Abhijeet Dipke, youth campaigner: There’s an underlying frustration in India

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0:54Hello, I'm Yogi Thalamay, the BBC's international correspondent, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service, the best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world. I want to get freedom. I like their freedom. A gender-equal world would be a better world for men too. We need this is fire. We need healing. We need trust. These companies don't really, they don't care what governments do. This is a war. The first thing that we want is the war to end. For this interview, I met Abhijit Dibke, founder of the Kokruj Janata Party, in a village in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, where he was campaigning to improve the conditions of rural schools.

1:41Dibke rose to prominence in India earlier this year after criticising the country's chief justice, who had compared unemployed young people and social media activists to cockroaches. Dipke was studying in the US when he posted, what if all cockroaches come together on the social media platform X in response? Although he thought nothing of it at the time, his impromptu post quickly went viral, eventually snowballing into a youth protest movement that has shaken India's political establishment and thrust Dipke himself into the spotlight. I think there has been this underlying frustration among the youth of India especially since a very long time.

2:19Because if we look at the unemployment data, currently India has the highest unemployment rate in the last 40 years. And even when it comes to education, every year all government examination, there is not even one single government examination where the paper doesn't get leaked or the exam doesn't get cancelled. So people are really, really frustrated with unemployment, with the way the education ministry is functioning in India, which was not accountable at all.

2:50Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Abhijit Dipke. It was really spontaneous. I had no clue that it would turn into a huge movement. It happened when the Chief Justice of India, who made a comment and compared the youth of India with cockroaches and parasites for criticising the system. and being the chief justice of India he should be the one to safeguard the freedom of expression but here he was demeaning and insulting the youth for merely expressing their opinion about the current existing political system and somewhere I just was taking a pot shot for that comment by saying what if all cockroaches come together and I did that while playing PS5 and I just made that random post on X and then after a couple of hours I saw that by then thousands of replies were there on that post.

3:37And most of the young people were saying, yeah, we should start our own platform, maybe our own party. So I thought, why not let's launch something like the Cockroach Janata Party using the word Cockroach, which the Chief Justice of India used to demean the youth and also the Janata taking from the ruling party. So his defense of that has been that he didn't actually say it about youngsters overall. He was talking about people who have fake degrees who try to get into the bar. I think that is even more problematic then because there are some people here with fake degrees sitting on the top most position here Allegedly and also in a country like India where people struggle to get formal education How can you just demean them by calling cockroaches and parasites in a country like India where?

4:23Majority of the population lives in the rural part and they don't have the access to quality education and because of that They don't have formal degrees. So I think even that clarification was very problematic Now, when the Kokroj Janata Party got all of this traction online, you suddenly had lots of people following you. Can you explain what happened to you? Because I think, you know, you were blocked, your pages were not available for a little bit. yeah so the thing that happened is that i was expecting like when we launched the google form i was expecting something 300 to 400 memberships and then i saw the number just kept increasing and that is what led me to you know why not launch an official website of cockroach junta party and somehow after launching the website we received more than 50 000 members within 24 hours and after looking at that those numbers i thought maybe it's a good time to launch even a social media channels And on Instagram in particular, there was huge, huge following within, like I would say, just a day.

5:21In just a day, we were able to cross 1 million. And within 4 days, we crossed 10 million, surpassing the ruling party of India, which had just 8 million followers. As of today, we have 26 million followers. That within, I would say, just 2 or 3 months. And I think somewhere the government did feel nervous because of the rising popularity and that too, overnight popularity. And that is why constant attempts were made to take down our accounts. And even the government withheld our ex-account in India, calling us a national security threat. So at what point did you think, OK, now this has got a lot of traction online, this needs to become a ground movement?

5:59Because after that, you decided to come to India. At what point did you make that decision? I was an international student studying in the US on an Indian passport. I was an Indian abroad. Everybody who knew me there knew me as an Indian, a brown guy studying in the US. And somewhere that really hurt me, that really, I don't know, really made me sad. That isn't my government supposed to be, supposed to stand by me when I'm abroad. But this was the same government that called me a national security threat. And that really hurt me and that is when I decided I need to go back to my country. And I need to show this that I do love my country and I'm a patriot.

