In late December 1973, students in Gujarat protested higher food bills in their college dining halls. In January, engineering students burned their dining hall and ransacked the rector’s home. The rioting spread. A coalition of mainly white-collar workers called for an Ahmedabad bandh. A teachers’ union, driven by grievances over low salaries and stagnant careers, joined the call. Despite brutal police suppression, and supported by the city’s beleaguered residents, Ahmedabad shut down almost completely.
That mass protest, more than half a century ago, began as a cry against a broken education system and joblessness, which made life’s necessities unaffordable. It quickly turned into a call to eradicate the cancer of corruption in Gujarat politics. United under the banner of Nav Nirman (Rebuild), the students demanded chief minister Chimanbhai Patel's resignation—the latest symbol of political corruption. When the army appeared on Ahmedabad’s streets, the protestors were not intimidated; they offered the befuddled soldiers sweets and tea.
On 9 February, chief minister Patel resigned. The students insisted the state assembly must also be disbanded. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was reluctant. Her Congress Party held an overwhelming majority. But with nearly one hundred dead and thousands injured, she caved.
The recent “Cockroach Janata Party” (CJP) protests were a modern expression of that same frustration over dismal education and job prospects, this time amid ballooning education (and housing) costs, again making life prospects frightening. The triggers and context were different; the pathology remained unchanged.
For so long we have failed to clean this rot. The country’s demographic dividend has vanished into the sand, as so many young people struggle simply to survive.
The cry for such survival draws elite contempt. The Supreme Court Chief Justice’s comparison of India’s unemployed youth to “parasites” and “cockroaches” unsurprisingly rubbed raw nerves. Abhijeet Dipke, a master’s graduate in public relations from Boston University, fired up a social media storm. That movement gained momentum after the leak of exam questions for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)—the undergraduate screening for medical students.
Ultimately, 2.3 million students had to retake the exam, an ordeal that led about a dozen to commit suicide. Brutal police charges on protestors in Delhi inflamed students across the country. As in 1973, the new generation sustained its movement with humour and grit.
The historical parallels are clear. Does history tell us what might happen in today’s India?
Pyrhhic Victories
In the 1970s, the anger moved rapidly beyond Gujarat. That was, after all, the era of the “angry young man,” reflected in Indian cinema. It wasn’t just Hindi films; in Bengal, Satyajit Ray’s 1970 film Pratidwandi spotlighted the inhumanity of job interviews—the competitive exams of their day. In his 1976 Jan Aranya (The Human Jungle), Ray dwelt on a man whose hopes literally slip on a banana peel, plunging him into the darkness that descends when the funnel to success clogs. Ritwik Ghatak’s Nagrik portrayed the pathos of a man repeatedly uplifted by a new job prospect, only to be crushed as it slipped away.
The Gujarat anger spread to Bihar, and from there—through Jayaprakash Narayan’s Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution)—to Delhi. That eventually led, via the detour of the Emergency, to a new government in 1977. But nothing changed. The political class had remained the same.
Today, the CJP has claimed the scalp of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. That was virtually the end of their demands. With the problem festering for over 50 years, why should there be any hope for more?
Yet, many are celebrating. Sonam Wangchuk—the activist who awed the nation with his 26-day hunger strike in support of the students—declared Pradhan’s resignation a “victory for democracy.” Arvind Kejriwal chimed in, calling it a “big win for democracy.” Uddhav Thackeray cosmically proclaimed the protesters as an “avatar of Lord Vishnu.”
Arundhati Roy does remember the history. She conceded we have a “mountain of shit” to climb. But she was hopeful: “I can die in peace. I will die smiling.” We must focus not on her hope, but on the persisting mountain she spoke of—however odious its sight, smell, and touch. There are ways forward, but this flash-in-the-pan approach is doomed to disappointment.
The Mountain We Must Climb
Since the early 2000s, primary school enrollment in India has been nearly universal, yet most students never master basic second- or third-grade lessons. This early learning deficit compounds through middle school, leaving students entirely unprepared for high school. The numbers speak: out of a 25 million annual cohort of school-leaving age (about 17 years old), 40% (10 million) drop out before completing high school. Another 5 million drop out before finishing college, leaving just 10 million able to pursue higher education.
Competition among these 10 million survivors is fierce. This year, 2.3 million took the NEET medical exam; 150,000 were admitted. Similarly, 1.5 million vied for engineering slots, resulting in fewer than 20,000 IIT placements and 50,000 admissions to other reputable engineering colleges.
