Money from a Spiritual Perspective

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Money Through a Spiritual Lens: Finding the Sacred Balance

We often wrestle with the role of money in our lives. Is it a tool or a trap? A blessing or a poison? From a spiritual perspective, the answer isn't about choosing one extreme, but about discovering a middle path where financial security supports inner growth without becoming the centre of our existence.

The True Goal of Spiritual Practice

At its heart, spiritual life aims to calm the restless mind, open the heart, and nurture genuine kindness. The goal is to become a good human being — someone with a clear, peaceful mind and a compassionate presence. Money, in this context, is never the destination. It can be a companion on the journey, but when it becomes the sole focus, we lose sight of what makes life meaningful: human connection, inner peace, and the capacity to care for others.

Can Money Buy Happiness?

I once watched an interview with a very wealthy individual. When asked if money made him happy, his answer was striking. He explained that wealth certainly makes life easier and more convenient. But ease and convenience, he noted, do not automatically translate into happiness. That distinction is profound. A comfortable chair doesn't guarantee a quiet mind; a full bank account doesn't fill an empty heart. Money solves external problems efficiently, yet the internal landscape — our sense of purpose, love, and contentment — requires a different kind of nourishment.

The Danger of Extremes

When we treat money as everything, life shrinks. We risk losing our ability to see human value beyond a price tag. Compassion and kindness erode when profit becomes the only metric. This obsession brings anxiety, comparison, and a never-ending hunger that no amount of wealth can satisfy.

But the opposite extreme — declaring money a poison, cultivating hatred or aversion toward it — is equally unbalanced. Anger toward money doesn't free us; it just adds another layer of inner conflict. The reality is, we all need resources to survive. Food, shelter, clothing, and the ability to support our loved ones require a healthy relationship with material means. Renouncing money completely is noble only if one has reached a very high level of realisation, where survival is sustained without attachment. For most of us, rejecting money outright simply creates unnecessary suffering.

Visualising the Balance: Life Satisfaction Across Attitudes

The chart below illustrates how our relationship with money impacts overall life satisfaction and inner peace. A balanced approach consistently leads to a richer quality of life than either extreme.

Money Obsession

Low peace / High stress

Balanced View

High satisfaction & meaning

Money Aversion

Inner conflict / Survival strain

Comparing the Three Mindsets

Aspect	Money Obsession	Balanced Approach	Money Aversion
View of money	Ultimate goal, source of identity	Practical tool, not the purpose	Poison to be avoided
Impact on mind	Restlessness, greed, comparison	Calm, responsible, content	Anger, denial, survival anxiety
Relationships	Often transactional	Nurtured with care	Strained by ideology
Spiritual growth	Stunted by attachment	Supported through conscious use	Hindered by aversion
Daily experience	Chasing, never enough	Gratitude, sufficiency	Constant internal battle

Finding the Sacred Middle Ground

True balance means holding money lightly. You use it with awareness, without letting it define your worth. You earn, save, and spend in alignment with your values. You don't worship wealth, nor do you demonise it. This middle path allows you to engage fully with the world while keeping your heart free. You can provide for your family, enjoy simple pleasures, and contribute to others — all while remaining rooted in compassion and inner stillness.

A Lighthearted Mantra?

Sometimes spiritual seekers secretly hope that mantras will bring material gain. I recall a playful joke: "Om Mani Padme Hum" might be transformed by the wishful mind into "Om Money Coming Home." It's a humorous reminder of how even sacred practice can be co-opted by desire. The real mantra doesn't summon cash; it summons clarity and compassion. That is the wealth that never fades.

Conclusion

Bringing spirituality and money together isn't about guilt or renunciation. It's about conscious, kind engagement. Here are the key takeaways:

• Money is a tool, not the goal — the real goal is a calm, kind heart.
• Wealth brings convenience, but not automatic happiness; inner peace must be cultivated separately.
• Extreme obsession with money destroys human values and breeds discontent.
• Aversion to money creates anger and struggle; we need resources to live responsibly.
• Balance is the essence: use money mindfully without letting it own your mind.
• A spiritual practice is about transforming the heart, not manipulating lottery numbers.

Citations & References

1. Interview insight from a wealthy individual (documentary-style media), highlighting that money eases life but does not create happiness — a perspective echoed in numerous studies on the hedonic treadmill and subjective well-being (e.g., Kahneman & Deaton, 2010).

2. Buddhist teachings on the Middle Way, which caution against both extreme attachment to sensual pleasures and extreme asceticism, encouraging a balanced relationship with material life (Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta).

3. The mantra "Om Mani Padme Hum" is a traditional Tibetan Buddhist mantra embodying compassion; its humorous twist used here illustrates the tendency to spiritual materialism.

Disclaimer: This article is generated using DeepSeek (AI) and an AI can sometimes make mistakes.

Lessons in Investing    All Buddhist Stories    « Previously in Investing    « Previously in "Buddhism and Wealth"
Tags: Buddhism,Investment,

Why is Gen-Z Taking Loans?

