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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.

The Eye of the Beholder

Updated: Mar 17, 2025


Margaret Wolfe Hungerford wrote the line, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” in her 1878 novel, though several, including Plato, have explored variations of this theme. It is now a well-worn idiom for people agreeing to disagree on the appeal of something, be it a person, a melody, or a work of art. Is beauty inherent, is it perceived, does it exist at all, what is the relationship between art and beauty? Artists have long struggled with such questions.



Meidias Hydria, Athenian red-figure water vase, circa 420 BC
Meidias Hydria, Athenian red-figure water vase, circa 420 BC

The first hurdle lies in defining the concept of beauty. Reading philosophies of aesthetics as postulated by Aristotle, Nietzsche, and other empiricists and rationalists is enough to make one’s head spin. Is beauty a primordial truth contained within the Golden Ratio, which has been superimposed – sometimes inaccurately – on the Parthenon, da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, and Hokusai’s Great Wave of Kanazawa? Is this math applied to works retrospectively a marker of inherent beauty, or merely an interesting, if flawed, coincidence? Johann Winckelmann, often considered the first art historian, believed that unity and simplicity are the two sources of absolute beauty which can only be achieved in man’s artistic creations and not in nature.


Immanuel Kant claimed that to the contrary, ‘true beauty’ can be found only in nature. Poets and artists have embraced this notion with exaltations to the natural universe.


David Hume suggested a complex relationship between the object, its perception, and its comprehension stating, "Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” If it awakens pleasure or passion in the viewer, then that which is being viewed could be termed beautiful, be it a sunset or a work of art. And then there was Keats with his Ode on a Grecian Urn: “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." If you’ve ever looked at a Grecian Urn in a museum, you’ve likely pondered some of these questions. Or perhaps it made little impact in comparison to the Khavda pottery from Gujarat, thought to trace its roots to the Indus Valley civilization. The eye of the beholder, after all.



Rummana Hussain, Earth Picture, 1993
Rummana Hussain, Earth Picture, 1993

The traditional ‘purpose’ of art was to transcend the banal and prosaic, to rise into being sacred and sublime. Statues of gods and goddesses whether Indian or Greek were representations of idealised beauty which was determined within the context of time, place, material, and culture. Cows imbued with metaphoric love in a Pichwai painting can evoke feelings of divine devotion, but only if you have knowledge of the lore. Notwithstanding the treatises of philosophers about the Platonic ideal and a priori truths, much aesthetic taste is a result of conditioning.


The women painted by Flemish artist Peter Paul Reubens in the 1600s have little in common with the women in scroll paintings from the Ming dynasty in China, which lasted until 1644. Whether voluptuous or stylized, each artist was creating what was considered glorious to them and their audience.


Though many even today continue to equate art with beauty, art gradually evolved into the portrayal of “real life,” which of course is not always beautiful, no matter which way you define it. Indeed, much modern and contemporary art would lead one to believe that beauty isn’t top of mind for most artists, no matter where they are in the world. Somnath Hore and Chittaprosad Bhattacharya’s drawings of the 1943 Bengal Famine are heart-wrenching.


Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei says, “Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.” Vivan Sundaram’s politically conscious art raised awareness about many “crises,” as he termed them, including communalism and migration.


Last week, an artist left piglets to starve in a cage at an art show in Copenhagen to make a statement about the mistreatment of animals. The elusive Banksy says, “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable,” his anti-establishment graffiti art presenting ironic commentaries on socio-political absurdities. Rummana Hussain’s broken terracotta pots are a response to the Babri Masjid demolition of 1992 – wouldn’t Keats’ ode to truth and beauty hold true for her work as well, even though the urn she depicts is shattered and in pieces?


The relationship between art and beauty is complicated. George Bernard Shaw said, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” The joy and sadness of the human condition is what makes life magical, and art necessarily responds to both. We can lose ourselves in the dreamworlds of Sakti Burman as deeply as in the nightmares of Hieronymus Bosch. Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin declared, “Beauty will save the world,” but let’s not forget that he was The Idiot of the book title. Idiots, however, sometimes speak profound truths.


One could argue that art which moves viewers to reconsider their reality in any way offers salvation because, to quote acting teacher Stella Adler, “life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” Could there be anything more universally beautiful than rediscovering our humanity?


Vitruvian Man 


Great Wave of Kanazawa 

 

Khavda pottery 

 

Pichwai 

 

Reubens 

 

Somnath Hore 

 

Chittaprosad Bhattacharya 

 

scroll paintings from the Ming dynasty 

 

Sakti Burman 

 

Hieronymus Bosch 

 

(Meera is an architect, author, editor, and artist. Her column meanders through the vibrant world of art, discussing ideas, offering critiques, delving into theory and exploring everything in between and beyond.)

 

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