastic caption. Within hours, the cockroach was everywhere — not as an insult, but as a badge of honor.

Because what do cockroaches do? They survive. They endure. You can't get rid of them.

Kant later clarified that he did not intend to insult India's youth. He said his remarks were about people with fraudulent degrees. But the cockroach had already escaped the jar. You cannot put it back.

The Manifesto of the Unemployable

The CJP's official membership criteria reads like a cry for help wrapped in a joke:

• Unemployed (check)
• Lazy (check)
• Chronically online (check)
• Capable of ranting professionally (check)

Its manifesto addresses — through satire — the raw nerves of Indian politics: allegations of voter manipulation, the cozy relationship between corporate media and the government, the appointment of retired judges to official posts, and the gut-wrenching frustration of applying for 200 jobs and hearing nothing back.

But here's the twist: the CJP has no real candidates. No election funding. No party office. It exists entirely on Instagram reels, X threads, and Telegram groups where young people share memes faster than the government can delete them.

"We have to understand that five years ago nobody was ready to speak up against Modi or the government," Dipke said. "The times are changing."

The Roaches Are Crawling Offline

This was supposed to be a joke. But jokes have a way of becoming real when enough people laugh.

In the past week, young volunteers have begun appearing at protests dressed as cockroaches — antennae waving, cardboard shells painted with "CJP" slogans, chanting "Hum roach, hum coach, hum tumhe sikha denge approach" (We are roaches, we will teach you approach). It's absurd. It's hilarious. And it's terrifying the establishment.

Because you can't debate a cockroach. You can't threaten a meme. You can't arrest 15 million Instagram followers.

Dipke, despite his past affiliation with the AAP, insists the CJP is not aligned with any opposition party. "This is not a political gimmick," he said. "This is a movement. The movement has arrived in India. It will change the political discourse."

The First Crackdown: 'Cockroach Is Back'

On Thursday, Dipke wrote on X that the CJP's account on the platform — which had about 200,000 followers — had been withheld in India. The reason was not immediately clear. Supporters speculated it was pressure from the government. Others said it was a routine content flag.

But within minutes, Dipke announced a new account for the group. Alongside it, a post that read:

"Cockroach is back."

Then: "You thought you can get rid of us? Lol."

That is the ethos of the Cockroach Janta Party. You cannot kill it. You cannot silence it. You cannot delete it.

Because every time the government cracks down, a thousand memes take its place. Every time a chief justice speaks, a million young Indians repost.

The cockroach doesn't ask for mercy. It doesn't pray to Ganesha. It doesn't beg Allah. It just keeps crawling.

Why This Party Scares the Establishment

Political analysts are divided. Some dismiss the CJP as a flash in the pan — a digital fad that will burn out as quickly as it ignited. Others, including opposition leaders who have quietly endorsed the movement, see it as the canary in the coal mine. India's youth bulge — more than a quarter of the population under 30 — is not being absorbed by the economy. Degrees are devalued. Exams are rigged. Hope is commodified.

And now, they have a symbol.

"The youth are really frustrated and the government is not acknowledging their concerns," Dipke said. "This is the movement that has arrived in India."

Meanwhile, the real cockroaches — the ones in power, the ones in boardrooms, the ones in gated colonies — are watching their Instagram follower counts shrink.

The CJP doesn't need to win an election to win. It already has.

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