Authorities have abandoned tear gas in favor of stomping aggressively and waiting for the thousands of marching students to simply scurry under the baseboards.
NEW DELHI — The air outside the Sansad Bhavan is thick with the scent of monsoon damp and idling diesel engines.
New Delhi law enforcement confirmed Tuesday they will not deploy traditional riot control against the thousands of students marching under the banner of the Cockroach Janta Party, opting instead to wait until dusk and suddenly flick on the parliament building's exterior floodlights.
The movement, which began with hundreds of undergraduates demanding fundamental education reforms, has swelled into a dense swarm currently occupying the capital's central avenues. Rather than negotiate over the students’ requests for updated textbooks and safe classroom infrastructure, local constables have been issued heavily rolled-up copies of the Hindustan Times and instructed to swat at the pavement whenever a protester darts toward the barricades.
Interior ministry officials have remained steadfast in their refusal to acknowledge the political nature of the demonstration, treating the mass assembly of disenfranchised youth entirely as a seasonal sanitation issue.
We laid out several glue traps baited with promises of mid-level clerical employment, but they simply gnawed their way out and continued chanting.
The students themselves have fiercely embraced the insectoid moniker, noting that years within the state education apparatus have perfectly adapted them to survive on discarded scraps while avoiding being crushed by massive, unthinking structures. In response, parliament groundskeepers spent the morning sealing the cracks beneath the legislative chambers with caulk to prevent the movement from slipping inside and drafting a budget.
By late afternoon, the tactical situation remained deadlocked as the Prime Minister’s security detail debated whether to address the crowd from a balcony or simply tent the entire government district in a striped nylon tarp.