‘My voice is being heard’: A month of India’s Cockroach Janta Party

Mumbai, India – Ayush Shimpi has had a rough month and a half.

On May 3, the 20-year-old student from the tribal district of Gadchiroli in western India’s Maharashtra state appeared for a national medical entrance exam, known as the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).

Shimpi had dropped out of formal education for two years to prepare for the exam, which determines one’s eligibility to join medical colleges as well as the schools they qualify for.

As he walked out of the examination hall, he heaved a sigh of relief. “I was out of the rat race,” he told Al Jazeera. “It was finally behind me.”

But nine days later, the government declared the NEET exam null and void over allegations of paper leaks and widespread irregularities. Shimpi’s world came crashing down, along with more than two million other aspirants battling for fewer than 130,000 spots in medical colleges.

After the cancellation of the exam – now rescheduled for June 21 – several students died by suicide , as public fury over the government’s failure to check frequent paper leaks grew across the country.

It was at such a moment of anger and hopelessness that Shimpi, while scrolling through his Instagram feed, discovered the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a satirical social media account that grew from a joke into a Gen Z movement in the world’s most populous country.

It began with the chief justice of India, Surya Kant, making a controversial remark during a court hearing last month.