If satire is Gen-Z’s civic language, a viral meme can start a party, but it takes institutions to sustain a democracy. The Cockroach Janta Party made authority look ridiculous, but unless spectacle turns into substance, this summer’s revolt risks fading into just another algorithmic trend in an endless digital feed. There is something wonderfully medieval about calling yourself a cockroach and marching on Parliament with it. When Chief Justice Surya Kant reportedly compared India’s unemployed youth to cockroaches and parasites, a twenty-something political strategist named Abhijeet Dipke did the only sensible thing a Gen-Zer raised on irony could do: he founded a party out of the insult. The Cockroach Janta Party took its name as a deliberate parody of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. This is culture jamming, plain and simple: hijack the symbols of power and hand them back changed. There is something deliciously subversive about naming yourself after the cockroach specifically. It i...