Youth Protests Reveal Institutional Failure: Menaka Guruswamy

Hyderabad:Protests by young Indians over examinations, jobs and education were the point at which institutional failure became visible, Supreme Court senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP Menaka Guruswamy said here on Saturday, arguing that the constitutional promise of freedom must ultimately translate into opportunity, dignity and a voice in public life.

Speaking at a lecture titled ‘Indian Constitution and its Protection;, organised by the S. Jaipal Reddy Memorial Foundation and Manthan Foundation, Guruswamy traced the journey of a young Indian from the classroom to the examination hall and labour market, and finally to the street when institutions fail to provide answers. “The protest is not where the story begins. It is where the story becomes visible,” she said.

Guruswamy said Indian families had long understood education as the route to social mobility. “Families have been taught a simple formula for mobility: study hard, get educated, get a degree, get a job, build a better life,” she said. “In modern India, the parent sacrifices, the child studies, the family saves, and education is supposed to turn effort into opportunity.”

But that chain was increasingly under strain, she said, pointing to graduate unemployment and the difficulty of moving from education into secure employment. Citing the ‘State of Working India 2026’ report, she referred to graduate unemployment of nearly 40 per cent among those aged 15-25 and about 20 per cent among those aged 25-29.

Menaka Guruswamy also questioned what official employment figures actually capture, referring to the Periodic Labour Force Survey’s current weekly status measure under which a person could be counted as employed after working for at least one hour on any single day in the preceding seven days. “One hour,” she said. “So when we say India is creating employment, we need to ask what kind of employment.”

“A statistic can tell us that someone has worked. It cannot tell us whether they can plan, whether they can repay a loan, whether they can support their parents, whether they can rent a home, whether they can imagine having a family,” the SC senior advocate said.

The growing private cost of education was another concern, she noted. As public educational capacity retreated and private education expanded, Guruswamy said, the cost shifted from the state to households through fees, coaching, transport, hostels, college expenses and education loans.

“When public capacity retreats, education does not retreat with it. The cost simply changes hands,” Guruswamy said. “It moves from the state to the household, from the public budget to the family budget, from a public service to a private expense.”

For many lower-middle-class and middle-class families, she said, examinations such as NEET represented much more than an examination. “It is a chance for a stable, better life,” she said, referring to coaching fees, years of preparation and family sacrifices. “When the examination itself is alleged to be compromised, the question no longer is: who leaked the paper? It becomes, can I trust this system that decides my future?”

Guruswamy said other countries had created institutional bridges between education and employment, citing Germany’s dual vocational system, South Korea’s vocational education, Japan’s university-to-employment recruitment and China’s expansion of vocational education alongside industrial policy. “India often tells a young person, get the degrees, get the skill, find the job, adapt, re-skill, compete, move,” she said. “But at some point we have to ask: how much of the transition from education to employment should one individual be expected to solve alone?”

She later turned to Parliament and constitutional institutions while responding to questions from the audience.

Asked whether the Constitution was in danger, Guruswamy said it was “highly endangered” when institutions lose their capacity for deliberation and disagreement. “When you have parliamentary traditions of deliberation that are not allowed or followed, your Constitution is endangered,” she said. “When you have institutions, including courts, becoming politicised, then Parliament is endangered, then the Constitution is endangered.”

Earlier, Nalsar University of Law Vice Chancellor Prof. Srikrishna Deva Rao, speaking at the event, said the Constitution was a “legal, social and political document” and a roadmap for social transformation, aimed at dismantling hierarchies and ending oppression. He identified constitutional supremacy, constitutional endurance and continuing constitutional engagement as key to its protection. Referring to Hyderabad’s human-rights tradition, Prof. Rao recalled the contribution of poet and activist Kaloji Narayana Rao, describing his poetry and struggles as an outstanding example of the human-rights movement.

Guruswamy said the youth protests offered a different model of political engagement, moving issues such as jobs, education, examinations, security and livelihood beyond the boundaries of political parties. Ultimately, she said, constitutional protection could not mean defending only the text of the Constitution. “It had to mean ensuring that its promises reached ordinary citizens. If you follow the life of young Indians, we see the larger story of India herself,” she said.

At the question answer session, she was also asked about her association with the Trinamul Congress and whether the same criticisms she had levelled at the BJP and the functioning of Parliament could be applied to her own party. Guruswamy said she was willing to “agree to disagree”, but rejected the suggestion that there was no distinction between political parties on issues such as secularism, equality, free media and the treatment of different communities.“There is no perfect political party,” she said. “I’ll tell you what there is. There are people who oppose when tyrants govern.”

She said that those who regarded secularism, equality, dignity and fraternity as constitutional values had a reason to be part of the Opposition.

Another audience question concerned the collegium system for appointing judges. Guruswamy said the system was not expressly provided for in the text of the Constitution but had emerged through judicial decisions. “The collegium system is not provided for by the text of the Constitution. The collegium system is created by case law.” She said three key cases had established the system under which judges appoint judges, describing it as unique to India.

Responding to a student from Osmania University Law College who said students facing protests and demands for basic rights were being subjected to FIRs, Guruswamy advised students to connect with lawyers in the audience.

On another question about the Opposition’s role, she criticised the functioning of Parliament, saying even recording a dissenting note in a parliamentary committee had become a battle. “We are outnumbered in every parliamentary committee. We are outnumbered enormously,” she said. “But that Parliament has become a space where even dissent on legislation is not countenanced.” She recalled being told that an intervention she made on the representation of Scheduled Castes, women and OBCs among judges could not go on record, and said another remark concerning judicial appointments was also deleted.

“The real question has become: can Parliament be an institution where only one point of view is even recorded as part of the minutes of the House,” she asked.