New Delhi, India – Abhijeet Dipke has barely slept in the last 72 hours, fielding waves of messages on social media after a casual joke took an unexpected turn.

The 30-year-old, a recent graduate in public relations from Boston University in the United States, finds himself leading a sweeping satirical political movement – the so-called Cockroach Janta Party (“janta” is people in Hindi) – being joined online by thousands of people with each passing day.

On Friday, India’s chief justice of the Supreme Court, Surya Kant, said during an open court hearing that “parasites” were attacking the system, and equated the youngsters to cockroaches “who don’t get any employment and don’t have any place in a profession”.

“There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists, and they start attacking everyone,” he said.

Kant later clarified his remarks, saying his comment related to some people acquiring fraudulent degrees, and did not target India’s youth, whom he called “the pillars of a developed India”.

Yet, his remarks drew considerable ire, mainly from Gen Z internet users as they battle large-scale unemployment, inflation, and bitter religious divides after 12 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.

As outrage escalated across social media, Dipke posted on X on Saturday: “What if all cockroaches come together?”

He followed up on his joke – and the desperately frustrated emotions behind it – by setting up a website and social media accounts for the Cockroach Janata Party – a play on Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – on Instagram and X.

“Those in power think citizens are cockroaches and parasites,” Dipke told Al Jazeera on Tuesday from Chicago. “They should know that cockroaches breed in rotten places. That’s what India is today.”

‘Like a breath of fresh air’

The Cockroach Janta Party’s Instagram account has crossed 3 million followers in three days, and more than 350,000 people have signed up for the party’s membership via a Google form.

Among the people who have signed up are political heavyweights, including Mahua Moitra, an opposition parliamentarian from West Bengal state, and Kirti Azad from neighbouring Bihar, also a former parliamentarian.

Ashish Joshi, an Indian bureaucrat who retired from federal service earlier this year, was among the earliest to sign up for the party after he read about it on social media.

“In the last decade, there has been a lot of fear in the country. And people are scared to speak,” Joshi told Al Jazeera, reflecting upon the Indian government’s crackdown on dissenters.
”India has become so hateful that the Cockroach Janta Party is like a breath of fresh air.”

Equating youngsters with cockroaches has a flip side, 60-year-old Joshi insisted: “Cockroaches are resilient insects; they survive. And apparently they can form a party and crawl over your system.”

‘Deep-rooted antipathy’

In recent years, South Asia has been the ground zero of historic Gen Z protests, which have toppled governments in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.

India, the world’s most populous nation, has been facing its own set of simmering issues. While its economy has ballooned, income inequality, coupled with unemployment and high cost of living, has reached historic highs.

While India produces more than eight million graduates a year, the unemployment rate among them stands at 29.1 percent, nine times higher than for those who never attended school. More than a quarter of India’s population is Gen Z – also the biggest cohort in the world.

Chief Justice Kant’s word, therefore, hit a raw nerve.

His comments came in a week that saw nationwide protests by young students over exam paper leaks, forcing the cancellation of a government-run medical entrance test.

“Chief Justice’s comments reflected deep-rooted prejudice and antipathy towards activists and youth in general,” Prashant Bhushan, a prominent lawyer at India’s Supreme Court and a rights activist, told Al Jazeera.

“This is also precisely the mentality of this present government.”

Bhushan said he has been feeling for a long time that India needs a youth uprising, since its “economy and society are bleeding for the benefit of crony capitalists like Ambani and Adani,” referring to the Indian billionaires seen close to Modi.

The outrage over Kant’s remarks also coincides with a rather difficult week for Indian diplomats, who are facing scrutiny from the Norwegian press after Modi avoided questions from journalists during his tour of the European country.

Since coming to power in 2014, Modi has not taken questions at a news conference, instead relying on carefully-managed interviews conducted by journalists sympathetic to his BJP party.

“Some people connect with satire – like is the case with the Cockroach Janata Party – because it’s funny, while others connect because they are frustrated,” said Bhushan. “People are finally asking questions and demanding accountability.”

Bhushan said he would have joined the party as well, but as things stand, he is ineligible.

Inside the Cockroach Janata Party

Dipke’s satirical party has four-point eligibility criteria: unemployed, lazy, chronically online, and people who can rant professionally.

Its motto on X: “A political front of the youth, by the youth, for the youth. Secular – Socialist – Democratic – Lazy.” On Instagram, the party identifies itself as “a union of lazy, unemployed cockroaches”, calling on Gen Z allies to join it.

And the party’s manifesto is an edgy take on the issues of voter manipulation allegations against Modi’s government, a largely pliant corporate media, and appointments of judges to government positions after their retirement.

Dipke said he built his party online within 24 hours of first posting about it, leveraging AI tools such as Claude and ChatGPT to design its look and manifesto. His initiative is in line with a long tradition of global countercultural political movements that use satire, absurdity, and performance to challenge mainstream politics.

Meghnad S, a YouTuber who hosted Dipke for a stream on the newly launched party, told Al Jazeera that “the joke has taken a life of its own,” and he has been caught up with text messages from Gen Z users, asking for directions to take the movement ahead.

“There is an overwhelming sense that people are looking for alternative political formations, not necessarily political parties, but political experiments that are not traditional,” Meghnad told Al Jazeera.

“Cockroach Janta party is a satirical, non-existent party, yet people believe that it is a better alternative to reality,” he said. “That’s kind of a giant commentary on Indian political parties in general.”

Meghnad said he signed up for the party because he thought “it was funny.

“But, at a very deeper level, I’m also experiencing the same frustration that this joke party has been born out of,” he added.

But as things stand, what started as a joke could no longer be one for Dipke, the one-man show at his party so far.

He said he is skipping sleep to keep the momentum going as he organises social media campaigns on ongoing political issues.

“For too long, people have been quiet in India,” he said. “There is a responsibility to take this moment and not laugh it off.”