Does Abhijeet Dipke’s popularity signal a new age of Dalit leaders?
Anant Gupta speaks to Amit Ahuja about Cockroach Janta Party’s rise and its upcoming protest at Jantar Mantar
The Cockroach Janta Party, which began as an online satirical campaign on May 16, is keeping up the pressure on the Narendra Modi government. Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, has announced his plans to return from the United States to India and lead a protest demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday.
Could this hugely popular social media campaign lead to dramatic political changes in India much like the youth protests in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal? Amit Ahuja, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, grapples with that question in this Scroll interview.
Ahuja has written extensively about protests, social movements and political parties in India. In his view, the Cockroach Janta Party’s online success underscores the “crisis of employment” that India is witnessing. All political parties, particularly the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, would do well to be more sensitive towards the “desperation” among the youth.
