By Prof. Ujjwal K Chowdhury

On 17 June 2026, Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, stood before thousands of students in Kota, Rajasthan — the nerve-centre of India's high-stakes coaching economy — and called the Indian education system an 'extortion machine' and a 'rejection system.' He did not use the language of electoral politics. He used the language of lived pain.

Barely a month earlier, on 16 May 2026, a 30-year-old Indian student in Boston named Abhijeet Dipke had launched the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) — a satirical political movement born from Chief Justice of India Surya Kant's controversial comparison of unemployed youth to 'cockroaches and parasites of society.' Within days, the CJP had over 20 million Instagram followers, surpassing the online reach of most mainstream political parties. By early June, young people in cockroach masks were marching at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, chanting: 'Cockroaches are coming, Dharmendra Pradhan is going!'

These are not unconnected events. Together, they mark a defining rupture in the relationship between the Indian state and its youth. The trigger in both cases was the same: the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak. The examination held on 3 May 2026 for over 2.27 million medical aspirants was cancelled on 12 May following revelations of massive paper leak networks linking coaching-centre insiders, chemistry professors in Pune and Rajasthan, and NTA personnel — with CBI investigation revealing the same racket had also compromised NEET-UG 2025.

But the anger is far deeper than one examination. The Kota speech and the Cockroach movement are symptoms of a systemic collapse. Indian education does not merely need repair. It needs reimagining. Here are twenty analytical points that illuminate what is truly ailing the system.

— I. The Economics of Educational Exploitation —

1. A Nation Underfunds Its Future: The Budgetary Betrayal

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 made a categorical promise: India would invest 6% of its GDP in education. In 2026, that promise remains unmet. The combined public spending on education by the Centre and most state governments continues to hover below 3% of GDP — a gap that widens with every passing year. The Union education budget in 2025-26 stands at approximately Rs. 1.48 lakh crore, a large-sounding number until placed against the scale of the task.

Rahul Gandhi's Kota address delivered a staggering comparison: families of the approximately 22 lakh NEET aspirants alone collectively spend amounts comparable to the government's entire education budget — just for one examination's coaching, hostel, travel and application costs. The exact arithmetic of individual state NEET application fees is debated, but the moral arithmetic is undeniable: the Indian state is significantly under-investing while extracting massive sums from student families through an examination economy that has grown entirely without social safety nets.

"India's education system is an extortion machine. We want a system that allows you to dream big." — Rahul Gandhi, Kota, 17 June 2026

2. The Rs. 6 Lakh Crore Scandal: Exam Fees vs. Social Welfare

Consider this: the total budgetary allocation by the Central Government for five critical ministries — Education, Health, Women and Child Development, Sports, and Youth Affairs — comes to less than Rs. 6 lakh crore. As Gandhi pointed out at Kota, this is comparable to the total fees collected annually across all public examinations in India — NEET, JEE, UPSC, SSC, RRB, CUET, state PSC examinations, banking exams, and dozens of others combined.

This is the paradox of the Indian developmental state in education: it collects from those who aspire, but invests far less than it promises. The examination economy has become a parallel tax on ambition — paid mostly by the non-rich, with no certainty of return. When a government spends less on social welfare than it collects from desperate exam-takers, it is not running an education system. It is running a lottery.

3. Degrees Without Destinies: The Employability Collapse

Rahul Gandhi presented a set of figures in Kota that crystallise the employability crisis: of every 1,000 students who enter the primary education pipeline, only 12 eventually secure formal graduate-level employment. Another 693 are absorbed into informal, part-time or gig economy work — precarious, unprotected, and economically vulnerable. The remainder face structural unemployment.

These numbers may be political formulations rather than peer-reviewed data, but they reflect a documented reality. The All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), CMIE surveys, Periodic Labour Force Surveys and industry employability reports consistently confirm that the majority of Indian graduates — across disciplines — are not employment-ready by the standards of modern enterprises. Degrees signal completion of syllabi, not acquisition of skills. The system manufactures educated unemployability at industrial scale.

4. The Rejection Machine: A System Designed for Failure

Of the over 2.27 million students who appeared for NEET-UG 2026, fewer than 1 lakh would have been allocated seats in government medical colleges. For UPSC Civil Services, anywhere between 10 to 13 lakh candidates typically compete for approximately 1,000 final selections annually. JEE-Advanced — the gateway to IITs — admits fewer than 17,000 students from over 2.5 lakh qualified candidates. These are not selection systems. They are mathematically designed rejection machines.

