Rajeev Narayan

India is building highways, semiconductor plants, data centres and digital platforms at remarkable speed. But the infrastructure its young population really needs most is much harder to come by: stable, adequately paid jobs that offer dignity and a secure future.

Look around, and it is difficult to miss the evidence of raw economic ambition. Highways are expanding, airports are being modernised, manufacturing plants are coming up, digital networks are transforming commerce and payments, data centres are proliferating, and a new generation of semiconductor plants promises to catapult India deeper inside the global technology supply chain.

But there is one piece of infrastructure missing, one that does not make for spectacular photographs or ribbon-cutting ceremonies. A job. Not just any job, but work that pays reasonably, offers security, builds skills and gives a family the hope of a better tomorrow. This may be a tougher test of our economic transformation – for India is creating massive economic activity, but the worry is whether this is creating enough stable work for the lakhs of young Indians entering the job market each year.

Sobering Numbers

The joblessness numbers are sobering. Among those aged 15 to 29, unemployment remains higher than overall joblessness, with women facing a particularly steep challenge. But unemployment is only part of the story. A young person who works a few hours a day, earns an uncertain income or takes a job below his qualifications may not appear in an unemployment statistic at all.

That matters. For behind the grand numbers are scores of individual stories – graduates waiting for recruitment exams, youth taking up jobs below their qualifications, workers moving from one makeshift engagement to another and families investing in education without knowing what the payoff will be. Or when it will come.

What of the graduate who spends years preparing for an exam because private jobs offer low wages and little security? Or the diploma-holder who takes up delivery work because it provides quick cash, even though it has no connection with the acquired skills? Or the young woman who has a degree but stays out of the workforce because available jobs are poorly paid, distant or too insecure?

Degrees, Then What?

India has spent decades improving access to education, and the aspirations of its youth have risen. A degree is no longer viewed as just a qualification; it is a family investment and a promise of upward mobility. But the promise turns fragile when education and opportunity fail to meet. The frustration around exams, recruitment processes and the paucity of opportunities is not just about government vacancies. It reflects a larger anxiety: what happens after getting the degree?

A young person who borrows money for a degree does not always want a government job. He wants a route to adulthood, a job that rewards effort, builds skills and offers the possibility of a better life. This is where the discussion on demographic dividend gets complicated. A young workforce is an economic advantage, but youth (in itself) is not a dividend. It becomes one only if people have the skills and opportunities to participate productively in the economy.

That leads to an uncomfortable question. Can our economy absorb the people we are educating?

Where Jobs Grow

Simply demanding that the economy create more jobs does not answer the question of where and how those jobs will come from. We need to ask what kind of growth creates jobs at scale. India is attracting funding in semiconductors, electronics, manufacturing, renewable energy, infrastructure and digital services, which is transforming productivity and deepening our place in the global supply chain. But investment does not always translate into jobs because modern industries are not just capital-intensive; they are highly automated too.

That is not a cry against the new, but a plea to look beyond the factory gate. A semiconductor plant may employ thousands, but the larger employment opportunity lies in the ecosystem around it – component suppliers, logistics, maintenance, construction, transport, food services, housing and a host of small businesses. The same is true of industrial corridors, tourism hubs, warehouses, food-processing clusters and urban infrastructure.

This is where small and medium enterprises are critical. They lack the glamour of a semiconductor plant but are closer to where large employment can be created. If they grow, access finance, adopt technology, formalise and connect to larger supply chains, they can turn economic activity into an employment story. The challenge is not a choice between technology and jobs; it is to invest to catalyse an employment multiplier. That is the missing link in the Indian jobs story.

The Dividend Test

Now to the ambition of Viksit Bharat 2047. A developed India cannot be measured just by the size of its economy, the quality of its infrastructure or the number of global firms investing here. It must also be judged by whether an ordinary Indian can look at the economy and see a place for himself in it. That requires more than vacancies. It requires a pathway from education to skills, skills to a first job, first job to a better job, and from rising productivity to rising incomes.

This is why the discussion about jobs cannot be left to the market alone. Better skilling, easier business conditions, stronger industrial ecosystems, improved female labour force participation and greater mobility have a role to play too. As does the ability of cities and emerging industrial centres to provide the housing, transport and public services that allow people to take up jobs in the first place.

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India has shown it can build at scale. The challenge now is to ensure that the people for whom this transformation is being built can participate in it. The demographic dividend will not last forever. The young will grow older, aspirations will continue to rise, and the window of opportunity will narrow. A country cannot cash its demographic dividend by counting its young people; it can do so only by giving them something worth working for. That is the job India cannot afford to miss.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist