Abhishek Kumar, 23, hanged himself to death in Patna in February this year following depression from joblessness. Sudip Singh was in his late 20s when he committed suicide after failing to repay debts. That was 2010 and he was unemployed. Even in the so-called Indian Silicon Valley, Bangalore, young DR Shyam recently took his life, leaving behind a suicide note claiming dejection due to unemployment.

India’s urban centres are faced with an emerging crisis whose magnitude is often overlooked. Youth unemployment continues to rise in a nation where more and more people are migrating to cities and towns while a crumbling educational edifice fails to work India’s population bulge to its advantage.

According to the ‘agglomeration index’, a new and now widely-acknowledged measure of urban population, 52% of India’s population is urbanised. Concurrently, India’s urban population is set to rise to around 600 million by 2030 according to various estimates. At present, 7.5% of graduates/postgraduates in urban India are jobless, as per recent official data from the labour ministry.

Educated unemployment is so entrenched and institutionalised in society that even the abnormality of such a situation is often short of being acknowledged. Asked about extensive unemployment, Bimal Nashkar, himself a jobless youth who graduated in 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis which many believe India did better at weathering than others, said: “What’s new in it? There are so many of them.” Nashkar rues the lack of comprehensive unemployment allowances in India.

But living off state support is hardly a solution. Most people desire an out-and-out reform of the system. A recent report put together by Boston Consulting Group went to the root of the problem. It said India’s huge labour surplus comprises graduates who are without the requisite skills and thus unemployable. Put simply, applicants’ profiles consistently don’t match job requirements.

The founder and chief mentor of Sikshana, an educational foundation based in Bangalore, ES Ramamurthy believes that with a focus on rote learning, degrees awarded to students are often irrelevant to skills looked for by employers. In addition, “if you look at the statistics now, across the country new state-run colleges are an extinct species,” Ramamurthy said, lamenting the state’s abdication of its responsibility.

Critics say under the shadow of the neoliberal educational policy, a privatised education system has meant quality higher education is not universally available. A 13% cut in higher education spending in the 2013 federal budget only bears out Ramamurthy’s grievance, one that is widely shared. Dwindling state support comes with a mushrooming of shoddy private institutes that churn graduates in thousands without necessary skills being imparted.

A recent ESRC Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance working paper confirmed fears that the quality of graduates in India leaves much to be desired. According to the report, authored by Ruchi Hajela, “on the one hand, domestic economic growth has created huge employment demand and job opportunities, while on the other, a shortage of skills is making more people unemployable.”

Engineering graduate Rajbir Sanyal is reeling under debt. He took an educational loan of around £5,000 and, after a four-year bachelor’s degree from a private institute, is without a job. “I have come to realise my CV is unworthy, and my degree a mere piece of paper,” he says. Sanyal, a resident of Kolkata, calls attention to “state apathy” by citing paltry public expenditure on higher education in India. According to latest available figures, state spending on education stood at 3.85% of GDP.

As educated Indians suffer from chronic joblessness, fingers are automatically pointed at the substandard quality of schooling itself. When human resource minister MM Pallam Raju said that “linking education to jobs” was a priority, he aptly captured in a few words what really needs to be done.

Aditya Singh, president of Alexis Society, a Lucknow-based youth-led not-for-profit and a participant of the Indian government’s NGO partnership scheme, echoed Raju’s views. “Academia and industry must come together to introduce some courses of professional relevance,” he said. Singh further argued in favour of a ‘strategic reform’ wherein the focus will be on nurturing specific skills to reduce the existing mismatch.

The thrust of education policymaking in India is now quality. In fact, allowing FDI in higher education is one among a slew of measures adopted by the government to potentially tackle the situation. But the possible benefits of such a move are debatable as critics say it is elitist in nature and will exclude the very mass of jobless population who simply fail to come up to scratch and battle it out in the hypercompetitive globalised job market.