Unity of Cockroaches

On July 25th, 2026, Indian education minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, following weeks of mass demonstrations by the student-led Cockroach Janata Party. The “CJP” started as internet satire mocking Indian Supreme Court Justice Surya Kant - who had recently called unemployed citizens “cockroaches.” But in under a month, recent Boston University graduate Abhijeet Dipke transformed a meme into a manifesto, calling all the “cockroaches” to come together and advocate for resignations of the corrupt and compensation for victims of India’s current education system.

Historically, student movements have had varying success: their institutional leverage and position as the next generation of both voters and policymakers gives them a platform. That said, critics argue that students are often themselves members of the highest classes of society — what right do they have to demand?

Despite the pushback student groups receive, their demands are often met.

May ‘68, a French student-led movement, saw students coming to the aid of workers’ rights. Students occupied the Sorbonne,among other school buildings, and called the nation to action, in their “spring of discontent.” Streets were filled, and riots began. Protest art sprung out onto Parisian walls, screens, and galleries. By the end of the month, student support dwindled as summer break began, and the later Grenelle Agreements and President De Gaulle’s political maneuvers halted the movement altogether. That said, the intrinsic changes May ‘68 had made to French protest culture remained.

Some 20 years later, in 1989, students helped spark a movement that ended 41 years of communist rule in the former Czechoslovakia. The ‘Velvet Revolution’ started as peaceful student protests against the regime, but police brutality and the fictitious murder of ‘Martin Šmid’ – the invention of activists – catalyzed widespread public action. Strikes organised by new, independent trade unions and the removal of the state’s political monopoly undermined the regime’s governing apparatus, contributing to the government’s eventual downfall.

Across these cases, a pattern emerges: students spark public action against society’s great injustices, that otherwise sink into normalcy. It is as though society needs students to point out all the things it simply decides to tolerate.

What happens when issues motivating students don’t resonate with the general public? Do students still have political influence?

In 2006, Chile gave us an example. The ‘Penguin Revolution’ fought solely for educational socioeconomic reforms. In a country nearly two decades out of a military dictatorship, students argued that far too little had been done to the inherited systems of education. With the help of early social media platforms, over 700,000 students were able to organize themselves. Millions of dollars in emergency funding and free transport passes for the poorest 20% of students were among the many concessions made by the Chilean government.

What changed? The 20th century examples grew stronger once the general public stepped in, while Chile had such success with a primarily student-led force. One factor is social media. However, in some cases, these platforms can actually be detrimental to the success of protests —bringing the 2011 Arab Spring into this conversation, for example, would make things vastly more complicated—for students, they provide the groundwork for organization and unity without much of the necessary experience or skills it previously required.

The CJP is not the first to achieve significant results by utilizing social media. Just two years ago, in Bangladesh, the revival of a civil service quota system for veterans of the country’s liberation sparked student protests. The protests themselves were strong, built on the back of high unemployment numbers in Bangladesh sparking public outrage. However, it was only when police brutality (another pattern in these protests, to be sure) caused the death of a student coordinator, Abu Sayed, on July 16th, that the movement exploded. After more than 10,000 people were arrested at the nationwide protests, on August 5th, 2024, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India. Sayed’s death was circulated on social media, and went viral.

These examples suggest that the evolution of student protests is a product of social media expanding outreach and sophisticating grassroots movements. Notably, these platforms offer a way for students to rally with other like-minded students, not having to rely on appealing to the general public as much. For the Cockroach Janata Party, they primarily gained traction with the help of students who resonated with the issues of the Indian education system. Irresponsible leaks of the NEET exam have claimed young lives; mass graduate unemployment has sparked widespread concern for the future. Now, with more public support, the CJP has contributed to pressure leading to the education minister’s resignation and moved into a position where the movement could potentially expand far beyond just education.

This pattern is hardly difficult to recognize — Emory students have seen similar student organizing on our own campus. The recent removal of Emory’s Flock safety cameras came after on-campus protests led by students. These student actions were also part of a national debate on privacy concerns regarding Flock cameras, fueled by social media.

In a world facing a wide variety of social issues, social media gives students a platform.