India has had two decades of mass protest culminating in the 2026 Delhi Jantar Mantar protests or "Cockroach Protests". My questions are (1) how much of the protests are a result of material conditions (Hardship) and (2) What possible response might the government consider in the face of discontent?
My Hardship Index (HARD1) for India has been increasing since the 1960s (see the graphic above). The Business-as-Usual forecast (BAU) suggests that, even though the model is stable (see below), Hardship will increase linearly until well after 2100--not a desirable outcome.
Linking India Geopolitically with the United States would result in a Hardship peak around 2040 and decline after that. Future increases in Hardship before the decline might or might not be sustainable politically.
Linking India Geopolitically to the World System keeps Hardship steady until after 2040 when it starts decreasing. This would be the best outcome but the most difficult to achieve politically (I will explore the difficulty of linking to the World System more fully in future posts).
Of course, India can keep muddling through, randomly responding to Protests (a Random Walk, RW) and hope that protesters will retreat from the streets, pushing problems off into the future at the current level of Hardship.
For more of my posts on India see Blog Roll: India. The WL20 India Model in R-Code is available on my Google site. INL20 BAU is an example of a moving equilibrium model that can both easily be stabilized or destabilized. Also, see the About page and the Boiler Plate.
Notes
- MSN Two Decades of Mass Protests in India
- MSN India's Cockroach Protests called off
- CNN Why Political Fury is Boiling Over on the Streets of India's Capital
- Economy of India a developing mixed economy with a notable public sector in strategic sectors.
- History of India Anatomically modern humans are estimated to have first arrived on the Indian subcontinent between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago.
- Politics of India India is a parliamentary secular democratic republic, described as a “sovereign, socialist, secular democratic republic” in its constitution.
- Geography of India On the south, India projects into and is bounded by the Indian Ocean—in particular, by the Arabian Sea on the west, the Lakshadweep Sea to the southwest, the Bay of Bengal on the east, and the Indian Ocean proper to the south.
- 2026 Delhi Jantar Mantar protests also referred to as the Indian Gen Z protests and the Cockroach protests, were a series of demonstrations initiated on 6 June 2026 by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), an Indian youth-based satirical political movement, alongside student organizations including the All India Students Federation, All India Students Association, and Students Federation of India.
- AIC Statistics The Akaike information criterion (AIC) is an estimator of prediction error and thereby relative quality of statistical models for a given set of data.
- Shefner et. al. (2015) Austerity and Anti-Systemic Protest: Bringing Hardships Back In JWSR
- Globalization in India The goods produced in India had long been exported to far off destinations across the world; the concept of globalization is hardly new to India.
INL20 Hardship Measurement Model
HARD1 = (Growth - mortality and longterm unemployment ), HARD2: Unemployment and poverty, HARD3 = Business cycle, Unemployment and reduction in CPI. From the World Development Indicators.
INL20 HARD1 AIC STATISTICS
INL20 HARD1 W-INPUT MODEL
The model is stable. Commodity Markets have the biggest negative impact on Hardship.
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