It was the ultimate political stunt. A BJP leader in Karnataka pulled out a box in which he had placed four cockroaches. Then, slowly and deliberately, he squished each one.

That’s one way to deal with cockroaches. But it may not be enough to wipe out the Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, which began as an internet joke and has now exploded into a political phenomenon with 22.7 million Instagram followers and counting, eclipsing by far the BJP and Congress.

A quick-thinking entrepreneur has already begun selling cockroach T-shirts. Baseball caps are reportedly on the way. All the CPJ lacks now is a flag before it begins to resemble a fully fledged political movement preparing for battle at the ballot box.

At first glance, the whole thing appears absurd: A meme party devoted to insects, sarcasm and internet humour. Its manifesto describes itself as “India’s number one political party for the lazy, unemployed and forgotten”. It promises “dignity, recognition and free WiFi for all”.

“We are building a political movement for those who have been systematically ignored, overlooked and underserved by traditional politics,” the group declares on its platform. “Our mission is simple: represent the unrepresented.”

The BJP, however, appears determined to believe darker forces are at work. Senior figures have suggested sinister “cross-border influences” may lie behind the phenomenon. “It is concerning if it is a cross-border operation,” said newly elected Kerala BJP MLA Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

Would the CJP have vanished as the political joke of the week had it simply been ignored? Quite possibly. But the BJP never entertained that option. Instead, it wheeled out the heavy artillery and began firing in all directions.

Authorities moved to block the party’s account on X, only for it to reappear almost immediately under the handle “Cockroach is Back”. Its backup Instagram account is listed as @cockroachneverdies.

Perhaps the BJP brass is right to sense a warning shot across the bows of India’s traditional political parties. The cockroach party may look ridiculous today, but so too did outsider youth movements elsewhere – until suddenly they did not.

“None of this was intentional,” the movement’s founder Abhijeet Dipke, a political communications strategist and student at Boston University, said. “It’s the younger people who were actually very frustrated. They didn’t have any outlet. They were really angry with the government.” And that may be precisely the point.

The cockroach is, in many ways, an oddly fitting symbol: despised, resilient and almost impossible to eradicate. Which may explain why it is resonating with millions of Indians who increasingly feel trapped inside an economy where opportunities appear to be shrinking rather than expanding.

The party itself sprang to life after a remark by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, who was reported to have compared unemployed young people to cockroaches, though he later said he had been misquoted.

India is one of the youngest countries in the world, with somewhere between 600 million and 700 million people under the age of 30. Yet jobs remain stubbornly scarce. For many young Indians, particularly those without elite university degrees or family connections, the future feels alarmingly uncertain.

Even a BA degree no longer guarantees middle-class security. Labour estimates suggest graduate unemployment hovers at strikingly high levels in some age groups, close to 40 per cent. Many drift between unstable gig work, temporary contracts and savagely competitive examinations for a tiny number of government posts.

Even options that once offered stability now feel precarious. Young people from poorer backgrounds long looked to the armed forces as a reliable path into the middle class. But under the Agniveer recruitment scheme, many now face the prospect of leaving military service after only four years.

The anxiety extends well beyond traditional sectors. In technology, hiring is slowing amid fears that artificial intelligence could hollow out junior and entry-level jobs. Manufacturing, once seen as India’s great employment engine, no longer absorbs labour as it once did. In industries such as automobiles, automation has steadily replaced workers in welding, painting and materials handling.

The question increasingly troubling economists and policymakers alike is straightforward: where will future jobs come from?

Official figures put youth unemployment at roughly 10 per cent nationally, though quarterly surveys often place it significantly higher in urban areas. But among educated young Indians, the picture is far bleaker. Research by Azim Premji University suggests unemployment among 15-to-25-year-olds is close to 40 per cent, exposing a widening gap between rising aspirations and shrinking opportunities.

The consequences are increasingly visible in places such as Bengal.

A senior Bengali professional returned from a Puja holiday at the Taj Coorg disturbed by what he had seen. On Vijaya Dashami, Bengali members of the hotel staff came to pay their respects. Many spoke polished English. Yet they were working far from home in relatively low-paid hospitality jobs because they had found little opportunity in Bengal itself.

“Why come all the way here for this sort of work?” he asked one young employee.

“At least it is a job, Sir,” came the reply. “And the Tatas are decent employers.”

When he later recounted the story to a minister in then Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s government, the minister replied he had encountered the same thing during a Puja visit to Puri and that Bengal’s young were leaving increasingly for service-sector jobs across India.

India’s Gen Z has grown up with social media that has exposed them to images of luxury and success. Once upon a time, families hoped for a government job and a scooter. Now, they dream of Dubai holidays and expensive gadgets.

In one NGO school for underprivileged children, a teacher asked students what their greatest ambition was. The most common answer was not becoming a doctor, engineer or teacher. It was owning an iPhone.

While consumer culture has dramatically expanded aspirations, yet for many young people, stable employment is hard to find. The result is not merely disappointment but frustration with established parties whose policies and language fail to connect with younger voters. The CJP, by contrast, communicates through ridicule, memes and satire.

The Congress party has already attempted to mimic the trend, launching an “Indian Youth Cockroaches” initiative in an effort to tap into the same energy. Other spin-offs include a Cockroach Yuva Party whose slogan declares: “Together we survive: Stronger Together.”

Established parties have good reason to feel nervous – they need only to look north to Nepal for a idea of what youth frustration can become.

Balendra Shah, better known as Balen, the rapper-turned-politician and former mayor of Kathmandu, rode a wave of youth anger over corruption, unemployment and an ageing political class all the way to the prime minister’s office earlier this year.

Shah, who led the new anti-establishment Rastriya Swatantra Party, built support among younger voters who had grown disillusioned with Nepal’s traditional parties. His rise from outsider to prime minister would once have seemed a long shot but he won by a landslide.

Across South Asia, youth frustration has increasingly reshaped politics. In neighbouring Bangladesh, mass protests led to the dramatic fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government. In Sri Lanka, economic collapse triggered an uprising that forced the Rajapaksa administration from office.

Dipke told the AP that the CPJ “will change the political discourse. It will continue online, and if required, it will also come on the ground. This is the movement that has arrived in India.”

The real danger for India’s political establishment may not be the cockroach party itself but the unhappiness driving it from all those young people posting #MainBhiCockroach,