India’s Gen Z have flipped the lowly cockroach into a symbol of defiance

The spiny, long-legged, and often reviled cockroach has become an unlikely symbol of dissent among India’s Gen Z, in a sharp rebuke to the ruling establishment in the world’s largest democracy. The Cockroach Janta Party, its name a satirical riff on the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party, has amassed more than 19 million Instagram followers in less than a week, almost double the government’s audience.

It owes its existence to remarks made by Chief Justice Surya Kant, widely taken as calling the country’s unemployed youth “cockroaches.” “There are youngsters like cockroaches, they don’t get any employment, they don’t have any place in profession,” he said during a court hearing on May 15.

Kant later clarified he was talking about people who entered certain professions using fake degrees. But the damage was already done in a vast nation where youth unemployment remains stubbornly entrenched.

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