By Balakmen Suting
A judge’s careless remark ignited a national satirical movement. In the hills of Meghalaya, where educated youth wait years for a single government vacancy, it hits closer to home than most care to admit.
Somewhere in a government office in Shillong, a young graduate is filling out yet another application form. She holds a master’s degree. She passed the MBOSE examination with distinction. They have been sitting examinations, attending interviews, and refreshing vacancy notification pages for three, four, perhaps five years. They are not idle. They are waiting and waiting for a system that seems perpetually unready for them.
Now, from the highest court of the land, comes the word: “cockroaches”.
Chief Justice of India Surya Kant made an oral observation during a court hearing in May 2026that used the word ‘cockroaches’ in reference to those who enter professions such as law and media through fake or misused credentials. He later clarified that he was not speaking about unemployed youth. The clarification, however, arrived too late. The remark had already struck millions of young Indians like a slap and the internet answered back, as only the internet can.
The Cockroach Janta Party: Satire as Self-Defence
Within twenty-four hours of the remark going viral, a 30-year-old named Abhijeet Dipke posted a Google Form on X (formerly Twitter) inviting people to register for the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ a satirical political outfit born entirely from public humour and public anger. The party’s motto: Together. Resilient. Unstoppable. Its mascot: a cockroach dressed in a business suit, standing at a podium, rendered in AI-generated imagery that spread across every social media platform within hours
Over 5,000 people signed up within hours. Within three days, that number crossed 80,000.
The Cockroach Janta Party is not a registered political party. It has no manifesto, no funding, no candidates, and no office. What it has is something far more telling: the spontaneous solidarity of a generation that is exhausted by being dismissed. It is satire, yes but satire is often the language of the powerless when every other language has failed them.
Closer to Home: The Meghalaya We Do Not Speak About Loudly Enough
In Meghalaya, comedy is harder to laugh at.
Our state is among the youngest in India by population demographics and among the most burdened by the gap between educational attainment and employment opportunity. Thousands of young men and women graduate each year from colleges in Shillong, Tura, Jowai, Nongstoiñ, Nongpoh and other towns in the state. They study hard. Many travel outside the state for higher education, accumulating qualifications and ambitions in equal measure. And then they return home to a job market that is narrow, a private sector that is thin, and a government that can absorb only a fraction of those who are qualified.
The numbers tell a story that our political conversations rarely confront directly. Meghalaya’s unemployment rate has consistently ranked among the higher figures in the Northeast. Government jobs still considered the gold standard of employment across much of the state are few, slow to be announced, slower to be filled, and frequently mired in controversy about the integrity of the selection process itself. The Meghalaya Public Service Commission has faced its share of scrutiny. Recruitment drives in police, education, and health departments have seen delays that stretch into years.
Meanwhile, the private sector the engine that absorbs young talent across most of India remains underdeveloped here. Infrastructure gaps, geographical challenges, and the slow pace of industrial investment mean that a young engineer or commerce graduate from Meghalaya has far fewer options than a peer from Pune or Hyderabad. Migration to Guwahati, Bengaluru, Delhi has become less a choice and more a compulsion
These are not abstract statistics. They are the daily reality of families across this state: parents who saved and sacrificed to put a child through college, only to watch them spend years in a limbo that no one in power seems to feel urgently responsible for ending
When Institutions Speak Down, Youth Speak Up
This is why the Chief Justice’s remark however unintentionally landed so hard. It was not merely an unfortunate choice of words. For young people already navigating a system that seems indifferent to their existence, it confirmed a fear they carry quietly: that those at the top of India’s institutions do not see them as contributors-in-waiting, but as a problem, a crowd, a nuisance
Meghalaya’s youth are not waiting because they are lazy. They are waiting because the opportunities are not there. They are not infiltrating professions through fake degrees most are desperately trying to enter any profession at all through legitimate means. To be lumped, even inadvertently, into the language of ‘cockroaches’ is to have that quiet dignity stripped away by someone who has never had to experience what they experience.
Abhijeet Dipke’s satirical party captured something real: the moment when a generation decides that if the system will call them names, they will own the name, wear it with defiance, and build something from it even if that something is, for now, a joke. Because sometimes a joke is the only honest thing left to say.
What Meghalaya’s Leadership Owes Its Young People
Satire and viral moments fade. What must not fade is the underlying demand they represent.
Meghalaya’s state government, its elected representatives, and its institutions owe the youth of this state something more than sympathy and speeches. They owe them action specific, time-bound, measurable action on the following fronts:
- Transparent and timely recruitment: Vacancies announced must be filled within defined timelines. Delays of two and three years between notification and appointment are not administrative inconveniences, they are years stolen from young lives.
- Investment in private sector growth: The state must create conditions that attract industries and businesses capable of absorbing a skilled young workforce. Skill development programmes must be tied to actual employment pipelines, not just certificates.
- Honest accounting of unemployment: Meghalaya needs accurate, publicly available data on youth unemployment, broken down by district, qualification level, and gender. What is not measured is not managed.
- Dignity in public discourse: Every public figure, from judges to politicians to administrators, must understand that words directed at ‘youth’ are heard by real young people who are already struggling. Words matter. Dismissiveness has a cost.
The Cockroach That Will Not Go Away
The cockroach, as a creature, has survived hundreds of millions of years on this planet. It has outlasted catastrophes that wiped out far larger and more impressive species. If those in power choose to reach for that particular metaphor when speaking about India’s youth, perhaps they should think more carefully about what they are actually saying.
Young people in Delhi, in Shillong, in Tura, in every small town and village are resilient. They will survive the indifference of institutions. They will find ways to be heard, whether through Google Forms or ballot boxes or the patient, grinding work of building better lives despite the odds.
But resilience should not have to be their primary qualification. A state and a nation that is serious about its future should not make survival the only option it offers its young people
Meghalaya’s youth deserve better than that. They deserve to be seen not as cockroaches, and not merely as a vote bank at election time, but as the generation on whose shoulders everything that comes next will rest.
