Too many graduates and not enough jobs in India

Picture: Soon a new worker might be needed! 
Due to a well established education system the southern Indian state of Kerala has one of the highest literacy rates (over 80%). However, graduates often end up working in the Middle East and not in India as Kerala has very limited job opportunities for well-educated workers. Kerala is still very much an agricultural state with very poor infrastructure and very limited manufacturing. This brain-drain has the positive effect of sky-high remittances from the Indian workers abroad that led to a building boom. Driving through medium-sized towns like Trivandrum or other nearby towns gives a typical picture for the Indian economy: a plethora of small shops run by their owners. Once a business is established it takes very little to run as there is hardly any marketing, innovation or management involved. India tends to solve problems by throwing cheap manpower at it, not brain-power. A main reason for this small-business economy is India's poor infrastructure. Getting goods across the country is notoriously expensive and time-consuming as states levy duties and tend to squabble about standards. This is the reason why even today India does not have a nationwide supply-chain, depending on a small-scale economy that hardly needs any highly trained engineers or managers.

If you are young, educated and looking for a job, going abroad is your best bet. For the ones who cannot land a job abroad, the best bet is to extort money and housing from their parents instead of looking for local employment. The parents on the other hand are more and more frustrated with their children's unwillingness to work and support them in old age. So if India does not manage to offer more corporate jobs for graduates, the lack of jobs will put the generational contract between young and old under acute stress as children are not willing or capable anymore to support their parents. The first cracks are already appearing in rural families as sons I met are pressing their parents to hand over house and money.