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The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim
The 'Cockroaches': Why are thousands of young Indians protesting?
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- [00:01]
A
How does a banana trigger a CIA backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open and reveal the world shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow
- [00:33]
B
Sky News the full story first. Hello, it's Yelda and welcome to the world podcast. I'm currently in London. Well, we've seen extraordinary powerful scenes coming out of India's capital Delhi.
- [00:57]
C
They are moving towards Parliament. They are determined to reach Parliament.
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B
Tens of thousands of young people have been pouring out onto the streets and they have been clashing with police. India has the youngest youth population in the world and they're frankly angry. They have come out onto the streets and they're making a number of demands from the government. They're calling for the education minister to resign and they want to see a complete overhaul of the system.
- [01:26]
C
This government believes whatever it does is right.
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B
Agrivance is not heard. And a number of young people from Delhi have reached out to me asking me to focus on this particular story because they don't feel that they are being heard at the moment. Literally beating us up. For what? For a good cause. We're all fighting for a good cause. The party and the movement that they've created is called the Cockroach Movement. This was based on a satire but it has now drawn more millions of people on social media and it has a huge digital footprint. But young people have moved from social media onto the streets of Delhi.
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C
There is a lot of tension between the students and the police.
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B
I've been speaking to our India correspondent Neville Lazarus about why these young people are so angry, why they out on the streets and why they want to see major change. As always, follow us wherever you get your podcast, podcasts on Apple or Spotify and send us your thoughts about this week's podcast or any other issue that you want us to address. The usual place, the worldatsky.uk thank you so much for listening. Hi Neville, really good to see you and thanks again for joining us on the podcast. I want to begin with what's going on right now in Delhi because we're seeing these images, we're seeing tear gas. There are thousands, tens of thousands of young people out in the streets of central Delhi protesting. Just talk us through what's happening right now.
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C
What happened was a guy called Sonam Wangchuk who Was a well respected educationalist, he's a scientist and he lent his support to the Cockroach party protest movement and then he decided to go for a hunger strike, sort of Gandhian way of protesting, go for a hunger strike there with him there were quite about a dozen students also went on hunger strike and on the 20th day, which was on Friday, these plain clothes policemen, they swooped in at about 7 o' clock in the morning at this site and they just picked him up and put him into an ambulance and rushed him off to a government hospital. Now this hospital is a government run one hospital. His family, his wife had protested, said she wants to take him out from there to take him to a hospital, to a private hospital which he was not allowed. This then has just caught on sort of the imagination of people who came in then support of this whole movement.
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B
Neville, I just want to pull back a little bit because there are so many elements to this. There are the tens of thousands of protesters in central Delhi, then there is this key figure Sonam Wangchu and then you've got Gen Z who have created this Cockroach party that suddenly gained a lot of momentum. So let's just break all this down for a moment. How did this party get created? Why is it called the Cockroach Party? And just, you know, what are their key concerns and the demands that they're making?
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C
So the genesis of this is the Chief justice of India, Surya Kant, he was listening to, he was hearing a petition in his court and in that he made a statement and then went on to say that the youth in this country are like cockroaches and parasites.
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B
Help us understand that Neville. Because it's an incredibly young population. So the Chief justice calling young people cockroaches. He was basically saying many of them are unemployed or they pursue things like activism, for example, where they bring petitions to the court and waste the court's time.
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C
That's correct.
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B
So he was taking a dig at the young population of India, is that correct?