Lessons in Investing    All Posts by Ankur Warikoo    « Previously

The Quiet Debt Trap: How a Generation is Drowning in Easy Loans

Published on May 23, 2026 — 14 min read — Personal Finance

It is the second of the month. You are lying in bed at 9:00 PM, casually scrolling through Instagram, when a beautiful notification lights up your screen. Your salary—62,000 rupees—has just been credited to your bank account. In that moment, you feel like a real adult. You feel like these are my own hard-earned rupees. After years of fulfilling your parents' dreams, after all the grind, a steady 62,000 lands in your account every single month. You drift off to sleep with a quiet smile, dreaming pleasant dreams.

Morning arrives, and your phone is flooded with SMS alerts. You know the kind—the transaction completion messages. Rent: 22,000 rupees, gone. Credit card bill: 14,000 rupees, gone. That laptop you bought on a zero-cost EMI: 4,800 rupees, gone. LazyPay, for reasons you cannot quite recall: 3,200 rupees, gone. Amazon Pay Later: 6,100 rupees, gone. Your sister got married recently and you took a personal loan for the wedding—its EMI: 9,500 rupees, gone. And then there is one more debit of 4,800 rupees from some lender you barely remember signing up with. Last night you were the master of 62,000 rupees. This morning, 2,400 rupees remain. The month hasn't even properly begun. You haven't bought a single meal with this money yet. You stare at the number and genuinely wonder: what on earth is going on?

You do not remember taking all these loans. You never sat across a banker. You never signed a mountain of paperwork. You simply went on Amazon, spotted some headphones, saw a "Pay Later" option, clicked it, and moved on with your day. Then you visited a Croma store and the salesperson casually suggested converting the purchase to a zero-cost EMI—done. Then your credit card bill arrived and the app nudged you to convert that large amount into easy EMIs—done. You went to a friend's party, swiped your credit card for the entire bill to collect reward points, and took cash from everyone else. Slowly, imperceptibly, you joined the ranks of countless Indians who are silently carrying around 80,000 rupees or more in floating debt. A generation—my generation—has emerged where taking a loan no longer feels like a burdensome decision. It feels almost as casual as handing out sweets.

Today, I want to talk about this generation that never tires of borrowing, and about who really profits when loans are sold to us like candy.

The Numbers You Might Not Want to See

Let us start with the figures that paint a sobering picture. In 2025, Indian banks reported a loan category called "Other Personal Loans." Its outstanding amount touched a staggering 15.5 lakh crore rupees. Within that, credit card outstanding alone stands at roughly 3,70,000 crore rupees. A decade ago, India had around 21 million credit cards—roughly 2.1 crore. Today, that number has ballooned to 115 million cards, nearly 11.5 crore. In just one month—September 2025—Indians swiped, tapped, and spent approximately 2.25 lakh crore rupees through credit cards. Not a year. One single month.

Credit Cards in India: A 10-Year Surge

2015

~2.1 Cr

2025

~11.5 Cr

Who is carrying all this debt? A report revealed that 41% of all this debt is borrowed by Gen Z—those born between 1997 and 2012. On fintech lending platforms, 60% of users belong to this generation. And 45% of new credit card owners are under the age of 30.

Now, not all debt is bad. If someone takes a loan to study, to start a business, to genuinely move forward in life—great. But there is another side to this story. Around 60% of personal loan borrowers already have three or more other loans running simultaneously. Credit card NPAs—Non-Performing Assets, meaning defaults where the person simply cannot pay—have climbed to nearly 6,700 crore rupees, an increase of 28%. This figure has multiplied fivefold in just four years.

41% of all consumer debt held by Gen Z

60% of personal loan borrowers have 3+ active loans

6,700 Cr credit card NPAs (up 28% YoY)

5x NPA growth in the last 4 years

The Three-Headed Debt Monster

There are three kinds of debt that Gen Z keeps reaching for, almost compulsively. Let us dissect each one.

1. Credit Cards: Best Friend or Worst Enemy?

Many people think of a credit card merely as a cashback tool, a lounge-access pass, or a "swipe now, pay next month" convenience. And honestly, when used wisely, a credit card can be your best friend. The smartest people I know definitely use credit cards. Why? Because they understand that a credit card essentially gives you a one-month interest-free loan. You spend today, the bill gets generated a month later, and if you pay the full amount, the debt was completely free. Additionally, it builds your credit history, which helps you secure home loans, education loans, or car loans at lower interest rates later. Plus, there are reward points and perks. Credit cards are genuinely incredible when treated as friends.

But if you fail to pay the full bill—if you slip—that same credit card becomes your worst enemy. The interest rate on credit card debt is not 10%, not 12%, not even 15%. It is 36%, 40%, 45%, even 48% per annum. If you have a 1-lakh-rupee credit card bill and you keep paying only the minimum amount due—say 5,000 rupees—within a single year your outstanding amount will balloon to somewhere between 1,36,000 and 1,48,000 rupees. It is wild how quickly this compounds. In fact, if you only make minimum payments on a 1-lakh-rupee bill, do you know how long it will take to clear that debt completely? You cannot even guess. Twenty-one years. Twenty-one years to pay off 1 lakh rupees, because your small payments keep getting devoured by the enormous interest.

2. Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL): The Seductive Trap

Buy Now, Pay Later is incredibly seductive. Someone invented this concept and thought, "This is a brilliant game—let people buy today, get them hooked, and they will buy anything because they can always pay later." Since no collateral is pledged, BNPL is an unsecured loan. And unsecured loans are as expensive as credit cards or personal loans—sometimes even pricier. Simpl, LazyPay, Amazon Pay Later, Flipkart Pay Later, Paytm Postpaid, Mobikwik Zip—all of these are cleverly designed products. I am not here to vilify them or accuse them of wrongdoing. But the truth is, it is frighteningly simple for a Gen Z user to glide through these apps and make purchases that feel almost free.

Why does it feel so effortless? Because there is no banker sitting across the table. There are no documents to sign. You tap, tap, tap, enter your PAN somewhere, and you are done. Here is what happens in the backend: every single BNPL loan is financed by some NBFC—a Non-Banking Financial Corporation. Every one of these transactions gets recorded in your credit history and filed in the RBI logs. That 499-rupee biryani you ordered on Pay Later? Recorded. That 1,200 rupees you spent on petrol via Pay Later? Recorded. Because it happens online and in such tiny amounts, it does not feel like a loan at all. It feels like UPI—just another 17 rupees here, 217 rupees there. And a 2,000-rupee or 3,000-rupee Pay Later purchase gets lumped right in. Most of the time, you do not even remember you used Pay Later—exactly as we saw in the opening scenario.

3. The Personal Loan Deluge

Everyone knows about personal loans by now, but even here the landscape has split into two distinct streams. First, there are personal loans from traditional banks—HDFC, ICICI, SBI, and the like. These come with interest rates around 12% to 15%, depending on fluctuations. They are unsecured too, and they are typically offered on the basis of your salary. If you work at a recognized company, the interest rate may dip slightly because the bank perceives some sense of security.

Then, a new world has emerged recently: fintech apps that can disburse a personal loan to you on a single click. CreditBee, Kred, Fi, Navi—the names keep multiplying. According to reports, the average loan through these channels is around 9,700 rupees. It is not a huge amount, which is precisely why it does not feel like a loan. You need 10,000 rupees instantly? Click. It lands in your bank account. Around 91% of all portfolios consist of loan amounts under 50,000 rupees. Interest rates range from 18% to 36%, and for some products, they climb even higher.

And then there are those shady Chinese loan apps that have no allegiance to any regulatory framework. They will give you any amount, slowly reeling you in, and they will ask for access to your contact list. God forbid you miss a payment—those apps will start calling your relatives. They will create morphed, inappropriate images and threaten to share them. They have no ethics, no conscience. They can go to any length to recover that money, and their interest rates are insane.

A Vicious Cycle: I have seen so many people trapped in a loop where they take a loan from one app to pay off another, then a third app to pay off the second. App after app is downloaded, money arrives in a snap, and the trap they are falling into is nothing short of terrifying.

Debt Type	Typical Interest Rate	Collateral	Key Risk
Credit Cards	36% - 48% p.a.	Unsecured	Minimum payments can stretch 1 lakh debt over 21 years
BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later)	18% - 36%+ p.a.	Unsecured	Feels like UPI; small transactions accumulate silently
Fintech Personal Loans	18% - 36%+ p.a.	Unsecured	Predatory recovery tactics; easy rollover into more debt
Traditional Bank Personal Loans	12% - 15% p.a.	Unsecured	Still adds to overall debt burden if not managed

What Are We Actually Borrowing For?

If this debt were flowing toward education or housing, I would not be writing this piece. But the data tells a different story.

Weddings. The average Indian wedding costs around 12.5 lakh rupees. That is five times the country's GDP per capita. A report by Jefferies estimated that parents spend as much on a three- or four-day wedding as they do on 18 years of a child's education. And how are these weddings being funded? Personal loans. Every personal loan player actively advertises: "Get up to X lakh rupees as a wedding loan at Y% interest." We have reached a point where society finds it perfectly acceptable to tell a 28-year-old couple, "Why not start your married life with a 15-lakh-rupee loan?" And they will do it because we want the 400 guests who show up, take photos with us, and gossip about us to at least say nice things.

Travel. Gen Z is on a completely different wavelength when it comes to travel. An entire category has emerged: Travel Now, Pay Later. Not Buy Now—Travel Now. Because travel is freedom, bro. If you haven't travelled, how will you even exist on Instagram? So a 26-year-old takes a 2-lakh-rupee personal loan to visit Paris, to stand in front of the Eiffel Tower, to post that photo on Instagram. And for three years after that trip, a chunk of their salary vanishes every single month, and they keep wondering why their finances feel perpetually tight.

iPhones and gadgets. The iPhone, of course, sits at the centre of this universe. A six-month no-cost EMI, a replacement scheme, some cashback sprinkled on top—and suddenly the iPhone 17 Pro Max feels like it costs as much as an iPhone SE. Or if not an iPhone, then a Samsung. Samsung's Finance Plus can get you a loan in 15 to 20 minutes, no CIBIL score required. During Amazon's Great India Sale in 2024, reports showed that one in every four smartphones—25% of all phones—was purchased on a loan. And four out of five of those loans were no-cost EMIs. Flipkart's Pay Later transactions surged by eight and a half times during the Big Billion Days sale.

