Grand Tamasha

India’s Youth Boom Meets a Jobs Bust

Episode Summary

For more than three decades, India’s growth story has rested on the promise of a large and youthful workforce. But a new report published by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University takes a comprehensive look at how young Indians move from education into the labor market—and asks whether India is successfully converting its demographic dividend into an economic one. This week on the show Milan speaks with the report’s lead author Rosa Abraham, who heads theCentre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University.

Episode Notes

For more than three decades, India’s growth story has rested on the promise of a large and youthful workforce—but whether that promise is being realized remains an open question.

A new report published by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University—State of Working India 2026—takes a comprehensive look at how young Indians move from education into the labor market—and asks whether India is successfully converting its demographic dividend into an economic one.

The report documents a striking paradox: even as educational attainment has expanded dramatically, the transition to stable, gainful employment remains uncertain—with high graduate unemployment, limited job creation outside agriculture, and persistent gaps between aspirations and opportunities.

To discuss the report, this week on the show Milan speaks with the report’s lead author Rosa Abraham, who heads theCentre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University. Her research focuses on informal work and women’s employment, with a particular interest in issues at the intersection of labor statistics and women’s work. Prior to joining the university, she worked as a researcher at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment and as a lecturer at the Madras School of Economics.

Milan and Rosa discuss the state of India’s mythical “demographic dividend,” the quality and quantity of higher education, and India’s stalled structural transformation. Plus, the two discuss the high unemployment rate for college graduates, trends in internal migration, and the loosening of caste-based occupational segregation.

Episode notes:

  1. “India’s Middle Class Hits a Breaking Point (with Saurabh Mukherjea and Nandita Rajhansa),” Grand Tamasha, April 15, 2026.
  2. Rishita Khanna, “‘We are not overproducing graduates, we are underproducing good jobs,’” Hindu, March 25, 2026.
  3. Soutik Biswas, “India's young are more educated than ever. So why are so many jobless?” BBC, March 19, 2026.
  4. Karthik Madhavapeddi, “‘For 1st Time In 4 Decades, Young Men Are Withdrawing From Education,’” IndiaSpend, March 27, 2026.