JANTAR MANTAR VIOLENCE-ACTUAL YOUTH PROBLEM -DEGREES AND EDUCATION NOT GIVING JOBS

 

JANTAR MANTAR VIOLENCE-ACTUAL YOUTH PROBLEM -DEGREES AND EDUCATION NOT GIVING JOBS

Main Idea

India’s real youth crisis is not just exam malpractice like the NEET paper leak, but a deeper structural problem: the country keeps producing educated yet underemployed young people whose degrees do not translate into employable skills or stable livelihoods. This mismatch creates frustration that can be easily exploited by protest movements and ideological mobilisers.

Protest and Its Drift

The original NEET protest had a legitimate grievance because students were harmed by administrative failure, and the government’s quick response was partly justified. But the protest later expanded beyond exam reform into a broader political and ideological agitation, with slogans and participants that the writer sees as divisive, inflammatory, and detached from the original issue.

The Root Cause

The central argument is that highly educated but jobless or underemployed youth have historically been fertile ground for radical politics, and India is no exception. The article compares India with Russia, China, Iran, Peru, and the Naxalite movement to show that frustration among credentialed youth often fuels unrest when economic opportunity does not match educational expansion.

India’s Education Problem

The piece criticizes India’s higher-education system for producing large numbers of graduates, especially from Tier II and Tier III colleges, whose degrees have little market value. It also argues that some faculty members encourage activism rather than serious scholarship, while many students are pushed into degrees that raise social status but not employability.

Why Youth Are Angry

Many graduates look down on vocational or skilled trades even when those jobs offer better pay and security. At the same time, government jobs remain disproportionately attractive because of security, prestige, and limited accountability, which encourages endless exam preparation instead of productive work or entrepreneurship.

Suggested Reforms

The tightening college accreditation, expanding vocational and polytechnic education, reducing the obsession with single high-stakes exams, and making business formation easier. It also calls for strong punishment for paper leaks, while arguing that the deeper solution is to create an education system and economy that give young people real career pathways.

Final Message

unless India fixes the education-to-employment pipeline, it will keep generating frustrated youth who can be drawn into agitation whenever the next crisis appears. In the writer’s view, the NEET leak was only the trigger; the real problem is a system that manufactures grievance at scale.