Cockroach Revolution: India's Jobless Generation Declares War On Modi | Rohit Azad, Utkarsh Bhardwaj

Is India's youth uprising the beginning of the end for Modi's twelve-year rule? I am joined by Rohit Azad, economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Utkarsh Bhardwaj, Delhi-based activist and former Vice President of the Students Federation of India, Delhi, both of whom have been on the ground throughout the protests, to examine the true scale and character of the movement now sweeping India. Azad and Bhardwaj describe a genuinely decentralized, largely leaderless uprising, sparked by the leak of the CBSE board exam papers and named after a dismissive remark by India's Chief Justice comparing unemployed youth to cockroaches, a label the movement has since turned into a badge of defiance. We examine why the government's repression, from the detention of Sonam Wangchuk to the shutdown of Delhi metro stations, has only swelled the crowds rather than dispersed them, why the protests draw from across the class spectrum rather than being confined to the urban elite, and the underacknowledged role of the organized left in sustaining the movement long before it captured national attention. https://www.RadhikaDesai.com https://www.radicaldesai.substack.com   / radhikadesai   Edited by Gena Smirnovs ([email protected])