"Youth Alienation and Education Policy Failures Signal Intergenerational Crisis"
Intergenerational discontinuity
breakdown of shared values and trust between successive age cohorts in a society
Social capital
the stock of mutual trust, norms, and networks that enable collective action in a society
India's youth — broadly defined as those between 15 and 29 years of age — constitute one of the largest demographic cohorts in the world, and the country's developmental narrative has long rested on the promise of a demographic dividend. Yet the structural conditions required to convert this demographic advantage into productive social capital — quality education, stable employment, and meaningful civic participation — have remained elusive for a significant proportion of young Indians. The National Education Policy, 2020 acknowledged systemic failures in curriculum design, pedagogical approach, and institutional capacity, echoing concerns first raised by the Yash Pal Committee Report of 1993, which examined the burden of rote learning and examination stress on school-going children. That report's recommendations briefly influenced curriculum reform but were gradually edged out by the pressures of competitive examination culture.
The sociology of adolescence in India has been shaped by a peculiar tension: a society that valorises youth as the nation's future while simultaneously subjecting young people to intensely hierarchical, high-stakes, and often dehumanising educational pathways. The expansion of higher education to include students from marginalised social backgrounds — a consequence of reservation policies and increased institutional capacity — was not matched by a corresponding investment in the quality of institutional support, mentorship, or mental health infrastructure. This gap between access and genuine inclusion has produced a generation that is formally educated but substantively alienated.
The concept of intergenerational discontinuity — the breakdown of shared values, narratives, and trust between successive generations — is central to understanding contemporary youth unrest in India. Unlike earlier generations, today's young people form their political and social consciousness in an environment shaped by social media, hyper-competitive credentialing, and visible economic precarity. Their historical consciousness is not inherited from parental memory but constructed from events they have personally witnessed since early adolescence, roughly from age 10 or 11 onwards. This produces a fundamentally different political subject: one whose grievances are experiential rather than ideological, and whose sense of betrayal is directed not at abstract systems but at the adult world that promised them a future and failed to deliver it.
The NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) controversy — involving allegations of systematic paper leaks and irregularities in a high-stakes national examination — became a flashpoint precisely because it crystallised a broader, pre-existing anger. The examination system in India functions as the primary gateway to social mobility for millions of aspirants, many of whom invest years of preparation and significant family resources in coaching. …
In the context of any country, which one of the following would be considered as part of its social capital?
One of the implications of equality in society is the absence of
Assertion (A): The systematic exclusion of teachers from education policy deliberation weakens the state's capacity to respond effectively to youth alienation.
Reason (R): Teachers have the most direct and sustained proximity to young people's lived experiences and concerns among all adult professional groups.
Select the correct answer using the codes below:
Which of the following policy documents first formally examined the relationship between curriculum overload, examination stress, and student well-being in India?
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