The 'Cockroach' Uprising and Should We Stop Data Centres?

**Rory Stewart** (0:01)
Is Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, finally in trouble? In India, for the first time in 12 years, street protests have forced the resignation of a government minister. Look, there's been plenty of unrest before. There's been farmers' protests, there's been demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act, conflict in Manipur, enormous mobilizations, but the minister always stayed in post. And Narendra Modi's message was, this doesn't work, don't try it. And now it's changed. I think three things made this week completely different for Narendra Modi. First, a trigger factor that really enraged. These were protests that came out of leaks on examination results, forcing more than 2 million people to reset their pre-medical exams and leading to suicide. Second, the protesters won the battle for social media, particularly on Instagram. Millions of people watching phone footage of police beating protesters, witty memes, clever jokes, compelling the movement. And third, the name. The Chief Justice compared unemployed graduates to cockroaches. And a 30-year-old Dalit man replied, What if all the cockroaches came together? And they did. For a decade, the Indian government has cast its critics as liberals, soft on Pakistan, different ordinary people. This time, it didn't work. So, is this the first crack in Modi's power?
Or is it just a pressure valve?
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**Alastair Campbell** (2:53)
Welcome to The Rest Is Politics, Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

**Rory Stewart** (2:56)
And with me, Rory Stewart.

**Alastair Campbell** (2:57)
So Rory, India, massive, massive news. Ishan and Tashi have written, Hi Alastair and Rory.
Why is political accountability still so out of reach in India? What do you make of the Cockroach Janta Party? And is there any reason to think it will be more effective than recent movements? Or does real change now require mass uprisings, like those in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Indonesia?

**Rory Stewart** (3:21)
Well, I think the first thing to say is that this was very, very, very startling and different, and actually took a lot of people in India by surprise. So the sort of demonstrations that a lot of people had focused on in the past were the demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act. This was the moment where Narendra Modi basically made it easy for people to get citizenship who were not Muslims.
And there were large demonstrations, which was quite kind of left progressive civil society demonstrations against what they saw as a real example of authoritarian populist anti-Muslim prejudice coming out of this Hindu nationalist party. But those protests were very rapidly characterised by the government as being sort of left-leaning, elitist. They would say, and there's this whole troll army, which we've talked about, where Modi supporters would say, these people are Soros-funded.
If you look at Twitter, these are maybe references that people don't get so much. They don't know Delhi, but they're people who go to Khan Market, which is the old city to eat Muslim food. They eat biryani across the border in Pakistan. And they were very quite high-minded, those protests. So if you watch them, they would be quoting a poetry from Fayaz Ahmed Fayaz, who is the great Urdu poet. And they would quote these rather grand Urdu poems as part of their demonstrations. And there was a lot of talk about Azadi or freedom, freedom from capitalism, freedom from patriarchy. Now, this time, it's become completely different because this is much more socially diverse. So in the Parliament Square demonstrations, in Janta Manta, which is where a lot of these demonstrations take place for the first time, yes, you've got the students, but they're not doing these kind of high-minded Urdu chants. They're much funnier, very, very rude social media stuff, people holding up placards saying things like, my tampon is more leak proof than the Ministry of Education, this kind of stuff. Then you've got real working class people out there taking on the police at half past two in the morning who are not frightened by the surveillance state. There's been a lot of Modi putting in cameras and people wired their digital ID cards being stripped. But there are some real people, the poorest sectors of Delhi society out there saying, this is the police that demolished my home. I don't care a damn about surveillance, hit me with people filming it. Anyway, over to you.