This is true universally, so I don't think it explains why some people in some countries are extra desperate to get degrees
There's a _lot_ of very poor people in India, vastly more so than in a "fully developed" nation.
But at the same time, India's recent economic growth is enormous, giving a far larger percentage of the population opportunities they've never had before.
But there's enormous competition for those opportunities.
So basically it's the right moment (more like "right half century") for India to have this problem, there's so much opportunity but also so much competition, that each small step forwards academically can mean a jumping a generation ahead of the curve on economic growth.
To put it another way, you can model economic development by chucking a lump of meat to a school of starving piranhas.