Thousands of young people came to Jantar Mantar to demand accountability on structural failures in education, starting with the NEET paper leak. The police lathi-charged them, and fired tear gas and pellet guns at them. For such an all-powerful government, what was so difficult about fixing a paper leak? And yet, they chose the same route they had previously deployed on farmers, on women, and on women wrestlers – the route of tyrannical brute force.Despite this brutality, the youth on the streets responded with remarkable restraint and sharp satire. That is precisely why none of the government’s tactics worked this time. The country’s Gen Z has forced the Union education minister to resign, they have set the process of accountability in motion.Yet for the Bharatiya Janata Party government, education and employment, two issues that matter most to the youth remain out of syllabus. What exactly is in their syllabus? After all these years in power, what have they actually done with education? Where is the real accountability? Will NEET and other exams papers stop leaking now? Will India’s youth be skilled enough to get reasonable jobs? Also, is India’s economy generating enough jobs for Gen Z? Today, public trust, educational quality, employment, and India’s future all hang in the balance. At this crucial juncture, we need to ask two questions: how do we rebuild our entire educational framework? And how do we secure the future of Gen Z Indians, who number 50 crore by some accounts?Education and employment are two sides of the same coin. Until recently, every Indian, rich or poor, believed that a good education could secure their family’s future. But over the last few years, the middle class has realised that this promise has slipped away from them. How did that happen? How are our long-established institutions losing their prestige? Why are our exam systems, our schools, our colleges, and the overall quality of education declining instead of improving? According to the World Population Review’s 2026 ranking, India’s Public Education Score is just 4.3 out of a resounding 100. Denmark scored a perfect 100, Sweden scored 99.9, and the UK scored 96.8. The World Population Review has officially placed India among third-world countries. Their analysis shows that while India’s population – especially its youth – is growing rapidly, our quality-of-life indicators like education, healthcare, and equity remain far behind.According to the QS World University Rankings 2027, not a single Indian university features among Asia’s top 10. IIT Delhi ranks 30th in Asia. Only three Indian universities make it to the world’s top 200: IIT Delhi at 118th, IIT Bombay at 134th, and IIT Madras at 170th. No wonder the education minister says nothing about these rankings and we hardly get a government response on these.Perhaps that’s the reason why Indian students queue up in droves to study abroad. Sending students overseas has itself become a parallel industry. In 2026, Indian students rank second among all nationalities going to the UK for higher education. This year, 695,740 students applied for undergraduate courses – a 4.6% increase over last year.Also read: Control Over Education Is Critical for the RSS. The Sacking of Pradhan Is a Major Setback for ItWhen the BJP government took office in 2014, it introduced major changes in education. Behind the façade of impressive-looking policies, an unregistered NGO got a backdoor entry into the system. Today, Vidya Bharati – essentially the RSS’s largest NGO – runs over 15,000 formal schools. It also operates 4,000 Ekal Shiksha Kendras in tribal areas and 5,000 Sanskar Kendras in urban slums. Additionally, it manages 60 colleges and technical institutes. Reports have repeatedly shown that these institutions focus more on creating Hindutva foot-soldiers than on actual education.Recently, The News Minute reported that ONGC, a government-owned company, donated Rs 668 crore to 20 RSS-linked organisations over the last 10 years. Questions about the RSS’s own registration arose this June, but they have yet to receive any legal response. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat even asked why, if Hindu dharma doesn’t need registration, should the RSS?Imagine this today, at a time when you cannot deposit or withdraw more than Rs 50,000 from a bank without a PAN card. Yet the RSS receives crores in donations without any registration – and that too from a government company. No one knows anything about their activities or finances. They pay no taxes, offer no transparency, and accountability is completely out of the question. Now these same flaws are showing up across our education system.If you want to see how your tax money flows into RSS-style activities, visit government websites like mybharat.gov.in. Take a glance at their events – Viksit Bharat Yuva Connect, Viksit Bharat Youth Leader Dialogue, and so on. Do they ever discuss democracy and secularism at these gatherings? In 2013-14, the Ministry of Education’s budget stood at 4.6% of GDP. By 2025–26, that figure has halved to just 2.5%. No wonder 76% of our Class 3 students cannot read a Class 2 level text. More than one lakh government schools have shut down. Even the parliamentary committee reported that nearly 10 lakh teaching posts remain vacant.Worse still, a survey found that only 10-15% of government school teachers can score 60% or more in their own subject. Do you know why your maths is weak? Because only 2% of maths teachers can score above 70% in maths. The average maths score among all government teachers across the country is just 46%. Do they receive no training? How do