While the storm rages and observers watch and discuss the phenomenon, a few points perhaps can and need to be made at the outset.
There would have been no Cockroach Janata Party had CJI Suryakant not contemptuously used words like cockroach and parasites for dissenters who use social media platforms and tools like RTI to demand greater transparency and accountability.
And the storm would not have perhaps acquired this intensity had we not experienced just the other day yet another paper leak affecting the future of more than 22 lakh NEET applicants and their families.
We have seen this digital revolt grow in a few hours and days from an idea of an individual to a concerted digital initiative amplified by millions of netizens. Beyond the immediate triggers let us also not lose sight of the larger environment that made the CJP strike such a massive chord with India's GenZ - the puncture of the Modi government’s balloon of promises of ushering in 'achhe din' and turning India into a global power, systematic successive stealing of elections, crumbling of India's institutions, especially the dominant media and the judiciary, and the stark decline of the Aam Aadmi Party experiment.
We can also clearly see a rattled Modi government and the Sangh brigade are trying to deal with this digital revolt by blocking the X handle of the CJP, demonising it as a destabilising conspiracy against India by foreign-based elements and threatening it with metaphorical extermination by spraying black and red 'Hit' cockroach repellents.
The five-point 'manifesto' of the CJP focuses on five most deeply felt maladies of our times and their solution - safeguarding the fundamental right to vote for all eligible voters, protecting the freedom of the press and autonomy of institutions, the judiciary in particular, 50% reservation for women in legislatures and cabinets and a 20-year disqualification to check defection by elected representatives and stop the BJP washing machine.
The immediate campaign demand of resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan endorses a point already being raised by students across India along with more basic questions like the dismantling of NTA and scrapping of the centralised NEET examination system.
The point of course remains as to if and how this digital anger and action would translate into palpable collective pressure for change. We have witnessed digital amplification of physical struggles and vice versa in recent past. For example, the equal citizenship movement popularised the reading of the preamble to the Constitution as a manifesto or the singing of 'Ham Dekhenge' or 'kagaz nahi dikhayenge' as anthems. The historic farmers movement gave rise to tractor and tricolour marches and solidarity convergences of diverse struggles.
Will the digital anger now manifesting itself in the shape of the CJP connect with the workers' protests for living wages and eight hour work, with the pains of the common people reeling under enforced austerity, with the demand for release of all prisoners of conscience or for stopping the bulldozers that are demolishing homes and shops and destroying lives and livelihoods or the hate campaign targeting millions of Indian Muslims? It is for activists who are already connected with all these struggles to connect the dots and strengthen the links whereby digital anger and resolve can grow into collective hope, confidence and solidarity.
