Who Got Nothing, And Why: Youth Welfare In Uttar Pradesh Under Akhilesh Yadav And Yogi Adityanath - Sunny Singh

Harold Lasswell reduced politics to a single line: "Who gets what, when, and how?" David Easton gave the same idea a formal shape when he described politics as the authoritative allocation of values for a society. Both definitions put distribution at the centre, and both require a government to explain how it allocates public resources. Uttar Pradesh sharpens that test. The 2011 Census counts 55,198,857 people aged 15 to 29 in the state, accounting for over 10 per cent of India’s youth and the largest such cohort in any state. A cohort of that size can become a dividend or a liability, and the outcome depends on state capacity. Lasswell also leaves a harder question unasked. Who got nothing, and why? For decades the answer lay in a politics that treated welfare as patronage. Until 2017, governments in Uttar Pradesh rewarded the loyal and the connected, and millions of young citizens never entered the state’s field of vision.

Read through the idea of justice; this failure has a name. Rawls held that a just order distributes basic goods through a fair and impartial procedure. Amartya Sen added an important correction. Merely possessing a good tells us little unless the holder can turn it into a real freedom to learn, work and earn. Together, the two ideas set a double test for any youth programme. The procedure must stay clean, and the outcome must increase what a young person can actually do. Public choice scholars add a third point. Where officials exercise discretion over scarce benefits, rent-seeking follows. Discretion invites the middleman, and the middleman shrinks the benefit before it reaches the citizen.

The laptop scheme from 2012 to 2017 under Akhilesh Yadav failed all three tests. Against 14.91 lakh applications, the government invited a tender for 15 lakh laptops. HP supplied 14.81 lakh devices for ₹2,822.71 crore, and the Comptroller and Auditor General recorded that 14.35 lakh were distributed. The same report found that about 4.55 lakh eligible students were still denied a laptop and that ₹598.33 crore meant for the scheme lay unspent. Officials, using political discretion, picked the beneficiaries, and that is precisely the condition in which rent-seeking thrives. The machines arrived with no connectivity, no link to a curriculum and no route to employment, so a laptop with nothing around it worked as a souvenir. Built on favour, the scheme produced goodwill for a party and very little human capital for the state.

The Swami Vivekanand Yuva Sashaktikaran Yojana addresses each of these failures in turn. Between 2021 and 2023, the Yogi Adityanath government delivered 46.75 lakh tablets and smartphones to students, 19.84 lakh tablets and 26.91 lakh smartphones, more than three times the 14.35 lakh laptops the Comptroller and Auditor General recorded as distributed under the earlier scheme. The design matters more than the count. DigiShakti and Aadhaar-linked verification remove human discretion from selection and delivery, on the same logic as direct benefit transfers, and the government reports that delivery is leakage-free. The state cabinet later approved 25 lakh more tablets, with a budget provision of ₹2,374.60 crore for 2026–27. Each device comes loaded with learning portals, competitive exam modules and digital skill platforms, so the hardware works as a tool from the first day.

Devices solve only the access problem. Employability needs a second layer, and between 2017 and 2026, the government built it. Guided by the National Education Policy 2020, it moved from supply-driven training to demand-driven training. The Chief Minister Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme pairs classroom instruction with on-the-job training and splits the stipend with employers, narrowing the gap between what institutes teach and what firms need. The partnership with Tata Technologies is upgrading government polytechnics and industrial training institutes. Under it, the firm designs industry-aligned curricula and installs equipment for Industry 4.0 training, including industrial automation, robotics and related digital manufacturing skills. A first phase has covered government ITIs, and the state has cleared a further phase for 62 more ITIs at an investment of over ₹3,634 crore, with a separate modernisation of government polytechnics. Skilling that follows employer demand produces graduates whom employers hire.

The startup record shows the same logic at work. As of 31 December 2025, Uttar Pradesh had 20,163 startups recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade and ranked as the third-largest startup ecosystem in India. Incubation support comes from IIT Kanpur, IIT BHU and IIM Lucknow. This spread matters because Indian startups cluster in a few metros, and a state that pushes them into smaller cities spreads income and employment more evenly. Seed funding, mentorship and faster approvals lower the cost of entry, and the founders who gain from them hire locally.

Human development also covers physical and civic life. Block-level sports complexes, open gyms and Yuvak Mangal Dal clubs build a talent pipeline in rural districts where no such pipeline existed. Digital volunteer platforms connect young people to infrastructure projects and welfare delivery and so turn beneficiaries into participants.

Taken together, these steps redefine youth welfare in Uttar Pradesh. Universal reach, honest procedure and a direct link to industry have replaced the middleman and selective favour. The state’s young people are emerging as the Amrit Peedhi that Viksit Bharat 2047 needs. Swami Vivekananda told them to stand up, to be bold and to be strong, to take the whole responsibility on their own shoulders, and to know that they are the creators of their own destiny. The youth of Uttar Pradesh now have the capability to act on that advice and to shape the destiny of the nation.

About the Author: Sunny Singh is a research scholar at the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, and a research associate at the Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation, New Delhi.

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