they get these jobs? In our country, people don’t ask how to earn a BEd degree — they ask how much it costs. India has 16,000 NCTE-recognised BEd and DEd institutes, 92% of which operate in the private sector. The National Council for Teacher Education — the body responsible for maintaining standards — itself has up to 89% vacancies in Group C posts. Without standards and without overseers, how can we produce quality teachers?That is precisely why our qualified, capable teachers are forced to migrate to other countries. Only Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas pay teachers according to the 7th Pay Commission – Rs 80,000–85,000 per month, along with pension, housing allowance, and medical benefits. In contrast, a private school teacher in a small town earns just Rs 8,000–12,000 per month. In big cities, that figure can rise depending on the subject. Teachers who teach science in large private institutions sometimes earn up to Rs 1 lakh. But the median annual salary for private-sector teachers is only Rs 2.4 lakh, lesser than what an IT fresher makes. Often, they have no formal contract and can be fired at any time. How can education improve when teachers themselves feel so insecure?ISC Research found that every year, 60% of new teaching positions open up in West Asia, Southeast Asia, and China. Indian teachers prefer destinations like the UK and the UAE. In the UAE, a secondary school teacher can earn $2,000–5,500 per month, completely tax-free. The paper leak network thus finds it easy to trap teachers too. Every student knows that good preparation leads to good marks. But the BJP government has not prepared a good education system for these students. A job cardGen Z protested magnificently for their right to education. But what do their careers look like? Today, Gen Z falls in the 15–29 age group. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023–24, India’s working-age Gen Z population was roughly 29.94 crore. Using that as a base, The Hindu recently analysed Gen Z’s employment patterns. The data shows that 41.7% of Gen Z boys and 38.4% of girls are still studying. This delays their entry into the job market. But what about those already in the workforce? You must have seen Reels in which Gen Z workers seem to quit the very next day if they don’t like the office vibe, but those Reels are far from reality.In June 2026, IT sector hiring dropped 14% compared to the previous month. Year-on-year, fresher hiring plummeted by 44%. This is the condition of one of the most preferred jobs among young people. What is actually happening in the overall labour market? Over the last 10-12 years, the market has shifted away from salaried formal jobs towards casual, gig-based, and contractual work. That’s why Gen Z is being forced into casual employment. Estimates show that 15.8% of Gen Z men work as unpaid family workers, and 12.3% work in the informal economy. Only 14.8% hold any kind of regular job. The situation is even worse for Gen Z women. Around 35% remain engaged in domestic work, meaning they are not in paid employment. Another 10.7% work as unpaid family workers, managing family farms or businesses without pay. Only 4.7% of Gen Z women hold a regular job.While 44.1% of rural Gen Z participates in the workforce, the urban participation rate stands at 37.2%. This means rural youth have to leave education early and find work quickly, while urban youth spend more time on education and training. But what good is that when more education actually reduces your chances of getting a job? Unemployment among graduate Gen Z boys stands at 29% – 29 out of every 100 young men cannot find work. Among young women, that number rises to 36 out of every 100. Gen Z’s overall unemployment rate is 11.9%, but in urban areas it spikes to 17.1%. For urban Gen Z girls, the rate climbs even higher to 22.6%. For context, India’s overall unemployment rate is 5.5%.Meanwhile, Narendra Modi has kept throwing around random numbers as promises – two crore jobs, 10 crore jobs, or 17 crore jobs. But the truth is that the Indian economy is simply not creating enough jobs for Gen Z. Remember Modi’s internship scheme, launched with great fanfare in the 2024 budget? It promised to place 1 crore youth in 500 top companies over 5 years. The News Minute reported that after two years, the scheme had not even reached 1% of its target, and has spent only 0.2% of its 5-year budget. The scheme is running 99% behind schedule.The link between education and good jobs has broken down. In the coming years, instead of preparing young people for global challenges, the system will simply write them off as incapable. Under the cover of AI and a war economy, the governments will launch an even bigger assault on the labour force.India’s demographic dividend window will close within the next 15 years. Looking at today’s situation, can we honestly say that we will benefit from this dividend? When China had its demographic dividend window, they made massive investments in education, manufacturing, infrastructure, and technology. That is why China can now bear the burden of its aging population. If we do not invest in skills, jobs, education, healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing over the next five years, this dividend will turn into a massive liability.The young people on the streets understand all this. They know their future is at stake. Through their voice, their posters and memes, they want to make one thing clear: the government does not hold all the cards.Kavita Kabeer is a writer and a satirist, currently helming the shows ‘Cracknomics’ and ‘Digital Arrest’ for The Wire.