Vijay Garg
India is one of the youngest countries in the world, with over 80 crore population (about 65 per cent) under the age of 35. The nation is currently in its demographic dividend phase, a 50-year window (2005-2055) of economic growth potential, when the proportion of working-age individuals (15-64 years) is large enough to support children and the elderly. However, realizing this dividend requires access to quality education, skills development, and job creation to ensure youth can fully contribute. The critical questions are: Will India capitalise on this opportunity? Are we sure our youth are not riding an altogether different bus? Each year, about 22 lakh students take NEET-UG for two lakh MBBS and related seats and 14 lakh attempt JEE Main for 42,000 IIT and other spots.
Assuming 2.5 years (912.5 days) of preparation per student, NEET’s 20 lakh unsuccessful candidates spend 182 crore human-days. JEE’s 13.5 lakh add another 123 crore, bringing the total to 305 crore wasted human-days annually. This translates into Rs 2.07 lakh crore in lost output, that could fund 115-390 new medical colleges with attached hospitals (Rs 528-1,760 crore each); and in the following year, 235-470 engineering colleges (Rs 440–880 crore each). For these 33 lakh unsuccessful students, their childhood is forever lost without any equivalent gain. If they had played a sport of their choice, some could have become successful professionals or at least enjoyed a healthier life. Additionally, the NSS 80th round Comprehensive Modular Survey: Education, 2025 shows 27 per cent of students opt for private coaching at Rs 2,409 average, scaling to Rs 16,116 crore just for higher secondary levels. As per Infinium Global Research, India’s coaching business is now worth Rs 70,000 crore, projected to double by 2028.
The problem extends beyond these two exams. Over 10 lakh aspirants appear for the Civil Services exam (CSE) annually, targeting about 1,000 positions. This is dwarfed by the millions pursuing other government jobs (detailed below). Sanjeev Sanyal of the PM’s Economic Advisory Council calls CSE coaching a “massive misallocation of talent,” akin to a “mafia selling opium.” A lucky dip for selection would be more humane. It would at least save the time, money, and energy of lakhs, to be spent in other meaningful fields contributing to the nation’s growth.
Children as young as 13 internalise a message of failure from a system designed to eliminate over 90 per cent of them, leading to lifelong trauma, depression, and sense of guilt over wasted time. According to the NCRB’s Crime in India 2023, India lost 1,17,849 students to suicide between 2013 and 2023. The number climbed to a record high of 13,892 in 2023 alone, a 6.5 per cent increase from 2022. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) guarantees every child the right to develop their personality and talents to the fullest potential (Article 29), as well as the right to rest, leisure, and play (Article 31).
India, as a signatory, is obligated to uphold CRC’s core principle of prioritizing the ‘best interests of the child.’ Moved by the suicide of a girl in a coaching centre, the Supreme Court, in Sukdeb Saha v. State of Andhra Pradesh, in July, had to issue guidelines to prohibit batch segregation and public shaming based on performance. In March, in Amit Kumar v. Union of India, the Court had set up a National Task Force headed by Justice S. Ravindra Bhat to recommend reforms in higher education. The UNICEF YuWaah ~ iDreamCareer Bharat Career Aspirations Report 2025 finds that only 10.4 per cent of students have access to professional career counselling; 78 per cent lack any backup career plan.
Among 21,239 students surveyed, merely 6 per cent had used any tool to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and very few had access to psychometric assessments. Students denied this guidance are vulnerable to uncertainty and unqualified advice. This career guidance gap has already had catastrophic consequences. Each year, 22 million aspirants apply for one lakh central government jobs, exams with a cruel 0.5 per cent success rate. These aspirants spend their youth chasing a mirage, neither working nor building any skills. If a candidate spends one year, the wastage explodes to 824 crore human-days annually, representing Rs 5.59 lakh crore in foregone economic output. This tragedy is preventable: If students knew from Class 10 onwards that government job exams have a 0.5 per cent success rate, comparable to a school cricketer making it to the Indian national team, most would develop back-up plans, pursue skill development, or explore private-sector careers.
Netherlands uses aptitude and personality assessments at age 15 to guide students. Students in many countries, including Cyprus, South Africa, Australia, Thailand, and Finland utilize psychometric tests for informed career and subject selection, with professional support. Exams need to be reimagined as coaching-resistant, scientific aptitude tests, not memory contests. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 proposes a high-quality common aptitude test “rather than having hundreds of universities each devising their own entrance exams.” India already has world-class models.
The Services Selection Board (SSB) for the armed forces uses assessments of intelligence, personality, leadership, and judgment. Tests like Word Association, Situation Reaction, and Self-Description gauge psychological suitability for military service. The armed forces’ success in producing principled leaders is visible. Officers selected by the SSB consistently demonstrate integrity, resilience, and a willingness to sacrifice for the national interest. In contrast, a system that rewards cracking an exam often overlooks substance. This risks creating a generation of professionals who are skilled at test-taking but may lack the strength to withstand administrative and political pressures or innovation. For finding scientific innovators, India’s National Olympiad programme could be leveraged.
If only students who achieve a qualifying score in such exams were made eligible to sit for JEE or NEET, the candidate pool would shrink from lakhs to a few thousand genuinely qualified aspirants. Olympiads have proven to be one of the most effective ways to identify exceptional scientific talent. one in every forty gold medallists at the International Mathematical Olympiad later earns a major science prize, a success rate fifty times higher than that of MIT undergraduates. Half of OpenAI’s founders began their journeys through Olympiads. However, the proposal might appear elitist and could face opposition for seemingly excluding rural and economically disadvantaged students who are less familiar with Olympiads.
The NEP’s emphasis on holistic progress, competency-based assessment, and integration of vocational education needs massive investment in developing vocational academies on the German model, where a ‘master craftsperson’ in mechatronics is valued and often earns more than a generic engineer. South Korea’s economic miracle was not built by doctors alone, but also by technicians, and designers. Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee cautions that “the lives of our young are dominated by a testocracy masquerading as meritocracy.” A nation aspiring to be the Vishwa Guru cannot afford to let its best minds spend their youth memorising rather than innovating.
Vijay Garg Retired Principal Educational columnist Eminent Educationist street kour Chand MHR Malout Punjab |
