We went to cockroach party's Jantar Mantar protest. This is what we saw
An 83-year-old woman stood among hundreds of protesters at New Delhi's Jantar Mantar on Saturday morning at around 11 am. The sun had begun to
An 83-year-old woman stood among hundreds of protesters at New Delhi's Jantar Mantar on Saturday morning at around 11 am. The sun had begun to take its toll. Asked why she had come to a students' protest, she had an answer ready. Her children had long completed their education, but she was worried about her grandchildren's future. "All of them are our children," she said, pointing towards the hundreds of cockroaches. Read Full Story For much of the afternoon, the protest seemed to be happening in fragments. There were repeated rounds of sloganeering and speech-making by Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke and the outfit's spokespersons. The crowd at Jantar Mantar continued to swell. A thousand personnel from the CRPF, SSB and Delhi Police stood guard around the venue. Members of the SFI and the AISF (Left student outfits) carried on with their slogans and daphli. Many 'cockroaches', seated directly on the scorching pitch road under the unforgiving Delhi sun, could barely hear the speakers. All of that lasted until educationist and activist Sonam Wangchuk walked in. The scattered gathering at the heart of the capital found a common focal point. That, in some ways, summed up the first major street mobilisation by the CJP, the online movement founded by Abhijeet Dipke. While Dipke drew the crowds to the Jantar Mantar protest site, it was "Sonam sir", as some cockroaches from Delhi University at the protest site, called Sonam Wangchuk, commanded their attention. At its peak, when Wangchuk was addressing the gathering, an estimated 2,000-2,500 protesters packed the Jantar Mantar protest site. The protest at Jantar Mantar was organised to demand the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over examination irregularities and recruitment-related grievances. College-goers, competitive exam aspirants, parents, young professionals and activists turned up in large numbers. A man claimed he had "come from Maharashtra's Nagpur to take part in the demonstration against the system's rot". The dominant slogan throughout the day was "Dharmendra Pradhan must go". The gathering was significant and successful. It made noise. Significant and successful, not because of its size, but because it was a decent transition from a social media movement into physical mobilisation. Yet the day at Jantar Mantar also exposed the challenges that might lie ahead if the CJP and the cockroaches hope to metamorphise further. WHAT THOUSANDS OF 'COCKROACHES' LOOKED AND FELT LIKE AT DELHI'S JANTAR MANTAR By late morning, Jantar Mantar had been filled with students carrying placards, copies of the Constitution, portraits of BR Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi, books of these stalwarts, and the Tiranga.
The BriefWire