Across rural India, millions of children attend schools where ceilings crumble, toilets stand clogged, and classrooms flood with monsoon rains — a quiet, systemic failure that has unfolded over decades while ninety-four thousand schools have closed and education spending remains below what the nation's own policy recommends. Into this neglect has stepped an unlikely force: the Cockroach Janta Party, a satirical online movement that has already toppled a cabinet minister, and now asks citizens to document what their government has allowed to decay. The #FixTheSchool campaign is less a political
India's 'Cockroach Party' Targets Crumbling Schools in Viral Campaign
Millions of rural students lack equal educational opportunities due to infrastructure failures, forcing many into agricultural or manual labor instead of pursuing education.
Even animals would not be kept in such a place
Mark
Why did a satirical party become the vehicle for this? Why not an NGO or a teachers' union?
Mimi
Because satire cuts through the noise. The Cockroach Janta Party started as mockery—a way to name the absurdity of what was happening. But absurdity is what people recognize when they live it. A union makes demands. A satirical movement makes people laugh and then makes them angry.
Mark
The videos seem to be the real power here. Why are they working now when petitions and letters failed for years?
Mimi
Because a video is undeniable. Narwat wrote to the National Human Rights Commission. Nothing. But when a girl films her school's toilet and posts it to millions, the official can't hide behind procedure. The phone is a weapon the poor finally have.
Mark
You mentioned that teachers are being pulled away for election duty. Is that the government deliberately weakening schools, or just bureaucratic dysfunction?
Mimi
Both, probably. But the effect is the same. When a head teacher has only six people to teach nine hundred children, it doesn't matter whether it's intentional neglect or careless indifference. The children still sit on the floor.
Mark
Narwat studied in that school fifty years ago. It was better then. What changed?
Mimi
The road outside was raised fifteen years ago, leaving the school below ground level. Now it floods. But that's just the visible thing. What changed is that anyone with money left. The school became a place for the children of people with no choice.
Mark
Do you think the government will actually respond to this campaign?
Mimi
Some already have. A road got fixed in Maharashtra. But real change—rebuilding ninety-four thousand schools, paying teachers properly, keeping them in classrooms—that requires money and will. The campaign has created pressure. Whether it becomes power is still uncertain.
O Pulso
- A school outside Delhi wears fresh paint on its facade while four classrooms sit condemned and monsoon floodwater drives children from the rest — a symbol of cosmetic governance masking structural abandonment.
- India has shuttered ninety-four thousand government schools since 2014, and teachers who remain are routinely pulled from classrooms to conduct elections and census work, leaving hundreds of children in the care of a skeleton staff.
- The Cockroach Janta Party, which already forced the resignation of India's Education Minister over a mass exam scandal that drove more than twenty students to suicide, has redirected its twenty-six million followers toward a new target: the rotting bones of rural education.
- Armed with smartphones, students across the country are filming broken toilets, bare floors, and flooded classrooms — and in at least one case, a viral video of a potholed school road prompted local authorities to repair it within days.
- Observers warn the campaign will move slowly, but argue it cuts deeper than a street protest — building sustained public pressure on a government that has long counted on the silence of those with nowhere else to turn.
Across rural India, millions of children attend schools where ceilings crumble, toilets stand clogged, and classrooms flood with monsoon rains — a quiet, systemic failure that has unfolded over decades while ninety-four thousand schools have closed and education spending remains below what the nation's own policy recommends. Into this neglect has stepped an unlikely force: the Cockroach Janta Party, a satirical online movement that has already toppled a cabinet minister, and now asks citizens to document what their government has allowed to decay. The #FixTheSchool campaign is less a political party than a mirror held up to a society deciding whether the children of its poorest communities deserve the same future as everyone else.
In Khedi Kalan village near Delhi, a government girls' school presents a tidy face to the road. Inside, plaster falls from the ceiling, half the toilets are blocked with trash, and four classrooms have been sealed as unsafe. When the monsoon arrives, the remaining rooms flood. Satpal Narwat, who studied here in the late 1960s, has spent years petitioning officials to act. He eventually moved his children — then his grandchildren — to private school. Little else changed.
This school is not exceptional. Rural government schools across India are caught in a long, slow collapse. The country spends 4.1 percent of GDP on education, below the 6 percent its own National Education Policy recommends and less than most comparable nations. Since 2014, ninety-four thousand government schools have closed. Families who can afford alternatives have left, concentrating the poorest children — those of migrant laborers, farmers, and low-caste communities — in the institutions least equipped to serve them.
The Cockroach Janta Party emerged from a different crisis: the leaking of India's national medical entrance exam, NEET, which forced nearly two million students to retake it and was followed by the suicides of more than twenty young people. The party's weeks of protest in Delhi ended with the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, then turned the movement's energy toward schools, launching #SchoolThikKaro — Fix The School. After visiting more than twenty rural schools, he told the BBC he had not found a single one in acceptable condition.