The Hidden Price of "No-Cost"

Let me be blunt: no-cost EMI is not truly no-cost. There is no free lunch, my friend. On the interest component, you pay 18% GST. There is usually a processing fee of around 199 rupees, which also attracts GST. You do not earn any reward points on the purchase, and sometimes the interest for the gap days between your first EMI and the purchase date gets added to your total. On a 1-lakh-rupee no-cost EMI, you are easily paying between 1,700 and 2,000 rupees in various forms of fees and embedded charges. It looks tiny, but remember—everything is adding up.

Your Credit History Is Your Reputation

Here is an interesting and deeply unsettling fallout of all this. Every single loan amount, no matter how small, is now being recorded. It becomes part of your credit history. Your credit report is increasingly being used to determine what kind of individual you are from a financial perspective. There are enough documented cases where companies, during background checks for hiring, pull up CIBIL reports. They want to see: does this person default? Do they pay their loans on time? How many loans are currently running? Is the amount manageable or substantial?

Imagine this: three years ago, you took a 60,000-rupee personal loan—maybe for your sister's wedding, maybe for something else. For whatever reason, you defaulted on three EMIs. Five years have passed. The loan is fully cleared. Everything is fine. You sit for a job interview, ace it, and then these buried skeletons crawl out. You are flagged as a defaulter. And that could mean you do not get the job offer. Not because you are bad at your work. Not because you lack the skills or the degree or couldn't clear the interview. But because you defaulted on some 2,800-rupee EMI three times when you were naive and didn't know any better.

Or let's say you apply for a home loan at age 35. You have followed all the sensible advice—you saved diligently, you applied the 24-10 rule, and you finally approach the bank. You assume your CIBIL score is 780 or above. It comes out as 700. Why? Because five years ago, for some reason, you missed a credit card payment. Now, that 8.5% home loan you were hoping for is offered to you at 9.5%. Your original EMI of 52,068 rupees becomes 55,932 rupees. You think, "Fine, what difference does a couple of thousand rupees make? I am 35, I have earned well, let's go ahead." But over 20 years on a 60-lakh-rupee loan, that difference compounds to roughly 15 to 18 lakh rupees. Every single credit card default, every missed EMI, every tiny slip—adds up.

Who Really Wins Here?

If we are losing, who is winning? I will not name specific companies because they are not doing anything illegal—they are doing exactly what they are designed to do. We are perhaps the fools for believing they are doing us a great favour. They don't force these products on us; we choose to dive in.

But consider the scale. There is one company with 55 billion dollars in outstanding loans and 110 million customers in this country alone, pulling in 55,000 crore rupees in annual revenue. Another company we used to associate merely with credit card payments now generates 2,800 crore rupees in revenue—almost all of it from interest on disbursed loans. A payment company has disbursed 52,000 crore rupees in loans and is earning handsomely from the interest. Every single entity is laser-focused on making money from our borrowing habits.

"You deserve this car. You deserve this house. You deserve this phone. You deserve this wedding. You deserve to travel. You deserve this fine life." They shout it from every billboard and every app notification. What they do not shout is: "The money you deposited with us earns you a maximum of five or six percent. But when you come to us for a loan, we will charge you 8-10% for education or housing, and 14-16% for a personal loan. We will lend you your own money and make a fool of you."

And we start believing that narrative. Every Gen Z individual is made to feel that if they do not own an iPhone 17 Pro Max on day one, they have achieved nothing in life. They are almost ashamed of using a phone that is two generations old, or an Android device, or a Windows laptop—because everyone wants a Mac, everyone wants the M5 chip, everyone wants the Neo. Everyone needs to flaunt an Apple Watch, everyone needs to show off a long sedan. Why? Because how can Sharma ji's car be longer than ours?

An entire generation is living on comparison. They cannot see what genuinely makes them happy; they can only see who looks richer on Instagram and wonder why they are not that person. So they will spend 2 lakh rupees to travel so they can prove they visited that destination, but they will not take a 2-lakh-rupee education loan. They will finance their wedding on debt, but they will not save to buy a home for their spouse. They will feed 400 strangers for three days, dance in front of them, burst firecrackers, and blow money—but they will not build an emergency fund for themselves.

Breaking Free from the Gilded Cage

Gen Z was born around 1997. When Facebook launched, they were 10 years old. By the time they became teenagers, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Snapchat were simply the default way of living. So every person photographs their meal before eating it, and that photo must scream that the meal costs thousands—no matter how mediocre the food actually tastes. Because only you tasted the food, but everyone saw the photo. And this is exactly what lenders exploit. They are tricking you into living a life that is not yours. They want you drowning in debt so that you stay trapped in your job, so that you never take a risk, so that you never dream of becoming a business owner. No—you are an employee, and you shall remain an employee. Know your place. You have taken loans; you are a debtor.

I would love for you to defy that. I would love for a movement to rise that declares: I will not live my life on debt. I am already navigating a world where jobs are scarce, salaries are stagnant, and prices keep climbing. I will not make my life worse by taking on a loan I do not need. It does not matter if I do not own that long sedan. The friends who laugh at me because I use an Android phone are not my friends at all. I want to spend time with people who love me for me—not for my clothes, my phone, my car, my dining habits, or my travel itinerary.

And if you manage to do this, my friend, you will start defeating the very forces that are trying to lure you into a beautiful golden cage through glossy advertisements. Do not fall for it. This is your life. You were born free. Stay free.

