India possesses a treasure that no other nation can claim in such abundance ~ a vast reservoir of educated and semi-educated youth, brimming with energy, ambition, and the desire to contribute. This demographic dividend is our greatest strength, a force that could transform every sector from healthcare to technology, from agriculture to green energy, from the automobile industry to digital innovation. Yet the question that confronts us is whether we are truly doing justice to this gift.

Are we harnessing this immense potential for nation building, or are we allowing it to dissipate into frustration, agitation, and low wage survival work? The recent NEET paper leak and the agitations that followed were not isolated events; they were a mirror reflecting the anxieties of a generation that feels cheated of its rightful place in the future. These young men and women, having invested years in education, find themselves stranded between degrees that do not translate into employable skills and a job market that increasingly pushes them into gig work with little dignity or security.

The sight of graduates delivering food parcels or riding motorcycles for survival wages is not a reflection of their lack of ambition, but of a system that has failed to align education with employability. Their anger is therefore not only about fairness in examinations, but about dignity in work, about the right to a future that matches the promise of their education. This is not a new story. The unemployability factor has long haunted our youth. In 2024, the National Skill Development Council reported that nearly half of graduates remained unqualified for industry jobs, while surveys revealed that 70 per cent of engineering graduates were unemployable and more than 80 per cent lacked advanced digital skills.

These numbers are not just statistics; they represent millions of young lives caught in a cycle of frustration, impatience, and cynicism. The automobile sector, with its untapped potential in electric vehicles, diagnostics, and AI driven technologies, could have absorbed thousands of trained youth; yet outdated curricula and lack of practical exposure have left them unprepared. Similarly, the mushrooming of mediocre professional colleges has produced graduates who remain unfit for industry, contributing little to nation building. Large scale manufacture of utility items, from household goods to industrial components, remains the strongest pillar of economic independence.

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