Funding & Transparency.
A satire project that demands transparency from power had better practise it. Here is the whole operation, in the open.
The short version
Who owns and runs this
This website is owned and operated by Shivam Panchal, an independent developer, as a personal project. There is no company, trust, society, NGO, or registered political party behind it. The Cockroach Janta Party is a creative identity — not a legal entity, and not registered with the Election Commission of India.
How it is funded
- The developer’s own pocket — the default source for every bill.
- Voluntary support payments — visitors who choose to can contribute via the Support the Developer page (UPI or PayPal), governed by the Support Policy and Refund Policy.
What the project does not take:
- No political-party, campaign, or candidate funding.
- No election funding or foreign political contributions.
- No corporate sponsorships, advertising, or paid placements.
- No investors and no monetisation of member data — data is never sold or rented.
Where the money goes
Support payments fund website costs: hosting, domain renewals, database and media infrastructure, security, and development tools. A disclosed-costs ledger on the support page publishes these expenses as they are recorded. Nothing is spent on political activity — there is no political activity to spend on.
The infrastructure
For the technically curious, the stack this project pays for and relies on:
- Vercel — application hosting and delivery.
- Turso — the database holding members, articles, and community content.
- Cloudinary — image and video storage and delivery.
- Google Analytics / Ads tags — traffic measurement, consent-gated (see the Cookie Policy).
- Cloudflare Turnstile — anti-spam checks on forms.
- Google sign-in — optional authentication for members.
What each processor sees of your data is documented in the Privacy Policy.
Editorial independence
Funding and editorial are firewalled by structure: since the only money is the developer’s own plus voluntary support that buys nothing, there is no sponsor to please and no advertiser to protect. Support payments confer no editorial influence at any amount — a rule stated in the Editorial Policy and enforced by the person who would have to break it.
Honest numbers
Where the site shows a member count, it is the count of sign-ups on this website (including members imported from the project’s earlier site) — a community figure, not an electoral roll, and not a claim of political support. The Cockroach Tracker distinguishes total members from members with known locations rather than pretending the map is complete.
Asking us about any of this
Questions about funding, data, or operations: contact@thecockroachjantaparty.org.in. Formal complaints and DPDP data requests go through the grievance channel.