Prime Minister Narendra Modi finally felt the political earth move underneath his feet. He discarded his cloak of hubris, ate a plateful of crow and, as demanded by the protesters at Jantar Mantar, booted out the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan. The highs that BJP achieved with great tactical maneuvering in West Bengal a few short months earlier was followed by the lows of a leaden-footed lathi response to the Cockroach Janata Party’s marshaling of youthful anger and angst at traditional politics and politicians playing with their future. It revealed Modi as victim of his own hype as the Man of the People. After all, who cared if threshold examination papers were regularly leaked — 150 leaks in the past decade alone per a TV report, examinations cancelled, the lives of millions of young adults disrupted, and those culpable within and outside the government left off with a tap on their fingers?

Nothing is so injurious to a carefully curated political image than its being mocked by GenZ that Modi had hoped would strengthen his continued hold on the country, sporting cockroach masks. A reminder that cockroaches are hard to stamp out. A friend who was previously an ardent Modi-bhakt texted me in some sorrow and with a bit of wit: “Modiji’s image has a great fall. All the king’s publicists, all the king’s spinners, cannot put the aura back again.”

Yes, it is the aura that Modi has now lost — the aura of invincibility. No, it doesn’t push him down into the ranks of the Rahul Gandhis and the Akhilesh Yadavs of the political world — callow dynasts heading their respective ‘parivar-vadi’ parties, who proved once again what they have always lacked: Political presence and heft, and the foresight to see trends before they emerge into a full blown storm rather than trying to ride it once it breaks. So, Modi has nothing to fear from such competition — rivals only in name.

But what he is undoubtedly mindful of and now possibly fears is the treacherous road ahead that may be carved out by the impromptu leadership of the “Cockroaches” around Abhijeet Dibke, which having tasted political blood seeing the mighty Modi buckle under pressure, are settling down to decide what to do next, how to use the mass mobilising power of social media they discovered they have, to address the hopelessness of their generational cohort — the largest of its kind in the world.

One thing’s for sure, this movement is not motivated by the offline and toothless do-goodingness of an Anna Hazare. But, from what is discernible from the inchoate spoutings of Dibke and the others, there is desire for real change in how the government works and for whom, starting with an utterly transformed education sector. There are too many politicians in the lucrative “education business” for them to allow any seachange. Change, in any case, may be preempted for two other reasons: Either Dibke et al will be coopted by the establishment, or the cockroach movement will peter out as is more likely as the thousands of protesters get back to home ground and the grind reminiscing, as they grow older, how they once held Delhi hostage, the thrilling moments amounting ultimately to nothing. But Modi could very well trip on “cockroaches” in the future if Dibke’s Movement fashions itself into a people’s forum that demands and monitors government’s accountability.

Predictably, the Modi government expects that its punitive lashout with fast track courts, new laws and heavy fines will do the trick. They won’t. Because if laws on the books alone were a measure of a law abiding country, India would top the list. India has every conceivable law but is a lawless country. Because all the laws the citizens are subject to are selectively applied, depending on the dispensation of the day and on the traditional subcontinental principle of “jiski lathi, usekee bhains” which people understand only too well. Because “law and order” in India is still only a Western/colonial veneer.

Meaning, Akhilesh Yadav can permit “goondas” to run around plying their trade one day, only to have Adityanath run bulldozers over “encroachments” the next. Which is why losing power in elections is so dicey, dangerous, and fatal for those living off the political fat of the land, and elections are do or die struggles. One can overnight become an enemy of the state! More mundanely, with every law known to man in the books, the government and its functionaries follow and implement them in a disinterested sort of way, with violations of the law and the prevailing rules routinely permitted for political reasons, or for a consideration. Until something really bad happens when some police or other agency, finding itself in the public eye, springs into action usually with more vehemence than sense, amidst public mutterings of dastardly persons “taking law into their own hands”.

Modi, it may be recalled, had promised to re-make India in 2014 when he was elected the first time with a huge majority and had the people’s mandate to pretty much re-do the system. He responded by getting his gang of babus led by PK Mishra as PPS (Personal Private Secretary to the PM) who had helped him run Gujarat to the centre, and otherwise carrying on as if India was only a bigger Gujarat. It didn’t work also because of his innate belief in incrementalism as a gradualist, as a Statist who is convinced the Government is the solution. Far from a revolutionary, he is only another variety of sarkari businessman. Recall his words: “Business is in my blood.”

Sure, he rearranged some furniture of governance in Delhi — straightened some administrative procedures and lines of communications and, more visibly, erected modern buildings in place of the 1940s style blocky Stalinist architecture lining the Rajpath, and built infrastructure — highways, railways, ports along the coast, and airports, and pumped lots more electricity in the grid. And the deposit of government subsidies directly into bank accounts of the poor did lift, as is advertised, over 300 million people out of abject poverty, shutting down the biggest scam — the sustained siphoning over decades of public funds by officialdom up and down the line.

These are commendable achievements.

But it is still like putting lipstick on a pig. Because the massive Nanny state remains, it is still an impediment to doing business, a hindrance to industry, and sits astride the commanding heights of the economy studiously gutting private sector attempts at an economic breakout that potentially could generate employment at a level and pace the government can never match, if only the latter eases off on the controls. And this even as the Finance Minister periodically hints at the next generation reforms just round the corner, except that corner seemingly never gets turned by the Modi government. If much of the corpora of laws, rules and regulations left behind by the British in 1947 are still current, what does it say about how much things have really changed in the government’s functioning? And, in its attitude to the people it is supposed to serve? Which last concern was at the heart of the cockroaches’ protest.