The Real Reason Modi Is Losing the Young

FOR decades there has been a covenant between India and its young—pass these entrance exams, and you are set. You can then escape India, physically and even within India. It was the privatization of hope. In return, the young wasted their youth in the gloom of preparing for life, to make it to some humid town where there would be an ‘institution of excellence.’

So, when news exploded that Indian corruption also extended to a major entrance exam, whose question papers were leaked and sold, and that the government messed up exams in other ways, a vast swathe of young people and their parents were disgusted enough to hit the streets, swayed by the cunning provocations of the Cockroach Janata Party. But this is not why Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in his most serious political trouble since he took charge in 2014.

At first glance, it may appear so. And that the agitation was also about the fear of the young about the economy, AI and the future. But I feel something more fascinating is going on, something new, and it cannot be fixed by a government, certainly not this one.

The real problem is this. Higher education has hinged on a lie. That it can result in a good job. For decades there appeared to be a correlation between higher education and lucrative jobs. But, in reality, it was always inequality that helped people secure well-paying or prestigious jobs. As more and more people could afford education, and were well-fed enough to crack entrance exams, employers just couldn’t absorb so many. Higher education was an artificial filter designed to reject millions of people.

Education is many wonderful things. I am sure there are people who study engineering to enjoy the poetic beauty of mechanics, medicine to marvel at the human form and statistics to unearth truth, but mostly people get educated to get a job. But it is useless if education is not an elite club. Without inequality, higher education is merely about learning.

Today, if you are upper-middle-class or rich, chances are you don’t know anyone personally who is a tearing fast bowler or who has made it to the Indian Institute of Technology. This is so because the upper classes cannot compete anymore with the rest in many fields; equality has seeped in. Indians intuitively understand why the chances of knowing a superfast bolwer decreases as you clumb up the social rungs —because the sons of the soil tend to be more athletic than the silver sperms. The fast bowler and the engineer used to come from very different pools; not anymore. Millions of Indians have a real shot at proper higher education today. And the world can create only so many good jobs, which means social equality is overproducing elites. This is an absurd state because the elite have no meaning if they are not scarce.

Yet, the sacred utility of higher education is such an entrenched belief that the government has, in fact, increased the number of elite engineering and management courses, thinking, very weirdly, that if there are many engineers, there would be more jobs. Not surprisingly, millions of graduates are both unemployed and unemployable. Because “expertise” was always a byproduct of an unequal society. Even technical jobs require elements of social class, like appearance, refinement and confident articulation. So hundreds of thousands of students, the poor especially, whose parents borrowed money to send them to college, have no special prospects even if they did well in the exams. India is unable to sustain its greatest bullshit.

That is why the BJP is in unprecedented trouble. Even if India shifts from organized intellectuality to vocational training, there are just too many of us. The effect of inequality is visible even in modest jobs. It looks like the whole world was built on a model that is not ready for our sweetest wish—an equal society.

The old arrangement was that a lucky few would acquire prestigious degrees in prestigious-sounding courses, giving them the appearance of qualification. The elite would then move on to better things, and the next rung would take their place. But the force of social progress, combined with powerful publicity of the lie that higher education will save everyone, has ensured that too many people are now ‘qualified.’

We are watching the full chaos of social progress, compounded by AI. India is so vast that even the top 10% who have ‘made it’ are a huge number of people, and their disenchantment is a powerful political force. For the first time, the BJP has been cast as a party that is out of touch with the young, as a fellowship of the old harming the young. And for the first time in over a decade, the ruling party may even be looking beatable in national polls.

The last time the BJP faced such negative branding was in the 1990s, when it was deemed ‘communal,’ which was a bad word in India then.

Indians have a low bar for many things. Our protests for clean air and liveable cities did not rattle politicians. But they are hysterically serious about their children. And, the present is just a temporary holding place for them to shine in a place called the ‘future’. Any threat to the future is grave. They can bring up their children in filthy air, let them dangle from unsafe trains and travel on dangerous roads, but they will not tolerate that terrifying thing called an uncertain future. Of such a future, the BJP has become a mascot.

Just how bad it is for Modi can be measured in the new courage of Indian celebrities, who have been fearful of saying anything meaningful against the government, which has a reputation of being vindictive. Now they have found at least a faint voice.

Also, there was a time not long ago when only arts students used to take part in protests. Humanities professors and writers used to proclaim their favorite misunderstanding of the world—that humanities students protest because they have more “empathy” than science students. Now we know better—the more bleak your future is, the more you tend to hit the streets against authority. That is all there is to it. Science and engineering students should in fact speak more with arts students on how to grapple with life when the lights of the future have gone out. (I can help. The secret to success is inequality. Always, only tread the path where you have an unfair advantage—in talent, beauty, refinement, papa’s friends.)

The bleakness of equality has come to India at a time when Donald Trump has made it very risky for Indians to escape to America. As a result, the present young are the first generation in modern India that has no choice but to make their home a better place.

(Manu Joseph’s latest book is, ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us’)