Will the government’s policy response to last week’s developments at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi yield the desired results? Will it prevent any more such protests by young Indians?
The government’s immediate response to the agitation was flawed. It chose not to engage with the stakeholders, including the affected parties, and instead cracked down on the young agitators with brutal police force. It was only when the agitation became widespread that the government chose to accept major demands of the agitators — that the education minister should quit — and came out with announcements on reforming the examination system conducted by the National Testing Agency and introducing stringent legal provisions against those convicted of examination paper leaks.
It is likely that more reforms in the education system will be introduced as the government begins to assess the unrest among young people in the country. More visible steps may also be taken to address the demand for salaried jobs for young people. Remember that it was largely an electoral setback that pushed the government to initiate a few schemes for jobs. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did not win enough seats in the 2024 elections to form a government on its own and it had to rely on its alliance partners to retain power in New Delhi for a third consecutive term.
Unsurprisingly, the government’s first Budget, presented in July 2024, unveiled an ambitious package of schemes to facilitate employment, skilling and other opportunities for 41 million young people at a financial outlay of Rs 2 trillion. These included an internship scheme under which the top 500 companies could volunteer to provide one-year-long internship opportunities to 10 million young people over five years. The scheme was to initially run for two years with an internship allowance of Rs 5,000 per month, along with a one-time assistance of Rs 6,000 to be provided by the government. Companies were expected to bear the training cost, 10 per cent of which could be met through their corporate social responsibility funds. A year later, the Union Cabinet cleared these schemes.
Not much is known about how these schemes have fared on the ground, although a senior journalist, Indulekha Aravind, found, based on a reply to an application filed under the Right to Information Act, that the internship scheme performed poorly. Till April 30, companies had posted only 297,000 internship opportunities, which was just about 10 per cent of the two-year target. Actual offers were even lower at 173,000. Of those who received offers, only 18,000 showed up for work, and only 5,200 stayed till the end of their internship. Less than one per cent of what was initially allocated for five years of the internship scheme was spent till March 2026. Almost half of what was spent went towards promoting and advertising the scheme.
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It is reasonable to deduce that these job schemes were announced in 2024 because the government was worried about the electoral costs it might incur if it allowed popular resentment over the lack of adequate jobs and employment opportunities to grow. But those concerns did not appear to be as pressing for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s leaders after the party began winning elections in the following years.
Results of the Assembly elections in October and November 2024 had certainly helped it repair some of the damage it had incurred in the general elections held earlier in May that year. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) retained the states of Maharashtra and Haryana, overcoming the headwinds of anti-incumbency. The BJP appeared to be back on a stronger political footing with its performance in the Bihar Assembly elections in 2025. In 2026, it not only retained Assam, but also won West Bengal.
With these electoral gains in its pocket, the BJP-led government in New Delhi did not appear as worried over jobs as it was immediately after the general elections in 2024. But the protest over leaked examination papers was not just about a flawed system of holding tests for admitting young students into different educational institutions. It was also about shrinking job opportunities and the lack of salaried jobs in a market already impacted by technology and artificial intelligence. Fixing the examination system alone, therefore, will not be adequate to address the angst of the youth.
A bigger challenge lies in generating an adequate number of jobs for an economy where over 29 per cent of the population is in the 18 to 29 age group. To believe that Jantar Mantar protests were led only by young students will be a mistake. The young students were helped and supported by this larger cohort of the population between 18 and 29 years, a segment electorally large enough to make a difference to election results in the coming few years.
It is easier to identify a challenge as intricate and formidable as creating jobs. Facing up to the challenge requires greater resolve. What the government attempted in 2024 is perhaps worth a fresh look. Experts had pointed out many gaps in the internship schemes announced by the government two years ago. Those gaps should be plugged without any further delay. For instance, internship schemes should be conceived keeping in mind the specific needs of different cities and towns. A young job-seeker from a southern state cannot be expected to undergo an internship in a company in a northern state or vice versa.
Similarly, the need for more schemes that create skilling opportunities should be embraced with greater commitment and should not be ignored once they cease to be an electoral concern. If the government wishes that protests like the one that took place at Jantar Mantar during the last few weeks should not recur, it must refocus its energies on jobs, not just the examination system.
AK Bhattacharya is the Editorial Director of Business Standard. He tweets @AshokAkaybee. Views are personal.
Well, you know, I am obsessed with pulling out 2014 campaign slogans like a broken jukebox that only plays one song. I grew up with “Garibi Hatao, Desh Bachao”. We achieved it in 2013. Garibi was gone. Desh was saved. We were #1 in the world but then 2014 turned it all upside down.
Uncle A is still measuring the entire Indian economy by 1980s factory headcount numbers. Completely blind to the massive surge in tech infrastructure, electronics manufacturing, digital economy, and millions brought into the formal workforce. But no… if it doesn’t fit his textbook definition from twenty years ago, it “doesn’t exist.”
Paper leaks are a serious administrative and legal failure that need to be crushed… but using them as an excuse to peddle old political talking points isn’t economic analysis… it’s just lazy doom-posting.
Bottom line is this… Uncle A’s economic vision is stuck in a 2014 time capsule… endless complaining, zero real-world context, and a desperate need to turn every single local problem into an apocalyptic lecture.
Education as a precursor to Employment. That promise of two crore jobs a year swept the election in 2014. Based on raising the share of manufacturing in GDP from 16 to 25%. Neither has been delivered.