When the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) launched its protest at Jantar Mantar in June, there was no dearth of sceptics. The government didn’t take it seriously to begin with. On the other side, there was wariness and doubt: this is AAP’s ‘B-team’; CJP is a joke, but Sonam Wangchuk is a good man; CJP has been propped up by the government, to distract from the Ram Temple scam; the BJP goes soft on Hindu boys; Gen Z only turns up on the phone, not on the ground; the CJP’s biggest problem is its lack of ideology.I felt that they might be on to something. The reason: Why would any young person in their right mind take on the Modi-Shah combine? GoI’s dirty tricks department is well-stocked. The fact that a bunch of greenhorn leaders were challenging the government so loudly and fearlessly was enough to make one sit up and listen. Remember the conversations around Dipke when he was going to land in India? Most felt it was a foregone conclusion that he would be arrested at the airport. I was under the impression that the present generation was an extension of their parents’; bhajans had been replaced by bhajan-clubbing— that was about it. Such was the air of 360 degree pessimism. Look at things now – the young leaders have become household names. India’s youth cohort, cutting across divisions, has emerged as a hero. In CJP’s own words on their website: ‘We have migrated from online shitposting to a serious, socialist democratic front’.CJP’s quiet achievement has been to break the Liberal vs Bhakt dichotomy. For the duration of the CJP protest we hardly ever heard the word being used. That simple linguistic recasting, Government vs Cockroaches, instead of Hindu Right vs Liberals, enabled the movement to widen its ambit. Like Zohran Mamdani repeating the mantra of ‘affordability’, until it was drilled into citizens’ heads, the CJP fetishised the word ‘accountability’— a neutral term. As the movement grew into a rainbow coalition, the quantum of rage and resentment in society became amply clear.Modi has become an object of ridiculeThe government has stuck to its antiquated playbook: harassment of protestors; doxxing by Hindutva foot-soldiers; ordering social media companies to take down posts; blaming an imaginary foreign hand. Sourav Das, when asked by a news channel about funding, replied with a poker face: ‘George Soros gave me hundred bucks to take a cab to Jantar Mantar’.As we speak, the prime minister’s carefully curated image – his ‘chhavi’ – of an aloof superstar strongman who fills stadiums, lies in tatters. His own reels are a curious mix of bluster and fear, tone-deafness and lapsed moral authority. The youth are not misguided; in fact, they have seen through the act – that it’s the prime minister and his party who have been misguiding them. His attempts at invoking sympathy over cuss words uttered by a young girl remind one of a schoolboy running to the teacher: ‘Sir, sir, he’s abusing my mom.’ In this case, it’s the headmaster running to the students’ parents, the prime minister’s support base.Every Modi reel becomes more fodder for Gen Z; he’s become an object of ridicule. The government can remove thousands of posts and reels, only for them to be replaced by thousands more, liked and shared by millions. While the BJP ensured that the revolution was not televised, Gen Z’s creator economy ensured that the revolution was monetised.What we are seeing is what Bharatiya Janta Party did to their favourite punching bag – Rahul Gandhi – but in reverse: the Pappu-isation of Narendra Modi. Scroll down the comments section and you will find line after line lampooning Modi, no holds barred. The god-like figure is reduced to being a mere mocked mortal. Hindutva is reduced to an image of an aggressive male with a tilak/ tika, belonging to some outfit or the other, threatening to rape women and unleash vigilante violence. A recurring comment in the right-wing ecosystem is: ‘Iska bhi ilaj karva do.’An image that comes to mind is of Modi forlornly standing at a platform, flagging off a Vande Bharat, except that the train has no passengers. Like the empty train, Modi too is running on empty. The train metaphor can be spun in another way: the train has long left the station, along with the passengers; Modi stands alone on the platform, wearing a golden crown, waving a ghost flag for a ghost train. As the young have woken from slumber, escaped Plato’s cave, the no-longer-Teflon prime minister inaugurates another sleeper train.The medium is the messageThe need of the hour is for Modi and the BJP to come to grips with the new reality and adapt. They cannot because the party is chained to the ideology of the RSS. The education system cannot see any substantive changes because this is the best the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh can do. They have put their most competent foot forward. Political parties like the Congress can be opportunistic and take advantage of changed circumstances. An ideology-based party like the BJP – an ideology fixated on a fantasy past – finds that ideology can become a bug-bear, a millstone around one’s neck. Modi, instead of reading the writing on the wall, is busy whitewashing it. Except that Indian society is not a graffiti-filled wall in Jantar Mantar – the eye of the utopia storm. The gulf between generations was evident in Mohan Bhagwat’s remark when the CJP protests were ongoing. Addressing the Vishwa Mangalya Sabha in Hyderabad, he said: ‘Gen Z is adaptable and emotional by nature. They do not think with a very calm mind. If what is in touch with them is visibly authentic, it appeals to them’. The Women’s Liberation Movement, Bhagwat observed, has led a segment of society astray: ‘Stree Mukti Andolan started and gradually became widely accepted… So, a phase passed. After that, the proponents of that movement realised that we had stepped onto a wrong path and ruined a generation or two of our country.”The CJP movement has underlined the chasm between the public’s political sentiment and what manifests in electoral results. The BJP allegedly wins elections by hook or by crook: lopping off Muslims from electoral rolls in the SIR exercise; mysterious surges in last minute voting in certain constituencies where the race is close; ‘buying’ MPs from rival parties. The opposition parties have long asked for a paper trail with regard to EVMs. Essentially, you can diddle the math but you cannot tell people what to think, what to say and what to feel. You only diddle the math because you are afraid of something; you know that the public mood has soured.With Indira Gandhi, when elections were reasonably fair, one could see public sentiment playing out at the ballot box. It provided a safety valve for democracy. Indira could be voted out, then voted back in. With the safety valve blocked, like in present times, the public has no option but to hit the streets, as they did. You can physically clear the streets by breaking bones, firing pellet guns and filing FIRs, but the movement continues to grow on Instagram, like a long dormant volcano spewing copious molten lava. The momentum hasn’t flagged. The medium is very much the message.CJP’s original manifestoWhich brings us to the CJP’s original manifesto for systemic reform. It offers a roadmap of sorts in the larger battle for democracy. Like no post-retirement rewards for judges: ‘The systemic practice of appointing retired judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts to lucrative political positions, commission chairmanships, or nominating them to the Rajya Sabha creates a structural conflict of interest.’On voter deletions: ‘We demand that the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and senior electoral officers be held personally and criminally liable under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) if voter rolls are altered in a manner that deletes hundreds of thousands of citizens without verified physical surveys, public notice, and transparent administrative review.’ Also: ‘Legally binding mandate forcing the EC to investigate, verify, and resolve any voter deletion or roll discrepancy complaint within a strict 48-hour timeline from the moment of filing. When voter deletion complaints are filed, they are currently sent into an administrative abyss, leaving the complaint unresolved until long after the election has concluded. A right delayed is a right denied.’These are not unreasonable demands. When news came of Pradhan’s resignation, CJP’S spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka said that this was just the beginning, only the first wicket had fallen. Something tells me that this is building up to be the greatest Test match ever. The umpires might cheat, the rules of the game will be altered, there will be attempts at match-fixing, but one thing is for sure: the match will not end in a draw. Which Pappu wins – that’s a toss-up.Palash Krishna Mehrotra is the author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolour Youth, and the editor of House Spirit: Drinking in India.