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C
Yeah, that's absolutely correct. And I mean we're talking about 370 million people between the ages of 15 to 29 which is the largest, youngest population in the world. Now of that between 15 and 25 years, 40%, according to one of a report, a very credible report, 40% of those are unemployed. Now there is huge crisis in India. We have huge numbers of people who are unemployed. We have 15 million graduates every year that come into the workforce of which millions don't get employment. Now you know we have this obviously there Is this elite class. There is. There are people who have managed to climb the ladder and everyone looks at judges in that sort of way where they are, you know, I wouldn't say devoid of reality, but they can say things that is quite insensitive. And the Chief justice is in the highest court of the land. He's above all other judges. And him making this sort of insensitive statement of calling the youth cockroaches and parasites and exactly what you said. And then it was a satire where Abhijit Deepke, who was in Boston studying his journalism here he was a political activist, he was a media consultant for a political party out here. Then he went and was studying in. In Boston. He was doing his master's in journalism. And he just, you know, as a satire, just started a cockroach people's party. And that caught the imagination, even though the Chief justice had said it was misconstrued. It came a few days later, his statement that, you know, it was misquoted, misconstrued, et cetera. But the damage had already been done. I mean, there was a furoral.
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B
So just to be clear. So the Chief justice takes a dig at the youth of the nation, calls them a bunch of cocktails, cockroaches, says you should do something meaningful with your. With your life. It's livestreamed. Everyone sees it. This cockroach party is formed by a guy in Boston as a satire. How does it then flare up into millions of people joining the pages online, but then tens of thousands of people coming out onto the streets?
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C
Well, everything was online earlier. I mean, it's. As I said, it was like a satire, which he started. He started as a cockroach people's party and then it just raged because they. There was already quite a furore in India itself. This whole thing against Chief justices commence. It would have come up in some shape and form, but since this party was made and online, it was till yesterday, it was all in the sort of social and cultural sphere where it was online thanks to the Internet. I mean, India's got a huge number of people using the Internet in this country. And just to give you an example, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is Prime Minister Modi, with all its money and influence and you know, his popularity, all of that on Instagram, they had. They've got about 11 million followers, give and take. This party, when it was started, it covered those 11 million within four days. So you could imagine the number of people just joining it online. And now it's about 27 million. It gives you an indication of the number of people who are ready to join something like this against, you know, against government, against, you know, political parties which are considered quite big and influential.
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B
This is also about a medical exam that students sit leaked papers on telegram, which is actually the root cause of people coming out onto the streets now.
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C
That's correct. So we have central examinations for medical colleges in this country which is conducted by the government, by the central government, by Prime Minister Modi's government. It's called neet neet. So students apply for this or sit for the examination. So in May There were about 2.3 million students, medical students, who sat for this exam. And this is a really tough exam where not only the student but the whole family is involved. People take loans, sell property, jewelry for the children to go to coaching institutes to get ready for this exam. And this exam happened in May and a few days later it was cancelled. Cancelled because the paper had leaked. It's crushing for students. And since that happened, they organized another paper a few weeks later which went fine. But between that and today, almost 20 students are taking their lives. They died by suicide. You know, every week we would hear these really, really sad stories of students taking their lives because you know, they felt they can't take it, can't take another exam anymore. They exhausted or, you know, you have these terrible and really, really sad suicide notes written to their parents and that. So they. So the Cockroach party took this as, you know, to ask for the resignation of the Education Minister as the head of the department who organizes examinations. And he needed to resign some sort of accountability, some sort of respons that they want from the government, but no one heard them. In fact, the Education Minister went on television one of his interviews and called them the B team of terrorists. This government just feels they can say ministers can say anything and get by it, but it didn't go down so well. So it hasn't aged very well for the Education minister. And they demand his resignation.
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B
Because of course, if you also put all of this into context, in India, a young person will spend their entire life working towards sitting a medical exam. It is perhaps the toughest and most sought after degree in India. And so the fact that, you know, there are a few places they work their entire life towards something, it gets canceled. And so the Cockroach party more or less straightaway takes this up as a course.
