Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old Indian recent post-graduate living in Boston, never planned to start a youth movement in India. But when India’s chief justice, Surya Kant, called certain unemployed young Indians "cockroaches," Mr. Dipke took to X and wrote, "What if all cockroaches come together?" The post went viral, inspiring Mr. Dipke to start the Cockroach Janta Party, a youth-led political movement. It came amid anger over India’s government scrapping the results of a national medical entrance exam taken by millions of students because of an alleged question-paper leak.

More than 20 aspiring students reportedly died by suicide amid the fallout from the controversy. For many young Indians, the scandal was another sign of an education system where hard work doesn’t always translate into opportunity. As the movement gained momentum, Mr. Dipke flew back to India and began organizing nationwide, calling for the resignation of the education minister.

In this video, Mr. Dipke shares three lessons he learned from leading the Cockroach Janta Party — and what young people around the world can learn from India’s Gen Z political awakening. As of today, we have close to 26 million followers. This just happened within a span of two months.

I started interacting with nearly 50 to 100 people every day. The youth in India feel that they are being dismissed by the people in the government. All they are talking about is communal politics, where they try to polarize the people on religious lines, using Hindu-Muslim debates every single night.

The real issues have taken a back seat. But the young generation — Gen Z — they are very outspoken and they don’t want to settle for less. They were writing: Let’s make this a serious platform, let’s make this a serious thing.

Lesson No. 2 that I learned from this movement was that you also need to be bold. You need to take the risk nobody’s willing to take. I had decided to come back to my country to show that I’m not a national security threat.

And my lawyer said: Are you crazy? You should not come back to India any time soon. The reporters that I spoke to, they were telling me: The day you land, you will end up in jail. You will be put behind bars.

When I told this news to my mother, she broke down. And I told her: There is a risk, but that is a risk worth taking. As the flight got close to India, I could see the Himalayan Mountains from the flight.

I thought: This is the last time I’m going to see an open sky. The biggest concern I had was for my family.