6:36I'm not a national security threat. I just love my country, not in the way that you want, but I do love my country. Now, we have seen, obviously, in the past decade or more, a pattern that anybody who is critical of the government or its policies, there's a pattern of intimidation, threats, even jailing of activists, journalists, organizations. Were you afraid when you were coming back to India? And are you still afraid? I won't lie. Before taking the decision to come back to India, I was afraid. I was nervous Who wouldn't be Because when I called up my lawyer And I just asked him Like what is the worst case scenario And he told me Was minimum one year jail Under NSA So you would be a fool If you're thinking Which is the National Security Act Security Act And he said that You would be a fool If you're thinking To come back to India My legal advice would be Don't come But then I had like Three four sleepless nights Where I have to Take a decision That do I need to Go back to India Or do I just need to Sit in the US Now there were two things if I go back to India my whole life would be changed I might be locked up in jail I don't know for how long but if I sit in the US all these people who have followed the Kokorojanta party they would somewhere feel betrayed that we were ready to put on a fight but he didn't come to India he just you know somewhere he just kept hiding in the US and he's not he's not willing to take the risk he's not ready to put up a fight and that is where I thought that if I don't go back to India maybe I won't be able to face myself ever again and maybe people will always call me a I don't know a traitor or somebody who didn't have the courage to come back to his own country and after three four sleepless nights I finally made up my decision that I let's see whatever happens let's just face it and let's go back to the home country so I just made the announcement on the internet and that is when I called up my mother and I told her that I'm coming back to India and immediately she broke down on the call and she's like why are you coming back you know what would happen to you they might put you in jail or they might just attack you and I just tried to tell her that I have made the decision I have made it public now I can't backtrack because now if I backtrack people would really mock me that is the justification I was trying to give to her but no nobody from my family supported it but I had to take this decision I had to take a stand I had mentally prepared myself that whatever may come I'm gonna face it And even if it comes to going to jail, I'm prepared for that.

8:58So I honestly don't have any fear left of going to jail. And when you came back, the initial few protests, they did have an out, you know, people did come out, but it wasn't massive numbers. Was there doubt? Because, you know, you were, you, it was a gen, it's a generation that is constantly online. As you, you know, you were talking about yourself professionally online. you see a lot of ranting and raging online but that doesn't necessarily mean people are going to show up on the streets did you ever have doubts that can this online movement actually become something on the ground? No, of course I had my doubts even while I was living from the US many of my friends were kind of mocking me saying that what do you think you will land in India and suddenly people will come out in support of you and there will be thousands of people on the streets and I told them I'm not a delusional person I know that maybe people won't show up There is a very high possibility of that.

9:50Because until now, this is just an online movement. So I don't know how many people will show up. But I think I need to go. If I cannot go, I cannot ask people to come on the ground. I was just willing to take a risk that if I cannot take that risk, I cannot ask the people to take the same risk. So why do you think people came out? Why do you think it resonated with people? I think there has been this underlying frustration among the youth of India, especially since a very long time. Because if we look at the unemployment data, Currently, India has the highest unemployment rate in last 40 years.

10:22And even when it comes to education, every year, all government examination, there is not even one single government examination where the paper doesn't get leaked or the exam doesn't get cancelled. So people are really, really frustrated with unemployment, with the way the education ministry is functioning in India, which was not accountable at all. And I think this underlying frustration was the core reason when they saw that somebody's coming back to India, willing to take up the risk. So I think that could have somewhere made them feel that if he can, why not we? You centered the protest on a very specific issue on the leaks of a medical entrance exam.

11:02What went behind deciding that? Was it strategic? Because it's, you know, I would say in this country, a relatively safe issue to talk about. So was there strategy involved? Or again, was that an off the cuff decision? I would say it was mostly because of the social listening that we were doing on our Kokoro Janta Party page because the paper leak happened around the same time when we launched the Kokoro Janta Party and when we started the page many students were reaching out to me talking about CBSC and NEET especially and I used to interact with them I tried to speak to like at least hundreds of followers every day and within a span of 15 days I think I would have spoken to more than 2000 people online just chatting with them and most of them complained about paper leak and majority of them were the students of NEET and they told me that how they have been preparing for this exam for years because you you know in India NEET medical entrance exam examination is a huge burden is a huge expectation because if you are born into an Indian family if you don't end up becoming a doctor or an engineer then you don't have a successful career so this is how much expectations and burden are on those children.

12:12And they were preparing for it. They were doing all the hard work. They were studying, I would say, 16 hours a day. And after all their hard work and all their efforts, the paper gets leaked. And the government cancels the exam. And that leads to the death of more than 20 students. More than 20 students died by suicide because it was the failure of the system which compelled them to commit suicide.