- [11:53]
C
So education is a big thing in the country. I mean for students, for families to get out of poverty or get onto a better ladder or better life. Education is the only way to get out. They want to go to school, they want to go to college and take these examinations, some of the toughest exams, you know, anywhere you would find. And when they take that and they find that there is corruption and it has been leaked out and it's been canceled and they got to retake it, they are exhausted. I mean, some have been studying for three years, four years continuously, you know, talking about 10, 12 hours of study every day for a long period of time. And this is not the first time it has been leaked in this regime. It has been leaked a few times before. There have been other examinations. On the last count, one of the newspapers reported over 100 examinations, Central and state ones have, you know, the papers have been leaked out. So it's like a network. So when the student takes an exam, he doesn't know whether that is going to be the final time he's taking it, if he qualifies, because there may be a paper leak and that just crushes them. So to the extent that some of them take their lives. But it's that absolute angst and frustration against the system and that's what has drawn them to the party because this is Gen Z party. It's not a political party in that sense, but it is a Gen Z movement where they feel there is a certain sense of onus of what they did. And they want accountability and they want someone to take responsibility, responsible for things that have gone so badly wrong. The other thing is that a lot of the ministers, their kids are studying abroad and everyone knows about it. So they feel that, you know, the ministers, there's this huge gap, the ministers and people from the elite. In fact, the education minister's daughter studies abroad, is working abroad. So a number of the cabinet ministers, their children are studying abroad. And here these kids have to go through exam after exam, study really hard and for long, and then the papers cancel because of reasons of corruption or the network.
- [14:16]
B
So basically the cockroach party is essentially trying to represent and take on the cause of these young people who are angry about leaked papers about corruption within the system. They're out on the streets now and there's been at least 20 people who have committed suicide as a result of the leaked papers and having to being told that, you know, this exam is not valid and you're going to have to redo it.
- [14:43]
C
That's correct. And this party was mainly online. But yesterday, after what happened, this protest, they had called students to come to raise their voices and get some sort of accountability because yesterday was Monday was the first day of the monsoon session of Parliament. So the Clarence call was to come, converge Jantar Mantar and we'll march to Parliament to raise our voice and get some sort of answers because we've been sitting for weeks on this hunger strike on protests and no one's listening to us. The government's never reached out to us, everyone. I spoke to one of the leaders of this movement and he said no one's come to us, no one has spoken, not even has sent an emissary and we are not very far. We are just here and we are there day and night. And that's what happens. They, they wanted to move. And to tell you facts, I haven't seen so many people just converge on a place in this short call of given a short call. Political parties do have big rallies and that sort of thing, but this was just a Clarence call. We will march and raise our voices in front of Parliament on the 20th. Please come. And you had thousands, tens of thousands coming to Jantar Mantar and wanting to march down to parliam.
- [16:16]
A
How does a banana trigger a CIA backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway and in each episode of my new podcast Stuff Maps, I take an object, crack it open and reveal the world shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.
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B
The anger now is at the police brutality, at the tear gas. I guess the protesters did not expect that kind of heavy handed approach by the police. And then can, you know, give us context around Sonam Wangchuk because you talked about him at the beginning of the podcast. Because this has become a protest around education, leaked papers. That's why he's been such a significant figure within this protest movement. And one of the calls by the protesters is for him to be released by the police.