Conclusion: Key Takeaways

• Credit card debt is brutally expensive. With interest rates ranging from 36% to 48%, making only minimum payments can trap you for decades on even modest outstanding amounts.
• BNPL feels invisible but is fully recorded. Every small Pay Later transaction enters your credit history and can silently accumulate into an unmanageable monthly burden.
• Fintech personal loans are engineered for impulse. Instant disbursement of small amounts (average ~9,700 rupees) masks the fact that interest rates often exceed 36%, and predatory recovery practices are rampant among unregulated apps.
• Weddings, travel, and gadgets are the top debt drivers for Gen Z. These are lifestyle aspirations amplified by social media comparison, not wealth-building investments.
• "No-cost EMI" is never truly free. Embedded processing fees, GST on interest, and foregone rewards mean you almost always pay 1,700 to 2,000 rupees extra on a 1-lakh-rupee purchase.
• Your credit history affects your career and future borrowing power. A few missed EMIs can cost you a job offer or add 15-18 lakh rupees in extra interest on a home loan over 20 years.
• The lending industry profits from your financial fog. Billion-dollar revenues are built on the casual borrowing habits of a generation that often does not even remember taking the loans.
• True freedom means rejecting the comparison trap. Living within your means and refusing to fund a lifestyle for an audience is the most powerful financial decision you can make.

Citations and References

1. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) — "Sectoral Deployment of Bank Credit," monthly bulletin data on Other Personal Loans and credit card outstanding, 2025.
2. RBI — "Trend and Progress of Banking in India," report on credit card NPAs and five-year NPA growth trajectory, 2024-2025.
3. Jefferies Equity Research — "Indian Weddings: The Big Fat Spending," report estimating average wedding expenditure and comparison with per-capita GDP and education spending, 2024.
4. Amazon India — Great India Sale consumer insights, smartphone purchase data and BNPL adoption rates, 2024.
5. Flipkart — Big Billion Days sales data, Pay Later transaction growth figures, 2024.
6. CIBIL / TransUnion CIBIL — Consumer credit behaviour reports, Gen Z borrowing patterns, and impact of credit history on loan eligibility and interest rates, 2024-2025.
7. Fintech lending platform reports — Aggregated data on average loan ticket size (~9,700 rupees), portfolio distribution (91% under 50,000 rupees), and user demographics (60% Gen Z), 2024-2025.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice. Please consult a qualified professional before making any borrowing or investment decisions. Also, this content was generated by DeepSeek AI and should be independently verified for factual accuracy before citing or relying on specific claims.

Lessons in Investing    All Posts by Ankur Warikoo    « Previously

What is Cockroach Janata Party?

See All News by Ravish Kumar    « Previously

RAVISH KUMAR — POLITICAL COMMENTARY

We Are the
Cockroaches

India's Youth, Digital Dissent, and the Democracy That Forgot Them

POLITICS DEMOCRACY SOCIAL MEDIA 7 min read

The Insult That Backfired

Imagine finding a cockroach under your pillow. You leap out of bed. Your skin crawls. Now imagine — the very next morning — you wake up, look in the mirror, and call yourself the cockroach. Proudly. With a party manifesto.

That is what happened in India. India's Chief Justice — in remarks reported by the media, later "clarified" as misquoted — allegedly used the word parasite to describe those with fake degrees sneaking into law and journalism. The word cockroach, as reported, referred to those who had crawled into respectable institutions through dishonest means.

The Chief Justice offered a clarification the very next day. He said the media had misrepresented him. He had not called the public cockroaches. He was speaking about fraudsters in the legal profession.

The forest, however, was already on fire.

The youth of India did not wait for the clarification to settle. They took the word, they wrapped it in a coat and tie, they put a Gandhi cap on it — and they built a party. Welcome to the Cockroach Janata Party.

A Bug Goes Viral: The Numbers

In five days, the Cockroach Janata Party's Instagram account accumulated 15 million followers. Not in an election cycle. Not after years of grinding street protests. In five days — on a platform built for recipe videos and vacation photos.

15M Instagram followers in 5 days

1 Twitter handle banned in India

0 Editorials in mainstream media

Rap songs were written about the cockroach. Posters appeared: "Vote for me, I am the CJP candidate." Young Indians did not mourn being called a cockroach. They embraced it — because when the drains of democracy are clogged, cockroaches are precisely who survives.

Event	Date / Context	Outcome
CJ's reported "cockroach/parasite" remark	Bar Association event, 2024	Viral outrage on social media
Chief Justice's clarification	Next day	Largely ignored; movement already live
CJP Instagram account launched	Within days of the remark	15 million followers in 5 days
CJP Twitter handle banned in India	Shortly after launch	Government-directed account suspension
Congress protest over NEET paper leak	Rajasthan, concurrent period	Invisible in mainstream media

Who Is Abhijit Deepke — and What Must He Clarify?

The founder of the Cockroach Janata Party is Abhijit Deepke, a student at Boston University, previously associated with the Aam Aadmi Party. The movement's origin story invites legitimate scrutiny.

Those who remember the India Against Corruption movement — and how the RSS allegedly used it as a runway for AAP's launch, and how many supporters felt cheated afterwards — are now watching CJP with the same suspicious squint. The question being asked aloud: Is BJP behind this? Is the public's anger being rerouted from opposition parties into an Instagram reel?

