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By:

Rajendra Joshi

3 December 2024 at 9:20:26 am

The Warning Beyond NEET

The Jantar Mantar protests exposed the widening gap between education, employment and growth. The month-long protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar may have formally ended, but the political and economic questions it raised will linger. Triggered by the NEET paper leak, the movement became a major expression of youth discontent. What began as a demand for a fair examination system became a broader indictment of an economic model that promises opportunity but increasingly fails to deliver...

The Warning Beyond NEET

The Jantar Mantar protests exposed the widening gap between education, employment and growth. The month-long protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar may have formally ended, but the political and economic questions it raised will linger. Triggered by the NEET paper leak, the movement became a major expression of youth discontent. What began as a demand for a fair examination system became a broader indictment of an economic model that promises opportunity but increasingly fails to deliver employment. The government initially treated the protests as a law-and-order issue. That changed when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fountainhead of the ruling establishment, publicly criticised police action and expressed solidarity with the students. The subsequent resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, withdrawal of criminal cases and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's endorsement of the integrity and aspirations of India's Gen Z transformed the political narrative. The issue had moved beyond examination reform to whether India's development model is serving its young citizens. The NEET paper leak was merely the spark. The fuel had accumulated through rising educated unemployment, declining confidence in public institutions and growing frustration among millions of young Indians. Education is increasingly seen as an uncertain investment rather than a guaranteed pathway to opportunity. Every examination scandal reinforces the perception that merit alone is insufficient, while recruitment delays deepen the belief that the system is failing those who have done everything expected of them. India has celebrated its demographic dividend for nearly two decades, projecting its young workforce as its greatest competitive advantage. But demographic dividends are never automatic. They generate prosperity only when education is matched by employment, productivity and rising incomes. Otherwise, they become demographic liabilities that breed frustration rather than growth. The evidence suggests India is approaching that inflection point. GDP has expanded impressively over the past two decades, yet employment has failed to keep pace. Employment elasticity has weakened sharply. During the 1980s, every percentage point of GDP growth generated roughly half a percentage point increase in employment. Today the ratio is estimated at about 0.16, among the lowest for major emerging economies. Growth continues; jobs do not. This disconnect reflects India's growth strategy. Public policy has increasingly favoured capital-intensive industries through subsidies, tax incentives and investment support. Such sectors contribute to output and productivity but generate relatively fewer jobs. Agriculture continues to suffer from incomplete reforms and low productivity. Manufacturing has not expanded fast enough to absorb new workers, while artificial intelligence and automation are reducing opportunities in occupations once regarded as gateways to middle-class prosperity. India thus faces a paradox: it is producing more graduates while creating fewer opportunities to absorb them. The comparison with Asia is instructive. Vietnam and Bangladesh have pursued manufacturing-led growth that has generated substantially higher employment relative to economic expansion. Vietnam's employment-to-population ratio is estimated at nearly three-fourths, compared with about one-half in India. Vietnam has also moved into the upper-middle-income category, while India remains a lower-middle-income economy. These comparisons do not diminish India's achievements. They highlight the urgency of correcting structural weaknesses before they become politically destabilising. History demonstrates the risks of prolonged youth unemployment. The Arab Spring showed how educated but unemployed youth can transform political landscapes. More recently, political instability in Bangladesh and Nepal has reflected frustration among younger populations facing shrinking opportunities. India's democratic institutions are stronger, and its circumstances are different. Yet no democracy can indefinitely ignore the aspirations of its largest demographic group. The significance of Jantar Mantar lies here. India's Gen Z is organised, digitally connected and politically conscious. Social media transformed local grievances into a national movement within days, while traditional political parties largely responded after the sentiment had acquired independent momentum. The RSS intervention further complicated the government's challenge. Once protesting students found resonance within the ideological ecosystem closest to the ruling establishment, the issue ceased to be a partisan confrontation. It became an internal warning that India's youth expect credible institutions, transparent examinations and, above all, meaningful employment. The Centre's examination reforms are necessary but insufficient. Restoring the credibility of competitive examinations addresses only one symptom. The larger challenge is to redesign India's growth strategy around employment. Labour-intensive manufacturing, support for small and medium enterprises, investment in skills, higher-education reform and greater attention to employment outcomes must become central to economic planning. The Jantar Mantar agitation should not be remembered simply as the NEET protests. It marked a moment when India's youngest generation questioned the assumptions underlying the country's development model. Governments can manage protests and reform examinations. But unless economic growth translates into broad-based employment, similar movements will return. India's demographic dividend remains its greatest opportunity. It could equally become its greatest challenge. The warning has been delivered. The question is whether policymakers are prepared to listen.

Bofors Scam: ‘Nobody believes 18.5 pc was not paid’

Updated: Mar 12, 2025


Bofors Scam

Journalist and author Chitra Subramaniam has asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to make public its discoveries from the "box of evidence" received from Switzerland on Bofors payoffs which, the former officers said, were used in the probe and submitted before the court as evidence in its charge sheet.