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C
Yes, that's right. It did happen this evening after the court had intervened, but not before him spending a few days in government hospital against his family's wishes. I mean, his wife did not want him there, petitioned the court to get him out, they kind of refused at that time and just let him go only a few hours ago. But I have covered quite a lot of protests, including the farmer protest where they surrounded Delhi for 13 months protesting against three farm laws. But I've never seen this sort of unwarranted brutality by the police in hitting and tear gassing young students. Some still in their teens, some barely just over their teens, they were brutally smashed. I mean, there's no other word that I could think of, including girls. I mean, I myself saw them being hit by batons and by. What we have is wooden stick or lattice, you know, big ones. And the policemen went for a free. Free. You know, just freed their hands and just smashed people. I mean, there are. There are so many videos of girls being hit. And these are young girls who were probably first year of college or some may have been in school as well. And men, which is not allowed, which is. Which is absolutely against the law of men hitting girls, policemen hitting girls, and security people hitting girls. There are some videos of. Of a policeman slapping an officer slapping a girl. And it was really brutal. And they came there and they just swung these sticks and batons blindly. Even we got. I mean, as media. My camera person and I also got whacked by one of the cops. But they were just swinging and they were hitting and people were just. It was like a stampede. Climbing over each other, running, trying to. Because it's walled in, this protest. There's only one entry. There is an exit, but that was also blocked. So there's one entry, and they had nowhere to run and they were just swinging. The security forces and police fired relentlessly for hours and hours of tear gas into the crowds. They were. These are kids. These are some teenagers, some in the early 20s. They're students. Almost 90% of them, or 95% would be students. They've never seen anything. And they were peaceful. There was a bit of retaliation at times when there was a bit of stone throwing and then some police cars were damaged later on. But 99% of the time, it was a peaceful protest by them. The only time that there was a bit of what was considered violence from the police side was when they dropped the last barriers and rushed towards Parliament and they reached to the boundary wall of the complex. Not to Parliament or not to the gate, but at least to the boundary wall from where they were pushed back. And after that, then it was an unwarranted brutality by the Delhi police and security forces. A statement by the Delhi police said, our men acted in very professionally, which to my eyes was absolutely not true because we ourselves, in our report have shown how, you know, the protesters and the students were hit. So, yeah, I've never seen something like that in Delhi.
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B
Do you think that this Gen Z taking on the government now in India, in Delhi, is this a major crisis for the Modi government? Because the prime minister hasn't Commented. There hasn't been any comment from the education minister. You know, all of these players and characters we haven't heard from. We have heard from the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi who has said, you know, this is an anti youth government and he's shown his support for the young people protesting. But he too is part of the system and the establishment, you know, in India. And so there is no doub that many of these people have anger towards all political parties in India right now.
- [21:57]
C
That's right. I mean this is against the whole system and institutions and political parties. It's a reflection of the angst, the frustration, the alienation that they feel from the system. But it also shows that how Prime Minister Modi's government, he does not react to something like that. He does not show any sort of buckling under public pressure. We saw that in the farmers movement. For 13 months they had basically surrounded the national capital of the country. Two main highways, arterial highways were blocked by them. And for 13 months in glistening summers, in the rains, in cold winter, they just stayed there and camped there for 13 months. And he hardly made a comment on it. I don't see this movement of the cockroach party being as big and massive and well organized as that one. And that's why we don't expect the Prime Minister to say anything. He doesn't. Whenever there's something negative, he does not come out and acknowledge it or say anything. I would be surprised if he did.
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B
Do you think these young people are going to back down?
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C
No, I don't think so. After yesterday, after the absolute hammering and smashing, what you know that they went
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B
through,
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C
they took back. I mean the stage was ripped off, the tarpaulins over that because we are in the rainy season at the site was taken down by the police. And a couple of hours later the protesters were back. They're back on the stage in kind of full strength back there again with the number of injured people we have. I went there in the afternoon. I saw people still with bandages around their heads and over 100 students are in hospital. In fact there is a report of a young 20 year old girl who's on ventilator because she was hit on the head. The doctors have said she has recovered a bit but still on a ventilator. So they are back and they have said they will not relent. They want their demands to be met. They want the education Minister to resign. I mean everyone who I spoke to who have said they will not relent and it was raining in the evening, they were all there, under tables, under whatever tarpaulin they could find. They were all there. And it's quite heartening to see. So we have food delivery systems called what you have in the uk. People across the country are sending food to them through these deliveries, food delivery agents. And it's quite heartening to see. I mean, someone sent over, you know, over a thousand pizzas to this, to this place. Someone sent dozens and dozens of McDonald burgers. So the support is there and people are doing from all across the country because of what the images that went out yesterday was really telling. And, and I think every parent would have felt this sort of a concern for these young kids who were getting hit.
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B
Extraordinary scenes, as you say, and powerful reporting from you. Neville, thank you so much for bringing us up to date and we're going to continue to follow this story.
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C
Thank you very much.
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B
Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week.
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A
How does a banana trigger a CIA backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open and reveal the world shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.