These are not paranoid questions. They are necessary questions in a democracy where artificial public support has been manufactured before — through EVMs, through blocked votes, through WhatsApp University. When public opinion can be fabricated, a political party too can be fabricated.

Deepke owes his growing constituency a direct answer: Does AAP have any organizational role in CJP's formation? Transparency is not optional when you are positioning yourself as a democratic alternative.

That said — dismissing CJP entirely because of unanswered questions is also unfair. In a democracy where all institutional machinery has been captured, the mere act of imagining a party is itself an act of resistance. Tamil Nadu's TVK party never marched on the streets. It went from a social media presence straight to electoral power. The route has changed. The map is being redrawn.

The Democracy That Is Being Dismantled, Quietly

Why does the cockroach resonate so deeply? Because young Indians are living inside a country where democratic imagination is dying — and they know it, even if they cannot name it.

Look at what happened in West Bengal: 27 lakh people were reportedly prevented from casting their votes. Serious questions arose about vote counting. Central forces visibly and selectively dominated the polling process. One section of the public fell into a stunned silence, wondering: This much happened, and the country's youth said nothing?

Then there is the story of Coastal Energen — a company whose owner was imprisoned for 31 months on fabricated charges, against whom no evidence was produced, while his company was quietly swallowed by others. This is not an anomaly. It is a pattern. When the state can imprison a citizen without evidence and absorb his enterprise, it is not justice that is being served. It is intimidation.

In a country like this, democratic imagination does not just weaken. It is murdered. Slowly. Methodically. With a gag and a blindfold.

The Cockroach Janata Party is not a policy document. It is proof that despite everything — despite the media surrender, the institutional capture, the electoral manipulation — the democratic spirit has not been fully exterminated. Cockroaches survive the apocalypse. Perhaps that is the point.

Nav Pratirodh: The New Resistance

A common criticism of CJP is that real politics happens on the street, not on Instagram. This criticism is not wrong. But it is dangerously incomplete.

Consider: Narendra Modi's rise in 2014 was not purely a street movement. WhatsApp University carried fabricated histories into millions of homes. A compliant media built a 24-hour personality cult. The street was only one element of a carefully engineered political machine.

If the ruling establishment can use social media to build and consolidate power, why must the opposition and the citizens be restricted to only marching boots and lathis?

Traditional Resistance

Street protests, dharnas, marches

Digital Resistance (CJP)

Social media party, viral satire, rap songs, memes

Godi Media Coverage

Near-zero editorial response

Democracy is not a single exercise. It is a bouquet. Someone marches. Someone sings. Someone makes a YouTube video. Someone builds a satirical party with 15 million followers. All of these are democratic acts. The question is not which form is more legitimate — the question is why the government fears even the satirical ones enough to ban their Twitter handle.

The Godi Media's Comfortable Silence

When the Chief Justice's remark went viral, how many editorials did India's mainstream press write? Count them. Take your time. I'll wait.

While the CJP gathered 15 million followers, India's television studios — those same studios that will devote forty-eight hours to a Pakistani press conference or a celebrity divorce — found no airtime to address whether it was appropriate for a sitting Chief Justice to describe citizens as parasites, or cockroaches, in any context.

At the same time, the Congress party was on the streets of Rajasthan — demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over two separate NEET examination paper leaks. Students cheated. Futures stolen. A government that can conduct a moon mission apparently cannot secure a question paper.

That protest received no coverage in godi media. But if 15 million social media followers amplified it, perhaps the government would feel the weight of that silence becoming a noise it could no longer ignore.

The media's fear of criticizing the judiciary and the government in the same breath has made it useless to the very public it claims to serve.

A Warning to the Opposition

The rise of the Cockroach Janata Party is not just a rebuke of the BJP government. It is a rebuke of the opposition too.

If one young man in Boston — Abhijit Deepke, building a satirical Instagram account — can mobilize 15 million people in five days, what exactly is the Congress doing? What is the Samajwadi Party doing? What is the entire edifice of Indian opposition doing that it cannot create a single moment this electric?

The public is anxious. It is looking left and right for the opposition and finding it only occasionally — flickering like a streetlight at 3 a.m. The opposition must expand its canvas of democratic imagination. It must learn the grammar of the new resistance — not replace street protests, but amplify them. Use every tool. Speak every language. The cockroach survived because it adapted.

!

Criticisms

• The Modi government's instinct upon seeing 15 million citizens form a satirical political party was not reflection, not dialogue — it was to ban their Twitter handle. This is the action of an administration that is allergic to dissent even in its most theatrical form.
• Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has presided over a catastrophic failure of examination integrity. NEET paper leaks have occurred not once but twice on his watch. He has not resigned, has not been asked to resign by the Prime Minister, and the BJP government has offered no accountability whatsoever to the millions of students whose futures were sold by paper thieves.
• The Modi government's systematic capture of godi media — converting newsrooms into state megaphones — means that even a Chief Justice calling citizens "cockroaches" produces no editorial outrage. When the press stops being the press, cockroaches have to build their own parties.
• The West Bengal election of 2021, in which credible reports indicate that 27 lakh voters were disenfranchised, remains without any meaningful central investigation. The same BJP that screams electoral fraud in states it loses has nothing to say when its own central forces are accused of intimidating voters.
• The BJP and its ecosystem must answer how the India Against Corruption movement was politically harvested to birth the AAP, leaving millions of genuine protestors feeling used and discarded. The same template of co-opting public anger for partisan benefit remains BJP's most dangerous and perfected weapon.
• Prime Minister Modi's social media presence — including the viral video of him gifting Italian Prime Minister Meloni a "melody" — is covered adoringly by godi media while genuine public movements are suppressed. The double standard is not accidental. It is policy.
• The imprisonment of the Coastal Energen owner for 31 months, without evidence, while his company was absorbed by connected interests, represents a criminalized use of state power. This government has turned the law into a tool of corporate predation, not justice.

