Narendra Modi, the powerful and acutely image-conscious prime minister of India, is suddenly facing a political problem he had not anticipated on entering his 13th year in office.

印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪一向强势且极其在意形象。在执掌权力进入第13个年头之际，他突然面临一个始料未及的政治难题。

Mr. Modi has had his eye trained on economic anxieties for much of the year, which were sharpened by the external effects of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. His government had to manage shortages of imported oil and gas, distributing the costs among businesses and ordinary citizens.

今年以来，莫迪大部分时间都在关注经济层面的焦虑情绪，而美国和以色列对伊朗发动的战争所带来的外部影响又进一步加剧了这种焦虑。他的政府不得不应对进口石油和天然气短缺的问题，需要在企业和普通民众之间分摊由此产生的成本。

But it was another sort of economic pressure that has now caught up with him and helped drive thousands of students to protest in the capital: The crumbling and sometimes crooked machinery of India’s underfunded education system, along with a painful lack of jobs for the millions of graduates it produces.

但真正让他陷入困境的是另一种经济压力——也正是这种压力驱使数千名学生走上首都街头抗议：印度资金不足的教育体系本身已经摇摇欲坠、腐败丛生，而这一体系每年培养出的数百万毕业生又面临严峻的就业难问题。

After 25 days of protest, and nearly three days since police used batons and tear gas to disperse protesters, Mr. Modi was still struggling for a meaningful response. On Thursday, he posted on social media that “Nothing is more important than the welfare and future of our youth!” He has promised fast-track tribunals to punish the individuals who spoiled the exam but nothing else.

抗议已持续25天，警察动用警棍和催泪弹驱散示威者也已过去将近三天，莫迪仍在苦苦寻找一个有分量的回应。周四，他在社交媒体上发帖称，“没有什么比我们年轻人的福祉和未来更重要！”他承诺将设立快速审理法庭，惩处泄题丑闻的相关人员，但除此之外没有提出其他措施。

This sounded both late and lame to the protesters who were on the street, infuriating many of them further. The movement’s demands are widening rapidly from their initial complaints focused on over accountability for the scrapping of a college-entrance exam to, among other things, compensation for the protesters injured in clashes on Monday.

这番表态在街头抗议者听来既嫌太迟，又显苍白无力，反而让许多人更加愤慨。这场运动的诉求正在迅速扩大：从最初要求对大学入学考试取消一事追究责任，延伸至为周一冲突中受伤的抗议者提供赔偿等多项诉求。

Many of the protesters are students, and many others have jobs, but they share a sense of desperation and rage about education and employment prospects. Smaller protests have emerged in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and other cities, raising demands that Mr. Modi will find difficult if not impossible to answer in the short term.

许多抗议者是学生，也有不少是上班族，但他们对教育和就业前景都抱有共同的绝望和愤怒。孟买、班加罗尔、艾哈迈达巴德等城市也出现了规模较小的抗议活动，这些诉求将让莫迪在短期内很难、甚至无法作出回应。

Arsh Gupta, a 20-year-old college student, said “there are a lot of feelings” that brought him to the central protest site on Thursday. The original testing failure “is not a small thing at all,” he said, but he was driven more by other issues, most of all “the feeling that we’re living under a dictatorship.”

20岁的大学生阿尔什·古普塔说，促使他周四来到中央抗议现场的原因是“许许多多的情绪”。最初的考试事故“绝非小事”，他说，但驱使他前来的更多是其他问题，尤其是“我们感觉自己生活在一个独裁政权之下”。

At the forefront of the protests is the Cockroach Janta Party, not an actual political party but a movement that takes its name from an insult made by the chief justice of India’s Supreme Court. It is taking aim at these much longer-term crises. The education system is in disarray, the C.J.P.’s spokesmen said, demanding that corrupt and bungling officials must face accountability.

站在抗议最前沿的是“蟑螂人民党”。这并不是一个真正的政党，而是一场以印度最高法院首席大法官曾使用的一句侮辱性言论命名的社会运动。该运动正在将矛头指向印度长期存在的危机。蟑螂人民党的发言人表示，印度教育体系已陷入混乱，要求腐败无能的官员必须被追责。

India’s economy may be growing at a healthy rate, but it offers the protesters little hope. While the gross rate of unemployment looks low, recorded as between 4 and 7 percent, most workers fall outside the formal sector and never get counted. Young adults, especially those who have earned degrees and want to put them to use, are the most frustrated. Nearly 40 percent are unemployed, according to the State of Working India 2026 report published by Azim Premji University.