She questioned the official narrative regarding the alleged bribe in the Bofors case, suggesting the sum of Rs 64 crore may not reflect the full extent of the corruption."I don't believe, nobody believes that 18.5 per cent was not paid. We're going around saying 64 crore, 64 crore, 64 crore. What is the real percentage? Because Sten Lindstrom (former head of Swedish police) doesn't believe it was 3 per cent. Why would such a large democracy stand on its head for so little money?" she said.


The author of 'Boforsgate: A Journalist's Pursuit of Truth' said, "We should be told who opened the box, when it was opened, what was in the boxes." She also wondered if the commission in the deal was 18 per cent, as suggested by the evidence Swedish firm Bofors gave to the Indian government. "Secondly, why would George Fernandez, who was then the defence minister, tell me at the end of 1999 that he was told by Brijesh Mishra not to open the box?" Subramaniam, who has remained firm in her stance on the issue, said, "The CBI is saying what it has to say. I have to say what I have to say." Former Director General of Rajasthan Police, O P Galhotra, who played an important role in the Bofors case during his tenure with the CBI, said the agency filed a charge sheet based on documents received from Switzerland.


"It is crucial to understand that these documents were transferred from a Swiss court to an Indian court, with the boxes opened at the direction of the designated court," he said in a reply to questions from PTI. "The boxes were opened, and everything was examined. Indeed, the documents were crucial and critical that prompted the agency to file a supplementary charge sheet."


While declining to engage in discussions regarding the author of a recent book on the subject, the 1985-batch IPS officer, who served in the CBI from 1996 to 2004 and later from 2008 to 2015, affirmed that investigators are accountable to the courts. "A charge sheet is submitted in court and is considered a public document."


The Bofors documents were transferred to India by a three-member team, led by the ex-CBI Director Joginder Singh, and were submitted to Additional Sessions Judge Ajit Bharihoke at the Tis Hazari complex. The claims in Subramaniam's book have not been independently verified. Subramaniam said that the CBI planted stories about Hindi film actor Amitabh Bachchan to derail the investigation and launched a political vendetta against the Bachchans.


She recalled that Bachchan had come to her home and asked if she had seen his name. "They tried to derail the investigation in a massive way. And then we found out there was absolutely nothing on the Bachchans," Subramaniam said.


"He is a star by himself. He needs neither political patronage nor money. They were trying to bring him down. All governments were trying to bring him down, from Rajiv Gandhi to V P Singh. And you know, I think people are just jealous of this man. He doesn't need anyone," she said.


When asked about possible links between the Bofors scandal and the Gandhi family, Subramaniam said she was not sure about Rajiv Gandhi, but the money reached Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi.


"I know it reached Mr Quattrocchi. First, there was a bank in Zurich, the Nord Finance Bank, and then from there, it touched the money. And then it went to Geneva. And then his wife came into the account," she said.


Regarding the CBI's recent request for assistance from the United States, Subramaniam said, "And now I'm reading in some papers that there is a Letter of Rogatory (LR) that's going to the United States. Why not Sweden? After all, this is the biggest investigation. I find it strange that the Indian investigators don't want to connect with Swedish investigators. Why?" On Wednesday, officials said that the CBI had sent a judicial request to the US seeking information from private investigator Michael Hershman, who had expressed willingness to share with Indian agencies crucial details about the Rs 64-crore Bofors bribery scandal from the 1980s.


Hershman, head of the Fairfax Group, visited India in 2017 to attend a conference of private detectives. During his stay, he appeared on various platforms, alleging that the investigation into the scam had been derailed by the then Congress government and stated he was willing to share details with the CBI. He claimed in an interview that he was appointed by the Union Finance Ministry in 1986 for investigation of violation of currency control laws and money laundering by Indians abroad and tracking of such assets outside India, and some of them pertained to the Bofors deal.


The agency took note of Hershman's claims in several interviews and announced in 2017 that the matter would be investigated according to due process. The need for Letters Rogatory arose because letters and reminders to the US authorities on November 8, 2023, December 21, 2023, May 13, 2024, and August 14, 2024, did not yield any information. Subramaniam's book delves into the Bofors scandal, a major bribery case involving the Indian government and the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors in the 1980s. The scam pertains to allegations of a Rs 64-crore bribe in a Rs 1,437-crore deal with Bofors for the supply of 400 155mm field Howitzers, which played a significant role in India's victory during the Kargil war.


The CBI filed the charge sheets in 1999 and 2000. The Delhi High Court exonerated Rajiv Gandhi in 2004, nearly 13 years after he was assassinated by the LTTE in a suicide attack. In 2005, the Delhi High Court quashed all charges against the remaining accused, noting that the CBI failed to prove that the money transferred by Bofors to various agents by Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi was meant to be paid as a bribe to public servants in India.


The CBI appealed against the 2005 decision in the apex court in 2018, but it was dismissed on the grounds of delay. The Supreme Court, however, allowed it to raise all the points in an appeal filed by advocate Ajay Aggarwal in 2005.


PTI

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