Public radio’s longest-running daily global news program.AboutContactDonateMeet the TeamPrivacyTerms of use©2026 The World from PRXPRX is a 501(c)(3) organization recognized by the IRS: #263347402.Author Arundhati Roy on the rise of India’s youth-led ‘Cockroach’ party protestsIndia’s youth-led anti-government protests inspired by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party led to the resignation of the country’s education minister over the weekend. The World’s Host Marco Werman spoke with award-winning author and activist Arundhati Roy to discuss what the movement reveals about the country’s political moment. ProtestJuly 28, 2026Updated: July 28, 202611:07Protesters celebrate after Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned following nationwide protests as part of the Cockroach Janta Party’s protest movement in Mumbai, India, July 26, 2026.India saw waves of anti-government protests inspired by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party calling for the ouster of the country’s education minister and a number of policy changes.On Monday, the student-led movement celebrated a major victory after the government agreed to its key demands, including the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and reforms to the country’s examination system.Protesters celebrate after Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned following nationwide protests as part of the Cockroach Janta Party’s protest movement in Mumbai, India, July 26, 2026.Rafiq Maqbool/APAward-winning Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy joined The World’s Host Marco Werman to discuss what the movement reveals about the country’s political moment and whether India’s growing protests have staying power.Arundhati Roy: The atmosphere is simultaneously hilarious and a little full of apprehension because we’ve never seen this particular sort of section of society — young middle class Hindu, for the most part, students, but also every other kind — you know, Muslims and Buddhists and Christians — but altogether, really the Hindu majority whose parents’ generation really voted for [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi and the [Bharatiya Janata Party] BJP, now just up in arms, well unarmed, but armed with the wildest humor you can possibly imagine, despite massive violence on the part of the police. So, now I don’t know what’s going to happen next. You know, the air is very tense. And the jokes are very sharp.Saurav Das, chief spokesperson of the Cockroach Janta Party, center, looks on as fellow spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka, right, shakes hands with India’s Health Minister J.P. Nadda during a joint press conference in New Delhi, India, July 25, 2026, following the resignation of India’s education minister.APThere’s a strange confluence of things. First of all, the flashpoint, of course, was the continuous and consistent leak of these public exam papers for which students spend years preparing. And the poorer ones, their parents sell land, sell their homes in the hope that they can get a future and an education. Those papers are leaked onto social media, like 152 leaks, I think. That’s what the opposition says in 2014.But the point is that even after you get an education, there are no jobs. Everything has been privatized. Everything is put into the hands of these two industrialist friends of Modi’s. Obviously, for the upper ranges, AI is taking over. You have a situation of a country of 1.5 billion people that has been brought to its knees, the middle class and the poor alike. So, that’s what you’re seeing in these protests. Everybody’s out there.People shout slogans during a citizen protest march in support of the Cockroach Janta Party’s protest movement in Dharamshala, India, July 26, 2026.Ashwini Bhatia/APThe current demands of the students are very simple: The resignation of the education minister, compensation for all the young people who died by suicide, an apology from the prime minister, and action against the police who’ve beaten up kids very badly. But if you go to the protest and you follow it, what has been said is way beyond that. Now, the target is singularly Modi himself. And Sonam Wangchuk, of course, he galvanized the whole thing with his fast, but he has been previously allied with the BJP. So, he broke his fast in the presence of BJP ministers, and I don’t think that’s gone down very well. And I don’t think this movement actually has any specific leaders.Oh, I’m very, very, very, very worried, you know, because it’s not just in Delhi, in city after city after city. It’s not thousands, it’s millions of kids out there now. And the police are totally outnumbered, and the kids are really just having fun. This has never happened in protests before. They’re like, “Please, can you put the water cannons on? It’s so hot.” And then they go and dance under the water, and they run off with the barricades, and the police don’t know what to do.And I’m just wondering, I mean, if they were Muslims or Sikhs or Christians or tribespeople or Kashmiris, the army would have been out and would have killed quite a few by now. Now, this, as I keep saying, this is their major constituency. So, what’s going to happen? Is he going to try and get the army out, or is he going to defuse it? Already the television channels are saying, “Oh, it’s a foreign plot, they are Pakistani,” and so on.In this file photo, Booker Prize-winning novelist and activist Arundhati Roy, center, participates in a gathering for Kashmiris to observe Eid al-Adha away from their homes in New Delhi, India, Aug. 12, 2019.Manish Swarup/AP/File photoProtesters participate in a demonstration demanding educational reforms during the Cockroach Janta Party’s ongoing protest movement in New Delhi, India, July 25, 2026.Vipin/APHonestly, right now, these young people, very, very young people, their first outing into the political arena, and it’s been amazing. But now it’s time for the opposition and for adults to come in, because as I said in the piece I recently wrote, the reason the government feels it does not need to listen to anything and anyone is [that] it has captured the election machinery. It’s reconstituted the Election Commission. It has fiddled with the voting machines. It has voter lists now where there are millions of phantom names and millions of real people deleted from it, trying to realign the constituencies and how they are mapped in its favor. The courts look away. The bureaucracy and the police are completely complicit. So, it doesn’t feel that it can really lose an election, and therefore it doesn’t need to listen to people. But this is a huge country, and we have a history of fighting for things. And for a while, that was snuffed out, but I feel that it’s coming back.It just tells me that there’s a new thing in the air, a new way of doing politics. And sometimes, people don’t understand it. Sometimes it can go badly wrong, like you have student uprisings and you had the Arab Springs, and then it goes back to something even more frightening, and worse, because there’s a clampdown. So, the opposition has to somehow come together and be responsible, the political opposition parties. Otherwise, things are going to get very, very bad because, you know, the vigilante Hindu right-wing is very violent. So, these kids, as I said, they’re beautiful and they’re funny, but when things start to go south, what’s going to happen? I don’t know.This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.