The crowd that gathered at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi this week was not marching behind the banner of a traditional political party. Instead, tens of thousands of mostly young Indians rallied under the improbable name of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) before setting out on the ‘March to Parliament’, demanding accountability for what they see as the collapse of confidence in India’s competitive examination system. Led by CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and galvanised by education reformer Sonam Wangchu’s three-week hunger strike, the demonstrators called for the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, sweeping reforms to the country’s examination process and justice for students whose futures they believe have been sacrificed to institutional failure. Even after police erected barricades, fired tear gas and used batons to disperse the march, protesters returned, insisting that their movement had grown beyond a single grievance.
The movement’s name is as deliberate as it is provocative. It emerged after young protesters embraced the label ‘cockroach’, turning what had been intended as a term of derision into a symbol of defiance. What began as internet satire has evolved into a nationwide movement that speaks a political language distinctly its own. “This march is to reclaim our India,” CJP spokesperson Saurav Das declared before the demonstration, describing it as the fight for a better future, not just for students but for this country as well. Those words capture why the protests have resonated far beyond university campuses. Although the immediate catalyst was the controversy surrounding the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), taken annually by nearly two million aspiring medical students, the demonstrations are no longer simply about a leaked examination paper. They reflect a generation asking whether the institutions entrusted with protecting merit, fairness and opportunity can still be trusted to do so.
To view these demonstrations as an exclusively Indian phenomenon, however, would be to miss the larger story unfolding across South Asia. While India’s youth have rallied around the integrity of competitive examinations, similar movements have emerged elsewhere in the region, driven by different grievances. In Bangladesh, students who initially protested the reinstatement of a controversial public sector quota system went on to spearhead a nationwide movement that culminated in the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after weeks of unrest. In Sri Lanka, the Aragalaya protests, triggered by soaring inflation, fuel shortages and economic collapse, quickly evolved into a broader demand for political accountability that forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.
The events unfolding in New Delhi illustrate that institutional credibility depends not only on the decisions governments make but also on whether those decisions command public confidence.
Nepal, too, has witnessed growing youth mobilisation against corruption, weak governance and the failure of public institutions to respond to citizens’ concerns. Although each movement arose from its own political and economic circumstances, they reveal a common regional reality. Across South Asia, young people are no longer mobilising solely against individual policies or political leaders. Instead, they are increasingly questioning whether the institutions responsible for safeguarding opportunity, fairness and accountability continue to deserve public trust.
Equally revealing is the way this generation has chosen to organise. Protest movements have traditionally been built around political parties, student unions or ideological platforms. The CJP defies those conventions. It transformed a disparaging label into its defining emblem, using humour and satire not to trivialise politics but to make it more accessible. Within weeks, what began as an online campaign attracted millions of followers before spilling onto the streets of New Delhi, where students and civil society groups rallied around a cause that had grown far beyond examination reform.
Even as opposition parties sought to embrace the protests, the movement resisted being defined through conventional partisan lines, insisting that its demands were directed at institutions rather than electoral outcomes. In doing so, it has sought to preserve its identity as a citizens’ movement centred on examination integrity and accountability, suggesting that for many young people, institutional credibility has become a political issue in its own right rather than merely an extension of party competition.
Whether India’s government ultimately concedes the protesters’ demands is, in many ways, no longer the only question. It can tighten examination procedures, prosecute those responsible for paper leaks and introduce further administrative safeguards. Yet restoring confidence in the institutions responsible for administering those reforms is a far more demanding task. Once citizens begin to question the fairness of the process itself, procedural changes alone rarely settle the wider debate. The events unfolding in New Delhi illustrate that institutional credibility depends not only on the decisions governments make but also on whether those decisions command public confidence.
That may prove to be the broader lesson for South Asia. The region’s recent protest movements have differed in their causes and outcomes, but they share a striking feature. Increasingly, young people are using specific controversies as a starting point for wider conversations about opportunity, fairness and public accountability. For governments and public institutions across the region, including Pakistan, the challenge is therefore larger than responding to the immediate grievance. It is to preserve confidence in the institutions that shape citizens’ lives. In societies where education remains the principal pathway to social mobility, faith in the fairness of that pathway may ultimately matter just as much as the opportunities it is meant to provide.