Growing Fan Base of Cockroach Janata Party in India

"Indians live like cockroaches and die like cockroaches", argued Jayant Bhandari in an X post in April this year. "They vote for bottom of the barrel cockroaches as rulers, who rightly treat them as cockroaches", he added, faulting the people of India for this state of affairs. More recently, Indian Supreme Court Chief Justice Surya Kant said during a hearing that certain unemployed youth were "like cockroaches" who enter professions with fake degrees or become social media and RTI activists attacking the system.  Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old Indian graduate of the public relations program at Boston University, picked up on it. He posted on X on May 16: “What if all cockroaches came together?” Dipke created a political party, named it Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), a parody of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), and established a website that quickly gained tens of millions of followers, according to the New York Times. 

Cockroach Janata Party Logo. Source: CJP Website


Dipke embraced “cockroach” in the party’s name to reinforce the fact that the insect, which arouses visceral disgust in many people, is also nearly indestructible. “What was thrown at them as an insult, now they are carrying it with pride,” he said. 

The group of Indians described by the Indian Chief Justice as "cockroaches" is made up of over 100 million young people aged 15-29 years who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) as estimated by the World Bank. They make up the world's largest NEET population in any country. Such massive numbers threaten the country’s demographic dividend, risking long-term economic stagnation, widening gender disparities, and severe social instability. They represent a massive reservoir of untapped human potential that drains productivity. 
As a result of failed policies and lack of opportunities at home, India is driving its best and brightest to the West, particularly to the United States, at an increasingly rapid pace. A 2023 study of the 1,000 top scorers in the 2010 entrance exams to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) — a network of prestigious institutions of higher learning based in 23 Indian cities — revealed the scale of the problem. Around 36% migrated abroad, and of the top 100 scorers, 62% left the country, according to a report in the science journal Nature.  Nearly two-thirds of those leaving India are highly educated, having received academic or vocational training. This is the highest for any country, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

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Comment by Riaz Haq on September 2, 2026 at 10:28am

Former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg says there is a lot of distress among the wage earning class where incomes don't seem to have grown in real terms over the years. The other really sad development is 8 to 9 crore crore youth are out of the employment market. Therefore there is a new to investigate whether GDP is actually growing at the rate officially claimed.


https://youtu.be/ReWkJTEcQd4?is=1i5gdFSEk81oH5ih

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Subhash Chandra Garg
@Subhashgarg1960
I explain analytical base of my conclusion that GDP growth in Q1 in 2026-27 in current price is 2.6% and in real terms close to 0. There are still messier distortions in sectoral performance with manufacturing and consumption witnessing negative growth.

https://x.com/Subhashgarg1960/status/2095074164814258439?s=20

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@Manoj_216

Last year, Q1 2025-26:
Nominal GDP was ₹86 trillion (everyone celebrated)
It was then conveniently revised down to ₹80 trillion (almost a 7% downward revision) (after celebrations were over).

This quarter, Q1 2026-27:
Nominal GDP is ₹88.27 trillion rupees.
This may also get conveniently revised down later after the celebrations are over.

Compare unrevised (₹86 trillion) vs unrevised (₹88.27 trillion), we have grown only by 2.6%

Oops! too much of a number game going on !

https://x.com/manoj_216/status/2094990270337290344?s=46&t=Uy6jy...

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India's 20 years of GDP misestimation: New evidence

Abhishek Anand (Madras Institute of Development Studies), Josh Felman (JH Consulting) and Arvind Subramanian (PIIE)
Working Paper 26-3
March 2026
Photo Credit: REUTERS/Amit Dave


https://www.piie.com/publications/working-papers/2026/indias-20-yea...


KEY TAKEAWAYS

India’s annual economic growth during the boom years between 2005 and 2011 may have been underestimated by about 1–1½ percentage points on average, and subsequent growth between 2012 and 2023 may have been overestimated by about 1½-2 percentage points.
The first methodological issue leading to the misestimation is that the economy’s formal sector has been used as a proxy for the vast informal sector, even though the latter was disproportionately hit after 2015 by demonetization, the introduction of the goods and services tax, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The second methodological issue causing misestimation is that the deflators for many sectors have been based on commodity prices, which have moved sharply relative to others.



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Ex-finance secretary raises concerns
Former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg told India Today that the real GDP data in the new series for the first quarter of the financial year 2025-’26 was not available as it had been released based on the old series at the time.

