By Suresh Unnithan
An estimated 8.7 crore Indians aged 15 to 29 — roughly one in four of the country’s youth in that age group — are neither in education, employment nor training. This stark finding from NITI Aayog’s report Reimagining Skilling for Viksit Bharat@2047, based on the 78th round of the National Sample Survey from 2021, should jolt any serious conversation about India’s development trajectory. Nearly 88 per cent of this NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) cohort is engaged in domestic duties. Only 8.25 per cent of graduates are employed in roles that match their qualifications. Graduate unemployment stands at 13 per cent overall and 20.4 per cent among women, against a national unemployment rate of around 3.2 per cent.
These are not abstract statistics. They represent a vast reservoir of wasted human potential at the precise moment India claims it is racing toward Viksit Bharat by 2047. The report correctly flags barriers: high training costs, financial constraints that prevent layering skills onto already expensive education, and the difficulty of transitioning from school or college into the labour market. It recommends subsidised programmes targeted at women and NEET youth, vocational and employability frameworks from Class 6, and training pipelines aligned with MSME and emerging-sector demand. On paper, the diagnosis and prescriptions appear sensible. In practice, they reveal how little has changed despite a decade of Skill India rhetoric, massive training numbers, and policy documents that recycle the same solutions.
The Scale of Failure Hidden in Plain Sight
NITI Aayog maps India’s learners and workers into five segments — schooling, tertiary education, formal and informal work, NEET youth, and women — covering roughly 60 crore people. The NEET figure of 8.7 crore is the most damning. That nearly nine out of ten of them are stuck in domestic duties is not merely a skilling problem; it is a structural indictment of gender norms, mobility constraints, lack of safe and flexible work, and the near-absence of formal jobs for women. Only 3 per cent of women hold formal jobs, according to the report’s own framing. This is not a marginal issue that subsidies alone can fix.
The qualification mismatch is equally revealing. India has expanded higher education aggressively. More than two crore students are enrolled in BA, BSc and BCom programmes alone. Yet only a tiny fraction of graduates find roles commensurate with their degrees. Between November 2024 and July 2025, 1.86 crore applications were received for roughly 55,000 government posts. The degree has become a lottery ticket for public employment rather than a signal of productive capability. Limited practical exposure and industry-aligned training leave even the formally educated unemployable in the private sector.
Since 2014-15, more than 7.67 crore people have been trained under various schemes. The Union Budget for 2025-26 allocated around ₹34,000 crore across ministries for skilling. Outcomes, NITI itself admits, remain uneven. Funding has long been linked to enrolment rather than verified placements, wage gains or retention. This is the central contradiction: India has built one of the world’s largest training architectures while simultaneously producing a massive cohort of young people who are neither learning nor earning.
Familiar Prescriptions, Persistent Gaps
The recommendations — affordable or subsidised training for NEET youth and women, General Employability and Entrepreneurship Skills from Class 6, structured vocational “Kaushal Tracks” from Class 9, stronger MSME linkages, apprenticeships, and skills-first hiring — sound progressive. They also sound familiar. The National Education Policy 2020 already called for vocational exposure from the middle school stage and greater industry integration. Fewer than one in twelve secondary schools currently offer vocational subjects. Implementation has lagged far behind ambition.
Calling for outcome-linked financing, a Digital Skills Passport, National Credit Framework adoption, and public-private partnerships is necessary. Yet these are process reforms. They do not address the deeper demand-side failure. Skilling without corresponding job creation in manufacturing, formal services and productive MSMEs merely shifts the idle from one category to another. Self-employment is frequently presented as the residual solution for those the formal economy cannot absorb. For many, especially women constrained by domestic responsibilities and social norms, it becomes a euphemism for low-productivity, precarious work.
The report’s reliance on 2021 data in a 2026 document is also telling. The numbers capture a period still shaped by the pandemic’s labour market disruption. Whether the NEET population has meaningfully shrunk in the intervening years is left largely unexamined in the public discourse around the report. Diagnosis without timely, granular, state-level tracking risks becoming another periodic exercise in official self-awareness.
The Real Test for Viksit Bharat
India’s demographic dividend is not automatic. A large youth population becomes an asset only when education, skills and productive employment move in tandem. When 8.7 crore young people sit outside the triad of education, employment and training, the dividend begins to look like a liability — socially, economically and politically. Frustration over limited opportunities, the scramble for scarce government jobs, and the gendered confinement of women to domestic roles are not abstract risks. They are lived realities that shape social stability and growth potential.
NITI Aayog has performed a useful public service by putting hard numbers on the table and acknowledging that training volumes have not translated into consistent livelihoods. The hard work lies elsewhere: in raising the quality and relevance of school and higher education so that degrees signal capability rather than mere eligibility; in creating the conditions for formal job growth, particularly in labour-intensive manufacturing and services; in treating women’s workforce participation as a central economic priority rather than a residual social concern; and in measuring success by sustained employment and wage progression rather than certificates issued.
Subsidised programmes and Class 6 vocational modules are necessary but insufficient. Without simultaneous expansion of genuine economic opportunity and a decisive shift from credentialism to competence, India’s skilling architecture will continue to process large numbers while leaving tens of millions of young people in limbo. The report diagnoses the problem. The test of Viksit Bharat@2047 will be whether the system finally moves beyond diagnosis to durable outcomes.