Apart from the anger and acrimony expressed across the country over Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s remarks in the Supreme Court that unemployed youth are like parasites and cockroaches which he has clarified as well, there is widespread discussion in public sphere, media and social media on the cockroach issue in the wake of the formation of an online satirical party Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) by Abhijit Dipke and suspension of its X account and banning of its website by the Narendra Modi regime. The CJP projecting itself as the “Voice of the Lazy and Unemployed,” is deeply engaged in the digital world employing AI-generated images and dark humour to release Gen Z frustrations and launch protests against exam paper leaks, unemployment, and erosion of institutional accountability.Insensitivity to youthAs the website got signed by a hooping 10 lakh people and its handle in Instagram and X got unprecedented support of millions of Indians leaving the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) far behind, it commanded attention of the whole country and editorials were written in major national and regional newspapers.It is well known that CJI described unemployed youth as cockroaches and parasites by stating that they fail to get jobs and end up joining journalism, social media and emerge as RTI activists to attack the system. Of course, he issued a clarification suggesting his oral observations on those with fake degrees entering legal profession have been twisted by media by misquoting him.That clarification did not douse the fury of the youth.Also read: Nehru Described Zamindars and Royalty as Parasites, Not Unemployed Youth, Like the CJI DidMeanwhile, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) gave inputs that the CJP posed a danger to national security. Such panic reaction combined with heavy handed measures against ventilation of their anger, anguish and dissent through satire and sarcasm clearly prove insensitivity of the Modi regime towards the youth struggling to get employed and address the ills of the system. This trampling of dissent and expression is part of the familiar pattern of authorities describing the so called illegal immigrants as “termites,” protesting activists as “urban naxals,” “anti-nationals” and “andolan jeevis”.T.N. Seshan questioned, ‘Are we cockroaches?’In this backdrop it is important to recall the much admired former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India T.N. Seshan who apart from setting a shining example of employing the Election Commission of India (ECI) to conduct free and fair elections in the country asked a searching question, “Are We Cockroaches?” That question formed the title of the second chapter of his 1995 book, A Heart Full of Burden.Unlike CJI Surya Kant who called unemployed youth cockroaches, Seshan was employing it for all Indians including himself to drive home the point that there lies some kind of capacity to survive by withstanding all challenges and assaults. “You can stamp on a cockroach,” he wrote and added, “Five minutes later when you think it is totally dead, it suddenly turns itself upside down and runs away.” Continuing without any hesitation he asserted, “I can tell you all kinds of things about the anatomy of a cockroach, I being one myself,” and sharply asked, “Is survivability the fundamental of Indian existence?”Those remarks of Seshan were preceded by his sharp observations, “Are we a non-achieving society? If the answer to that question is at least partly yes, then you have to find a treatment for this, that from a non-achieving society we become an achieving society. We have been told, through generations of existence, that the most surviving animal is the ordinary household kitchen cockroach.”He was possibly trying to imply that like cockroaches which survive in the face of all kinds of assaults on them, India survived as a non-achieving society in spite of all the resources at its disposal to transform it to the status of an achieving society.Interestingly, while Justice Surya Kant made cockroach and parasite remarks when NEET exam paper leak issue was causing anger among the youth, Seshan was also expressing his anguished remarks likening Indians as cockroaches by pointing finger at leaking of exam question papers, pervasive corruption in every sphere, degrees obtained by copying and plagiarising to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, judges, IAS officers, politicians, teachers, etc. His invocation of resignation of Lal Bahadur Shastri as the railway minister after a train accident and his sharp remarks that, “Today a train jumping off the track is a daily occurrence. But somebody else will say, “but the PM [prime minister] did not ask me to resign. That is why I am not resigning,” resonate in the context of railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw not putting up his papers even after several major train accidents in India killing hundreds of people.Also read: CJI’s ‘Cockroaches’ Remark Does Not Bode Well for DemocracySeshan’s interrogation, “Are we cockroaches” assumes relevance with added poignancy going beyond CJI Surya Kant calling unemployed youth as cockroaches and parasites.It is fascinating to learn that Seshan categorically wrote that no chief election commissioner or set of election commissioners including hundreds of them could protect democracy. Those words are playing out in the context of the conduct of elections by the present Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which has led to the disenfranchisement of millions of voters under the supervision of a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant.Seshan reiterated the oft repeated finding that massive money spent during elections in India constituted the chief source of corruption and it remains unaddressed by the successive regimes. During the Modi regime the expenses incurred by political parties specifically by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during elections is disproportionately exorbitant in the annals of electoral history of India. So his 1995 remarks “..what passes for democracy is not democracy. It does not have any of the elements of democracy. There is no will of the people. There is no rule by the will of the people. There is no rule by consent” are getting played out in a more pronounced manner in India in 2026.He made it clear that India could not be made great and transformed into an achieving society by repeatedly saying “Rama did this, Krishna did this or Chola did that.” He urged all concerned to remain collectively responsible for the state of affairs of the the country and address the problem about which he had “mood of agony not of desperation, mood of solemnity not of anguish, mood of helplessness, not frustration.”S.N. Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India K.R. Narayanan.