Band aid on a tumour

Comical steps in the aftermath of NEET leak will not work

Alok Tiwari

At a time when the world is trying to understand how to deal with consequences of Artificial Intelligence and best strategies to survive climate change, we are confounded by the logistics of conducting an exam properly. The fallout from NEET paper leak seems never ending. Amid all that, there is another fiasco around the CBSE exams. Students have found someone else’s answer sheets got evaluated in their name. Nobody really knows its true extent and how bad it is. Just that poor students are no longer sure whether there is any connection between what they have written in the examination and what their mark-sheets say. Underneath that a whole new scandal emerged about how CBSE appointed a tainted tech company to provide on-screen marking system.

For a change, country’s premier investigation agencies are doing more than just dirty work of BJP. They have rounded up a string of people that include paper setters, teachers, and coaching class owners. Most of the accused in these cases have impeccable caste and communal credentials. They may have put the lights off on the future of lakhs of our youths. They may have pushed several youngsters to suicide. They may have turned lakhs of rupees parents spent on coaching of their wards to dust. But, hey, nobody can call them anti-national. Whatever else it may be, it is not exam-jehad. They are just ordinary criminals out to ruin our lives. Let us be grateful the vishwaguru flag will keep flying high.

Oh man, dark humour is the only thing that will keep us alive. Otherwise, the picture is as bleak as it can be. Not the least because of government response. Apparently, air force planes will now deliver NEET question papers to different centres across the country. What problem will this fix exactly? Was it the case that the leaked papers were stolen in transit? Also, the planes will fly to only 18 cities. How will the papers be carried from there to 551 cities and towns where exam will be held? I am guessing army tanks will be called. Then, perhaps, soldiers will be guarding the centres and invigilating during the exams.

But wait, the papers were leaked by those who set them. So now the paper setters will be in ‘lockdown’ until the end of the exams. This is not a joke. There is safe facility where they have all been housed. They will have no interaction with the outside world. No access to phones. Internet use is being closely monitored. All entries and exits are apparently being recorded. There is no word yet about how the exam centres across the county will be guarded. Or how the answer sheets will be transported to the valuers.

Doing all this is great if at the end of this all the National Testing Agency is finally able to conduct the examination properly. Let us for a moment forget the comical aspect of the whole exercise. Governments do a lot of things not because it is effective but because they want to be seen to be doing something. Even if everything works flawlessly, it would still be applying band-aid on what is essentially a malignant tumour. Band aids are visible, but they will not treat the cancer.

The cancer is the neglect that almost entire education sector is suffering. NEET and CBSE boards are just two of the most visible exams among hundreds that our students appear for. Many of these are entrances to important courses. There are also exit exams that students write to earn their degrees and certificates. If such important exams can be fooled around with, what is the state of the less important ones? How reliable are the tests conducted at hundreds of smaller universities where no scrutiny exists? The very firm that bungled CBSE exam is also contracted to work for some of the universities. No one knows what it has done there.

The scandals that we see are but symptoms of a deeply flawed education system. Ideally, there should be no examination that assumes such life and death importance, be it NEET or Boards. We as a nation are woefully short of doctors, yet there are not enough medical schools. This gives NEET an outsized importance and creates incentives for malpractices. We need to have a situation that exists on the engineering side. Practically everyone who wants to study engineering can do so. Yes, some institutions are better than others and there is competition for them. But those who cannot make it to them still have hope of getting into less known ones. It has been years that this problem has been identified but not addressed.

Opposition has taken up the issue of NEET leak in a big way. Even the cockroach movement latched on to it and is holding protests in different cities demanding resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. It is a valid demand in as much as it will enforce some accountability. If heads roll at the top, there is greater sense of responsibility along the entire chain. But we need to be clear that his resignation is not happening. Accountability and Modi governments are two mutually exclusive things. It will see that as a defeat, not a nod to taking responsibility.

Also, the resignation will not change anything. The new minister that comes in will be as clueless as the present one. No minister in this cabinet, with possible exception of Nitin Gadkari, holds his or her place because of domain expertise. They hold their place largely to the electoral arithmetic of BJP and personal loyalty to the prime minister. Inevitable in any government but taken to rare heights in the present one. The government knows it has not come to power with expectations of good governance, nor does it stay in the office for that reason.

This column appeared in Lokmat Times on June 11, 2026