Another 1.2 million students sat for the Common University Entrance Test (CUET-UG), chasing 300,000 non-medical/non-engineering seats at India’s “premier” public universities. “Premier,” though, is relative to the Indian context. Under the affiliated-college model, teaching standards and infrastructure vary drastically from one campus to the next, even within top-tier systems. Compounding the issue, this year's CUET was plagued by technical failures and infrastructure glitches, forcing emergency retests for nearly 4,000 stranded candidates.
To recap: out of 25 million 17-year-olds, many take multiple tests, leaving perhaps only about 4 million unique students—16% of the cohort—to compete for coveted college spots. Of those, only 520,000 emerged this year with a seat in a desirable medical, engineering, or general-stream program. Thus, only two out of every hundred youngsters who were born nearly at the same time secured a pathway to a good job.
At this stage, students are already virtually condemned to a class hierarchy. The 220,000 entering either medical or engineering colleges have the highest expectations for lifetime earnings. Aided by private tuition and draconian coaching classes—supported by anxious parents, many of whom have taken debts that were a gamble—they now must compete with some of their best peers. With the stakes so high, they are understandably anxious about corruption and institutional apathy that threaten their future. But these are the lucky ones. They, as in Ray’s Pratidwandi, pass the interview.
The next group, those who won seats through the CUET-UG, can also hope. Some will blossom and achieve intellectual and financial distinction. But this group also faces the risk of (possibly severe) disappointment and failure.
The ‘TimePass’ Students
The rest of the demographic bulge slowly burns itself out. Approximately 9.5 million students this year, as in previous years, are aspirants who wish to pursue college but do not make the cut in the three national exams.
They disappear into the miasma of second- and third-tier public universities and, more likely, dubious private universities. Some—through hard work and good fortune—build successful careers. But virtually all are ill-prepared and study at substandard colleges. An entire ecosystem preys on them.
As early as 2012, a Washington Post investigation reported that “poorly regulated, unaccredited and often entirely fake colleges have sprung up as demand for higher education accelerates.” They charge stiff prices to award certification, including for medical and law degrees. The University Grants Commission maintains a public warning system and regularly publishes a list of fake colleges and universities.
These are the timepass students, as the anthropologist-geographer Craig Jeffrey described them 15 years ago. They acquire one useless degree after another, while playing the roulette of public sector jobs, each time through the grinder of competitive exams. They apply in the hundreds of thousands, even millions—with allegedly advanced degrees—for low-level jobs, such as for clerks, peons, constables, and guards, to gain the security of the public sector. They are represented most vividly today in the ongoing Jharkhand students’ protests.
Every exam for a public-sector job since Jharkhand was formed in 2000 has been tainted, a coaching centre coordinator alleges. A student, “preparing for years” for the elite Jharkhand Public Service exam, complained “Even the constable’s exam is sold.” The Hindu writes. “Many protesters are in their late twenties, early thirties. Some graduated nearly a decade ago. Their lives have been measured by postponed exams, cancelled recruitments and endless preparation cycles.” They are the incarnations of Ritwick Ghatak’s Nagrik, ever hopeful, perpetually disappointed. Several disappointments later, they fall, as in Ray’s Jan Aranya, into the jungle of the informal sector.
And finally, the fourth group (about 15 million) are those who dropped out in high school or just after. They have no choice other than the jungle.
Life Inside A Black Hole
Many are surprised that the “unemployment rate” in India is higher for college graduates than for non-graduates. As the late Ajit Ghose explained, those who survived college likely have financial reserves through family safety nets. They can afford to be unemployed. The rest cannot. They are not technically “unemployed”, but they struggle in the informal sector, performing low-productivity tasks, with long downtimes, earning near-subsistence wages. As India’s surplus labour army, they bid down wages for all.
The education funnel maps into the job market. India has one billion working-age people—those between 15 and 64. About 40% of them do not report being either employed or seeking work. They are in a black hole. Just under half of the rest are in agriculture, where the most impressive recent growth has been in “unpaid” female labour. Altogether, about 90% of the workforce is in the informal sector, much of that in agriculture and the rest in low-end service jobs. “Self-employment” is the norm in the informal sector, almost always a self-characterisation to retain some dignity.
For generations, Indian society has failed to transform aspiration into programmatic politics. An education minister’s resignation does nothing to remedy repeated failures that have condemned all but a lucky handful to a bleak future.
Where lies the Achilles heel?
