From ‘Cockroaches’ to a New Political Generation: The Crisis of the 19th Century State in a 21st Century Society

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Something unusual is happening across societies otherwise separated by geography, political culture, economic development and historical experience. 

Young people are increasingly taking to the streets - not simply because of one election, one political leader or one policy, but because they feel that the traditional systems governing their lives no longer represent the world in which they live.

Over the past two years, from India and Nepal to Bangladesh and Kenya, from Madagascar and Serbia to Peru and the Philippines, and from demonstrations over Gaza in European capitals to protests against Donald Trump in the United States, a new generation has challenged established political hierarchies. The immediate causes differ: corruption, unemployment, taxation, education, inequality, police violence, foreign policy or democratic backsliding. Beneath those differences, however, lies a striking commonality—a growing distrust of inherited authority and a renewed resistance to different forms of hegemony.

India’s ‘cockroaches’ are therefore not merely protesting against one government. They may be signalling the arrival of a political generation increasingly unwilling to accept institutions simply because previous generations built them around ideas that now appear obsolete.

From India’s ‘Cockroaches’ to Global Youth Resistance

India’s youth-led ‘cockroach’ movement offers one of the clearest recent examples. It began as satire after controversial remarks by Chief Justice Surya Kant likened some unemployed young people and activists to cockroaches. Abhijeet Dipke reclaimed the insult through the self-styled Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). What started as a joke online soon collided with anger over examination leaks and the failures of an education system serving the world’s most populous country.

For millions of Indian families, competitive examinations are the gateway to social mobility. When allegations of leaked papers, cancelled tests and administrative failures undermine that process, the issue becomes much larger than education. It strikes at the promise that hard work and merit can provide a better future.

That is why a movement dismissed as unserious resonated so strongly. The CJP turned satire into mobilisation, while social media supplied the infrastructure for rapid organisation. Sonam Wangchuk’s 26-day hunger strike became a further catalyst. After weeks of protests, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on 25 July 2026. The symbolism was powerful: a generation first described as insignificant by supposedly serious institutions had transformed an insult into a political identity.

India’s experience is only one part of a much wider pattern.

Neighbouring Bangladesh provided perhaps the clearest recent example of youth mobilisation producing regime-level consequences. What began in 2024 with student opposition to government-job quotas developed into a mass movement against corruption, authoritarianism and the political establishment. After a violent crackdown, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and left the country in August 2024, ending fifteen years of rule.

Yet Bangladesh also offers an important warning: overthrowing a government is much easier than constructing a political order that satisfies the generation that brought it down. In the February 2026 election, the youth-led National Citizen Party won only six of the 300 parliamentary seats. Street power had not automatically become electoral power.

Nepal followed a similar trajectory in 2025. Young protesters mobilised against corruption, inequality and a government ban on major social-media platforms. The dispute rapidly widened after a deadly police crackdown, and Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli was forced to resign. Nepal demonstrated how quickly a digitally connected generation can transform an apparently limited policy dispute into a challenge to an entire political establishment.

In Africa, Kenya’s protests of 2024 and 2025 revealed another dimension. What began as opposition to tax increases developed into a broader revolt against corruption, political privilege and police brutality. The movement was decentralised, largely leaderless and heavily dependent on social media. President William Ruto withdrew the controversial Finance Bill, but the protests continued because the underlying grievance was no longer taxation alone.

Madagascar in 2025 showed how quickly basic economic grievances can become political. Water shortages and power cuts triggered demonstrations that expanded into a wider movement against corruption and nepotism. President Andry Rajoelina fled after army units defected and joined the protesters. But the aftermath also exposed the danger of a political vacuum: the military then seized power.

The pattern also appeared in South America. In Peru, demonstrations associated with Generation Z targeted corruption, economic insecurity and controversial pension reforms. In the Philippines, more than 200,000 people joined anti-corruption demonstrations in Manila in November 2025 over alleged misuse of flood-control funds. The Philippine rallies were broader and not exclusively youth-led, but they reflected the same collapse of trust in institutions that demand obedience while failing to provide accountability.

These cases should not be presented artificially as one homogeneous revolution. They are not. But they reveal something increasingly difficult to ignore: young citizens across very different societies are becoming less tolerant of political systems that demand obedience while failing to provide credibility, opportunity and accountability.

The Crisis of the 19th Century State in a 21st Century Society

The deeper problem must therefore be examined structurally.

The modern state took shape around nineteenth- and twentieth-century assumptions: centralised administration, hierarchical bureaucracy, standardised education, territorial sovereignty, national identity and relatively slow flows of information. In some systems, this was reinforced by the idea that the state apparatus itself should remain beyond criticism.

That model was remarkably successful during the industrial age. But society has changed faster than its institutions. A young person today can communicate instantly with millions, study through universities on another continent, establish a business without a traditional corporation, create a political movement without a party headquarters and challenge an official narrative before the government has finished preparing its response.

The state, meanwhile, often remains organised around ministries, paperwork, bureaucratic chains of command, institutional hierarchies and pre-arranged beneficiaries. The contradiction is increasingly visible. The citizen has become digital, individualised and globally connected, while the institution remains hierarchical, territorial and bureaucratic.

