On the morning of 10 October 2026, New Delhi woke to a city under siege. Trains bound for the capital had been cancelled, metro stations were shuttered, and mobile internet was switched off across parts of the city. By nightfall, more than 2,000 protesters had been detained and the movement's founder, Abhijeet Dipke, had been picked up the moment his flight from Mumbai touched down. The state had mobilised all of this against a group of young Indians whose chosen emblem is the cockroach, and in doing so it confirmed what the past three months had already made plain. India's youngest voters have joined a protest wave now rolling from Paris to Rio de Janeiro.
\n\nThe Cockroach Janta Party began as a joke. In May, after India's chief justice was reported to have likened unemployed young people to cockroaches and parasites, a satirical online campaign seized on the insult and wore it as armour. A cockroach, its founders pointed out, is almost impossible to kill. Within weeks, the joke had found a cause. The NEET undergraduate medical entrance examination was cancelled that month over paper-leak allegations, and lakhs of students who had given years of their lives to a single…
Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle
