00:00The biggest online protest against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 12-year rule
00:05started with a single satirical reply.
00:07But it quickly snowballed, gaining over 23 million followers on Instagram.
00:1230-year-old Abhijit Dipke and his cockroach Janta Party have become hugely popular in just days.
00:18The group says it speaks for the lazy, the unemployed, and the chronically correct.
00:23Its rise reflects deep frustration among India's young people,
00:26who make up more than half of the country's 1.42 billion population.
00:30Dipke, a public relations strategist based in Boston, made his intentions clear last week.
00:36This is a movement that we will be taking forward and I will be returning to India
00:39to take this movement forward so that we can hold the government accountable
00:43and we can change the political discourse of the country.
00:46The spark came on May 16th when Dipke posted on X,
00:49what if all cockroaches come together?
00:51It was a sharp response to India's chief justice comparing some unemployed youth to the scuttling bugs.
00:56Since then, Dipke has faced threats of harm, hacking attempts, and criticism from ruling party leaders.
01:02One senior minister accused the group of hurting India's democracy by using an insect as its symbol.
01:08Jobs, or the lack of them, are key to its rise.
01:11In 2025, India's unemployment was 3.1% overall, but 9.9% among ages 15 to 29.
01:18The numbers are higher in urban areas than in rural regions.
01:22Lawyer Prashant Bhushan says the movement could spell trouble for Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party
01:26and draws parallels with Gen Z uprisings in neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh.
01:31It is clear that the government is very scared of them because the government's attempts to,
01:37or the government's shutting down their websites and various accounts, etc.,
01:43clearly shows that the government is very scared of any Gen Z revolution in India.
01:48Modi has dominated Indian politics since coming to power in 2014.
01:53But youth unemployment is one factor creating cracks in his carefully built image of strength and stability.
01:59For now, the CJP is as much as a meme as a movement, and isn't officially a political party at
02:04all.
02:05But India's young people, and its prime minister, will be watching to see if that changes.
02:09Where is this?
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