Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: India’s Cockroach movement winds down protests after the education minister resigns, violence surges around an election in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, and the resignation of Bangladesh’s president leaves few allies of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in government.
Modi Gives In to Protest Demands
The protest campaign led by the Cockroach Janta Party—one of the largest such movements in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 12 years in power—reached a conclusion over the weekend after the government agreed to some of the demonstrators’ demands. However, while the crisis has ended, it arguably has left Modi more politically vulnerable than ever before.
The Cockroach movement is one of just a small number that have significantly challenged Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. It exposed the level of fury that many young people harbor toward a leader and party that have banked on their strong popularity to win three straight national elections. The rhetoric of the protesters was angry and sometimes profane.
