The Cockroach that won’t disappear by Avani Devi

When political empires begin to crack, the most dangerous thing for their masters is not necessarily an army, a revolution or even an angry electorate. Sometimes it is a survivor with a thousand political lives, crawling through the wreckage of a carefully constructed illusion.

Narendra Modi built his political empire on the promise of invincibility. The strongman of New Delhi, the self-appointed architect of a Hindu nationalist renaissance, the man who turned electoral victories into personal mythology, suddenly faces an uncomfortable question: what happens when the cockroach refuses to die?

Indian politics has always been a brutal ecosystem, but Modi's greatest achievement was convincing millions that he was not merely another politician surviving the jungle. He was the jungle's undisputed king. His machinery of propaganda, religious mobilisation, muscular nationalism and carefully choreographed public appearances manufactured the impression that opposition was obsolete and political alternatives were little more than historical curiosities.

Then reality intervened. The Indian electorate reminded Modi that democracy is not a private property deed issued to a charismatic leader. His party's reduced parliamentary strength in 2024 forced him into coalition dependence, exposing an uncomfortable vulnerability beneath the carefully polished armour. Suddenly, the supposedly invincible emperor needed allies, compromises and parliamentary arithmetic. The mythology of absolute dominance suffered a rather undignified collision with mathematics.

And lurking in this political mess is the cockroach: India's surviving opposition, particularly the Congress-led alliance, and the stubborn democratic instinct that refuses to surrender the country to one political personality.

The cockroach, after all, is not beautiful, respectable or particularly welcome in the kitchen. It survives. It adapts. It appears precisely when somebody believes the room has been thoroughly disinfected. India's opposition has demonstrated something Modi's political theatre desperately wanted to conceal: survival is itself a political weapon.

But the danger for Modi extends beyond parliamentary numbers. His political project depends on permanent mobilisation, permanent enemies and permanent emotional intoxication. Hindu nationalism provides the fuel, but economic frustrations, unemployment, inequality and the ordinary indignities of everyday existence cannot indefinitely be buried beneath religious spectacle. A temple inauguration does not create employment. A nationalist slogan does not fill a stomach. And another televised declaration of greatness cannot magically transform political disappointment into prosperity.

The irony is delicious. A leader who cultivated the image of a political exterminator now discovers that democratic competition possesses extraordinary reproductive capacity. Eliminate one opponent and another emerges. Marginalise one institution and another becomes troublesome. Silence one criticism and ten more crawl out from beneath the furniture.

This does not mean Modi's departure is imminent, nor that India's opposition has suddenly become competent, united or morally immaculate. The opposition has its own failures, dynastic baggage and political parasites. Modi remains powerful, his organisation formidable, and his ideological project deeply rooted. But power without vulnerability is an illusion, and the illusion has been punctured.

The real question is whether India can recover something more valuable than the humiliation of one political heavyweight: the democratic space in which disagreement is not treason, minorities are not permanent suspects, journalists are not enemies, and citizenship does not require ideological obedience.

Modi may yet survive another political season. The cockroach certainly will. And perhaps that is the most irritating lesson for every aspiring authoritarian: democracy does not need to be magnificent to survive. Sometimes it only needs to be stubborn, ugly, inconvenient and impossible to kill. In India, the political insect has survived the spraying. Now the exterminator has a problem.