By Aakar Patel
A few thoughts on the Cockroach Janata Party’s protest come to mind.
The hunger strike by activists, including Sonam Wangchuk, had one demand: the Minister of Education should resign. Why? Because the minister failed at one of the most important tasks he was assigned: conducting the NEET examination without corruption. Readers may recall that, in 2024, the paper leaked, yet the same minister remained in charge and clung to his post.
This year, the government was compelled to admit there was corruption in the matter, and it cancelled the examination, inconveniencing 20 lakh students. Add their families, and it is one crore Indians we are talking about who were directly affected. All were subjected to high levels of stress, anxiety, and the insecurity that constantly plagues Indians.
Twelve young girls and boys killed themselves in the 37 days between the cancelled examination and the retest. These are only the ones we know of. The government conceded that the Education Ministry could not be trusted with the question papers and therefore handed them over to the Air Force for transportation to the examination centres. We can interpret this as a stunt or as evidence of a genuine fear of another leak. Under neither interpretation does the government come out looking good.
But having accepted that his Education Minister failed to stop corruption in NEET, the Prime Minister rejected the idea of accountability. He chose to retain the Education Minister, and we can tell ourselves stories about why. Those who dislike the Prime Minister will speculate that it was because autocrats shy away from admitting mistakes because of their arrogance, or because doing so refl ects poorly on them. Those who are fond of him will similarly make up some story about why Modi retained Dharmendra Pradhan. Neither story is important. The fact is that Pradhan has been retained despite the scandal and despite his demonstrable incompetence.
What happens from here on is that he will remain a liability and a target for fi nger-pointing. India’s problems of incompetence and corruption are real, structural, and societal. Only the delusional believe that the Prime Minister waved them away with magic in 2014.
The second thought that comes to mind is that protest, even when it is peaceful and does not inconvenience anyone, is effectively forbidden in India because we are only partly democratic. This is something several indices have concluded, and evidence of it appears before us daily. Over the years, peaceful assembly (Article 19) has gone from being a fundamental right—something that enjoys a high degree of protection from encroachment by the State—to a nuisance, and then to an offence. The mother of democracy is extremely intolerant of her children when they disagree.
The judiciary and the executive have narrowed the physical space in which peaceful protests may be held. In Mumbai, they are consigned to Azad Maidan; in Bengaluru, to Freedom Park, where protests go to die; and in Delhi, to Jantar Mantar. Now Indians have been informed that even protests in these “designated areas” are unacceptable to this government.
The third thing that comes to mind is that when protesters have resolve and strategy, they often win and force the government to retreat. The farmers did so most spectacularly during their agitation against the farm laws. The Prime Minister tried to wait them out, failed, and then not only surrendered to them but also apologised.
It is not often thought of in the same way, but the success of the protests against the National Register of Citizens is one reason we do not yet have concentration camps with lakhs of Indians in them. Even in the most oppressive and tyrannical state, peaceful protest can make an impact that cannot simply be bulldozed away. There is a reason the world knows about a place called Tiananmen Square. Those brave enough to put their heads above the parapet may bear the consequences, but their stories will also be heard.
This is, of course, why the government sought to scuttle the Wangchuk hunger strike. Those who despaired that it was not achieving anything failed to see that, structurally, the protest had everything going for it. It had attention, and it had sympathy.
So what happens from here on? The problem for the government is that the protesters have not given it much room to manoeuvre. The Cockroach Janata Party’s demand is modest and reasonable: remove the minister responsible. The government’s response, as far as it can be understood, is: yes, there is a problem, but no, we will not act. That is not tenable, and the protesters know this. The momentum is with them.
The last thing that comes to mind is that there is an education that comes to those involved in these deep, weeks-long protests that those of us on the outside will never receive. At the end of this journey, no matter how it ends, these youngsters will know something essential about the Indian government, the judiciary, the media, the police, the laws, and indeed Indian society itself. This understanding cannot come to those of us on the outside, no matter how old, knowledgeable, or even wise we may be.