The system treats the 98% who do not make the cut as failures — not as individuals who simply did not clear one examination. There are no dignified alternative pathways for most, no robust apprenticeship systems, no vocational routes with equivalent social recognition, and no safety nets for the years of investment made. As Gandhi declared at Kota, the examination system is built around rejection, not selection.

— II. Infrastructure in Freefall —

5. 92,000 Schoolrooms Gone: The Silent Dismantling of Public Education

Across India, approximately 92,000 government schools have been closed or merged in recent years. The official justifications — low enrolment, rationalisation, infrastructural deficiency — cloak a graver reality: the systemic starving of the public school system has made closures self-fulfilling. When parents see crumbling buildings, absent teachers, and no laboratories, they pull children out. Enrolment falls. The school 'fails' by the government's own metric. And then it closes.

The trend is sharpest in BJP-ruled states. Kerala — governed by the Left Democratic Front — stands as a contrast: it has seen the least school closures and has consistently invested in upgrading public school infrastructure, introducing computer labs, midday meals, libraries and inclusive design. Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh have also maintained relatively stronger public school systems. The political variable is not incidental. School closures are a policy choice.

The consequences fall most heavily on girls, children with disabilities, first-generation learners, Dalit and Adivasi children, and rural communities. When a village school closes, the distance to the next school grows. Dropout risk rises. Education retreats from the margins precisely where it is needed most.

6. Science Without Laboratories: A Blackboard Republic

For the overwhelming majority of India's student population — in government schools, low-cost private schools and underfunded colleges — science is a theoretical affair. Chemistry is learned without beakers, biology without specimens, physics without instruments. Students memorise diagrams of the human digestive system without ever viewing a model. They solve numerical problems on circuits without ever building one.

This is not merely a pedagogical failure; it is a failure of imagination about what education is for. Scientific temper — enshrined as a constitutional value under Article 51A(h) — cannot be cultivated through rote reproduction of textbook diagrams. Laboratory practice, hypothesis testing, observation and experimentation are the foundations of scientific citizenship. Without them, India produces rote-learners who can pass standardised tests but cannot adapt to a world that demands creative problem-solving.

7. The Life Skills Gap: No Financial, Legal, or Health Literacy

Indian school curricula remain largely divorced from the realities of adult life. A student who clears Class XII board examinations with distinction may not know how to read an insurance policy, identify a predatory loan, understand consent and bodily autonomy, access government welfare schemes, recognise symptoms of common illnesses, file a consumer complaint, or verify a piece of viral news. Schools teach trigonometry but not tax literacy. They teach the speed of sound but not the sound of one's rights.

Financial literacy, health education, legal awareness, civic rights, mental health, digital safety, climate science and media literacy remain absent or token in most curricula. This leaves young Indians — particularly from lower-income and first-generation educated families — deeply vulnerable to exploitation, misinformation, financial fraud, health emergencies and civic disenfranchisement.

8. EdTech: Disruption Without Transformation

The pandemic accelerated India's edtech boom. Platforms offering recorded lectures, test-prep kits, doubt-solving bots and AI tutors proliferated rapidly. Yet the deeper pedagogical structure remained unchanged. A video lecture is still a lecture. A digital multiple-choice test is still a test of memory. The medium changed; the method did not.

More critically, edtech has deepened inequality rather than dissolving it. Students with reliable internet, personal devices, quiet study spaces and technically literate parents can leverage digital tools effectively. Students without these — a demographic that includes the majority of rural India — found themselves doubly disadvantaged during and after the pandemic. They lost learning years while urban peers fell forward. The digital divide in Indian education is not a residual problem. It is a structural one.

— III. Pedagogy Frozen in Time —

9. The Rote Empire: Memory Mistaken for Intelligence

The Indian classroom remains deeply hierarchical and teacher-centred. Students are discouraged from questioning, debating, disagreeing, or arriving at answers through independent routes. The mark is the metric, and the mark is awarded for reproducing the correct answer — not for the quality of the reasoning that produced it. Curiosity is not rewarded; conformity is.

Assessment design drives teaching. When examinations reward memorisation, schools teach memorisation. The result is a vast population of young people who have spent twelve to sixteen years in education but emerge without the capacities that the 21st-century economy and democracy actually require: critical thinking, collaborative problem-solving, evidence evaluation, creative risk-taking, and adaptive learning. India's education system trains students for a pre-digital world in a post-AI era.

