By P Kharel
Sonam’s Wangchuk’s recent hunger strike and the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) protests pointed out the multiple fronts the country’s government has created and consequent platforms formed. The party is named after the country’s senior judge used the term to describe unemployed youth. Several youths are reported to have committed suicide.
Hundreds of celebrities from various walks of life have come out openly in the movement’s support, triggered by medical exams papers’ leak that led to allegations of rampant cheating. This gave an impetus to the movement. Millions more promised to invade the capital New Delhi and other cities until Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, even as Prime Minister Modi government dug its heels in not conceding the student demand.
If they got militant, the situation would accelerate dangerously. The protestors wanted to know who ordered the attacks on them. The ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) was worried about India’s international image whereas the protestors said what they have pressed for was neither anti-democratic not an unjust demand.
The hunger-striking engineer Sonam Wangchuk, hailing from the sensitive north, ended his strike on July 23 after 26 days after the Modi government offered assurances to take appropriate environmental measures and introduce educational reforms pressed for. However, the well-known Indian activist continued supporting the youth protests launched under the banner of the newly floated CJP.
COACKROACH CULT: In power since 2014, the BJP and its prime minister face mounting public disappointment. Media control, continued corruption and, most importantly, unemployment are the key issues constituting the chief grievances of an average Indian today.
In September, Gen Z movement in Nepal sent shivers down the spine of politicians in South Asia and beyond, as underlined by the emphases and frequency in which analysts and news media cite the incident. After all, it registered the deaths of at least 76 persons and destruction of no less than 550 public and private buildings, including the supreme and lower courts of law, central secretariat, presidential office-cum-residence and prime minister’s official residence.
The Nepal model begins innocuously but expands to incorporate new demands, depending upon the response the mass public makes and the course the government takes. It was by no means the first of its type but the scale and depth compelled people to conclude that when a government drifts and fails to address the basic issues affecting most people for too long, the high dam of frustrations bursts the floodgates.
That seems to be the message from South Asia’s series of three major youth movements in four years.
PRIME REASON: Economic collapse was the chief cause of the July 2022 struggle known as Aragalaya in Sri Lanka. When fuel and cooking gas shortages hit the people severely, youths and university students took to the streets. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned on May 9. The protesting youth then raided the president’s office. Four days later, the prime minister’s brother Gotabaya Rajapakse fled in a military aircraft to the Maldives before announcing from Singapore his resignation. He and the former prime minister now live in their ancestral residence since a legislation removed perks given to former heads of state. The former president was subsequently reported to have visited Nepal and Bhutan.
In Bangladesh, Prime Minister Hasina Wajed’s Awami League won its fourth consecutive victory in the January 2024 general election. Barely seven months later on August 5, she fled to neighbouring India with the army giving her only an hour to pack up, when student protests in the streets overwhelmed the government responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1500 people.
In Nepal, the KP Oli-led CPN (UML)-Nepali Congress coalition cabinet put a ban on major social media platforms after foreign companies refused to register in Nepal. The agitators’ demands expanded to good governance, corruption control, rule of law and meritocracy. The army had to rescue the prime minister, the president and some key ministers to safe shelters, mostly at military barracks. Five-time former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife Arzoo, foreign minister in the Oli cabinet, were thrashed severely before security forces rescued the couple. Other former prime ministers, too, went hiding.
AUTHORITARIAN STREAK: Modi’s critics accuse the major mainstream media of being compromised. In 1990, leaders of the ruling party and others came to Kathmandu amidst an already year-long India-clamped economic blockade clamped on Nepal. Janata Dal leader Chandra Shekhar exhorted the political crowds in Kathmandu to fight for “freedom and democracy” for which “you need to remove the fear” that hindered their energy. Nine months later he became prime minister after splitting his party and ditching Prime Minister VP Singh with about 10 per cent of parliamentarians, as he was lured by the main opposition’s support that with withdrawn to force snap polls.
Knowingly or otherwise, the CJP followers are doing what their senior leaders advised protestors in Nepal in 1990 amidst a throttling economic blockade New Delhi imposed on Nepal for more than a year. Millions of youths, including sympathisers of the opposition parties of various hues, are backing them. The BJP, too, would have done the same if it were in the opposition.
If the tide’s intensity were to grow BJP’s coalition constituents could have second thoughts about partnering with a government cornered from many sides. In any case, the Cockroach movement will not fade out easily. It has tasted the youth power in the streets that compelled the government to bend forward after more than ten days of putting up a tough posture, and could strike in action whenever a right issue occurred to activate the grouping.
As for the Gen Z movements in South Asia, once might be a chance, twice a happening but thrice a pattern. Surely, a fourth would mean a model for would-be-protest movements.
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