New Delhi, Sept. 11 -- When the 1950s-origin Planning Commission was decommissioned in 2015, many welcomed the flexible and participatory ethos postulated by the NITI Aayog. The Planning Commission was, after all, top-down, highly centralised, and adhered to rigid 'five-year plans'. Its younger, yuppie version was to propound decentralisation and greater cooperation between the states and the Centre. Most significantly, though, the NITI Aayog was to have no financial muscle, unlike its predecessor, which controlled almost half of the Plan expenditure. By comparison, the NITI Aayog was essentially rendered toothless, reduced only to a role of advice and gentle persuasion. For economy-watchers such as myself, though, NITI Aayog's reports continue to enthral. Several of its reports contain crucial murmurings that affect the Indian economy; unfortunately, they are not receiving the importance that they deserve.

With the GDP numbers once again being debated and debunked this week, attention has naturally turned to tepid job creation. The NITI Aayog had already rung the alarm bells on August 18 in its report titled, "Reimagining Skilling for Viksit Bharat@2047" - a closer look paints a rather dismal picture of the plight of Indian youth. A whopping 8.7 crore of them, aged between 15 and 29 years, are in a state of limbo - they aren't studying, are not in training, and neither do they have employment. Ironically, they are also called NEET (not in education, employment, and training) in the report. What are these young people doing? Doomscrolling? Maybe participating in student-led protests? These numbers divulge a seething frustration among the younger generation, who are not yet on a productive path in their lives. These numbers are in spite of the supposed 7.67 crore youth who have been trained since 2014-15. Noting that some state governments and the private sector have strived to improve skilling, the report says the "outcomes remain uneven".

These numbers, gathered as part of the 78th round of the National Sample Survey of 2021, may well have been surpassed by now if Covid-19 and its after-effects are taken into consideration, along with global outages, AI (artificial intelligence) disruption, and so on. The report also went on to say that unemployment among graduates was almost four times that among the general population. Only one in 12 graduates, or 8.25 per cent, lands a job matching their skills, while 13 per cent of all graduates and 20.4 per cent of women graduates are not gainfully employed. As per the latest numbers cited in the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), India's unemployment rate in July 2026 stood at 5.1 per cent for people aged 15 years and above, with urban unemployment at 6.7 per cent and rural unemployment at 4.5 per cent.

The purported resilience of our economic growth, in spite of the West Asia war and supply-chain issues, is commendable. However, we cannot gloss over the challenges that still abound. The lack of good jobs is a reality that is easily noticeable. Just observe the number of gig workers who are well-spoken, educated, and definitely seem overqualified to be delivery persons. But, at the same time, they don't have the skills to be employed in better jobs. The NITI Aayog report notes the cost barrier that exists for youth seeking to avail themselves of additional vocational courses, as well as the dearth of apprenticeships. Stuck in this no-man's-land, a vast number of Indian youth stare at an uncertain future unless the government overcomes its inertia. And that's where the NITI Aayog report comes into play. It recommends that skill development should be introduced as early as Class 6 in the school curriculum: General Employability and Entrepreneurship Skills (GEES) for students between Classes 6 and 12, Kaushal Tracks from Class 9, more vocational options based on national labour-market demands, and greater real-world work experience. A robust MSME (micro, small and medium enterprise) sector can provide a stable middle rung of firms that can also generate quality jobs. Global financial giant Morgan Stanley predicts that India needs annual GDP growth of 9-10 per cent to generate enough jobs and a growth rate of about 14 per cent to clear the backlog of jobless people. The action that we need is not short-term in nature; these measures, if initiated now, will reap benefits over the next five to 10 years. The time is not to argue over GDP numbers and their methodologies. It's time to pay attention to the youth waiting for jobs, and those who will soon be standing in the wings as well.

Views expressed are personal. The writer is an independent journalist

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.