Traditional folklore rarely exalts the humble cockroach. It usually favours noble beasts, cunning jackals, clever crows, or industrious ants. Yet the cockroach has quietly earned its own mythology in urban legends and sailors’ lore.Here is a tale that celebrates the cockroach’s uncanny survival, quiet endurance, and absolute permanence when everything else is doomed. In the port towns along the Bay of Bengal, old sailors used to tell the story of the Loha-Keeda (the Iron-Shell Bug) to explain why the roaches aboard ships could never be drowned or starved.Security personnel stop protestors during a protest march near the Parliament, outside RBI building in New Delhi on July 20, 2026. Photo: PTI/Gurinder Osan.Long ago, when the Great Deluge swept across the earth, every animal fought for a place on the grand timber rafts. The elephant took the deck, the tiger claimed the stern, and man hid in the cabin. But as the rains pounded for 40 days, the mighty beasts grew weak. The timber rotted, salt ate through the ropes, and the great creatures surrendered to the sea.Only the small brown beetle asked for no place. It crawled deep beneath the floorboards, into the dark crevices where the salt air could not reach, and fed on the dust of the rotting wood. When the waters finally receded and the sun scorched the land bare, the mighty beasts were gone. But from the cracks in the dried driftwood, the little brown beetle emerged into the light, entirely unchanged.The sailors believed that while pride builds ships, patience survives the storm.Reality of the Cockroach Janata PartyWho are these youths agitating under the banner of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP)? Are they merely a misguided lot gathered at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to draw attention to themselves? Are they frustrated young people watching their dreams slip away? Are they demanding something the ruling establishment simply cannot deliver? Will they be satisfied if Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is removed? Will they return home if the government sets up a committee to inquire into the numerous cases of leaked NEET papers and other competitive examinations?Some analysts are drawing parallels with earlier agitations – Anna Hazare’s movement of 2011–12, Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement of the 1970s, and others. They are judging the present protest through the parameters of those earlier movements. But every movement, whether in India or elsewhere, has its own context and its own novelty.NCP (SP) president Sharad Pawar interacts with Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Photo: PTI.While it may be tempting to compare the current youth agitation with movements of the past, the obsession with viewing it only through that prism can be grossly misleading. The movement under the CJP has its own context and is charting its own course. It would be unwise to measure its success or failure merely by the scale of police action or the government’s apparent insensitivity.In fact, the scenes at Jantar Mantar are a microcosmic manifestation of the deep wound that has been festering within India’s education system for quite some time. The leaked NEET papers and similar scandals are the rotten fruits and foul-smelling blossoms of the bugs and termites that have infested the roots and trunk of the tree called the Indian education system.Also read: An Open Letter: Dear Friends, We Should Expect and Prepare Well for the Repression that Comes Our WayThis crisis did not emerge without warning. Indians received signals of the deep malaise when, from an exalted public platform, they were told that tea could be brewed using gas generated from a drain connected to a pit of cow dung. Or when the elephant’s head on Lord Ganesha was cited as evidence of plastic surgery in ancient India. The sycophants, who constitute an integral pillar of this system, applauded such utterances.It did not stop there. Such outlandish claims coincided with so-called experts glorifying the medieval Rajput ruler Maharana Pratap for his alleged “victory” in the Battle of Haldighati against the Mughal forces led by Raja Man Singh in NCERT textbooks. They coincided with the rise of myth-makers emerging from Hindutva laboratories while genuine scholars languished in the dark corners of educational institutions. They coincided with ISRO scientists leaving in large numbers, with ubiquitous Hindutva “toolkits” masquerading as historians and mocking established scholars on social media. They coincided with crackdowns on students and activists at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and many other reputed educational institutions. They coincided with systematic reductions in funding for the University Grants Commission (UGC) and other institutions of primary, higher, and research education. They coincided with a system of governance that vilified students and activists in the name of rashtravad (nationalism).Who are Gen Zs?This writer vividly remembers young people aged between 18 and 20 in the run-up to 2014 falling for Narendra Modi’s charisma and his promise of creating two crore jobs every year. Modi became prime minister and has gone from strength to strength. But those youths who were 18 to 20 then are now around 30 to 32 years old, having lost much hope of obtaining meaningful education and gainful employment, both of which have become increasingly scarce. Statistics alone cannot tell the true story of their frustration and despair.The youths at Jantar Mantar are, apparently, the successors of those now 30-year-olds who feel betrayed. Gen Z is restless, yet resolute. They do not wish to fall into what they perceive as the trap of promises that turned into nightmares for the generation immediately preceding them.A protestor wearing a Spiderman mask poses in Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. Photo: PTI.The food packets arriving from Maharashtra, Bihar, Gujarat and the southern states are not merely tokens of solidarity; they are blessings and expressions of hope from those older youths who, having been silenced and pushed into blind alleys, now see a glimmer of hope in their successors.Yours truly was pleasantly surprised to hear a young barber trimming his beard in a dingy corner of Street No. 37 in Tughlakabad Extension, New Delhi, say: “I will visit Jantar Mantar and cut the hair of the activists free of cost.”A political scientist, federalist and head of the Centre for Federal Studies, Public Policy and Governance at Jamia Hamdard, Ajay Kumar Singh, says: “Most of us are misreading the current wave of protest by limiting it to the paper leak. It is a protest by Gen Z, who have been pushed to the margins of the so-called trillion-dollar economic development model.”Volunteers fan protesters amid the ongoing demonstration over the alleged NEET-UG examination irregularities at Jantar Mantar, in New Delhi on July 23, 2026. Photo: PTI/Atul Yadav.Meanwhile, retired IPS officer, former Director General of Police, Bihar, and now Physics teacher Abhay Anand observes: “It’s unprecedented. I have never seen such a protest before. It’s the result of the deep-rooted malaise in our education system.”Jantar Mantar is simply a replica of what is unfolding in the bruised psyche of Indians across the country.Also read: In Photos | Writings on the Wall for Modi, BJP and the NationOf course, CJP leader Abhijeet Dipke is a Dalit, and the fasting Sonam Wangchuk, who was removed by the police from Jantar Mantar to a hospital, is an environmentalist and education reformer of high integrity from Ladakh. But their caste and professional identities do not tell the whole story. Their presence at Jantar Mantar has become a credible force behind Gen Z’s growing unrest.Loha-KeedaThe Gen Z youths agitating at Jantar Mantar and elsewhere resemble the Loha-Keeda of Bay of Bengal sailors’ folklore. Theirs is a new and still unfolding story. It is wiser to watch it unfold than to predict either its failure or its triumph solely on the basis of old precedents or knee-jerk reactions from the present system of governance.Nalin Verma is a journalist, folklorist and educator.