“So, the number which has now been used as a base for 2025-’26 Q1 is the number that [the government] has come out with for the first time,” he said. “Therefore, comparing it with that base should be taken with a little bit of a pinch of salt.”

Garg said that the GDP growth analysis is done in terms of current prices and that the government had “drastically revised” the gross domestic product at current prices for the first quarter of 2025-’26.

“It’s such a massive, drastic reduction in the base year’s Q1 GDP at current prices that the growth is now 10.3%,” he told the news channel. “If you had taken the numbers – and the current prices don’t change – which were put out last year as the GDP at current prices, the growth would be less than 2.5% in current prices – nominal GDP.”

https://scroll.in/latest/1095427/pms-economic-adviser-denies-allega...

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 3, 2026 at 8:43am

@PraveshParas


Former Finance Secretary Subhash Garg is right to question the 7.8% GDP growth figure. Last year’s first-quarter GDP at current prices was first reported at ₹86 lakh crore. It was later revised down to rupees 80 lakh crore. This year’s figure is rupees 88.27 lakh crore. Compare that with the original rupees 86 lakh crore and nominal growth is only about 2.6%. After inflation, real growth almost disappears.
Imagine a kirana shop. Last year the owner said April-June sales were rupees 86,000. This year they were rupees 88,270 just 2.6% more. Now he says last year’s sales were actually only rupees 80,000. Suddenly this year looks like a 10% jump. The extra growth came from changing last year’s number, not from selling much more. That is what happened with GDP. People feel the difference in weak jobs, slow spending and tight household budgets. The government must explain the rupees 6 lakh crore revision instead of celebrating a number that looks better only on paper.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Govt may be right in their perception but even common man feels there is no changing his life or prosperity then what is the point of GDP growth. Even in stock market, investors are big shark , they understand every bit of financial growth, they are good in numbers, so why have market fallen for three consecutive sessions after announcement. However no anchor looked me convincing on understanding of GDP and its calculation so they were also throwing ball from one side to another. @DILIPtheCHERIAN @iamnarendranath @bainjal @rohini_sgh @vijaita @suhasinih @ShereenBhan @suchetadalal @latha_venkatesh @sanjayuvacha @Subhashgarg1960 @NKSingh_MP @MishraPrac @maryashakil


https://x.com/praveshparas/status/2095425807321895313?s=61&t=mg...

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 15, 2026 at 8:10pm

India is undergoing a major democratic reckoning centered around youth-led protests, mass detentions, and intense disputes over electoral integrity under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. [1, 2]

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/india/democratic-reckoning-india


Key Elements of the Reckoning
Voter Roll Purges & SIR: Protests erupted following the Election Commission of India's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and draft electoral rolls released in January 2026, which led to the removal of nearly six crore (60 million) voters across 12 states and Union Territories—drawing accusations of structural manipulation. [1, 2]
Mass Protests & State Crackdown: Youth and student groups (including the "Cockroach" movement) alongside opposition leaders like Rahul Gandhi have taken to the streets in New Delhi. The government deployed over 40,000 security personnel, shut down metro stations, disrupted mobile internet, and detained more than 7,000 protesters, drawing criticism from bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Office. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Economic & Social Discontent: Beyond elections, the movement channels broader youth frustration, including graduate unemployment hovering near 23 percent and a sharp slowdown in white-collar job growth. [1]
Broader Institutional Concerns: International and domestic watchdogs—such as Freedom House and various political analysts—have increasingly characterized India's trajectory as a shift toward a hybrid regime or electoral autocracy, while Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) defends the administrative legitimacy of the voter roll cleanup. [1, 2, 3]

————-

@KenRoth

"The mass protests that have unfolded in Delhi since July and flared again this month are nothing less than a contest over the foundations of the Indian state and whether it lives up to its constitutional commitments."


https://x.com/kenroth/status/2110786861404701174?s=61&t=mgTxrmI...

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 26, 2026 at 9:35am

Opinion | I Went to India and Found It Has Lessons for Us All - The New York Times

She (Majumdar) never did get to march that day. A few minutes after I spoke with her and her friends, a column of police officers decked out in camouflage descended on the students, manhandling them into a waiting bus. The officers drove them 40 minutes north of the city center and held them in a police station until after dark, eventually letting the women go; only when they refused to leave did the officers also release the men.