- Ravish Kumar

Note: In this democracy, you may now consider keeping this in your pocket. Carefully. Folded. For later.

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India Considers Seeking Dollars from NRIs and Raising Interest Rates — Can the Rupee Still Be Saved?

The Reserve Bank of India is now reportedly considering an NRI dollar deposit scheme and sovereign dollar bonds. Yes, the same government that spent years claiming India had become a golden bird under its watch is about to go door-to-door, asking NRIs for dollars to save the rupee. Bloomberg’s Anup Roy reports that the central bank is exploring ways to raise dollars, including hiking interest rates, because the rupee is in free fall. A 12% drop against the dollar in just one year. RBI has been selling dollars, but it isn’t working. And when interest rates go up, your EMIs will shoot up, fuel prices will rise again, school fees, taxi fares — everything. This isn’t because of Iran. This is the result of 13 years of economic mismanagement by the Modi government.

The Confession of a Devotee

Surjit Bhalla, the economist who rarely missed a chance to applaud the Modi government, has finally admitted that the economy is sinking. In a column that broke the camp’s silence, Bhalla noted that India’s GDP averaged 6% over the last 35 years — and 13 of those years belong to this government. He can’t explain why the BJP keeps winning elections despite a crumbling economy. He says he does not doubt the electoral process, but his own numbers raise uncomfortable questions: how does a party win mandate after mandate when the ground beneath everyone’s feet is giving way? Vote deletions running into crores, 27 lakh voters disenfranchised, counting centre videos demanded but never released by the Election Commission — as Scroll reported. Bhalla might not ask, but we must.

The Growth That Never Was

Bhalla is not the first to say the India growth story is a lie. Arvind Subramanian in 2019 showed GDP was overstated by about 2.5% between 2011 and 2017. Real growth was closer to 4.5%, not 7%. Former chief statistician Pronab Sen raised the alarm as early as 2017. Ashok Modi’s “India Fake Growth Story” paper drew vicious trolling. Professor R. Nagaraj of IGIDR flagged the figures in 2015. Arun Kumar, Rajeshwari Sengupta, Pramod Sinha, Ravindra Dholakia — all have been telling us for years that the emperor has no clothes. Bhalla is just a late arrival at the truth.

The favourite slogan — “India is the fastest growing major economy” — collapses the moment you remove the word “major”. Since 2014, India ranks 9th in GDP growth among all countries, and 8th in per capita GDP growth. In dollar terms, the picture is even grimmer.

Per Capita GDP Growth (Dollar Terms, Annual Average since 2014)

Bangladesh

8.3%

Ethiopia

7.2%

India

4.7%

India trails Bangladesh and Ethiopia in per capita dollar income growth. Source: Surjit Bhalla compilation, IMF data.

Metric	India's Rank
GDP Growth (since 2014)	9th
Per Capita GDP Growth	8th
Per Capita Growth (Dollar Terms)	16th

Yet the propaganda machine kept running. Ministers repeated the lie, and the Prime Minister himself declared, “140 crore Indians are not satisfied with being the fastest growing economy, we want to be the third largest soon.” The reality is a country struggling to touch 6% when it needs 8% to even pretend it can develop.

Distraction as Policy: Cow, Bulldozer, Toffee

While the economy bled, what were we debating? Pakistan. Cow. Muslims. Madrasas. Bulldozer justice. DJ dance in front of mosques. The government and its godi media manufactured a permanent circus so that nobody would notice the hollowing out of the nation’s economic foundation. Free rations for 80 crore people were not a sign of a caring state — they were an admission that prosperity never reached them. In Bihar, over 1.5 crore women got ₹10,000 each during elections — vote-buying, plain and simple. Forty percent of graduates are unemployed. Sixty percent of BA degree holders don’t find a permanent job in the first year, and those who do earn meagre salaries. When young Indians started calling themselves cockroaches in protest, the government silenced them: social media accounts deleted, the “Cockroach Janata Party” Twitter account banned even as its Instagram outpaced the BJP’s follower growth.

The Credibility Trap and the AI Blindspot

Former RBI Governor D. Subbarao, in a widely discussed Hindustan Times article, says the rupee’s fall cannot be blamed only on oil prices. He warns of a credibility trap: if the world sees the RBI trying and failing to defend the rupee, it signals that the situation is beyond control, triggering a capital flight panic. India has also missed the AI bus. Global money is now chasing markets that lead in technology and AI, and India, despite all the chest-thumping, is a marginal player. Subbarao calls it a margin player. This, too, has battered the rupee. Remember the stock market frenzy after COVID? People pulled money from banks and poured it into equities without any underlying economic expansion. Companies weren’t investing, but stock prices soared. That bubble has now burst, and the common retail investor has been destroyed — two years of negative returns, and not a word about it in the prime-time debates.

