Mainstream WeeklyThe youth-led protests of the Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, are not simply expressions of anger over examination irregularities. They represent a demand that the Government of India fulfil one of its most important constitutional responsibilities: providing accessible, equal, reliable and high-quality education.
The movement has brought together students, unemployed graduates and families affected by paper leaks, examination failures, delayed recruitment and declining confidence in educational institutions. CJP has demanded systemic educational reform, accountability from the Union government and the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. What began as an online satirical response has developed into a wider youth movement organised around education, employment and governmental responsibility. Recent reporting shows how the protests have expanded beyond Delhi and created a national conversation about the future of India’s youth.
The movement is important because the Constituent Assembly never treated education as a private privilege to be purchased by those who could afford it. Its debates repeatedly described education as a responsibility of the state, a means of achieving equality and a necessary foundation for democratic citizenship.
Ambedkar’s call to educate and organise
Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s message “Educate, Agitate, Organize” provides the clearest framework for understanding the CJP movement. These words were part of his address to the All India Depressed Classes Conference in Nagpur in July 1942.
Ambedkar asked people to develop the strength, unity and determination necessary to secure their rights. The published speech demonstrates that education and agitation were not separate activities. Education created awareness, agitation transformed awareness into public pressure, and organisation ensured that the pressure produced lasting institutional change.
Ambedkar did not regard education merely as preparation for employment. Education was a means of cultivating the mind, developing independent judgment and freeing people from social domination. A genuinely educated citizen should be able to examine authority, recognise inequality and demand justice.
This makes education central to democracy. A government cannot claim to have educated its young people while refusing to hear them when they use their knowledge to question that government. Students who demand transparent examinations, protection from paper leaks and accountability from the education ministry are practising the democratic citizenship that education is supposed to create.
The Constituent Assembly made education a state responsibility
On 23 November 1948, the Constituent Assembly discussed draft Article 36, which later became Article 45. The provision required the state to endeavour to provide free and compulsory education to every child up to the age of fourteen.
During the debate, Naziruddin Ahmad proposed limiting the provision specifically to “primary education.” Ambedkar opposed this restriction. He explained that the purpose was to ensure that every child remained in an educational institution until fourteen. Because the Constitution prohibited the employment of children below that age, the state also had to provide them with education. The Assembly accepted Ambedkar’s position and rejected the attempt to narrow the provision. The debate of 23 November 1948 therefore established an important principle: protecting children from exploitation and providing education were connected governmental duties.
That commitment was eventually strengthened through Article 21A, which made free and compulsory education for children between six and fourteen a fundamental right. But the constitutional vision cannot be reduced to school enrolment. Education must be meaningful. Schools require trained teachers, proper infrastructure and equal access. Examinations must be secure and competently administered. Admissions must be fair. Recruitment processes must be completed within reasonable periods.
A child or student who is technically enrolled but receives poor instruction has not received the education envisioned by the Constitution. Similarly, a student who studies for years only to face a leaked or cancelled examination has been denied the practical value of education.
Public opinion was intended to enforce government responsibility
The Constituent Assembly also debated how the Directive Principles would be enforced when citizens could not directly approach a court for every governmental failure.
During the debate of 19 November 1948, Assembly member Ananthasayanam Ayyangar provided an important answer. He argued that governments must keep the Directive Principles in mind and implement them because they had been incorporated into the Constitution. He said that the real force behind these obligations would be “the strength of public opinion.” Governments that remained indifferent could ultimately be removed by the electorate. The Directive Principles debate therefore recognised organised public opinion as a constitutional source of accountability.
Ambedkar strengthened this interpretation during the same debate. He explained that the Directive Principles were instructions to every future legislature and executive regarding how governmental power should be exercised. He further stated that governments must continue to strive to fulfil them even under difficult circumstances.
This is precisely why the CJP protests matter. Public protest converts scattered individual grievances into organised public opinion. A student affected by a leaked examination paper may be ignored as an isolated complainant. Thousands of students raising the same issue reveal an institutional failure that the government must answer.
The protest is therefore performing the democratic function anticipated by the Constituent Assembly. It is applying public pressure to ensure that constitutional directions are not reduced to ceremonial promises.
Equality in education was a central constitutional concern
The Constituent Assembly did not merely discuss whether education should be provided. It also examined who would be able to access it.
On 8 December 1948, Thakur Das Bhargava proposed that no citizen should be denied admission to an educational institution maintained or aided by the state on grounds of religion, race, caste or language. He described the provision as a “charter of liberties for the student-world” because it placed students from majority and minority communities on equal terms. The Assembly adopted the amendment, which became the foundation of Article 29(2). The debate on educational equality demonstrates that publicly supported education must remain open and non-discriminatory.