So great was the threat these students presented to Modi’s rule that his government reportedly deployed over 50,000 security personnel to the streets, shut down dozens of metro stations, blocked long-distance trains from arriving in Delhi and threw up yellow steel barricades across the capital, leaving its usually teeming streets eerily deserted. Majumdar was one of thousands of people detained that day by the authorities in an all-out attempt to quash the protest.

Despite these efforts, Modi appears more vulnerable than at any time since he was first elected prime minister. Young people like Majumdar, educated, middle-class and Hindu — the children of a generation that rocketed him to power — are in open revolt, incensed by the government’s derogation of education and democracy. Willing to risk detention and the baton blows of the feared lathi, they are setting out to make Modi, who has carefully managed his image as a civilizational figure who will lift India into glory, an object of fun. Majumdar, undeterred by her detention, joined another protest the very next day.

————

Even a bachelor’s degree from a prestigious college is no guarantee in a country where graduate unemployment is at nearly 40 percent for those ages 15 to 29 and starting salaries are abysmally low. Food delivery drivers often earn more than entry-level tech workers with engineering degrees. To improve Sanskriti’s chances in life, Sharma said they are considering sending her abroad for a master’s degree. That would probably cost $100,000, an unfathomable sum that would require them to go into debt.

Young people across the country increasingly see this as a fool’s bargain, a debt-filled dead end. And they are not afraid to say so, loudly and publicly. Aditi (she goes by one name), the 29-year-old president of the students’ union at Jawaharlal Nehru University, is emblematic. Her parents are stalwart supporters of the B.J.P. But like many members of Gen Z, she rejects the empty promises of Hindu nationalism. “People have gotten bored with Modi’s narrative,” she told me. “Young people have tasted blood.”

————
Modi has also discovered that despite his efforts to project global leadership, his power quickly fades at the water’s edge. After promising to elevate India to great-power status, he has found himself stuck, subject to the mundane gravity of global events over which he has little control. He has suffered a series of embarrassments on the world stage, especially at the hands of the Trump administration.
 
 
What’s more, the pressure valve of migration is tightening. On the upper end of society, the dream of sending a child abroad, especially to the United States, is dying. On the lower end, uncertainty in the Persian Gulf is making migrant labor there a shakier proposition too. For a country that is the world’s largest receiver of remittances, amounting to roughly 4 percent of gross domestic product, that’s a big problem. That’s before you consider rising prices for fuel and tariffs on exports.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 30, 2026 at 9:39am

Narendra Modi and the battle for India

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2026/10/29/narendra-modi-and-the...

in early october India’s cabinet issued 11 pages of gushing praise to mark their leader’s quarter of a century in public office. As chief minister of Gujarat, a rich western state, then as prime minister, Narendra Modi had transformed “the lives of every citizen”, earning “unwavering support”. His dedication and honesty showed “the strength of India’s democracy”.
A month of celebrations was organised to mark Mr Modi’s silver jubilee, including exhibitions, tree-planting and grassroots events. It has not gone quite to plan.
Throughout October India has been gripped by protest, as unrest over the leak of an exam erupted into a broader anti-Modi movement. Gen Z activists, student groups and opposition parties accuse Mr Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) of rigging elections, and are agitating for education reform and jobs.

The 76-year-old strongman has appeared unsure how to respond. At times he has tried to mollify activists, notably by sacrificing his education minister in July. Now he is cracking down on them. In Delhi the authorities cut off the mobile internet, cancelled trains and blocked roads while police detained thousands of protesters, beating them with sticks. All of it has been streamed around the world.
Mr Modi still has strong support, particularly among older voters. His ideology remains potent. Though opposition parties are now more unified, they lack organisational muscle and are yet to offer a coherent alternative. Still, the unrest on the streets is a striking challenge to Mr Modi’s rule—both to a governing model that is no longer meeting many Indians’ aspirations, and to strong-arm methods that have closed down other avenues for opposition.
That makes it a good moment to reflect on Mr Modi’s 25 years in office. What kind of India has emerged under him? And what does his record suggest he will do next?
Mr Modi’s arrival on the political stage was heralded by an earthquake, which in January 2001 tore through Kutch in his native Gujarat, killing more than 20,000. The bjp’s ailing chief minister responded haplessly. His party installed a trusted apparatchik—a bearded, bespectacled 51-year-old who had never before stood for public office, let alone built a mass following. Few expected him to last long.
He almost did not, as a result of horrific religious violence that took place in Gujarat the next year. After a group of Hindu pilgrims was burned to death on a train, vigilante mobs went on the rampage; more than 1,000 people died, most of them Muslims. Mr Modi never accepted responsibility or apologised for the bloodshed on his watch—instead, at an election later that year, he inflamed tensions with communal speeches. The bjp won a landslide. He has since won five elections in a row, two more in Gujarat and three nationally.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 30, 2026 at 9:40am

Narendra Modi and the battle for India

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2026/10/29/narendra-modi-and-the...