10. NEP 2020 and the Skilling Mirage: Promised, Not Delivered

The National Education Policy 2020 represented an ambitious — and in many ways overdue — reimagining of Indian education. Its emphasis on vocational education, multidisciplinary learning, mother-tongue instruction in early years, and holistic assessment offered a genuine alternative to the rote-examination culture. On paper, it was among the more thoughtful education frameworks India has produced.

In practice, implementation has been uneven and slow. Vocational education remains stigmatised as a 'lesser' track for those who cannot compete academically. The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has repeatedly come under criticism from parliamentary committees, CAG reports, and industry associations for missed targets, low placement rates, poor quality control, and failure to align training programmes with actual labour-market demand. Skilling without placement is a fraud by another name — and many young people have experienced exactly this.

11. The Coaching Industrial Complex: Shadow Ministry of Education

In Kota, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai, Pune and dozens of smaller cities, the coaching industry has effectively replaced schooling as the 'real' education for competitive examinations. Families mortgage homes, sell farmland and take bank loans to fund two, three or four years of coaching. The Kota ecosystem alone is estimated to be worth thousands of crores and accommodates over two lakh students at any given time.

The coaching industry thrives precisely because the public education system fails to prepare students adequately for examinations, and those examinations are hyper-scarce entry points to meaningful economic futures. It is a market born from public failure. Yet it is entirely unregulated, wildly unequal in quality, and deeply extractive of middle-class and lower-middle-class family resources. When coaching success becomes the primary determinant of social mobility, merit becomes a function of purchasing power.

— IV. Political Failures and Differential State Performances —

12. The Political Divide: When Education Becomes a Campaign Variable

Not all states have failed equally. Delhi — under Aam Aadmi Party governments — made education a centrepiece of governance and global visibility: school building renovations, the School of Specialised Excellence programme, improved infrastructure, teacher training through Finland partnerships and the Mentor Teacher Programme. Punjab under AAP governance similarly attempted education reforms, though with more uneven outcomes given fiscal pressures.

Kerala, under Left Democratic Front governments, has maintained the highest literacy rates, the strongest public school network, the least school closures and a relatively equitable education ecosystem. Tamil Nadu, under Dravidian party governance, has consistently prioritised universal midday meals, free textbooks, school transport, and strong welfare infrastructure for students from marginalised communities. These are not accidental achievements; they reflect sustained political choice over decades.

By contrast, several large BJP-governed states — including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and others — have been associated with larger proportions of school closures, teacher vacancies, poor Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) outcomes and lower per-student public expenditure. The political variable matters enormously in education. The crisis is not uniform; it is, in part, a story of political priorities.

13. The Saffronisation of Syllabi: Ideology Before Evidence

A serious and sustained concern among educators, historians, constitutional scholars and civil society organisations is the ideological reshaping of educational content, particularly under Central Government direction over the past decade. NCERT textbooks have undergone changes that critics argue systematically diminish certain historical periods, reduce mention of constitutional figures associated with minority communities, insert faith-based content into scientific frameworks, and elevate majoritarian cultural narratives as national history.

The introduction of 'Indian Knowledge Systems' (IKS) as a curriculum component has legitimate dimensions — India's intellectual heritage in mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, metallurgy, philosophy and ecology is genuinely rich and underrepresented in modern curricula. However, when the implementation conflates scriptural belief with scientific knowledge, or introduces practices such as Hindu religious rituals in state-funded secular schools and colleges without equivalent inclusion for other faiths, it undermines the constitutional commitment to secularism and scientifically verifiable knowledge.

Saffronisation is not merely an academic debate. When a Dalit, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, or non-religious student encounters a curriculum that marginalises their heritage or mandates religious practices not of their faith, the school ceases to be a public good. It becomes an exclusionary institution.

14. Hindi Imposition and the Threat to Federal Dignity

Education is placed in the Concurrent List of the Indian Constitution — a shared responsibility between the Centre and states. Yet Central policy has repeatedly set the terms in ways that constrain state autonomy. The language question is the most contentious.

Tamil Nadu has historically and constitutionally resisted the three-language formula when applied in ways that effectively impose Hindi as a compulsory third language. The South — Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana — sees Hindi imposition not merely as an educational inconvenience but as a threat to linguistic identity, competitive examination access and cultural equality. When national examinations are designed with Hindi as the default language, or when Central funding conditions create backdoor linguistic pressure, the federal bargain of the Constitution is strained.

