The cockroach: Making of Abhijeet Dipke
New Delhi: When Abhijeet Dipke stood before thousands of students at Jantar Mantar on Saturday after Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, he did not
New Delhi: When Abhijeet Dipke stood before thousands of students at Jantar Mantar on Saturday after Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, he did not dwell on his own role in creating one of the biggest youth stirs in recent years.Instead, he sought to turn the moment into a lesson on democracy."This resignation is the evidence that if you don't get scared, don't bend before this government, you can get a resignation," he proclaimed. "If you are scared to speak, how is it democracy?... They think they are kings because we sent them there."For the 30-year-old founder of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), the resignation was never meant to be the end of the story. "This is the first wicket," he told the crowd. "This is just the beginning."Also Read: CJP withdraws Jantar Mantar protest after Centre accepts key demandsThat ability to convert a political victory into a larger argument about democratic participation perhaps explains how a man who, by his own admission, was applying for jobs in the United States barely two months ago ended up leading a movement that forced the resignation of a Union minister.When PTI interviewed him in early June, Dipke was preparing to fly back from Boston, where he had completed a master's degree in public relations.He expected to be arrested the moment he landed in India. "I'll most probably get arrested from the airport," he had said. Only weeks earlier, he recalled, he had been planning a career abroad.
As international attention around CJP grew, multinational companies in the US and Europe offered him jobs. He turned them down.The gamble has transformed both his life and India's political conversation.Born out of satire after unemployed youth were likened to "cockroaches", CJP rapidly evolved into what Dipke insisted on calling a "political youth movement".At the outset, he argued that its popularity reflected not his own appeal but the failure of the political establishment to address unemployment, education and the aspirations of young Indians."It's the failure of the political ecosystem that they have failed to cater to the aspirations, the needs, the concerns and the hope of the youth," he had told PTI. "The youth have followed a party which was born out of satire. There could be no bigger explanation than this."That belief continues to define his politics. On Saturday, as chants celebrating the resignation echoed across Jantar Mantar, Dipke repeatedly steered the conversation away from personalities and back to issues."The youth have shown they can force anyone's resignation if they want," he said. "The people who said this government never listens have been proved wrong."Then came perhaps the clearest articulation yet of what he wants the movement to become."If politics of Hindu-Muslim does not happen and issue-based politics happens, then thrones would shake," he said. "The youth of this country will not fall into the trap of Hindu-Muslim politics. They will talk about employment."Those who have watched the protests from the beginning say that instinct to resist personality politics has been visible throughout the agitation.
The BriefWire