One confidant from the early days attributes Mr Modi’s remarkable ascent to his long training touring villages as a foot-soldier in the rss, a Hindu-volunteer group. “His advantage has always been his grasp of the average Indian’s psyche, their hopes and fears,” he says. Steeped in Hindu-revivalist ideology, Mr Modi was particularly attuned to the victimhood many Hindus felt over policies that they believed had unfairly prioritised Muslims.
In Gujarat he established a governing model. Styling himself as a Hindu hardliner and a “development man”, he aggressively courted foreign investment and forged close links with industrialists. He offered businesses land, tax breaks and subsidies. He kept the police, the courts and party cadres under tight control. All the while he projected an image of himself as uniquely incorruptible: ascetic, celibate and without a family to enrich.
As prime minister, Mr Modi applied this model to India. A country of 1.45bn is, in effect, ruled by a few dozen people in the prime minister’s office and around Amit Shah, the home minister and Mr Modi’s longtime enforcer and strategist. Many in Delhi say that Mr Modi is rarely challenged, and cabinet ministers take direction. So do bjp chief ministers.
Only twice before has India had such a dominant leader. The first was Jawaharlal Nehru, who over 17 years as prime minister forged a newly independent India as a secular democracy inspired by socialist economic thinking. The second was his daughter, Indira Gandhi, who took India leftward during her 16 years in office, often ruling as a populist authoritarian.
Mr Modi, born into poverty, defined himself against these figures. By promoting a mixture of Hindu-nationalism, pro-business reform and welfarism, he reduced their once-mighty party, Congress, to a husk. Like Gandhi, though, he took a firm grip over his party, the media and institutions, and built a personality cult. “Even Indira never had this level of control,” says Neelanjan Sircar, a political scientist.

The bjp’s formidable political machine was on show in May when the party unseated Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, a populous eastern state. More than 70% of Indians now live in a state run by the bjp (see chart 1). Yet five months on, Mr Modi is facing the most difficult test of his premiership. “The bjp is in its strongest and its weakest position simultaneously,” says Rahul Verma of Shiv Nadar University, Chennai. It has never ruled more of the country, nor has it faced such fatigue and open discontent.
To see what kind of country Mr Modi has made, consider his impact in three areas: the economy, society and democracy. On the first he has been a moderniser, though not the reformer many had hoped for. In 2014 he inherited plans for a national digital-identity and -payment system and a goods-and-services tax, to replace 17 state-level taxes. Weaker, coalition governments—long the norm before Mr Modi—had struggled to implement such changes. Mr Modi used top-down power to force them through, a massive achievement.
The result has been to knit India together with a stronger internal market, in which almost all Indians can access services and make payments online. The national highway network is 60% longer than it was when Mr Modi took power and rural households enjoy 22.6 hours of electricity a day, up from 12.5. Voters have been given free grain, electricity connections and cooking gas. Direct cash transfers have cut graft and reduced poverty, forging a direct link between Mr Modi and the poor.
Break class…

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 30, 2026 at 9:40am

Narendra Modi and the battle for India

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2026/10/29/narendra-modi-and-the...

Break class…
Pro-business more than pro-market, Mr Modi has tilted India towards a model of national capitalism. Since Gujarat his rise has been bound up with that of Gautam Adani, who has built an empire spanning ports, airports, energy and defence. Tycoons like Mr Adani have, like Mr Modi, got hard things done and helped the economy grow—by around 6% a year (similar to before Mr Modi came to power). The Reserve Bank of India has largely kept inflation in check, too, avoiding the gyrations that undid previous prime ministers. Mr Modi has been unusually fiscally prudent.
But the rewards have been top-heavy. The tycoons have done as well as ever. Mr Adani’s wealth has risen from $7bn in 2014 to more than $100bn. Rural workers have not. Their real wages, which typically grew by 6% a year between 2006 and 2014, have since grown by 1%. Salaried workers have done worse still: adjusting for inflation, average pay for this group, accounting for around a quarter of the Indian workforce, has fallen by 5% since 2017 (see chart 2).