印度经济或许仍保持着健康增长速度，但这并没有给这些抗议者带来多少希望。虽然官方统计的失业率看起来并不高，大约在4%到7%之间，但大多数劳动者都处于非正规就业部门，从未被纳入统计。年轻人——尤其是拿到学位、渴望一展所长的大学毕业生——是最沮丧的群体。阿齐姆·普雷姆吉大学发布的《2026年印度就业状况报告》显示，印度年轻人的失业率接近40%。

The protesters’ anger intensified after Monday’s show of force by the police, and appears to have turned against the whole of India’s government.

警方周一采取强硬行动后，抗议者的愤怒进一步升级，矛头似乎已转向整个印度政府。

None of this was on Mr. Modi’s menu for 2026.

这一切都不在莫迪的2026年议程中。

本周早些时候，新德里，安保人员发射催泪瓦斯驱散抗议者。

The Iran war presented a tough series of challenges but also an opportunity to make a fresh break. Economic difficulties had been piling up for months while Mr. Modi’s party was also fighting to win power in a series of state elections.

伊朗战争带来了一系列严峻考验，但同时也提供了一个重新出发的机会。在莫迪的执政党忙于角逐一系列邦级选举之际，经济困难已持续数月。

After winning control of state governments culminating with West Bengal in May, Mr. Modi turned to keeping down inflation and reining in the public’s expectations.

在赢得多个邦的控制权，并于5月最终拿下西孟加拉邦后，莫迪开始致力于控制通胀，并降低公众对政府的期待。

Mr. Modi started warning Indians that painful times were coming. Food prices were rising, and the rupee was nose-diving.

莫迪开始警告印度民众，困难时期即将到来。食品价格在上涨，卢比在大幅贬值。

Around the same time, it emerged that the questions to a national medical college entrance exam had been leaked, so the results for millions of students were canceled. The C.J.P. took up the test-takers’ cause almost instantly.

大约在同一时期，一场全国医学院入学考试的试题泄露事件曝光，导致数百万学生的考试成绩被取消。蟑螂人民党几乎在第一时间站出来支持这些考生。

The protest’s leadership is, however, dispersed and nonprofessional. That makes it unlike the farmers who staged a siege-like protest around Delhi for more than a year from 2020 to 2021, or even a current protest on behalf of Jammu and Kashmir, whose elected leader is trying to restore its statehood.

不过，这场抗议的领导结构较为分散，也缺乏专业性。这使它不同于2020年至2021年农民在德里周边发动的、持续一年多的围困式抗议，也不同于目前围绕查谟和克什米尔问题展开的抗议——后者有一位民选领导人试图恢复该地区的邦地位。

These mostly middle-class protesters cannot easily be made to look marginal.

这些大多来自中产阶级的抗议者很难被简单描绘成边缘群体。

Nor can the issues they raise be answered overnight. The causes of India’s jobs crisis have been brewing for a long time. A great deal of students’ time and their families’ money has been invested in courses that routinely fail to equip them for the workplace.

他们所提出的问题同样无法一夜之间给出答案。印度就业危机的根源已经酝酿积累了很长时间。学生们投入了大量时间，家庭耗费了高昂资金投入，但这些课程往往无法真正帮助他们获得进入职场所需的技能。

Amit Basole, an economist and lead author of the State of Working India report, noted that young graduates in India have always been disproportionately unemployed. But their number has grown terrifically in recent years, along with the debt their families owe for their educations.

《印度就业状况报告》的主要作者、经济学家阿米特·巴索莱指出，印度年轻大学毕业生一直以来的失业比例就明显偏高。但近年来，他们的数量急剧增长，与此同时，他们的家庭为了支付教育费用而背负的债务也不断增长。

“It’s a systematic failure. If the government’s not responsible, then who is?” asked Pranavi Tripathi, a 22-year-old business graduate protesting in Delhi on Thursday.

“这是系统性的失败。如果政府不负责，那谁负责？”22岁的商科毕业生普拉纳维·特里帕蒂周四在德里参加抗议时说道。