Manu Joseph: here's some unsolicited advice for the Cockroach Janata Party’s survival

But where is he headed? What exactly does he want?

So far, he has not been clear about wanting to contest elections. A real or proclaimed distaste for polls, and hence power, is a familiar phase in a modern revolution where revolutionaries portray themselves as selfless and uninterested in material things.

But cockroaches are doomed if they don’t contest elections and doomed if they do.

There is a way, though, for Dipke to be more than just a protestor asking uncles to be nice, contest the ugly mess of elections that idealists rarely survive intact, and yet triumph unlike anyone before him. He has to do that one thing no revolutionary has done—listen to me.

To be clear, India has space for a mass movement that is purely reformist and does not require electoral validation. If magic, spirituality and diet can make people alter their behaviour, then a movement could train modern Indians to be smarter citizens.

Such a force would not only demand a better life from the political class, but also demand that citizens behave like intelligent beings in public, follow the rules, keep the nation clean and stop bribing people for services. Such a revolution can even get a political consensus, as long as it does not threaten higher forms of corruption.

But the Cockroach Janata Party is not a social movement. It displays a clear loathing for the government. Such a movement has no choice but to be political; a political movement needs to go political. Its reluctance to accept this and inevitable plunge into politics is foretold by events hardly 15 years ago.

Dipke’s party may be popular but its fame is a fraction of the hysteria Anna Hazare generated when he, after his letters to Sonia Gandhi went unanswered, came to Delhi, sat on a pavement near a public urinal and began a fast that he said he would end only when he dies or the Congress-led government puts in place his bizarre ideas to end political corruption (such as setting up an anti-corruption watchdog filled with Magsaysay award winners.)

There were not many people on the first day, but the media framed it as though there were throngs. Eventually, the middle class began to see whatever they wished to see in Hazare’s protest, and an immense anti-politician movement began.

He said his movement would never enter politics because it is “filthy.” The absurdity of fighting politicians elected by the people while arguing that elections were too dirty was hard to sustain.

Idealists may be good at creating a spectacle, but once the main reason why people gravitate towards them is over, so is the show. And so it happened with Hazare. People got bored of his fasts that he broke with a Gandhian orange juice.

One of his deputies, Arvind Kejriwal, may have sensed this when he took the movement into electoral politics. It succeeded, but also transformed it into something resembling the very thing it claimed to fight.

The young will get bored of the cockroach agitation too and the only way it can go on would be to contest elections. For this, it will need money, which could attract people with the smarts. Dipke might search for other Dipkes—idealists who can win elections. He will realize there are not many. People who can win elections bring their own problems that could endanger the movement.

Meanwhile, the entrenched political class too won’t rest until the new threat recedes. After all, politicians have seen more revolutions than revolutionaries have.

So, what would I do if I was Dipke? How would I sustain an idealistic and popular political movement? I’d convert it into the ‘10-Year Party.’ It would contest elections on the promise that if it comes into power, it will disband after 10 years. That way, I preserve my idealism, sustain my innocent amateurishness, proclaim selflessness and, more importantly, keep the ‘filth’ out. Also, the political class will look at my agitation as something that will pass.

All moral ideas have a consensus. Nobody in India, whether they like cockroaches or not, doubts that India needs reform and that exam question papers should not leak.

A 10-year political party can attract voters from across the political spectrum as people would consider it transient, a formation that would reform the nation and then go away. Voting is not always a moral act; people need the old political class for many ugly things. The world is what it is because people are what they are. But temporarily, they may want to vote for reform.

The best way for a startup to survive in Indian politics is to promise it’s temporary. You can achieve a lot in this world if you reassure people you are not permanent.

The author is a journalist, novelist, and the creator of the Netflix series, ‘Decoupled’