Teachers, Teachers, Teachers
The heartbeat that needs reviving is quality teachers. Student learning is primarily a function of teacher quality. Stanford University’s Erik Hanushek, the preeminent economist of education, writes: replacing 5-8% of America’s worst-quality teachers with those who are just average would take the U.S. from its current free fall to near “the top of international math and science rankings”; lifetime earnings of students would increase by $100 trillion. That message applies even more forcefully to India.
Again, history is a litany of failures. Expert reports—beginning with the Anand Sarup Committee in 2000—have repeatedly trained their fire on the regulator, the National Council for Teacher Education, the agency that certifies teacher training colleges. In 2007, the Sudeep Banerjee Committee recommended disbanding the NCTE. As India Today wrote then, teacher training had become a “breeding ground for corruption,” with many of the 8000-odd colleges issuing fake certificates.
Nevertheless, in 2009, the UPA government’s education minister, Kapil Sibal, vetoed the proposal to shut down the NCTE. In 2012, the Justice J S Verma Commission echoed the criticisms of the NCTE and teacher-training colleges. The report concluded that more than 10,000 teacher-training institutes were “essentially selling degrees for a price.”
The 2016 TSR Subramaniam Committee tried to shake things up. It said, “The poor quality of school education is a direct result of poor quality of teacher education and teacher training,” adding that “State Governments and NCTE [had become] partners in the proliferation of [teacher education] colleges, which were nothing but degree shops.” Inevitably, “Our education system has paid a heavy price for neglect of teacher education.”
For decades, everyone has pointed to the same problem and highlighted the path forward. No change occurs.
In 2026, India’s teaching profession is in a dismal state, the NITI Aayog says. Government school teachers are overloaded with “non-teaching duties such as surveys, election work, or administrative reporting, which reduces instructional time.” Teachers are not prepared for “classroom realities”; they do not know enough to teach basic arithmetic, science, and reading skills. Especially in private schools, teachers are paid poorly, have limited benefits, and lack job security.
The Only Path To Upward Mobility
Teaching remains a low-prestige profession. The increasing reliance on teachers with short-term, temporary contracts has further downgraded the profession. It has hurt students: contract teachers are badly educated and have no reason to better themselves.
These school-level problems are mercilessly passed on to colleges. Poor-quality school teachers deliver poorly educated children, who become poorly educated college teachers, who teach those who end up as school teachers. The Reporters’ Collective alleges that recruitment and promotions even at the elite Jawaharlal University are an ongoing scam. The student is the victim.
Instead of dealing with these problems, we have dodged them. Indian education today is massively privatised via private schools, private tuitions, and an unregulated, suicide-inducing coaching industry. Families bear an increasingly intolerable financial burden, yet without prospects for improved learning.
Technology has been the other siren call.
Rajiv Gandhi vowed to place a computer in every classroom. An edtech wave, led by Byju’s—valued at $22 billion in March 2022—promised to transform learning. But Byju’s aggressive, possibly unethical, sales pitches added to the financial burden of aspirational families, who turned against the company once they realised how hollow its promise was. A Delaware court has placed its eponymous owner in default to creditors and rebuked him for “breathtaking” refusal to answer its “basic and cogent questions.” What remains of “edtech” has merged into the giant coaching industry. Whatever the technology, the teacher is the lynchpin.
In 1930, Rabindranath Tagore mournfully wrote, “In my view the imposing tower of misery which today rests on the heart of India has its sole foundation in the absence of education.” Nearly a century later, why is our so-called democracy unable to produce teachers who can and will teach—and without whom India is forgoing the only reliable path to upward mobility for all?
The Tragedy Of 'Invisible’ Tasks
Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen distinguished between visible and invisible policies and actions. The Indian state responds quickly and effectively to famines, but it lets hunger and malnutrition persist. Famines are disturbingly visible. Any government would be morally and politically culpable for failing to eliminate the threat. But who is responsible for hunger and malnutrition, especially when they stem from a bundle of failures: the quantity and quality of food, water quality, nutrition education, and mothers' agency?
Politics responds well to two types of visible goals. Tilak’s message of freedom was one example: स्वराज्य हा माझा जन्मसिद्ध हक्क आहे आणि तो मी मिळवणारच, Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it. It was a universal, and morally compelling call. Gandhi had his own metaphors and mobilised large masses in the cause of freedom.
