Where Dan Ariely's 'Humour' Argument Meets Indian Politics

Shortly after the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) was founded in response to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India, Surya Kant, referring to unemployed young people in India as cockroaches and parasites, political scientist Sumantra Bose had said that the country was starved of political satire and humour.

Although Kant later said that his comment was not directed at the entire youth population, US-based Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old millennial student at Boston University, launched CJP and flew back to India to seize a political opportunity, demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over a series of exam leaks and irregularities in the marking system.

Dipke himself had said that he started CJP as an online platform “as a joke” before it went on to mobilise a large number of people and capture India’s public imagination. It resulted not only in the resignation of Pradhan but also in the fear of the powerful receding massively as Gen Z protesters poked fun at people whom many others assumed could not be mocked. It continues despite the backlash. CJP had attracted two million followers in the first 72 hours of its launch, 10 million in the first five days and touched 19 million within six days of its mid-May 2026 launch.

Bose had said shortly thereafter, “Ours is a country in which politicians and other establishment figures are notoriously devoid of anything remotely resembling a sense of humour, let alone self-deprecating wit.” He went on, “The CJP spoof is a welcome response to the puffed-up self-importance – and complete lack of self-reflection – of those who believe they are our leaders and moral guides. That especially applies in this case to the thin-skinned eminences who sanctimoniously lecture the rest of us daily from the pulpit of ‘justice’.”

Now, more people, including students, the public and behavioural scientists, are in agreement with Bose’s view that there should be more humour in Indian politics.

Asked generally about how important the use of humour, even if it is dark, is in dire situations, politically and individually, globally acclaimed behavioural economist and best-selling author Dan Ariely asserts that we should add humour to difficult conversations. “Why? Because humour is really a way to help us deal with difficult topics. There are lots of difficult topics that we don't want to deal with, that are unpleasant, and humour makes them slightly less difficult. Like the spoonful of sugar. Should we add humour to difficult conversations? I think the answer is yes. I think it makes the whole thing more digestible,” states Ariely, who is the James B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University and whose bestselling books include Dollars and Sense; Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions; The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home; and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves.

Does it come naturally to humans as a way to tide over crisis situations?

Ariely responds, “Of course, you can go with humour that is too soon or too strong or too painful. I'm not giving you here a request to add all humour to all conversations. But I think that humour as a way to deal with complexity is one of the most important things. Okay, to more humour in conversations, even in difficult ones.”

Ariely, who pronounces his surname as ‘oh really’, was born in New York but emigrated to Israel aged three. An alumnus of Tel Aviv University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Duke University, he was previously Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and at the MIT Media Lab. He is married to Sumedha Gupta, an assistant professor at Duke University, with whom he has two children. The acclaimed economist went through a painful period of prolonged hospitalisation and trauma as a teenager after he suffered third-degree burns over almost 70% of his body in an accident. Years later, he said that those years of his life inspired him to study human behaviour.

He had, in an earlier interview, hit out against the growing trend of self-deception among the global ruling class. “There is a real risk that governments will congratulate themselves on things that they haven't done and figure out that they don't need to do the real thing,” he had said, adding, “And we all know that a lot of governments in the world have a lot of things they actually need to do, and I worry that flattery could substitute.”