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14:32As he embarked on a new campaign visiting rural schools, demanding their conditions be improved, I saw him being surrounded by people everywhere he went, some wanting to shake his hand, others asking to take a photo with him. If the attention bothers him, it doesn't show. But what did come through in the interview was a student still grappling with the unexpected turn of events, which has thrust him into a position of power and influence. OK, let's return to my conversation with Abhijit Dipke. On the ground, the numbers kept surging after a certain point. Do you think there were certain kind of inflection points in your protests at which more and more people decided?

15:10I was at the protests in Delhi for a few days and largely it felt organic because I asked a lot of people, why have you come out? And they said, oh, we saw it on social media. We felt like we had to be a part of it. Anyway, we were just looking at it when we were sitting at home all day. So we wanted to come out. Was there a point, do you think, was there a turning point at which it went from being sort of hundreds of people to suddenly becoming this mass surge of thousands of people to spreading to different cities across the country? I think initially there was no credibility behind us. People had no reason to trust us.

15:44They thought maybe we'll sit for a day or two. They did not know what we are standing on. They did not know what our values are. But the longer we sat, the more people started trusting us, the more they started believing in us. And I think Mr. Sonam Wangchuk's hunger strike played a huge role. in a way he risked his life and awakened the nation and it was because of his hunger strike people the number which was in hundreds that went into thousands and thousands and i think it was the brutality done by the delhi police on 28th july where they used pellet guns tear gases against young children as young as 16 17 years old who were at the protest that really moved the nation and the protest which was limited until jantar mantra that spread across india we saw protests in every nook and corner of the country because of the brutality of the government.

16:35And just to remind people, Sonam Bangchuk, of course, was the activist who sat on hunger strike with you all at the protest site. About the violence, there was criticism of you as well as other people who were a part of the movement that why were you not leading from the front? There were a lot of students who got injured. There were dozens of people who were in hospital after that. How would you respond to that criticism? I think there is a misconception on this because I was leading the protest. I was at the forefront, I was on a truck because I thought maybe being on the truck will help me to direct the people, the protesters in a better way.

17:11I was also on my third day of hunger strike and this was for the very first time that I was doing a hunger strike. And I had to do that because they picked up Mr. Sonu Mangchuk. So my team advised me that you don't be on the ground because you are really weak, you are not in your best shape. and if you get on the crowd if you get on the ground the people will just you know hop on you and you won't be able to manage the crowd or direct the crowd and that is why I was on the truck and when it comes to the other leaders they were called up by the government Ashutosh and Saurabh and they went there in good faith but they were made to sit at JP Nadas the union minister's residence for five hours and in those five hours they had a meeting only for 10 minutes so in a way they were house arrested even their mobile phones were seized by the minister's officials and they tried to isolate me at Jantar Mantra because I was the only one who was there present and who was on third day of his hunger strike clearly didn't have much energy to somehow control the crowd to address the crowd so it was very well planned strategy by the government they installed the jammers there so most of the people thought that I am not at Jantar Mantra because there was no way of knowing.

18:20There was absolutely no way of communicating to the people. So the government had pre-planned it in a way they isolated me by installing the jammers, by calling Saurav and Ashutosh who were the second command after me to the union minister's residence and not letting them leave for five hours. So the result of your protest was unprecedented in the sense that there has been protests before that have forced the government into a climb down. but I don't think it's happened as quickly as it did in your case. What is it? Why do you think that happened? I think what happened after 20 July, even I was not sure the resignation is going to happen.

18:58One of the reporters called me on the eve of the resignation and they just asked me, do you think the resignation is going to happen? I told them, no, I don't think so. Then they just laughed and said, then why are you sitting there? I said, I've got to put up a fight. I'm not going to back off. Now if they want to remove me from Jantar Mantar, they will have to arrest me but I am not going to leave Jantramantar on my own but I believe what happened after 20 July when the police did that brutality where they were just were really really I would say cruel to the kids that somewhere you know awakened the nation that moved the nation and the government was afraid that this protest is just going beyond CJP it is becoming a people's movement the public movement and the anger which was limited to Jantramantar that spread across India that spread across from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

19:49And the government was afraid if they don't sack the education minister, then they might have thought that things would really get bad for them in going into the elections. And of course, the education minister, that was your core demand, that he has to resign or he has to leave. And he's, of course, a very core senior leader of the party. Can I ask you what next? Why, from what I understand, you want to be a political pressure group, but not a political party. Why? As I spoke for the opposition that if we start a political party, we will be fighting for our own survival rather than fighting for the people.

