CJP | Can they make a difference?

The Cockroach Janta Party expands its agenda and outreach, but challenges remain before it can emerge as a major political forceFLAGGED: PM Modi, Nitin Nabin and Amit Shah at an NDA parliamentary party ‘Mangal Milan’ meeting, Aug. 11. (Photo: IANS)ISSUE DATE: Aug 31, 2026 | UPDATED: Aug 21, 2026 16:51 IST The children do the counting themselves, video-recording their grievances on a hand-held mobile. At the government school in Santuk Pimpari, a village in Maharashtra’s Hingoli district, they list what they don’t have: benches, clean drinking water, usable toilets, a working computer, enough teachers. It happens to be a school in the ancestral village of Abhijeet Dipke, national convenor of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). Even as their Insta post goes viral, videos begin coming from elsewhere. In Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh, villagers post reels of broken windows, dirty washrooms and inadequate drinking water. In Bengaluru, volunteers spend a morning at a government school talking to teachers and parents. The instruction circulating online is simple: “inspect, ask, listen, document.” The CJP calls the campaign ‘School Thik Karo’ (Fix your school). Parents, students and citizens are being encouraged to audit their local government schools, record deficiencies on their phones, tag the CJP and demand that authorities fix them. It is an ingenious extension of the method that first propelled the CJP into national prominence: find a grievance young people recognise, document it, put it online, amplify it, mobilise around it and then force the state to respond.