Dharmendra Pradhan has resigned, but deeper problem remains: Youth unemployment

5 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jul 25, 2026 04:59 PM IST Protestors celebrate after the resignation of Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in New Delhi on Saturday. Tashi TobgyalThe immediate cause for the rise of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) and the nationwide protests may be the leak of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) question paper. And while Dharmendra Pradhan has resigned as Education Minister, it does nothing to solve a crucial underlying problem: jobs. According to Alexandra Hermann Prasa, Lead Economist at Oxford Economics, while the student protests don’t pose much of a risk to the larger Indian economy, they do “expose a deeper jobs problem”.The government’s flagship employment survey, the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), shows that the unemployment among Ind