印度青年失业危机催生“蟑螂运动”

For over a decade, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party have dominated Indian politics. Narendra Modi secures a third term. Modi's BJP wins control of the Indian capital. But that dominant political vehicle hit a bit of a roadblock. The police has barricaded the street and put internet jammers in place. Everyone is here fighting for their rights. Long live the revolution. In total, there would've been tens of thousands of protestors converging on the parliament.

And it went on for weeks, but was triggered by an internet meme featuring... Well, look. The youth will get employment. Now the country’s system will now change. Cockroach movement. That's a rather weird name for a popular movement, isn't it? It is, particularly considering that anger isn't directed at the government's pest control record, but its education department and some recent exam scandals. The unemployment situation in India is fairly grim.

These degrees, diplomas, and certificates are not enough. In late July, the movement scored a win. The country's education minister has resigned after protests over exam paper leaks. Toppling a minister though doesn't fix a youth job crisis that's only being compounded by artificial intelligence. With major elections looming, Modi isn't just fighting political rivals now. He's facing a threat to India's status quo, marching under the banner of a six-legged mascot.

So how does a political movement come to be likened to a cockroach? Well, the story is that the Chief Justice of India made a comment about the legal profession, how unemployed youth, they were parasites and so on. An important state functionary is telling that, look, you guys are no good. You are cockroaches. You are about to do something very big in this country, and that is going to change the country's political history forever.

Abhijit Deepke, who was then finishing a graduate degree in the United States, created an internet meme using some AI tools. That meme went viral. And within 24 hours, we had something called the Cockroach Janita Party or the Cockroach People's Party. This resonated with many of the 367 million young Indians who make up both the world's largest youth population and a third of India's entire workforce. The politicians of this country for long years have been talking about the demographic dividend, how we need to capitalize on this extremely young labor force.

Although it's the world's fastest growing major economy for young Indians, education doesn't guarantee a secure job. And here's why. In 1983, India was home to about 4.8 million young graduates. Over four decades, that total swelled 13-fold to 63 million. But job creation hasn't kept pace. Over the same period, the number of graduates left without work grew even faster. From fewer than a million to 11 million, a 16-fold increase.

Basically, there's a glut of graduates fueled by a proliferation of private and technical colleges. It's become a common sight to see long queues of youth at job fairs, thousands of applicants applying for just a handful of jobs. The problem really is that kids are spending millions of rupees on education, but they're not getting the required skillsets. They are feeling the pinch of AI, government policies, and the Indian education system can be a sort of pressure cooker environment.

Against this background, it didn't take much for a movement to emerge. Not even in my wildest dreams. I would have imagined this. Since being formed in May, the mock political party amassed nearly 27 million Instagram followers, many of whom showed up on the streets of India. Apart from that comment from a Chief Justice, what rallied them was a series of administrative errors. Authorities canceled the country's medical entrance exam after the question paper was leaked and 2.2 million candidates were affected.

And around the same time, thousands of students complained of mistakes in one of India's largest graduate examinations. Young people had had enough and demanded accountability. So the cockroach movement chose to target the education minister, Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan, and demanded his resignation. You have all of these different vectors, you know, pointing towards this mounting frustration, and then suddenly they all become politically aware.

Tens of thousands of protestors marched on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. No police permission was granted, and as the crowd closed in on the parliament gates, authorities responded with canes and tear gas. I saw it in the streets. They were so frustrated that they stood there and they took the batons on their bodies. This was, this was a stunning thing to watch. In a rare move, Prime Minister Modi, whose tactic is typically to float above the fray, posted a series of videos in a bid to quell the rising anger.

And by the end of the week, Pradhan resigned. The CJP had achieved something remarkable. This was the first time since Modi took power in 2014 that one of his cabinet ministers had resigned under public pressure. The government also promised stricter penalties for exam fraud and announced a task force to overhaul national tests. But unfortunately, India's underlying problems remain. Out of every hundred young Indian graduates, 50 are employed in some form.

But only 26 of these hold regular salaried roles as opposed to being self-employed or in casual work, for instance. And among those 26, only four have a written contract, paid leave, and social security benefits. You may have the diplomas, the certificates, and the degrees, but they're not giving you the kind of skills that you need to enter into the job market. You get to a point where there's a large mass of people, some of them actual graduates who have failed to find jobs, who have thrown themselves into the inferno of gig work.

They work eight to 10 hours a day. They make 500 to 700 rupees a day. That's about five to eight US dollars. So this isn't just even about a lack of jobs, but poor wage prospects. After peaking in 2012, India's male graduates have seen their average monthly salaries decline. Female graduates have gradually closed the gap. But across the board, the picture is one of wages having stagnated. Hold that thought until after this.

India's youth aren't alone. From Nepal to Bangladesh and Indonesia, youth-led unrest is rattling governments across Asia, fueled by anger over inequality, corruption, and widespread unemployment. The very issues Modi promised to fix. Eight million graduates enter the workforce every year in India. And the path that was available to their parents finding a decent job, stepping into the middle class, eventually buying a house, and then living in it for the rest of your life is simply not available.

Next year, Modi's party faces a key election in Utah Pradesh, India's most popular state, where youth unemployment is a major concern. This is a huge crisis with very many layers attached to it. At almost every economic aspect, the youth of the country feels like they're being robbed of the opportunities. For India to be able to get to a developed status by 2047, the country will have to consistently grow between eight to 9% for the next 25 years.

It will have to create enough jobs for its workforce and has to make sure that the workforce is also able to increase their incomes in a way that India retains its spot as the big demand center for the world. The cockroach has become some sort of a symbol for survival. Survival of people who are fighting very long odds in an environment of deep-seated corruption and bureaucratic apathy at a level that is hard to understand if you've not been to India.