China’s crisis crept in over years, slow enough for a society to find a term for the phenomenon and debate it, while India’s arose over a single exam season
3-MIN READ3-MINGaurav KumarGaurav Kumar is a researcher at the Centre for Professional Military Education in the United Service Institution of India, New Delhi. Published: 5:30am, 13 Aug 2026At Jantar Mantar, New Delhi’s designated protest site, India’s future spent weeks enduring the heat and demanding change. But what kind of change, and why?
These were young people, many of them highly educated but still without a job despite sitting numerous government recruitment exams. Their anger was not because they had been cheated. It stemmed from worse: their qualifications had simply stopped meaning anything. China has a word for this dilemma. India does not, and that missing word matters more than either country understands.
10:28‘Let it rot’: surviving China's high unemployment and cost of livingIndia has arrived at the same place, just more suddenly, following allegations in May that questions from the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test – the single exam that decides who is allowed to train as a doctor – had been leaked.
