Context

• In recent years, India's educational landscape has been the subject of ambitious policymaking and enthusiastic declarations of progress.
• At the forefront of these proclamations is the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, championed as a potential catalyst for an educational renaissance.
• Accompanied by initiatives such as Atal Tinkering Labs, the introduction of coding in middle school, inclusive recruitment drives for Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe teachers, and the empowerment of Muslim girl students, the current administration asserts that it has broken free from the shackles of past governments.
• Yet, these declarations belie a far more concerning and enduring issue: the employability crisis among India’s educated youth.

The Employment Crisis: A Failed Promise

• While the government highlights reforms and infrastructure enhancements, the educational system continues to falter where it matters most, preparing students for the rapidly evolving job market.
• India’s graduates remain largely unemployable, a reflection of a deeper malaise where degrees fail to translate into meaningful job opportunities.
• The employability rate in 2025 remains stagnant at 42.6%, a negligible shift from 44.3% in 2023.
• The education system, despite its expansive reach, disempowers rather than empowers, offering little value to students beyond paper credentials.
• This failure transcends party lines. Whether the shortcomings originated under the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party is immaterial.
• The onus lies with the incumbent government to rectify systemic deficiencies.
• With NEP 2020 being the fourth attempt in a lineage of reformative documents following the Radhakrishnan (1948), Kothari (1966), and Officers’ Commission (1985), it is not a lack of policy but rather the absence of meaningful implementation and insight that cripples Indian education.

The Fallacy of Reform

• Lack of Implementation Mechanisms
  • A truly effective education system should balance depth, which develops technical expertise and breadth which enables adaptability in a fluid, AI-driven job market.
  • NEP 2020, while conceptually flexible with its multiple entry and exit points, has only given rise to low-skill, poorly paid gig economy jobs.
  • Its approach, reminiscent of Vannevar Bush's mid-20th-century U.S. education model, lacks the financial support structures and industrial integration that made that system successful.
  • The NEP’s emphasis on superficial novelty such as Indian Knowledge Systems and mother tongue instruction remains unaccompanied by robust implementation mechanisms or industry input.
  • Notably, the NEP drafting committee lacked representation from business or industry, a glaring oversight that undermines its claim to address employability and innovation.
• Misplaced Celebration and Hollow Metrics
  • The Ministry of Education points to India’s improved standing in global rankings such as the QS World University Rankings (WUR) as evidence of progress.
  • Eleven Indian universities now feature in the top 500, and a 318% growth in ranking performance is touted as a triumph.
  • However, these statistics obscure deeper deficiencies. India’s Category Normalised Citation Impact (CNCI), a key measure of research quality, shows only marginal improvement, from 17th to 16th among G-20 nations over a span of years.
  • Such figures, though spun as success, reflect a system more concerned with optics than outcomes.
  • India’s Global Innovation Index (GII) position, 39th in 2024, lagging behind Malaysia (33) and Türkiye (37), further illustrates the gap between perception and reality.
  • In terms of high-impact research clusters, India’s top performer, Bengaluru, ranks 56th globally, with other cities like Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai trailing close to the bottom of the top 100.
  • These rankings pale in comparison to innovation hubs like Silicon Valley, underlining India’s limited capacity for research and development.

The Illusion of Start-Up Culture

• India's start-up narrative is equally misleading.
• While the term ‘start-up’ evokes innovation and technological advancement, in the Indian context it often refers to service-based apps and delivery platforms rather than high-impact technology enterprises.
• In contrast, start-ups in countries like China, Israel, and the U.S. tackle complex problems in semiconductors, renewable energy, and pharmaceuticals.
• Without a strong foundation of indigenous science and technology, rooted in quality education, India cannot hope to replicate these achievements.

Institutional Rot and the Need for Accountability

• At the heart of this systemic failure is a lack of transparency and accountability.
• Large-scale projects such as the CSIR-NMITLI, the Akash tablet, and the IMPRINT initiative consumed vast public funds but delivered negligible outcomes.
• Citizens remain uninformed about the tangible benefits, if any, of these projects.
• The issue is not who initiated them, but whether taxpayers received value for their investment.
• Equally problematic is the role of the University Grants Commission (UGC), which continues to act as a bureaucratic gatekeeper with both regulatory and financial control over higher education.
• There is scant evidence to suggest that the UGC’s interventions in curriculum or pedagogy have positively impacted employability or skills development.
• Rather than functioning as a visionary body, the UGC appears more as an impediment to reform, and its continued existence in its current form demands serious reconsideration.

Conclusion

• India’s education crisis is not one of policy volume, but of execution, alignment with industry, and a focus on real-world outcomes.
• If India is to produce a globally competitive workforce, it must ground its education reforms in reality, shed its preoccupation with rankings and appearances, and prioritise employability, research quality, and technological self-reliance.
• That means involving industry in curriculum design, ensuring transparency in large-scale projects, and replacing institutions like the UGC with more agile, accountable bodies.
• Without these structural changes, India’s education system risks remaining a source of disillusionment for its youth, offering promise on paper, but little substance in practice.