00:00All right, we'll get back to that rising youth unemployment in India, which has sparked a student-led cockroach movement,
00:04which has managed to oust a cabinet minister while presenting a growing challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
00:08The protests highlight the extent to which India's economic rise is failing to include young unemployed graduates,
00:14with many feeling their lives and futures are being ignored by the governing party.
00:18Joining us now is Bloomberg News senior reporter Dan Strump.
00:21Dan, the most interesting thing to me is the catalyst for all of this seems to have been a set
00:26of leaked test answers.
00:28Can you please explain why that mattered and how that got us here?
00:34Sure, sure. Yeah, that's absolutely right.
00:36So what was the catalyst in all of this was actually a series of leaked, what's known in India as
00:43exam papers.
00:44Essentially, it's the early leak of the actual test itself that was circulating among some students
00:50and essentially forced the government to invalidate a huge number of the one of the most competitive tests in India,
00:59which is the test to get into medical school.
01:01Now, this affects hundreds of thousands of students, if not more.
01:05It's a highly sought after sort of pathway for high achievers in India, widely seen as kind of a way
01:12out of poverty.
01:12And it has really it really at the time shook the confidence in the nation's education system,
01:18which for a long time has been having trouble really funneling its its many young educated students into well-paying
01:26jobs.
01:26So all of this has kind of culminated, come to a head in the last couple of months in the
01:30form of this movement that we have seen
01:32that has taken to the streets and, as you said, has really shaken the politics of India and forced this
01:38rare retreat by the government
01:39in the form of the resignation of the education minister and, you know, calls for this group to kind of
01:46carry on its mandate
01:47to keep pushing and keep calling for reform.
01:51We were chatting about the name of the group.
01:53And for us, us New Yorkers, cockroaches have one connotation.
01:56I gather there's a satirical connotation there in India.
01:59Explain that, if you would.
02:00This is the CJP versus the BJP, which is the ruling party, which is helmed by Narendra Modi.
02:04Explain the joke, if you would, and maybe tell us just a bit about how cohesive this group of young
02:09people is.
02:11Yeah, so it is it is a satirical movement.
02:14It started as a sort of a joke among among some some young people.
02:19You know, it's a play.
02:20It is a play on the ruling party, the BJP.
02:23What they're calling themselves is the CJP, the cockroach jaunt the party.
02:26And it essentially stemmed from what was kind of an offhand remark some months back by the chief justice of
02:33the Supreme Court of India,
02:34sort of dismissively referring to unemployed young people as kind of cockroaches of society with with with nothing better to
02:41do,
02:41but sort of, you know, disrupt things and cause trouble.
02:44Now, this did not go well.
02:48This did not go down well among some young people.
02:50And and they just started sort of joking on it online on Twitter.
02:54A sort of riff began to circulate.
02:57And this this joke essentially metamorphized into what became what is what they're calling themselves a political party.
03:03It's still not officially that it's it's a movement of sorts, but it's it's this it's this movement around this
03:09sense of aggrievement,
03:11this sense of disenfranchisement among young people that the system is sort of not working for them,
03:17that the education system is not working for them, that the economy is not working for them,
03:22that they're not getting the jobs that they need and that the establishment,
03:25the political class in India isn't listening to them.
03:28And worse is is mocking them and sort of dismissing them as as as cockroaches.
03:33So they sort of taken on this mantle and and and have kind of sort of wearing it proudly.
03:38And you really see, you know, in the form of some of those videos you just showed,
03:42some of those videos you just showed, you know, embracing this this this sort of cockroach mantle and taking it
03:50forward.
03:50Just want to say, Christina, Dan wins the show thus far.
03:52We're talking about the cockroach movement.
03:54And he has the Kafka S metamorphosis reference there to the way this group has developed.
03:58You're in the lead, Dan, you're you're the leaderboard thus far.
04:01All right. That was entirely that was an entirely unintentional incidental.
04:05I'm sure. I'm sure you mentioned it.
04:06It does sound great.
04:08Totally derailed my train of thought.
04:10But I did want to talk to you about who is going to these protests.
04:13I've been listening to some reports on them throughout the weeks,
04:16and it seems like it's not just kids anymore.
04:18There were some crackdowns on these protests.
04:20I heard of parents and aunties and uncles like showing up to try to show support because, as you mentioned,
04:26these tests are really important, but they're kind of the whole family has stake in them,
04:30especially if you're from a not well-off family.
04:32Those test results are seen as a way to break generations of a cycle of poverty
04:37and the amount of pressure that is put on these young people.
04:40And then to then allow kind of this malfeasance or these leaked test results,
04:44people were just really, really upset about it.
04:46Who's going to these protests and do they are they specific about what they want?
04:52So it did start off as a sort of a very much a student led protest.
04:56The founder of the movement was a student actually studying in the U.S. at the time of Indian descent.
05:02He was studying at Boston University.
05:04He's since come back to help lead the movement here.
05:06But it was very much a sort of a movement that started at the grassroots level from students.
05:11It has since grown much more widely.
05:14I mean, you do see sort of just young people across society joining in the protests.
05:18And as you said, many of their family members have also been coming out because you're absolutely right.
05:23For many families, you know, many of these students were taking the tests,
05:28who are hoping to go on to these higher education programs that have come under threat.
05:32We're the first people in their families to do this.
05:34I mean, this is, you know, India remains, you know, a low income country that puts a lot of priority
05:41on education
05:42and on the opportunities that education can afford.
05:45You're seeing a lot of pathways close off for many young Indians, for example,
05:49many who used to go to the U.S. for education or for employment on H-1B visas.
05:55That was a major pathway for many Indians.
05:57Now that's being closed off.
05:59So all of these things are kind of coming together.
06:00And you do see many more people kind of joining the protests.
06:04One big tipping point, I think, has been what the way the government initially responded to these protests,
06:10which was actually quite a tough crackdown in the form of police coming out into the streets,
06:18using batons on some of the protesters, using tear gas, allegations of pellet guns as well being used.
06:25And a lot of these images and videos of this sort of response by the police has circulated widely on
06:33social media
06:33and really has helped to inflame the movement and actually spread a lot of sympathy, I think, for many of
06:39these protesters,
06:40which is which is around the time that you started to really see the movement take off.
06:44So it has seen quite a sort of a widespread sympathy and it's and it's growing.
06:50It really it does show no signs of slowing down.
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