India’s cockroach movement illustrates this divide. The immediate dispute concerned examinations, but the deeper question was whether young people could trust the institutions that determine their futures.

This phenomenon should not be reduced to youthful impatience. The new generation is not necessarily rejecting the state. It is demanding a different state—one that is transparent, responsive and ethically credible. That distinction is fundamental.

The crisis facing modern institutions is not simply that they are too powerful. In many cases, they are too slow, too opaque, too sacrosanct and therefore too disconnected from the societies they govern. That is why these protests move beyond economic grievances. They increasingly concern dignity, respect and recognition.

From Gaza Protests to Belgrade: When the Street Challenges the Establishment

Europe and the wider West offer another revealing test. They show that this phenomenon is not merely a consequence of poverty or weak institutions in the Global South.

Serbia’s student-led movement has become one of Europe’s most significant examples. The protests began after the collapse of a railway-station canopy in Novi Sad in November 2024 killed sixteen people. What initially appeared to be a tragic infrastructure failure developed into a nationwide movement against corruption, institutional impunity and political dominance.

The demonstrations continued for more than eighteen months and produced a remarkable political consequence. President Aleksandar Vučić announced that early parliamentary elections would be held on either 18 or 25 October 2026, although the precise date remained undecided at the time of writing.

The Serbian case matters because the protesters are not simply demanding a new leader. They are demanding accountability, transparency and institutional responsibility. In other words, they are questioning not only who governs, but how governing institutions function.

The same generational psychology can be seen elsewhere in the West, though through different political issues. The war in Gaza has generated sustained youth mobilisation across European and North American cities, with protesters challenging their governments’ positions towards Israel and demanding greater consistency between foreign-policy behaviour and human-rights principles.

The issue has moved beyond street politics into cultural and institutional spaces. Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS, for example, announced that it would boycott the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest over Israel’s continued participation, after also staying out of the 2026 contest.

In the United States, meanwhile, Donald Trump’s second presidency has generated another enormous wave of mobilisation. The ‘No Kings’ demonstrations on 28 March 2026 involved more than 3,300 rallies across all fifty states, according to organisers, with protesters accusing the administration of undermining democratic norms and concentrating executive power.

Again, these movements are not identical. A Serbian student protesting against corruption, an Indian student demanding examination integrity, a Kenyan protesting against taxation and police brutality, and an American protesting against presidential power do not necessarily share the same ideology. What they increasingly share is something more fundamental: a refusal to accept authority without justification. That may be the defining political characteristic of emerging generations.

From Gen Z to the AI Generation: Individualisation and the Future of Politics

The rise of Gen Z may ultimately represent something larger than a generational phenomenon. It may signal a transition from institution-centred modernity towards more individual-centred politics.

The individual is becoming increasingly powerful. A person with a smartphone can become a journalist, activist, entrepreneur, educator, political commentator or global organiser without belonging to a traditional institution. Artificial intelligence will accelerate this transformation dramatically.

Individuals will increasingly possess capabilities that once belonged mainly to governments, corporations and universities: generating sophisticated content, analysing enormous datasets, translating languages, developing software, establishing businesses and organising communities.

This creates enormous possibilities for human emancipation. It also creates enormous risks. Digital mobilisation can spread truth, but it can spread misinformation just as quickly. Decentralisation can undermine authoritarian control, but it can also produce political fragmentation. Anti-establishment movements can democratise politics, but they can also create vacuums that populists, militaries or authoritarian actors exploit.

Tomorrow’s politics cannot simply be about greater individual power. It must also be about greater individual responsibility and a stronger civic conscience.

Figures such as Elon Musk are emblematic of this broader transformation, regardless of one’s assessment of him personally. Technological entrepreneurs can now acquire economic, communicative and political influence that once belonged primarily to states and traditional institutions. Artificial intelligence will probably intensify this individualisation of power, while questions of responsibility and conscience remain unresolved.

Political systems face a fundamental choice.

Established institutions can respond with more surveillance, censorship and bureaucratic control—or they can reform themselves. The latter path requires more transparent institutions, participatory democracy, ethical political leadership, adaptive education systems and international organisations capable of responding to citizens as well as states.

India’s ‘cockroaches’ may therefore represent something much larger than an unusual protest movement. They are part of a global generation discovering that collective action can emerge without traditional leaders, parties or bureaucratic structures. Western protests demonstrate that the same generational distrust also exists inside wealthy democracies.

Older generations often aspired to more money, higher status and the traditional symbols of material success—a house and a car. Younger generations still value these things. But freedom, independence, ethical conduct and fair recognition have gained equal weight. This is not the rise of one ideology, party or political movement. It is the emergence of a generation increasingly unwilling to inherit the political, economic and bureaucratic assumptions of previous centuries.

The ultimate question, then, is not whether Gen Z or the AI generation can overthrow old systems. It is whether they can help build better ones. The nineteenth-century state created many of the institutions that made modern civilisation possible. Yet a twenty-first-century society cannot indefinitely be governed according to assumptions designed for an industrial world of slow communication, rigid hierarchies and tightly controlled individual capacity.

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