The proximate cause of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP)-led student protests in Delhi, which have spilled countrywide, is anger over cancellation of the NEET-UG 2026 exam in May written by 2.2 million students for admission into the country’s too few (823) medical colleges, and the CBSE OSM assessment scandal. Students who suffered because of the muddling of these exams rallied behind the CJP, which has taken social media by storm notching up 24 million followers on Instagram, and are demanding accountability and resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

Yet the deeper cause of student anger is that the education system neglected for decades has utterly failed to prepare them for the new era of digital and AI learning and 21st century workplaces. Since it was elected to power at the Centre in 2014 and in several states subsequently, BJP/NDA governments have done precious little to redress the situation.

In particular even though BJP manifestos of three successive General Elections promised to raise annual expenditure on education (Centre plus states) to 6 percent of GDP, expenditure has not risen above the 3.5 percent average of the seven decades past. On the contrary, instead of contemporising the education system by injecting a culture of critical thinking, problem-solving and diverse perspectives, the BJP has muddied school curriculums by infusing Hindu mythology, Indian knowledge systems and language wars into them.

The country’s 59 Central and 488 state government universities are burdened with outdated curriculums, industry-academy disconnect, funds and teacher shortages — the country’s showpiece IITs and IIMs, which report 38 percent faculty shortages, included. And only 5 percent of India’s workforce has formal skills training qualifications as against China’s 26 percent, USA’s 50 percent and South Korea’s 96 percent. Unsurprisingly, the spectre of unemployment and/or low-pay under-employment is haunting Gen Z which is swelling the ranks of CJP.

The response of the establishment to these disquieting fears of Gen Z is indifference, unaccountability and contempt. The education minister adamantly refuses to explain his policy initiatives. Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, describes unemployed youth as cockroaches and parasites. Every compromised public exam is dismissed as an isolated administrative failure, and every student protest is portrayed as politically motivated.

The nationwide CJP student-led protests are a warning that India’s youth have lost patience with a political class which has consistently neglected education reform, resulting in lost employment opportunities.

The BJP/NDA government needs to drive modernisation of the country’s preschool to higher education institutions, restore the credibility of public examinations, bridge the widening academy-industry gap and most important, raise public spending for education to 10 percent of GDP to make up for lost time.