India, Aug. 9 -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged graduating engineers at IIT-Delhi on Saturday to measure their careers against the country's needs rather than salary slips or startup valuations, telling students that "the basis of every decision of yours should be what the benefit to the country will be."

Addressing the 57th convocation ceremony, Modi told the graduating class that an IIT degree was "a mandate to contribute to the nation," and framed the years ahead as a test distinct from anything the students had faced in the classroom. "Unlike your university exams, life's most critical challenges are entirely out of syllabus," he said, urging students to identify "the questions the world has stopped asking" rather than simply ans...