'Delulu', 'Clock it': 'Cockroach' protest brings Gen Z slang to India's parliament

'Delulu', 'Clock it': 'Cockroach' protest brings Gen Z slang to India's parliamentImage source, AFPImage caption, Tens of thousands of young people participated in the protests led by the Cockroach Janta PartyByZoya MateenBBC News, DelhiPublished1 hour agoThe language of India's young, perpetually-online population has finally reached one of its oldest institutions.Days after a youth-led protest movement forced the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, India's parliament found itself speaking the protesters' language."Delulu." "FOMO." "Clock it."Until recently, those words belonged to Instagram comment sections, group chats and meme pages. On Tuesday, they echoed across the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) instead.As MPs debated a new anti-exam leak bill, introduced by the government after weeks of protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), Gen Z slang flew freely through the chamber.Shiv Sena party's Shrikant Shinde accused the opposition of being "MIA" - missing in action - gripped by "FOMO", or the fear of missing out, before eventually becoming "delulu", Gen Z shorthand for detached from reality. Congress leader Deepender Singh Hooda, meanwhile, invoked the viral protest catchphrase "waste-guna-huiya" - a deliberately nonsensical meme popularised during the demonstrations - to poke fun at the government.Government lawmakers embraced the internet's lexicon too. Bansuri Swaraj of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) declared that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had "clocked it" - Gen Z slang for getting something right or spotting the solution - by introducing the law. Her fellow MP Tejasvi Surya accused the opposition of being "delulu" for criticising the bill after failing to pass similar reforms while in power.Across the aisle, opposition leader Supriya Sule briefly stepped outside the d...