Some nights, Chandan Kumar gets home at 1:30 a.m., long after his young daughter has fallen asleep. The 31-year-old moves passengers and parcels across Delhi on an Apache motorcycle. A good month brings about 22,000 rupees ($230), enough to keep the bike on the road and his household running. Kumar graduated from the University of Delhi in 2021 with a bachelor of arts degree and applied for about 20 jobs that year. Nothing landed. Delivery work, which he’d started part time in college, became the gig he couldn’t leave. “Sometimes I think, ‘What is this life?’” Kumar says. “‘What had I imagined, and what is actually happening?’”
Kumar’s story echoes the frustration of young graduates that animated the satirically named “cockroach” protest movement this year. A Bloomberg analysis of government data found that in 2025, just 4 in 100 young graduates held salaried jobs with a contract, paid leave and social security benefits.
Kumar’s still trying. After years volunteering with community organizations, he hopes to turn that experience into a corporate social-responsibility job working with nonprofits and local communities. “My dream is to get my daughter into a good school, so that her future can be secure,” he says.
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