 If you were ever a TikTok aficionado like me, then you would have seen a lot of TikTok videos like these. But not everything on TikTok is meant to be inspirational. Some of them are meant to just tickle your funny bone. What? By now you probably think that you've got a completely wrong video. Whatever was told to you on the thumbnail doesn't match the content here. Why am I talking about TikTok videos when this video is about the Agni Path protests, but they are connected. These are not just any ordinary TikTok videos. I've chosen two themes deliberately. The first is about the will, the passion amongst young Indian men to join the army. The army is a great leveler. Everyone from any background can hope to join it and especially in these times of extreme nationalism, it provides great prestige, great respect to people who work in the army. The second comic theme is about Sarkari knockries, a government job. Mind you, these two are connected. Across India, young men dream of joining the army not only because it's a prestigious job, but also because it's a secure job. It promises good financial security with a pension and perks which last almost throughout their lives. A soldier's job combines all the ideals of machismo in a patriarchal society. It is secure, it is well-paying, it garners respect and it also caters to the extreme nationalist identity of young men that we see around us today. So why has the Agni Path scheme caused so much heartburn and anger on the streets right now? There are many reasons but I'm going to only focus on two. The first of this is the age limit. Now anyone who wants to join the army knows that in most posts the age limit is actually 21. In some cases in technical posts it goes up to 23 and in some 27. So that should not have been the problem. The problem is what comes to point number two which is the duration or the length of service which is just four years but I'll come to that later. Let's just look at what this age bracket means. Now we have data from CMI for employment, what young people want in terms of employment when it comes to age brackets and I'm going to take the two age brackets that are relevant for us which is 15 to 19 and then 20 to 24. In the first group which is late teens, only 7% of young people actually want to work. Only 7% that's because most of them are studying. But by the time they enter their 20s they start looking for work. They want to work. So if one looks at the labour force participation rate of those who are actively seeking work or those who will work if they get an opportunity then that number rises from 7% straight to 38%. But that is both male and female. If we only look at young men in their early 20s that number is likely to be 60 to 70%. Now there are 5.4 crore young people between the age of 20 to 24 who are looking for work who want to work. Only 2.8 crore of them have worked. That means that the unemployment rate there is about 48%. This is a massive unemployment rate which explains the anger that is bubbling over onto the streets. And this is where reason number 2 comes in which is the length of service. Now imagine a 22 year old young man in a low middle class home. There is pressure on him to start looking for a job, start earning so that he can share the financial burden of the family. There is increasing pressure on the parents from society at large from relatives to get the boy married off to some young girl and he needs a job to do it and a secure job to do it. Traditionally an army job has been great prospects for anyone who wanted to get married. But if that job is only going to last till the time the young boy or young man is going to be 26 years old then who is going to marry him? But the counter argument there is that if someone has worked for 4 years even if he does not get absorbed into the regular army which is 75% of the agnives, even then they will end up with a corpus of about 11 lakh rupees at the end of the 4 years. 30% of it is forced saving from their salaries it will be deducted, they will only get 70% in hand, 30% equivalent will be given by the government. So a total of more than 11 lakh rupees those are the calculations for those who join as agnives. But what after that? What is that 11 lakh rupees going to be used as to become entrepreneurs? To run their own businesses? To become self-employed? Is that what the logic is? But if that is the case why would they want a government job in the first place? In fact studies done over the last few years have shown us that private jobs and entrepreneurship has completely lost its charm when it comes to young people in India. Look at this graph on your screen which is from a survey, a couple of surveys by CSDS Cass and it shows you that youth preference for private jobs and to run businesses has almost halved between the mid 2000s to the mid 2010s and reports suggest that that preference has actually dropped even further over the last few years. This is why there is so much anger on the streets but it is not only about a job. Yes of course there is the issue of financial security but also it is an issue of prestige of status and of their identity in these extreme nationalist times. That's the show today. Keep watching NewsClick, like this video, share it as well and subscribe to our channel.