India, Sept. 12 -- Somewhere in this country this morning, a man who cannot write his own name reached his workplace by seven, loading sacks, laying brick, pulling a cart. His neighbour's son holds a degree. At eleven, the son was still at home, on a phone his father paid for, refreshing a job portal.

The numbers say it more coldly. The International Labour Organisation, in its India Employment Report 2024 prepared with the Institute for Human Development, put the jobless rate among young graduates at 29.1 per cent. Among young people who can neither read nor write, 3.4 per cent. Nine times. For those who finished school or went a little further, 18.4 per cent. Those figures are for 2022 and nothing since has softened the shape they desc...