Civilisation has given humanity many great intellectual breakthroughs. Theory of Relativity bent time. Evolution by Natural Selection explained life. And now, from the lofty heights of Indian jurisprudence, comes perhaps the greatest discovery of all: Cockroachography.
Yes, a revolutionary discipline is born. No longer shall unemployed youngsters merely be called “job seekers,” “aspirants,” or “the demographic dividend.” Such pedestrian descriptions fail to capture their true essence. They are, we now learn, parasites—cockroaches, to be precise.
What insight. What vision. What courage. The Cockroach judge has gone over and above a statement on “loktantrajeevi, andolanjeevi” activists, who rush anywhere there is a protest.
The parasites do not know how profits are made with artificial, not insemination, but inflation, cooked up prices and higher monetary benefits called profits. A sacred word is turned into a scare! What a nonsense!
And Cockroach judge has right concern. The cockroaches do not digest sudden increase of water, sorry, ethanol-adulterated petrol, prices by Rs 3. Cockroaches ask why ethanol-water is being charged at par with petrol to damage their cars so that more car sales could enhance their profits, or is it cuts. Incorrigible!
For centuries, philosophers and economists have puzzled over unemployment. Why do educated young people wander from exam to exam, clutching certificates and dreams while vacancies evaporate faster than summer puddles? Why do graduates turn into delivery boys, engineers into tutors, scholars into YouTubers, and civil service aspirants into permanent residents of coaching hostels?
Fools. They were asking the wrong question. The real inquiry, as the great inventors of Cockroachography have clarified, is not why jobs are absent but why the jobless persist.
Like cockroaches. Resilient. Restless. Impossible to eliminate. Indeed, the comparison is scientifically irresistible.
Cockroaches survive in darkness. So do unemployed youth—particularly in rented rooms where electricity bills are unpaid. Cockroaches scatter when light appears. So do job seekers when family members ask, “Any updates?”
Not Eating is National Savings
Like cockroaches, India’s job aspirants survive on minimal sustenance—tea, biscuits, and stubborn hope—and prove equally hard to crush. From coaching centres to exam queues, they evolve under relentless pressure: graduates turn nocturnal, engineers chase clerical jobs, and postgraduates adapt to rejection with remarkable resilience. A perfect subject, perhaps, for Cockroachography.
An advanced cockroach, highly adaptable to rejection. Darwin would have wept with admiration.
Beyond Biology
Yet Cockroachography goes beyond biology—into sociology and public morality, where citizens who question power are dehumanised.
A student asking where jobs have gone? Cockroach.
A young woman demanding recruitment transparency? Cockroach.
A crowd protesting paper leaks? An infestation.
And then comes the most dangerous mutation of all: the unemployed youth becoming media—asking questions without waiting for approval from advertisers or authority.
Visibility is Contamination
No, this is social media. The lowest, sleaziest, most irritating form of democratic nuisance. Here, the jobless mutate into content creators, investigators, satirists, and fact-checkers. One uploads leaked exam papers.
Another documents broken promises. A third produces viral videos asking impolite questions.
A fourth, most terrifyingly, knows how to read government notifications. Thus the cockroach becomes visible.
And visibility, for power, is the ultimate contamination. Which brings us naturally to the RTI activist. How fitting that the famed Shyam Lal Yadav should emerge in this narrative. RTI activists are perhaps the purest form of democratic cockroach.
Governance in Darkness
You seal one file—they find another. You delay one answer—they file an appeal. You hide one number—they ask for ten more.
Their mission? To create unbearable discomfort by making systems accountable. What insolence. Governance, after all, thrives best in darkness. Budgets vanish more gracefully there.
Recruitment delays breed quietly. Vacancies remain decorative.
Policies may be announced repeatedly without the inconvenience of implementation.
Then comes the RTI activist, flashlight in hand. Suddenly everyone is scurrying. Who is the real cockroach now? Yet perhaps we misunderstand the unemployed.
Joblessness Planned
Perhaps the unemployed do not choose Cockroachian existence; perhaps the system manufactures it—celebrating growth while shrinking opportunity, preserving profit by rationing dignity.
Cockroachography offers elegant justice: when jobs vanish, blame the jobless. No need to examine failed policy or corporate greed. Simply declare: too many cockroaches.
But cockroaches survive. So do the young. They prepare, protest, mock, and rise again. That is what unsettles authority—not anger, but persistence.
The irony of Cockroachography is this: in trying to demean the unemployed, it has honoured their resilience. The parasite is not the one denied entry—but the one feeding on exclusion.
Sunday, May 31, 2026