“An economic storm is coming, the kind India has never seen... Modi went and ate toffee with Meloni and made videos... When he returns, the storm will hit the poor, the farmers, the youth... Then he will fold his hands and say, ‘Hang me, it’s not my fault.’” — Rahul Gandhi, months before the rupee rout.

The Amrit Kaal Scam

In December 2023, when the cracks were already visible, the government launched “Viksit Bharat 2047” and the “Voice of Youth” campaign. The Prime Minister spoke of an Amrit Kaal — a golden era — and asked everyone to work beyond limits. But to hit the developed-country target, India needs 8% annual GDP growth. The reality is stuck around 6%. UN DESA projects 6.4% for 2026-27, down from 7.5% in the previous year. Journalist Anindya Chakravarty pointed out that GST was supposed to add 2% to GDP. Since its introduction, average growth (excluding COVID) is 6.3%. Without GST, would growth have been 3.5-4.3%? The numbers scream that the much-touted reform didn’t deliver.

When Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman suddenly tweeted a string of rhetorical questions defending Jan Dhan, Mudra loans, and free grain, Congress’s Pawan Khera held a press conference that few channels cared to show. The facts he laid out were devastating: 15 crore Jan Dhan accounts are inoperative, 62% of the remaining hold less than ₹1,000. The central government has collected ₹43 lakh crore in petroleum taxes over 12 years. Public sector oil companies earned ₹12,400 crore in just a few hours from price hikes. Whose Amrit Kaal is this? The middle class is being crushed, and the finance minister’s threadbare defence was met with silence.

The Trump Factor: Toffees and Trade-offs

Prime Minister Modi’s foreign visits are assessed by the number of hugs, toffee moments, and dance reels, not by outcomes. Why did relations with Trump sour? What did India concede? Rahul Gandhi alleges that the Prime Minister traded national data to get Adani’s case cancelled in the US. The Telegraph’s Hans van Leeuwen wrote that “Trump trampled Modi’s dreams.” Yet the BJP’s supporters, who are also Trump supporters, don’t ask. India wants to know how much of this economic devastation is linked to those backroom compromises. If Modi wants India to be taken seriously, says the expert, he must turn the economy into a powerhouse that can rival China. Instead, manufacturing has declined over the last decade, India’s global industrial output is one-tenth of China’s, and deep-tech investment is abysmal. Winning elections by any means and running an economy are two different things. Controlling power, resources, and the media can win votes. Economic reality is like sand — it slips through even the tightest fist.

The Final Illusion

As the common citizen is pushed towards poverty and the middle class is pulverised, the godi media will switch on the Vishwaguru stories again. If you have enjoyed these fairy tales so far, you have no right to ask why the rupee is in a ditch. You should thank the Modi government: every time you are in pain, it expertly distracts you from your own wound.

Facts

• Rupee depreciated 12% against the dollar in one year; RBI exploring NRI dollar deposits and rate hikes.
• India’s average GDP growth over 35 years is 6%, with 13 years under the Modi government.
• Since 2014, India ranks 9th in GDP growth, 8th in per capita GDP growth, and 16th in dollar-term per capita growth.
• Bangladesh (8.3%) and Ethiopia (7.2%) outpaced India (4.7%) in per capita dollar income growth.
• 40% of graduates unemployed; 60% of BA graduates lack a permanent job in the first year.
• 15 crore Jan Dhan accounts are inoperative; 62% of the rest hold less than Rs 1,000.
• Central government collected Rs 43 lakh crore from petroleum taxes in 12 years.
• UN DESA projects India’s GDP growth at 6.4% for 2026-27, down from 7.5% previously.
• India’s share in global industrial output is about one-tenth of China’s.

Criticisms

• The Modi government has hollowed out the Indian economy while using statistical jugglery and a captive media to sell a fake growth story.
• For 13 years, communal polarisation, bulldozer theatrics, and manufactured nationalism were used to hide catastrophic unemployment, inflation, and a falling rupee.
• Electoral integrity has been compromised through mass voter deletions, opaque counting, and direct vote-buying with free rations and cash handouts.
• Flagship schemes like Jan Dhan are a sham — the majority of accounts are either dead or near-empty, while crony capitalists thrive.
• The government extracted Rs 43 lakh crore from citizens via fuel taxes while offering 5 kg of free grain as a sleight-of-hand to manufacture consent.
• The Prime Minister’s personal equations with foreign leaders, especially Donald Trump, appear to have compromised national interests, with possible data-for-legal-relief deals going unquestioned.
• The ‘Viksit Bharat’ and ‘Amrit Kaal’ narratives are cynical election props that mask the brutal math: India needs 8% growth, barely manages 6%, and the middle class is being systematically destroyed.
• A subservient ‘godibachi’ media launders the government’s failures, deletes dissenting voices, and converts every economic disaster into a Toffee-and-Dance spectacle.

Disclaimer: This writeup was generated with the assistance of AI (DeepSeek). While AI has been used to organize and present the information, the facts, data points, and criticisms referenced are based on public reporting and documented analysis. Readers are encouraged to verify claims independently and consult original sources.

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