Recent student-led protests over exam paper leaks and scarce jobs are not only about administrative failure. They reveal an economy in which too many educated young people are competing for too few routes to work that offer status, security and mobility.
It is not that jobs are not being created. Between 2018-19 and 2025, the share of working-age Indians in employment rose from 47% to 56.2%, adding an estimated 104 mn workers. But more than 40 mn entered agriculture, almost entirely as self-employed - the reverse of the shift out of low-productivity farming that normally accompanies structural transformation. Services added the most jobs outside agriculture, about 30 mn, though these include both aspirational, formal, high-paying work and low-paid, informal work.