Martin Luther King Jr. fought for black dignity, and Nelson Mandela fought to end the scourge of apartheid. At the spectrum’s other end, New York city’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has a visible goal: affordability. Behind that goal are monitorable actions: free childcare, lower housing costs, and free bus rides, funded by a popular tax on the rich. You don’t need a Tilak-Gandhi-sized moral goal if you can translate policy into tangible improvements people can see and measure.
Education and jobs are different. They cannot be boiled down to a large moral calling or to single, measurable tasks. Multiple interlocking efforts coordinated by numerous people over generations make and sustain an education system and a job-creation machine.
Quality teachers emerge from teacher training, which equips them with the skills and subject knowledge they need. Teachers need to be effectively recruited and compensated, and they must have prospects for career progression and social respect. Alongside teacher quality, a good education system relies on bringing children to school, ensuring good nutrition, creating safe neighbourhoods, and strengthening school leadership.
Accountability for each of these interlocking tasks is inherently diffuse, creating a strong incentive to deflect the hard work.
Indian education has thus become synonymous with infrastructure roll-outs, foundation-laying ceremonies, and slogans. Monumental structures have proliferated amid acute teacher shortages in schools, state universities (where two out of five positions are vacant), and even higher-regarded central universities (where three out of 10 positions are vacant). Some medical colleges and IITs struggle with alarmingly high numbers of vacant teaching positions. This is not a shortage at the margins; it runs through the educational ecosystem. Networks of patronage and corruption flourish to fill the gaps.
Where do you begin to correct this broken education system? Is there any appetite for a big push along multiple fronts—knowing that to be a long-term commitment whose political dividends will likely not accrue to current decision-makers?
The (Lack Of) Response
The government grudgingly conceded to the CJP students’ demand for Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation. The students’ other demand that they not be penalised for protesting will likely be shortchanged by a carve-out for those with “criminal antecedents”—a vague term with “no definition in Indian criminal law”. A moral high ground is already being invoked to shame profanity.
The government has zeroed in on paper leaks. Its guiding motto is “punish and prevent.” The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Act, 2026—rushed through the Lok Sabha—lays the groundwork for severe, swift punishment of offenders through fast-track courts. Alongside, a high-powered panel will design a zero-leak protocol to prevent future leaks.
Some students made vague calls for overhauling the education system. But that idea has no champions, not even among the government’s critics. Dipke has expanded his horizons: he wants to be a voice of everyone’s (not just of students’) grievances; he has launched kya bolti hai public, what do people have to say? Rahul Gandhi has his chatron ki goonj, the roar of students. He will draw attention to the “paper leak mafia,” extortionary private colleges, coaching centres, and the lack of jobs.
Papers will leak. When legitimate pathways to advancement are desperately narrow, corruption is not an aberration; it is the pressure valve. The higher the stakes and fewer the opportunities, the greater is the incentive to find—and sell—a shortcut. As after the Gujarat uprising in 1973, education and jobs will remain in a morass.
Self Correction As Liberal Conceit
A gushing New York Times editorial carries the headline: The World’s Largest Democracy Gets a Second Chance; the India Forum, a policy portal, has an editorial with the title, When the Youth Marched for Change and Turned Victorious. That Pradhan’s resignation should evoke such giddiness is a measure of how low our expectations have fallen.
It is a liberal conceit that democracy self-corrects: people protest, governments lose elections, new leaders emerge, and they magically chart a new path. But democracy does not operate on a blank slate. If a country fails for decades to perform essential tasks, the political system acquires bad habits and perverse incentives. Politics crushes citizen advocacy and activism.
Entrenched power holds sway. India’s elite have exited: they send their children to high-priced schools and colleges in India or abroad. Oligarchs get tax breaks and lax regulation; they build petrochemical plants and data centres that employ only a handful of people. And education and jobs are useful slogans for the political class driven by the rewards of office and money.
Today, beyond shades of variation within Hindutva, a frightening homogeneity exists across the political spectrum. Every party competes merely to give handouts to win the election in front of its nose. Our politics has no appetite for sustained work over generations that education and jobs require.
There is a right way to make progress. It is hard. But so long as we choose the easy path, the mountain ahead will keep rising. Protests will recur. They will pacify our idealism, our conceit. We will forget—then rinse and repeat.
(Ashoka Mody retired from Princeton University. Earlier, he worked for nearly 25 years at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He is the author of India is Broken, 2023, and EuroTragedy, 2018.)
Get exclusive access to new databases, expert analyses, weekly newsletters, book excerpts and new ideas on democracy, law and society in India. Subscribe to Article 14.