Mr Modi’s failure was that he abandoned deeper land and agriculture reforms when they triggered mass protests. Ironically, giving in to that discontent has helped lead to the discontent now. Despite steady growth, Mr Modi has not achieved the economic transformation he desired (and of which his cabinet boasts). The share of workers in agriculture has remained stubbornly at two-fifths; the share in manufacturing has grown only a little. Though India has been covered in shiny roads, informal labour remains ubiquitous. A huge expansion in higher education has not been matched by growth in salaried jobs, suppressing wages and creating a large cohort of frustrated youngsters.


“What we are seeing is Modi reaching the limits of his governing model,” says Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a former vice-chancellor of Ashoka University near Delhi. He has been able to push through big changes that require raw executive power. But he has failed in areas that require consensus-building or systemic reform.
The change to Indian society, the second area, has been more dramatic. Under Mr Modi India has become more brash, nationalistic and Hindu, and, bluntly, a more forbidding place for the country’s 200m Muslims (just under a seventh of the population). This is the most controversial part of his legacy. It is also where opposition to Mr Modi has been least effective.
The most visible change is that Mr Modi has fused religious nationalism with politics. As prime minister he has regularly taken part in ceremonies and rituals—above all the consecration of the Ram Temple on the site of a former mosque in Ayodhya, fulfilling a decades-long campaign. The bjp has pushed through citizenship laws and begun to overhaul Muslim family law. Although the word “secular” remains in the constitution, Mr Modi has damaged the principle that India is a republic that treats all religions equally.
This is unlikely to be reversed. “Hindutva [Hindu-ness] is still a powerful magnet for the middle class,” says Rajdeep Sardesai, a tv anchor and political analyst. bjp chief ministers have emulated Mr Modi—and taken his ideology to new extremes. Opposition politicians have joined in “temple hopping” and “soft Hindutva”. The Cockroach Janta Party (cjp), the youth movement at the centre of the protests, has notably steered clear of religious issues.
Since his fateful first year as chief minister in Gujarat, Mr Modi has fostered a culture of permissiveness around anti-Muslim bigotry and violence. bjp politicians call Muslims “infiltrators” and “encroachers” and issue threats against them. Communal violence has continued to fall from its peak in the 1980s, a period marred by regular bloody riots. But there has been a rise in targeted attacks on Muslims by vigilante groups, which often meet with impunity. This will be the most damaging part of Mr Modi’s legacy—and it, too, will be difficult to reverse.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 30, 2026 at 9:41am

Narendra Modi and the battle for India

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2026/10/29/narendra-modi-and-the...


With his blend of modernisation and religious nationalism, Mr Modi has been remarkably successful at unifying the Hindu vote. But how long can that go on if voters fret about the economy? In the national election in 2024, voters angry about jobs turned away from the bjp, forcing Mr Modi to govern in coalition (see chart 3). Praveen Chakravarty, an mp who leads polling for Congress, claims that age is now the main electoral dividing line, with under 30s—who make up almost 30% of eligible voters—turning against Mr Modi.
…in case of Emergency
The focus of those on the street is the third area: Mr Modi’s handling of elections and institutions. Protesters accuse him of “stealing democracy” through a voter-verification process called the Special Intensive Revision (sir), under which more than 130m names were removed from draft voter rolls. On October 14th Abhijeet Dipke, leader of the cjp, sardonically compared the circumstances with “the Emergency”, a period when Gandhi cancelled elections, locked up political opponents and clamped down on the press: “Declare Emergency officially,” he said.
The last revision of electoral rolls took place more than two decades ago, so one was overdue. The number of removals this time was much higher than before, at least some of which might be explained by higher internal migration or voters dying. Mr Modi’s defenders argue that only a small fraction of the 130m were eligible voters.
The problem is the way the process has been carried out, which has been rushed, opaque and—true to form—centralised. Millions who were wrongly removed were not given a proper chance to appeal, leaving them disenfranchised (when appeals were completed, the vast majority were successful). Whereas previous exercises have been run by state and local operators, this one was run centrally from Delhi, using software that allowed little transparency about who had been removed and why.
To some, this is proof that Mr Modi is a would-be dictator who will break Indian democracy to cling to power. That is going too far. The sir process has been murky, but there is no evidence that it has swung elections. The argument that Mr Modi holds power because he steals votes skims over the way the opposition has struggled to offer a more compelling alternative.
sir is better seen as an extreme example of Mr Modi’s strong-arm tactics. His government has extended control over Supreme Court appointments, weakening the independence of the judiciary, and has cowed the once-combative Indian media with a combination of takeovers and hostile investigations. It has similarly used the state to tie political opponents in legal knots. In all, Mr Modi has abused his powers more ruthlessly and over a longer period than any other Indian leader (though Indira Gandhi did suspend democracy, after 21 months she pulled back from the brink, called elections, and was voted out.)

