Comment by Riaz Haq on Wednesday

India’s ‘Cockroach’ Army and the Great Exam Betrayal

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-06-03/india-s-cockr...


India's youth are fighting battles over shrinking returns on college education, disappearing good jobs, and fading hopes of a middle-class life, with a comment from the chief justice of India being the final insult.
The comment sparked the birth of the Cockroach Janta Party, a movement that began as satire but has gained viral mass appeal, with a charter calling for a cleanup of the electoral system and other reforms.
The movement is focusing on the issue of a high-school exam, whose integrity has been put under doubt by a switch to digitization, and is planning a peaceful protest in New Delhi to demand the education minister's resignation.




India’s youth have many reasons to feel wounded. From shrinking returns on college education to the disappearance of good jobs and fading hopes of a middle-class life, they are fighting one battle after another. In the end, though, what broke Gen Z’s dam of patience was an insult from the highest court in the land.

“There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in the (legal) profession,” Surya Kant, the chief justice of India, said during a May 15 court hearing on a petition about delayed recognition of advocates’ seniority. “Some of them become media, some of them become social media … right-to-information activists and other activists, and they start attacking everyone.”


Although Kant quickly walked back his comments, insisting he was misquoted and that his words were meant only as a rebuke to unscrupulous lawyers entering the profession solely to cause mischief, the damage was done. Abhijeet Dipke, an Indian communications strategist in the US, responded to what he took as a generational slight with a social-media post announcing the birth of the Cockroach Janta Party — Janta or Janata being the Hindi word for “people.”


What began as satire, a fleeting internet meme featuring AI-generated images and videos of anthropomorphic insects, has almost overnight emerged as a movement with viral mass appeal. The CJP has amassed 22 million followers on Instagram, more than double the numbers for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP.

Even though the CJP is not a registered political party, it has released a charter. The self-described “Voice of the Lazy and Unemployed” has called for a cleanup of the electoral system, an end to the growing proximity between the political executive and the judiciary, more women in parliament and government, and a domestic media free from the clutches of oligarchs.

But the hot-button issue for the youth right now is their all-important high-school exam. Its integrity has been put under severe doubt by an ill-prepared switch to digitization, imperiling the fate of millions of future college-goers. Dipke has pounced on the opportunity by announcing that he will return to India Saturday and hold a peaceful protest in New Delhi to demand the education minister’s resignation. “Meet me at the airport,” he said in a video message to his followers.

Comment by Riaz Haq on Thursday

India Is Losing Its Economic Edge

While external forces have hurt the economy, New Delhi’s troubles are also self-inflicted.

By Sadanand Dhume

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/india-is-losing-its-economic-edge-800c7...


After more than 12 years in office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces a painful reality check: His promise to modernize India’s economy hasn’t panned out. Instead, the country faces a rapidly weakening rupee, dwindling net foreign investment, and worries that artificial intelligence will take a wrecking ball to the information technology industry.

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Recent weeks have brought a spate of bad news. The rupee, already among Asia’s worst-performing currencies in 2025, has lost 11% of its value against the dollar over the past 12 months. It may breach 100 to the dollar for the first time.

Just last year, Indian officials trumpeted an International Monetary Fund forecast that India was on the cusp of overtaking Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy at market exchange rates. Instead, India has fallen to sixth place, behind the U.K.. Meanwhile, the IMF projects that India’s per capita income at market exchange rates ($2,812) will fall behind Bangladesh’s ($2,911) this year.

The slippage extends to the financial markets. In the past two weeks, powered by technology stocks, the South Korean and Taiwanese stock markets have overtaken India in market capitalization, pushing India to seventh place in global rankings. Foreign investors have pulled more than $23 billion from Indian equities since the start of the year. Net foreign direct investment in the fiscal year that ended March 31 was a paltry $7.7 billion, down from $28 billion three years earlier. This reflects both repatriations by foreign investors and outbound investments by Indian companies.

The corporate landscape also reflects investor hesitation. Tesla last month said it was abandoning plans to build a factory in India. The Modi government had publicly wooed the U.S. company, hoping to replicate some of the limited success it has had with giving Apple incentives to locate a chunk of iPhone production in India.

These setbacks have triggered criticism of the Modi government. The economist Surjit Bhalla, a former member of the prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council, recently wrote for the Indian Express that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s “handling of the economy has hit a low with no guarantee that it cannot go lower.” Arvind Subramanian, a former chief economic adviser to the Indian government, called for a revamping of the prime minister’s economic team, warning that “sameness of personnel and staleness of ideas are fatal for all political systems.”

