“HOW CAN A democratic government do something like this?” asked Shivmuni Singh, aged 74, with visible bewilderment. His two-day journey from a village in Buxar district, in the eastern state of Bihar, which included spending a night in a railway station on the outskirts of Delhi, culminated at barricades that had come up around the centre of the capital city. He was some 2.5 kilometres from Jantar Mantar, an 18th-century astronomical observatory and an officially designated protest site. There were at least 200 policemen at the barricade where he had been stopped.
On 10 October, the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), the youth-led movement aiming to hold India’s government accountable to its people, which began this summer and has gathered enormous momentum since, called for a protest in Delhi against Gyanesh Kumar, the Chief Election Commissioner, who has been accused of illegality in implementing of a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls – an exercise that many allege is being used to target minority communities and opposition voters. The SIR has already removed 130 million voters from the rolls, and opposition parties in several states say the process has helped Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win recent elections.
Singh had first seen videos put out online by the CJP’s founder, Abhijit Dipke, a 30-year-old Dalit graduate, during the student protests that the movement spearheaded against examination paper leaks in July. Those massive protests had captured the imagination of many Gen-Zs, and led to the resignation of Modi’s education minister – only the second resignation from Modi’s cabinet in the 12 years since he took power, and a rare showing of susceptibility by India’s BJP government.
“The moment Dipke said youth will protest for our right to have fair elections, I wanted to come in support,” Singh said when I met him on 10 October. “My father was a freedom fighter who went to jail when fighting for independence. So, speaking up for issues of the country runs in our blood.” He was among the handful of protestors who had managed to circumvent multiple layers of barricades and enter the administrative heart of the capital.