ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Shownotes
Five months ago, India’s Chief Justice reportedly compared unemployed young people to ‘cockroaches’ and ‘parasites.’ Within days, a satirical online ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ had millions of followers.Since then, a meme has become one of the biggest challenges to Narendra Modi’s third term.
What began over paper leaks in a national medical entrance exam grew into protests on the streets of Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore. They were met with tear gas, batons, and arrests. But in July, the education minister officially resigned and has since left office—a major victory for the protest movement. But the movement hasn’t gone away, and the recent resurgence in protests throughout the country has focused on threats to the integrity of India’s electoral rolls.
Today we ask who these protesters are, what role social media played in bringing them out, while placing the movement in India’s history of youth and anti-corruption politics. We also ask what it says about gender, jobs, and education in contemporary India. Finally, we discuss the government’s response, what it means for Modi at the ballot box, and what it signals for democracy across the region.
On this episode of the Order from Ashes podcast, we have the pleasure to discuss and dissect these issues with two guests with a wealth of academic and journalistic expertise on the topic. Akanksha Awal, a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at SOAS, whose work explores gender, urbanisation and intimacy in India and has a new book—Love as Enjoyment: Education and Freedom in an Indian City—forthcoming this month with Cambridge University Press. And from New Delhi, we’re joined Yashraj Sharma, a journalist at Al Jazeera, covering human rights, the conflict in Kashmir, the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, among other issues. He previously worked at VICE and The Kashmir Walla, where he lived and worked in Indian-administered Kashmir for approximately five years.
On this episode of the Order from Ashes podcast, we hear about the protests from Dr. Akanksha Awal, a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at SOAS and Yashraj Sharma, a journalist at Al Jazeera based in New Delhi.
Guests
Akanksha Awal is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at SOAS and a former Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Oxford. Her research examines gender and urbanization in India.
Yashraj Sharma is a journalist at Al Jazeera, based in New Delhi, covering human rights, the conflict in Kashmir, and the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, among other issues.
Host
Rohan Advani is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for International Policy and a Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University.
Related reading
Akanksha Awal. 2026. Love as Enjoyment: Education and Freedom in an Indian City, Cambridge University Press.
Yashraj Sharma, “‘How can you stop these kids?’ Indian capital on lockdown before protests,” Al Jazeera, October 10, 2026.
Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Episode: Order from Ashes 123
