56

ANGER BUILDS OR DESTROYS ?

CJP Protest: A Matter of Emotional Intelligence

From a Joke to a Movement

The Cockroach Janta Party movement began as a joke. In May this year, Chief Justice Surya Kant compared unemployed youth to cockroaches and parasites during a court hearing. Within days, a young communications strategist named Abhijeet Dipke turned that insult into a satirical political outfit. What started as sarcasm on Instagram has now grown into one of the largest student movements India has seen in years, with lakhs of young people gathering at Jantar Mantar, demanding accountability for the NEET paper leak and the resignation of the Education Minister.

The Bigger Question: Where Does the Anger Go?

But behind the slogans and the viral videos lies a deeper question about emotional intelligence. Why does a movement that begins with humour so often end in anger, violence and chaos? And what does that tell us about how we, as a society, handle collective emotion.

IQ vs EQ: The Psychology Behind Crowds

In psychology, it has long been noted that intelligence quotient and emotional quotient are two different things. A person can be brilliant at exams and still fail at managing anger, fear or humiliation. The same is true for a crowd. Thousands of students who gathered peacefully at Jantar Mantar were driven by genuine and justified frustration. Years of exam leaks, delayed results, and a system that rewards those who cheat over those who work hard, all of this builds up as emotional pressure. When that pressure is not given a healthy outlet, it eventually explodes.

July 20: When Pressure Boiled Over

This is exactly what happened on July 20, when the march toward Parliament turned violent. Tear gas, baton charges, injuries to security personnel, and visuals of young students being dragged away, all of this filled our screens. The point being made here is not to blame the students alone, nor to fully excuse the police. It is more basic. A society that does not teach emotional regulation, at home, in schools, in coaching centres, will keep producing moments like this, where genuine grievance turns into uncontrolled anger.

Leadership and Self-Awareness

Consider the incident involving the party’s own spokesperson, who was seen eating at a fast food outlet while colleagues were allegedly facing police action. The party quickly disowned him, calling his conduct a lack of judgment. This one small episode shows how emotional intelligence, or the lack of it, plays out even within a movement itself. Leadership under stress needs empathy, timing and self awareness, not just passion.

Anger Is Not the Problem

It is often said that anger is not the problem, it is what we do with anger that matters. The CJP protest carries real and valid anger. Student suicides linked to exam failures, a paper leak that betrayed the trust of lakhs of aspirants, and a system that has ignored these cries for years, this anger did not appear overnight. It has been building since the AIPMT leak of 2004 and every scandal since. Many of us who lived through those years know this pain personally.

Lesson from the Government’s Side

There are two more points worth adding to this picture. The first concerns the Education Minister himself. His credibility may still be useful to the party in some sense, but when the situation keeps worsening, there is little sense in refusing to let him step aside. Sometimes, to win the larger battle, a leader has to be willing to take a step back. Otherwise, in trying to protect one person, the government risks losing the bigger fight for public trust. We saw something similar during the farmers protest, where the three farm laws were passed without adequate discussion, and after a long and painful standoff, the government finally withdrew them, admitting that it had failed to convince the farmers. History suggests that timely retreat is often wiser than stubborn defence.

The Role of Tone from the Judiciary

The second point concerns the judiciary’s own tone. A recent remark by the Chief Justice, reportedly telling protesters not to waste the court’s time and to approach the high court instead, could have been handled with more sympathy and calm. Judicial remarks carry unusual weight with the public, and here, arguably, they added fuel twice over. First, the cockroach comparison gave the younger generation a symbol around which to organise. Now, a second sharp remark has once again stirred the very crowd it may have intended to discourage.

What Makes a Movement Succeed or Fail

What separates a movement that achieves real change from one that fades into chaos is emotional intelligence at scale. Can leaders acknowledge anger without being consumed by it? Can the state respond to protest with dialogue instead of only force? Can young protesters channel their fury into sustained, disciplined pressure rather than one large explosive day? These are not small questions. They decide whether a movement becomes a turning point in history or just another news cycle that fades in a few weeks.

A Mirror for All of Us

There is also a personal lesson here, one that goes beyond politics. Every one of us carries some version of this anger, at an unfair boss, a broken promise, a system that failed us. The CJP protest is, in a strange way, a mirror held up to the nation’s own emotional maturity. How we handle disappointment, how we listen to those who disagree with us, how we protest without dehumanising the other side, these are lessons in emotional intelligence that apply just as much to a family argument as they do to a national movement.

Building, Not Breaking

As is taught in psychology, real change needs more than intelligence or outrage. It needs the wisdom to manage our emotions, so that our anger builds rather than destroys. The cockroach may have been an insult once. Whether it becomes a symbol of lasting reform, or just a forgotten meme, will depend on exactly this, the emotional intelligence of everyone involved, from the student on the street to the judge in the courtroom.

Politics of Politics

What started as a fight against NEET paper leaks has turned into a political stage. All parties are now twisting the CJP protest to suit themselves. Student issues, justice, and accountability are being ignored. The focus has shifted from reform to blame games. The youth’s voice is getting drowned in politics.