Youth are future-looking, the proverbial canaries in the coalmine. Their frustrations, simmering for years as they sit exam after exam in an often futile search for seats in elite educational institutions or government jobs, have finally boiled over. As our youth lit up social media, and fearlessly endured police lathis, tear gas, and FIRs, they captured the public’s imagination. The government eventually conceded protester demands and set up a high-powered task force on examination reform under the respected Nandan Nilekani. Even so, there is a real risk we miss the signal our youth are sending.
They are not just concerned about exam leaks, as this newspaper has itself pointed out. Their fears are partly about joblessness: About a future made bleak by inadequate education and skilling, the spread of artificial intelligence and automation, and competition from countries with better-prepared workforces. Official figures already put unemployment among 15–29-year-olds at more than three times the overall rate.
They also worry the government has done too little to change the current trajectory, which has yielded too few good jobs, even while it constantly celebrates an ambitious target — becoming a developed country by 2047 — as if we were already there. They see little willingness to listen to criticism, with messengers quickly labelled “anti-national”. As a university student told me, “the system does not listen to its people, and has no sense of what is going wrong”. A broader unease about authoritarianism, divisiveness, cronyism and corruption also ran through protester memes and interviews.
Not every issue is as amenable to mass mobilisation as is access to higher education. Moreover, India needs to tackle root concerns, not only symptoms like exam leaks. An organised Opposition must carry those concerns into public debate and force those in power to confront unwelcome facts. Without such pressure, governments have little incentive to correct course.
An Opposition cannot only oppose, it needs to propose. It needs a plan to better the government’s plan. The plan must sway minds but also touch hearts. Our Opposition leaders have alternative views to the government’s, some mirroring those of our youth leaders, but they need to articulate them with more coherence, consistency, and clarity, and back them with actions wherever possible.
On the economic front, the Opposition can distinguish itself by placing our people’s human capital at the centre of its economic agenda. The government’s achievements in infrastructure construction are praiseworthy, but concrete cannot substitute for cognition: The share of public spending on education and healthcare has stagnated even as infrastructure spending has skyrocketed.
The Opposition has to rethink its approach to education, skilling, and public healthcare, including how additional resources are spent. Unless we improve nutrition and the quality of pre-school and primary education for all, too many young people will struggle to learn — how can we become developed if half of rural children in Class V still cannot read a Class II passage? India also needs more high-quality universities, with stronger research and teaching, and deeper collaboration with industry, or we will fall further behind as the world races ahead. That means hard choices, for example, fewer subsidies to chip foundries and more to tackle malnutrition.
Politically, the antidote to divisive majoritarian nationalism is inclusive patriotism. Our founding fathers imagined India as a many-coloured tapestry, accommodating our constantly increasing diversity by adding yet more colours. The Opposition can embrace this vision, and contrast it with the ruling party’s monochrome imagery, where those who are different are forced into conformity. Almost surely, accommodating differences rather than suppressing them will make India stronger and more able to withstand future threats. It will also strengthen our standing in the world. Most importantly, inclusive patriotism helps combat two forces that risk fracturing our country.
The first is the delimitation exercise. If the government imposes, through clever parliamentary manoeuvres, a formula that is insensitive to the states that have lowered fertility, it could fuel resentment, especially in the south, for decades.
The second is the unequal treatment of minorities, whether it is through legislation like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or the implementation of the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Particularly egregious is bulldozer Raj, which seems to continue punishing people, often Muslim, with impunity and without trial despite the Supreme Court weighing against it.
Any convincing Opposition has to make the case that its idea of India will bind the country better, and therefore is the more patriotic alternative — that it can persuade angry states that a mutually acceptable consensus on delimitation is possible and reassure minorities they will continue to be equal citizens.
To be credible as an alternative, the Opposition has to act now. To defend the Constitution, why not protest violations like bulldozer Raj or the misuse of administrative agencies like the ED wherever, whenever, and against whomever they occur? Why not stop the inter-party sniping at the state level that prevents the Opposition from engaging in collective dissent? Why not negotiate a common minimum agenda taking youth on board, and settle seat sharing on objective grounds, long before the 2029 elections? And why not enact in Opposition-ruled states the democratic protections against authoritarianism and use of police force that the Opposition would like to see at the Centre?
A persuasive Opposition has to bring the best human capital practices across states into its minimum national agenda — drawing for instance on AAP’s success in improving Delhi schools and healthcare facilities, the BJD’s skilling programme in Orissa or the DMK’s programme to draw dropouts back into school. It should also borrow shamelessly from successful Union government programmes. Indeed, why not showcase its agenda by implementing aspects in some Opposition-ruled states before 2029?
A strong Opposition will be good for the ruling party, forcing it to think more carefully about the nation’s future. It is, therefore, good for India. Our youth have created the opportunity. For the sake of the country, the Opposition must build on it.
Rajan is professor, University of Chicago, and former governor, Reserve Bank of India. He is the co-author of Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India’s Economic Future
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A strong Opposition will be good for the ruling party, forcing it to think more carefully about the nation’s future. 
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