A country of 22 scheduled languages and several hundred dialects cannot be educated into national cohesion through linguistic coercion. The solution is not monolingualism but additive multilingualism — mother-tongue strength in early years, regional language pride, English access for global opportunity, and national language as a voluntary bridge.

— V. The Human Cost: Suicides, Dropouts, and Brain Drain —

15. Student Suicides: The Darkest Metric of Systemic Violence

Student suicides are the most devastating consequence of educational failure. Kota alone has seen dozens of student suicides in recent years, prompting interventions ranging from ceiling fan modifications in hostel rooms to inadequately resourced counselling cells. In the immediate aftermath of the 2026 NEET paper leak, media reports confirmed that at least three students took their own lives in the trauma of a cancelled examination — years of preparation and family sacrifice destroyed in a moment of institutional failure.

High school dropout rates — particularly among girls, Dalit students, children from migratory labour families, and students from Muslim communities — also reflect a system that fails to hold the most vulnerable. Each dropout is not a statistical entry. It is a life foreclosed by poverty, distance, examination anxiety, social discrimination, domestic pressure or the simple absence of a school worth attending. No examination reform will address this without concurrent investment in nutrition, mental health, social protection and inclusive school culture.

"When the highest judicial authority calls the youth cockroaches, and three students die after a paper leak, the education system has crossed from failure into crisis."

16. 2 Million and Counting: The Study Abroad Exodus

By 2025, over 2 million Indian students were enrolled in foreign universities — in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Ireland, the UAE, Singapore and elsewhere. This is not primarily a story of global ambition or the magnetism of foreign credentials. It is substantially a story of distrust.

When a family invests Rs. 50 lakh to Rs. 1 crore or more in sending a child abroad, it is effectively voting with its savings against the domestic higher education system. India's public universities — with the notable exception of a small tier of IITs, IIMs, IISc, NLUs, AIIMS and a handful of central universities — offer limited research environments, poor pedagogical cultures, infrastructure gaps, and uncertain employment pipelines. Private universities vary enormously in quality, with many offering degrees that are neither academically rigorous nor market-recognised. The study-abroad surge is the market's own verdict on Indian higher education.

17. The Paper Leak Epidemic: Merit Destroyed by Organised Crime

The 2026 NEET paper leak was not an aberration. It was part of a documented pattern. NEET-UG 2024 was similarly rocked by paper leak allegations that reached the Supreme Court. The 2026 CBI investigation revealed that the same network responsible for 2026 had also compromised NEET-UG 2025. CUET-UG 2026 experienced technical glitches affecting thousands of candidates. CBSE's online marking portal faced a security breach exposed by a 19-year-old student. SSC examinations have faced regular fraud allegations.

For students, particularly those from lower-income families who have no access to private-sector alternatives or foreign education, public examinations are the only meritocratic ladder. When paper leaks destroy that ladder, the social contract breaks entirely. The youth are not merely angry. They are rationally outraged. The state has failed to protect the one mechanism it claimed was fair.

— VI. Structural and Governance Failures —

18. Institutional Autonomy Eroded: Campuses Under Surveillance

India's universities and colleges are constitutionally meant to be spaces of intellectual inquiry, democratic debate, and academic freedom. In practice, many have seen a contraction of those freedoms. The appointment of politically aligned Vice-Chancellors over academically distinguished candidates, the shrinking of elected student union spaces, the invocation of institutional authority to silence dissent, the use of FIRs against protesting students and faculty — these are documented trends that have chilled the intellectual atmosphere of campuses.

University campuses historically produce the ideas, movements and leaders that push societies forward. From the freedom movement to the post-Emergency revival of democracy, Indian campuses have been incubators of civic change. When campuses become sites of surveillance and conformity rather than inquiry and debate, they stop producing thinkers. They produce credentials without conviction — graduates who have learned to stay silent.

19. The Teacher Crisis: Understaffed, Undervalued, Overburdened

No education system can outperform the quality of its teachers, and India's teaching workforce is in deep distress. Across states, teacher vacancies in government schools number in the hundreds of thousands. The heavy dependence on para-teachers, contractual instructors, and 'Shiksha Mitras' — paid a fraction of regular teacher salaries, without pension or job security — has produced pedagogical continuity deficits.

Regular teachers, meanwhile, are routinely deployed for non-academic duties: election operations, census surveys, government scheme data entry, midday meal management, and administrative compliance. A teacher who spends significant portions of the academic year on non-teaching government work is not a full-time educator. The teacher is the single most important variable in educational outcome. Until India invests in dignified, well-trained, well-compensated and academically focused teachers, no curriculum reform will close the learning deficit.

20. The Digital Divide: Two Indias, Two Educational Futures

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed with clinical clarity what analysts had been documenting for years: India has two educational systems, separated by a digital wall. Urban, upper-middle-class students adapted to online learning, accessed premium edtech platforms, maintained academic continuity, and — in many cases — actually accelerated their preparation for competitive examinations. Rural, poor, and first-generation students lost months or years of learning due to the absence of devices, internet connectivity, stable power supply, and quiet space to study.

This divide did not close after the pandemic. Government school digital infrastructure remains inconsistent. The PM e-VIDYA initiative and similar programmes have had implementation gaps. Many students in aspirational districts across Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, and Northeast India remain effectively without digital learning access. The digital divide is no longer just an infrastructure issue. It is an educational equity crisis with inter-generational consequences.

21. The Cockroach Generation: Satire as Political Language

The Cockroach Janata Party — founded on 16 May 2026 by Abhijeet Dipke in response to Chief Justice Surya Kant's remarks — represents a new grammar of Indian youth politics. The CJP's exam manifesto demanded Rs. 10,000 compensation per candidate in cases of paper leak, transparent testing processes, physical verification of answer sheets, and an independent audit of government contracts to private examination agencies. These are not frivolous demands. They are precise, concrete and constitutionally grounded.

The CJP's rapid growth to over 20 million followers — drawing support from figures as diverse as Sonam Wangchuk, Prashant Bhushan and Anna Hazare — demonstrates that the movement touched a genuine nerve. The government's response — allegedly blocking the CJP's Instagram page, citing 'national security' concerns when it had fewer than a lakh followers, filing SUo motu petitions, and a Union minister claiming 49% of followers were Pakistani (subsequently debunked by independent audience analytics showing over 94% Indian followers) — only accelerated the movement's credibility among young people.

When a satirical party draws more youth engagement than most parliamentary parties, it is not a novelty. It is a referendum on institutional legitimacy.

— Conclusion —

22. From Extortion Machine to Empowerment Engine: What India Must Do

The Indian youth are not agitated because they are impatient, entitled, or misinformed. They are agitated because they have studied, paid, waited, applied, been leaked upon, been delayed, been insulted, and been told to try again. They have done everything the system asked of them. The system has not reciprocated.

The path forward requires political will, not merely policy documents. First, public investment in education must credibly move toward 6% of GDP — not as a future aspiration but as a budgeted commitment over the next five years. Second, the examination system must be overhauled: paper security must be treated as national infrastructure, the NTA must be restructured with parliamentary accountability, and examinations must expand to become multiple-attempt processes rather than single-point elimination contests.

Third, assessment must shift from memory to competence. Portfolios, projects, practicals, internships, oral examinations, community tasks, and problem-solving challenges must count alongside written papers. Fourth, vocational education must be destigmatised, resourced, and linked directly to employment — through mandatory apprenticeship requirements for MSMEs, public sector, panchayats, and social enterprises.

Fifth, school closures must stop. Every neighbourhood school, however small, is a democratic institution. Sixth, mental health must be treated as core educational infrastructure. Counsellors, peer-support systems, suicide-prevention protocols, and pressure-reduction mechanisms must become mandatory — not optional — in all schools, colleges, and coaching establishments.

Seventh, the federal structure of education must be respected. Language policy must be based on constitutional choice, not administrative coercion. Curriculum reform must be scholarly, not ideological. India's civilisational heritage is rich enough to be taught without falsifying history or excluding minorities.

Finally, the youth must be heard as stakeholders, not managed as a vote bank. Rahul Gandhi's Kota convention and the Cockroach Janata Party have, in different registers, said the same thing: India's young people are watching. They are counting. They are organising. And they will not be crushed quietly.

The demographic dividend India so often celebrates is not a guarantee. It is a wager. The wager will be won or lost in classrooms, laboratories, counselling rooms, examination halls, and employment offices. Right now, India is losing the wager. The only question is whether those in power are listening carefully enough to change the outcome — or whether they would rather the cockroaches stayed silent.

A research based article by Prof Ujjwal K Chowdhury, senior educationist and author. 

This article integrates points from the 'Chhatron Ki Goonj' convention (Kota, 17 June 2026), the Cockroach Janata Party movement (founded 16 May 2026), NEET-UG 2026 controversy, and supplementary research on Indian education policy, NEP 2020 implementation, and state-level educational outcomes.

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