Listen to this article:

There is nationwide outrage against Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant’s remarks in the apex judiciary’s court room that unemployed youth of India are “cockroaches” and “parasites” and they, failing to secure jobs for themselves, join journalism, social media or become RTI activists and “attack the system”.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Contrast such observations of the CJI in the context of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1954 descriptions of zamindars and landlords as “parasites” and his appeal in 1929 for mobilisation of, what he called, “peasants, workers on land, industrial workers, shopkeepers, members of some professions, artisans and craftsmen and unemployed intellectuals” against the classes which by their nature were parasitical on society and rooted in a capitalist and feudal structure.

The contrasting examples – one currently representing the apex judiciary as its chief justice and the other as a freedom fighter and first prime minister of India – show in 2026 the tragic decline of the leadership of our institutions which have suffered huge loss of credibility and erosion of integrity.

It is shocking that the CJI made those observations about the unemployed youth of our country on May 15, 2026, while adjudicating a petition filed by a lawyer seeking designation as a senior advocate – particularly at a time when vast sections of our young population are denied employment opportunities in an economy marked not only by chronic joblessness and massive job losses, but also by the Modi government’s repeal of MNREGA, the scheme that guaranteed 100 days of work to the poor.

Subsequently, facing massive criticism from all quarters, the CJI defended himself by saying that his oral........

© The Wire