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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 Perennial Outlier

As Congress’s most erudite contrarian Shashi Tharoor courts controversy within his party once again, speculation mounts on will he stay, or will he cross the Rubicon?

Shashi Tharoor has never been one to retreat from an unpopular opinion or acknowledge. Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue yesterday, the Congress MP and author admitted to a misjudgment that left him with “egg on his face.” Tharoor, who criticized India’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, now conceded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s balancing act between Moscow and Kyiv was, in fact, a diplomatic coup. That confession lauding Modi, delivered with Tharoor’s characteristic eloquence, has predictably upset his own party while delighting the BJP.


The BJP’s Sambit Patra, never one to miss an opportunity for schadenfreude, called on Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge to acknowledge the wisdom of their own maverick MP.


Having only recently endured a furore over Tharoor’s unvarnished praise of the Left-led Kerala government’s industrial policy, the Congress seems resigned to his occasional rebellions.


Tharoor, for his part, has denied any intent to switch sides, citing “stark ideological differences” with the BJP. And yet, the murmurs persist. After all, Tharoor has spent years navigating Congress’s factional waters, his intellectual independence often putting him at odds with the party’s old guard. In 2022, he dared to challenge the party establishment by contesting the Congress presidency, facing off against Kharge who was the Gandhi family’s anointed choice. He lost, but the act itself was an assertion that he was not content to be a mere ornament in the Congress.


His history of friction with the party is long and storied. His “cattle class” remark in 2009, which was an acerbic response to a question about economy-class travel during the UPA’s austerity drive, had earned him a sharp rebuke. His stay at a five-star hotel, alongside then External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna had landed him in hot water with the government. In 2010, his role in securing a stake for his late wife, Sunanda Pushkar, in an IPL franchise forced his resignation as a junior minister. And in 2014, Pushkar’s sudden death in a Delhi hotel room threw him into a vortex of legal battles and personal tragedy, culminating in his 2021 acquittal in a murder case.


Yet, despite the controversies (or perhaps because of them) Tharoor has remained an electoral force. Since 2009, he has won four consecutive Lok Sabha elections from Thiruvananthapuram, defying critics who long dismissed him as an elite intellectual with little grassroots appeal. He commands a distinct support base of urbane, educated persons often disillusioned with the Congress’s traditional politics. His literary flourish, his Oxford-inflected baritone and his technocratic approach to governance set him apart in a party still steeped in dynastic and caste equations.


But being a perennial outlier has its costs. In Kerala, Tharoor’s recent remarks about the Congress’s lack of grassroots leadership rankled the state unit, which is already wary of his unpredictable streak. His praise of the Left’s industrial policy was seen as an unnecessary provocation, triggering suspicions about his long-term allegiance. That his latest comments lauding PM Modi on India’s foreign policy only adds to the intrigue.


Tharoor has insisted he is a Congress loyalist, describing himself as a “classic liberal” rather than an ideologue. But the lingering question is how long can a man of his intellectual autonomy and impatient of any party orthodoxy remain tethered to a party that seldom celebrates dissent?


Tharoor’s political career, like his prose, is complex, layered and full of contradictions. Whether he stays within the Congress to challenge its ossified structures or charts a new course altogether, one thing is certain: Shashi Tharoor will not fade into the background. He never has.

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