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 30, 2026 at 9:42am

Narendra Modi and the battle for India

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2026/10/29/narendra-modi-and-the...

And yet, Indian democracy is more resilient than many make out. The country is vast, diverse and noisy; competitive elections, while flawed, are ingrained. The scandal over sir has shown that Indians remain deeply attached to their vote, and that the media are still capable of holding the government to account. They have put pressure on the Supreme Court and the Electoral Commission of India to improve the appeals process for excluded voters.
This is a pattern in other democracies, says Milan Vaishnav of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank. “When you have a very strong leader, they can bend institutions to their will,” he says. “But when their popularity begins to fade, institutions tend to bounce back.”
Mr Modi has never faced stronger headwinds. At 76 he is—whisper many in Delhi—showing signs of ageing. Still, he is unlikely to back down or change his approach. Instead, he will continue to try to divide and weaken the opposition. In private, officials say ministers have been rattled by the way a handful of kids with smartphones have seized the agenda. They will aim to stop the youth protests gathering steam by keeping leaders in custody or tied up in the courts, and channel discontent into opposition parties, which they are more comfortable fighting.
It is not clear such tactics will work. So far protesters have turned crackdowns into viral clips. Attempts to brand the cjp—who wrap themselves in the Indian flag and talk of constitutional rights—as “anti-nationals” have failed. Mr Modi cannot easily take the sting out of the movement, as he did in 2021 by dropping the reforms that had angered farmers; many in his party regard more concessions as a slippery slope. But stifling legitimate dissent will also cause pressure to build.
The prime minister may look to shift the political debate onto more comfortable terrain. He could dial up the Hindu-nationalist rhetoric. Or suddenly table a controversial bill, say on delimitation, a thorny issue involving the allocation of parliamentary seats between states. The bjp will try to paint Rahul Gandhi, the grandson of Indira and leader of the Congress party who heads the opposition alliance, as a street agitator who wants “regime change” without winning elections.
The underlying sources of discontent—education, jobs, wages—will fester. But the opposition will need to show that it has better answers. Mr Gandhi often speaks as if the mood had already turned decisively (and he had not lost three elections in a row). “We are going to destroy them,” he said of Mr Modi and Mr Shah at a rally on October 6th. So far, Mr Modi’s approval ratings have only dipped. Some voters dislike the bjp’s authoritarianism, but also worry about how an unwieldy coalition led by Congress, which has moved to the left under Mr Gandhi, would govern.
The next big test will come in the spring with elections in several states, including the largest, bjp-run Uttar Pradesh. That one looks to be tight. If the bjp wins, it will claim that Mr Modi’s enduring popularity has been proved and the opposition are sore losers. If it loses, it will be the surest sign that Mr Modi’s appeal is waning.
For Mr Modi the risk now would be to believe what his outriders say—that the protests are just a small group of anarchists and anti-nationals who do not reflect Indians’ real grievances. For the opposition it is the reverse: to believe that a few months of street action mean that Mr Modi is in terminal decline. Over 25 years he has proved remarkably resilient. He is not going to go down without a fight.■

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 7, 2026 at 2:00pm

Kaushik Basu
@kaushikcbasu
India’s economy is showing deep cracks. Youth unemployment is shocking high, pollution is enveloping north India, net FDI inflow into the country is close to zero. India’s youth is losing hope. We need the courage to admit to the shortfalls & use the ample talent in the country to design policy.

https://x.com/kaushikcbasu/status/2118899538287034768?a=uh87MIT9MFl...

-------------

abeer Bhatia
@sabeer
These are the real numbers. GDP is a meaningless number. Every citizen should focus on reducing them.


https://x.com/sabeer/status/2118915616811909313?a=1GDMaOc_kXd1D1TDB...


Neha Patel
@Neha_S_Patel
GDP growth looks great until you open any other index.

https://x.com/Neha_S_Patel/status/2118697659922075876?a=CE-iQrtjraU...

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