Comment by Riaz Haq 16 hours ago

@SharadRaghavan

The $5 trillion GDP goal by 2025 was actively planned for in 2018. Today's data pegs India's FY26 GDP at ₹346.4 lakh crore

If exchange rates had stayed at 2018 levels, we would have hit $5 tn by now. But currently we're only at $3.6 tn.

Time to discard dollar-based targets?

https://x.com/sharadraghavan/status/2062904578262085833?s=61&t=...

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By late 2025, headlines celebrating India's ascent to the world's fourth-largest economy dominated Indian media coverage. Yet just months later, in April 2026, the Times of India reported that IMF data showed India's GDP, measured in US dollar terms, stood at approximately $3.92 trillion in 2025, making it the world's sixth-largest economy.

The IMF's latest World Economic Outlook showed that India's GDP growth still clocks in at 6.5 percent — an impressive-looking figure. However, the currency depreciation may weigh on real GDP growth.

Xinhua reported that the Indian rupee has continued to weaken against the US dollar, hitting a record low on May 20, when it briefly touched 96.9650 per dollar. More recently, the exchange rate stood at 94.80 at the time of writing. Industry insiders expect that if the rupee continues to depreciate rapidly, the Reserve Bank of India may be forced to intervene more actively, while Indian government agencies may already be preparing countermeasures. In addition, the government could also roll out measures aimed at attracting foreign capital inflows, said Xinhua.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202606/1362523.shtml

Comment by Riaz Haq 1 hour ago

Supporters of the Cockroach People’s Party hold protest in New Delhi
CJP organisers rally supporters to demand the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/6/supporters-of-the-cockroach...

Hundreds of supporters of the Cockroach Janta Party (Cockroach People’s Party, or CJP), a satirical social media movement in India, have gathered in New Delhi after weeks of grabbing news headlines.

The party, a play on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has attracted millions of online followers and widespread support among young Indians.


On Saturday, hundreds gathered in New Delhi’s protest zone near parliament, with some participants wearing cockroach masks.

Last month, India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant likened young people who criticised the government to “cockroaches” and “parasites” during a court hearing.

Kant later said his comments were taken out of context. But Abhijeet Dipke, a political communications strategist and Boston University student, used the insult as inspiration for a parody political party.

Within a week of launching a website and social media accounts, CJP’s Instagram page soared and by Saturday had amassed more than 22.2 million followers, with the slogan: “A political front for the youth, by the youth, for the youth.”

For Saturday’s march, CJP organisers rallied supporters to demand the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, after an exam irregularity controversy in May that quickly transformed into frustration over India’s education system and limited job opportunities.

CJP supporters chanted slogans including: “Cockroaches are coming, Dharmendra Pradhan is going!”

Organisers of the march encouraged participants to bring India’s national flag and a book, which they said symbolised the right to education and equal opportunity for all. They also urged demonstrators to remain peaceful and avoid any confrontations with police.


Ahead of the protest, Indian police tightened security at the airport and the Jantar Mantar protest site, setting up steel barricades at key points.


Reporting from New Delhi, Rebecca Bundhun explained that as crowds gathered throughout the day, the number went into the “thousands once you count the media and spectators”.


“Clearly there is a support, but it doesn’t seem to fully reflect what we’re seeing in terms of the scale that we’ve seen online over the past couple of weeks,” Bundhun said.

“People here are very eager to have their voices heard, saying they do want more representation in parliament as well for the youth.”

The group’s rise echoes a similar trend across South Asia, where youth movements born out of social media have been crucial in antigovernment protests, particularly in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

With the cockroach now a symbol of endurance, CJP supporters have jokingly described themselves as unemployed and perpetually online.

While young people in India make up more than a quarter of the population, they face limited job opportunities, leading to rising unemployment and growing disillusionment with traditional politics.

Satya Prakash Yadav, a protester and a young student, told the Associated Press that this was a “Youth first movement”.

“Youth is the future and we will ensure that our future is secure,” Yadav said.

Some supporters of Modi’s party have dismissed the CJP as nothing more than a social media gimmick. They argue that the parody party’s social media success might not translate into political street mobilisation and that its rapid rise will likely be fleeting.

Comment