I found this incredibly frustrating, @pbmehta. You tell her that exams and votes are the ‘two pillars of individual agency.’ And that gives Polgreen the rope on which to hang her big India story as one of frustrated aspirations and political democracy. Yet the fundamental problem generating the exams and votes pillars of the failed politico-economic order is totally ignored. The NYTimes reader never learns about the jobs crisis that is responsible for the narrow ladder (exams) and the clientelism of Indian politics (votes). 25 million people applied for 90 thousand positions in the Indian railways. More than half a million applied for 583 positions to enforce alcohol regulations. 26 percent of 15-24 year olds are neither in school or working. India’s female labor force participation is 35 percent. Only 12 percent of working age adults are employed in the formal sector. The bulk of the populace is underemployed in low-productivity informal sector activities like hawking vegetables on the street. This is a crisis of gargantuan proportions. The desperate pressure on the kids to score well in exams and the deep clientelism of Indian politics are both *causally downstream* of this jobs crisis. Why has the Indian economy failed to produce jobs for its people so systematically and comprehensively? This is the fundamental problem of the Indian republic. Everything else pales in comparison. nytimes.com/2026/10/26/opini…