FOR ACCOUNTABILITY:
It plans to travel across the country to hear young people’s concerns, as those ‘at the grassroots face a lot of issues and nobody hears them out’
The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which led India’s biggest student protests in years, wants to build a nationwide movement to hold the government accountable for its promises to young people, one of its senior members said.The group is seeking to create a grassroots organization with workers in every district, party spokesperson Saurav Das, 27, said on Friday.There are no immediate plans to register as a political party, Das said. Instead, it plans to travel across the country, hold public assemblies in villages to hear young people’s concerns, and demand greater government accountability on issues including unemployment, inflation and food security.
Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke, center, and spokesperson Saurav Das, left, celebrate the resignation of India’s minister of education in New Delhi on Saturday last week.
“The movement is about accountability. The issues that we want to raise are all going to be youth-centric,” Das said. “We want to take this movement to the grassroots, because people at the grassroots face a lot of issues and nobody hears them out.”The “Cockroach” party, which was created by a Boston University graduate Abhijeet Dipke, helped to channel youth anger over repeated exam paper leaks and other failures in the education system. Last week, the group drew tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets of New Delhi, with demonstrations quickly spreading to other cities across the country and opposition parties rallying behind its demands.