20:25Investigative agencies will be sent out after us and they will harass us, they will file cases against us. But they can still do all of that. Yeah, they can still do all of that but we won't have to fight the legal battles that other parties are fighting to save the election symbol, to save the political parties or even to save their elected representatives. I believe that they can arrest us still but at least we will be among the people and we will be working for the people and that is where we want to keep our focus on and I believe that somewhere in India in last 10-12 years people have limited politics or democracy just to elections and just to political parties.

20:59We want to move beyond that because democracy and politics is much more than elections than political parties. It involves a credible media, independent media. It also involves public pressure groups. It also involves civil society members. It also involves social activists and everybody else. And that is what we have an idea that we just don't need a political transformation where one party is replaced by another party and which keeps repeating the same thing. What we hear are for a cultural transformation where people understand their rights, people understand their fundamental duties and how to hold the government accountable no matter which party comes in power.

21:38You have now organized yourself with a core group of members and with any organization it has to be financially sustainable. You all have lives to lead, you've got families to run. I think you personally have an education loan to pay back. How do you get funding then? So right now we are just managing on our own. We had some savings. We are helping each other out. But going forward, we do realize that we need funding to sustain this movement. And for that, we are going to rely on crowdfunding, which will be starting very soon. But how do you ensure independence? Once you've started asking for crowdfunding, you could get a very large chunk of money from one specific person, entity, company.

22:19You know what, we are actually very concerned about that Because some might even donate us without us asking them I mean the government is very capable of doing that They might ask us to donate us a last sum of amount And then try to make it sound very fishy So what we are going to do is that we are going to put up a limit On how much amount you can donate And how many times you can donate And by that way I think we will be able to keep ourselves safe From all those kind of things I think the key question You've got the attention of the youth You've got the attention of Gen Z But this is also a generation Whose attention wavers very quickly I'm one of them Even I have a very bad attention span So you know You're cool right now How will you ensure that?

23:04How will you sustain that in the future? I think although the attention span of our generation Or even the Gen Z's might be very short But one thing that I have realised is that If they care about something They are very outspoken about it. They are very, you know, solid about it. They won't shy or hesitate while speaking out their minds, which I think that the elder generation tries to play a bit safe. But this generation has strong values they believe in and they are very outspoken about it. And that is something that I really like about them. If I had to ask you, what is the single biggest achievement you think your movement has had?

23:40It has made the people fearless. That is the biggest achievement. Many people are trying to tell me the resignation is the biggest achievement, something that has not been done by anybody else in the last 12 years. But I always tell them, no, it's not the biggest achievement. The biggest achievement is that the country has found its voice again. The people have become fearless again. And they have again started questioning the government as they should in a democracy. And what about your personal ambitions? How have they changed? What was Abhijit hoping to be prior to his post on X in May? And what are you hoping to be now?

24:17Abhijit prior to this just wanted to have a very private life. A couple of friends he know, a couple of friends I know, people I love. That's all I wanted. I didn't want a public life. And being around people I'm not good at. I'm a very, I would say, aloof kind of person, a very introvert person who would prefer to stay in his room for most of the day. And he would like to go out only for an hour or something. And even after that, immediately wants to go back home. But right now I'm spending most of my day out among the people, hundreds of people. But I'm doing right now what is required out of me to sustain this movement and to sustain the hopes that people have from this movement.

24:56And I believe that I'll have to keep my personal life, personal preference, take a backseat for a while. And a final question. Do you think this will have an electoral impact? I do believe that because we have already started witnessing that BJP lost just the Bakipur seat in Bihar and this was the first time in last 30 years they got defeated on that seat and the person who won that seat he himself claimed that that it was the result of the Jantar Manthar protest that the outcome has been such that the BJP got defeated after 30 years and not just that we have been seeing across India all political parties have started to catering to the youth, started to catering to the JNZs.

25:37They're trying to have a dialogue with them. Even the BGP is trying to do that. Even the RSS is trying to do that. So I do believe that somewhere everybody is shaken up, everybody is moved and they are somewhere just, you know, trying to somehow cater to the JNZ, cater to the young population. And this for sure going forward is going to have an electoral impact where we can see all the political parties focusing on policies which will help the youth more.

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