The discussion also recognised the importance of education in a child’s mother tongue and the need to protect linguistic minorities. Members argued that education becomes ineffective when children are forced to learn through a language they cannot understand. Consequently, educational equality meant more than opening a school building. It meant ensuring that education was genuinely accessible to children from different linguistic, cultural and social backgrounds.
The debate on draft Article 37, which became Article 46, added another dimension. Hukam Singh explained that promoting the educational and economic interests of weaker sections was essential so that historically disadvantaged communities could participate equally in national life. The Assembly adopted the provision directing the state to pay particular attention to the educational interests of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other weaker sections.
This remains especially relevant to examination failures. Wealthier students may be able to pay for additional coaching, repeat an examination or pursue alternatives. Students from poorer, rural, Dalit, Adivasi and other marginalised backgrounds may have invested their family’s savings in a single opportunity. A paper leak or arbitrary cancellation therefore deepens existing inequality. Protecting examination integrity is part of the government’s obligation under Article 46.
The framers also demanded quality and standards
The demand for the “best education” is also supported by the Assembly’s discussion of higher education.
On 31 August 1949, Ambedkar proposed giving the Union responsibility for the coordination and determination of standards in higher education, scientific and technical institutions and research institutions. He explained that national coordination was necessary to prevent educational standards from being lowered.
Other members went further. Basanta Kumar Das argued for a national educational policy, adequate financial assistance to the states and a minimum standard of education throughout the country. He said that education should receive “priority even after food.” Renuka Ray similarly argued that no part of India should be permitted to fall below a national minimum standard because education was the basis of the country’s progress. The higher-education debate ultimately produced the constitutional basis for national coordination and standards in higher education.
These debates show that the Union government cannot avoid responsibility by treating education solely as a state subject. The Centre has a constitutional role in maintaining standards, coordinating higher education, supporting research and ensuring the credibility of national examinations.
The Ministry of Education and national testing institutions must therefore be accountable for:
- Preventing paper leaks and examination fraud.
- Conducting independent and transparent investigations when failures occur.
- Publishing clear information instead of leaving students dependent on rumours.
- Completing examinations, results, admissions and recruitment within defined timelines.
- Providing effective remedies to students who lose opportunities because of administrative failures.
- Ensuring that national testing systems do not unfairly disadvantage poorer, rural or marginalised students.
- Maintaining uniform minimum standards while giving institutions sufficient funding to meet them.
These are not favours that students must request from the government. They arise from the constitutional responsibility accepted by the state.
The constitutional importance of the CJP protest
Article 19 protects freedom of speech, peaceful assembly and association because a democracy requires citizens to organise between elections. During the Constituent Assembly’s debates on these freedoms, members emphasised that speech and association enabled citizens and minorities to make their voices heard and prevent governmental injustice. The freedom-rights debate recognised public organisation as one of the principal safeguards against the misuse or neglect of authority.
Ambedkar’s idea of constitutional morality similarly combined respect for constitutional institutions with open criticism of those exercising public power. Constitutional morality does not require citizens to remain silent. It requires the government to exercise power according to constitutional principles and accept public scrutiny of its actions.
This is why efforts to suppress or dismiss education protests undermine accountability. Prakash Ambedkar has argued that using force against peaceful protesters seeking answers reflects an authoritarian tendency and only intensifies public resistance.
The appropriate governmental response to the CJP movement is therefore not silence, force or an attempt to discredit the protesters. It is a public explanation of what failed, who is responsible, what remedy will be provided to affected students and how similar failures will be prevented.
Education requires accountability
The framers understood that democracy would remain incomplete if political equality existed alongside educational and economic inequality. Education was the means through which historically excluded people could acquire knowledge, confidence and the ability to participate in governing the country.
The CJP movement carries this constitutional principle into the present. It tells students that they are not powerless recipients of government decisions. They are citizens entitled to question the institutions that determine their futures.
A strong education system is not defined simply by the number of universities, examinations or certificates it produces. It is defined by equal access, intellectual quality, institutional integrity and public trust. When examinations repeatedly fail, when papers are leaked and when responsible authorities avoid accountability, that trust is broken.
By demanding answers, reform and ministerial responsibility, the youth participating in the CJP protests are not acting against the constitutional order. They are asking the government to honour it. Their movement gives contemporary meaning to Ambedkar’s call: educate people so that they understand their rights, agitate when those rights are neglected, and organise so that governmental promises become institutional reality.
(Author: Vaisakh Baiju is a National University of Advanced Legal Studies Graduate and a Student at the Berlin School of Law and Economics)