The campaign has spread through the party's twenty-six million Instagram followers and ignited something beyond social media. Students are filming their own schools' failures and posting the evidence. When girls in Maharashtra mocked the ruined road to their school in a viral video, local authorities repaired it. In Uttar Pradesh, students marched into a district magistrate's office demanding the same. The question one group of schoolgirls put to an official has become a kind of slogan: would you send your own children here?
At a primary school in Haryana, the structural problems go beyond broken infrastructure. On the day the BBC visited, thirty of forty teachers had been deployed for voter registration duty. Six remained to manage nine hundred and ten children. Head teacher Chatar Singh described a system that hires educators and then uses them for everything except teaching. His students are overwhelmingly from underprivileged communities — those without the option of leaving.
Narwat, watching the campaign from retirement, feels something shift. The CJP, he said, has taught people to fight without fear. Journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay sees the movement as more durable than a single protest — slower, but aimed at something structural. The earlier uprising was about one exam and one minister. This one is about everything that has been allowed to break.
In Khedi Kalan village, just outside Delhi, a one-storey government school for girls wears a fresh coat of paint like a mask. From the road, it looks serviceable enough. Step inside and the illusion collapses. The ceiling sheds plaster in chunks. Four of eight toilets are clogged with trash and unusable. Four of nine classrooms have been abandoned because they're too dangerous for children to enter. When the monsoon comes, water floods the remaining rooms and students have nowhere to sit. Satpal Narwat, a local social worker, knows this school intimately—he studied here from 1968 to 1973, when it was the only option for children in the village and its rooms were full.
This is not an anomaly. Across rural India, government schools are starving. The country spends 4.1 percent of its GDP on education, meeting UNESCO's bare minimum threshold but falling short of the 6 percent that India's own National Education Policy recommends as ideal. France, Germany, Australia, Brazil, and the United States all spend more than 5 percent. Between 2014 and 2025, ninety-four thousand government schools closed their doors. Some merged as part of administrative streamlining, but enrollment has plummeted as families with means flee to private institutions, leaving behind the children of migrant laborers, farmers, and the poorest communities.
Into this crisis stepped the Cockroach Janta Party, an online satirical movement that made international news last month when its weeks-long protest in Delhi forced the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The uprising began in May after a leaked question paper invalidated India's biggest medical entrance exam, NEET, forcing nearly two million students to retake it. More than twenty students died by suicide. Their families demanded accountability. The party's founder, Abhijeet Dipke, channeled that rage into a new campaign: #SchoolThikKaro, or #FixTheSchool. The goal is simple and radical—make the government fix what it has allowed to rot.
Dipke has visited more than twenty rural schools in recent weeks. "I have not found even a single good school," he told the BBC. "There were no benches, no bathrooms, no drinking water, no facilities at all. Even animals would not be kept in such a place." He and other CJP leaders have posted videos to their twenty-six million Instagram followers showing leaking roofs, filthy toilets, children sitting on bare floors, and students demanding answers. The campaign has ignited something. Armed with phones, students across India have begun documenting their own schools' decay and posting the evidence online. When schoolgirls in Raigad, Maharashtra, mocked the potholed road to their school in a viral video, local authorities repaired it. In Uttar Pradesh, students stormed a district magistrate's office demanding a road. In another video, schoolgirls confronted an official: would you send your own children here?
The infrastructure failures are real and systemic. At a primary school in Atmadpur village, Haryana, where the head teacher Chatar Singh oversees 910 children with forty teachers, the problems run deeper than broken toilets. On the day the BBC visited, thirty teachers had been deployed to help with voter registration, four were sick, leaving six to manage the entire school. Across India, government routinely conscripts teachers for election duty, census work, and administrative tasks. "Teachers are hired to teach," Singh said, "but they are used for everything else." The quality of education suffers. The children in his school are mostly from underprivileged castes and communities, children of factory workers. "Anyone who can afford sends their children to private school," he said.
Narwat, now retired from the state electricity office, has petitioned chief ministers, MPs, and district officials for years. He even wrote to the National Human Rights Commission. Little changed. He moved his own children to private school, then his grandchildren. The cost is steep, but the facilities exist. The village schools have neither. Yet the CJP campaign has kindled something in him. "I think the CJP can be a force for good," he said. "They've taught people to fight, to not be afraid. The government has all the power and resources. And now they have to perform." Journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay sees this as the beginning of something sustained. The earlier protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar was about one exam, one minister. This campaign is about everything broken in Indian education. It will be slower than a street protest, he says, but deeper. The movement is gaining ground.
Citações Notáveis
It looks new from the outside, but it's crumbling from inside. Four of its eight toilets are unusable and full of trash, while four of the nine classrooms have also been abandoned because they are too unsafe for children.— Satpal Narwat, social worker in Khedi Kalan village
Teachers are hired to teach, but across India, government deploys them to do a lot of non-teaching assignments. They are used for election duty and to conduct Census.— Chatar Singh, head teacher in Atmadpur village
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Politics & Governance