Young Indians’ protests over NEET paper leaks have laid bare their deeper fears: that an overwhelmed education system and stagnant job market threaten to turn education from a gateway into a prolonged wait for stable employment, especially for women.
India’s student protests over the NEET paper leak were never only about exam malpractice. They reflected a wider fear among young Indians that a compromised test can delay, by another year or more, one of the few remaining paths to stable, reasonably paid work. For many graduates, the competitive exam system has become less a gateway than a holding pattern.
That sense of delay is rooted in a labour market that has not kept pace with the number of degree holders entering it. The National Herald article said young people spend years in coaching classes and rented accommodation, trying again and again for public-sector posts that may have success rates of only 1% or 2%. It also noted that the average monthly earnings of a young male graduate fell from Rs 21,800 in 2011 to Rs 19,573 in 2023, before inflation, making the wait for a government post look rational at the individual level even as it wastes talent collectively.
The mismatch between education and employment is stark in the data. According to the Azim Premji University’s State of Working India research, two-thirds of unemployed Indians aged 20 to 29 were graduates in 2023, up from 46% in 2017. The report also found that fewer than half of all graduates were working, while only 6.7% had permanent salaried jobs and just 3.7% were in white-collar roles.
Official labour figures point to a similar strain, especially for women. The latest Periodic Labour Force Survey, as reported by The Tribune, showed graduate unemployment rates for men at 10.6% in 2023-24 and for women at 20.4%, underlining how the problem hits female graduates even harder. Separate employability research from Mercer | Mettl has also suggested that only 45% of Indian graduates seeking jobs are ready for the roles employers want to fill, highlighting a skills gap as well as a jobs gap.
The larger picture is one of rapid expansion in higher education without enough corresponding opportunity. The National Herald article said India produced about 5 million graduates a year between 2004 and 2023, but graduate employment rose by only around 2.8 million a year. Azim Premji University’s analysis similarly pointed to a swelling pool of degree holders and a labour market that is simply not absorbing them fast enough, leaving millions either unemployed, underemployed or parked indefinitely in the queue for the next government exam.
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