THERE is disquiet. There is expectation, if not desperation, to move ahead. Coming in the backdrop of assembly elections outcome, this present conjuncture appears to be unreal. The BJP-RSS is busy authoring a narrative that the BJP as a political force is invincible and, more importantly, irreplaceable. Where does it leave Indian democracy?
In his 1852 essay ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, Karl Marx famously observed that history is shaped by real-world conditions, not by human imagination. He wrote: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."
Though stated in a different context, Marx’s observation seems to be an apt description for the present conjuncture. In an atmosphere where any question, not to speak of criticism, is being dubbed as anti-national, what has happened in the cyberspace in the last fifteen days is nothing short of unthinkable. A stray dismissal of the attempt to question the government with the description of those who ventured to do so as cockroaches and parasites touched a raw nerve somewhere! The self-description of perfectly alive human beings and, particularly, those of the younger generation as cockroaches would appear as bizarre as the initial off-the-cuff remark. But on careful dissection, it was loaded. The evolutionary history of cockroaches firmly establishes their longevity in the most adverse of circumstances. They appear to be a species which attempts to break an atmosphere of ominous silence and apathy.
It does not need rocket science to understand that the bizarre reaction is an obvious response to what is happening to our young people. All the centralized examinations conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) have gone awry, if not actually rigged. Consequentially, they stand cancelled, nullified, and in a limbo. These include the NEET-UG, the CBSE Onscreen Marking System, and now the JEE for IITs. In 2026, this has reached a crescendo. The most nauseating aspect of this entire development is the complete lack of accountability on the part of the HRD Ministry, if not the entire government. A democracy worth its salt would have displayed a semblance of accountability. But alas! We have only ostriches; ostriches created in this all-pervading atmosphere of complete absence of a counterpoint, an all-embracing thoughtlessness — an ideal setting for a fascistic environment.
Why is this happening? Of course, the immediate resignation of the HRD Minister Dharmendra Pradhan would be the minimum that is expected in a democracy to restore the confidence of the younger generation in the elected government. But the fact that it is not just the exams in 2026, but that, over the years, more than seventy such similar examinations conducted by NTA have become suspect does warrant a drastic action. The cockroaches, the symbolic collective of younger people, are on the warpath. Looking back, this was waiting to happen. The failure and, more importantly, the stifling lack of accountability would not have but caused some kind of a rebellion. The young people today are not duds, but quite efficient in the digital domain. Therefore, the site of struggle was bound to be the cyberspace.
The cockroaches, or the notional Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), have remained limited to demanding Pradhan’s resignation and have not yet raised systemic and structural questions. In a country as huge and as diverse as India, admission tests being centralised to the extent that their fate can be decided is doomed to failure. Together with that, the BJP’s penchant for capturing key positions with RSS-inspired functionaries, at the cost of merit, compounds the problem. Otherwise, who would expect this problem to be solved by ideas like transporting examination papers on the Indian Air Force fleet and the Prime Minister personally overseeing the conduct? Even if we were to imagine non-biological entities performing such superhuman responsibilities, that would be expecting too much! The unflinching trust on the private education mafias to perform complicated tasks of organising public examinations flawlessly is another outlandish idea. In fact, profit motive, even if it is for ignoring the compassionate concern for the future of the students, is a non-starter.
The fact that the process leading to valuing public-funded institutions and education also runs against the very grains of the policy that is being pursued at the national level is also a vital case in point. Overall, the condition of employment, whether for the white collar or the low-paid gig workers or the subsistence-earning unorganised and informal workers, is forcing workers to come to the streets. Therefore, what is happening with the cockroaches and what happened earlier with the workers of Noida, Manesar, Uttarakhand, or elsewhere across north-India, which may not be traditional strongholds of organised trade unions — the connection is apparent. The whole younger generation is boiling with rage.
The CJP has also referred to the shenanigans of sections of the judiciary and the conduct of the Election Commission. This was inevitable, because desperation and frustration are finding no ways to be articulated in a credible manner to change the situation. In that sense, CJI Surya Kant’s comment acting as the trigger is more than a coincidence. The Supreme Court was more concerned over the powers of the Election Commission than the constitutional right of the voters. That is a sad commentary on the current conjuncture. Therefore, cockroaches and ostriches will continue to visit our contemporary landscape more often. It is in this context that forward looking political forces of democracy and secularism will have to locate themselves and engage in taking history of our times.
(June 10, 2026)
