How to pass Agni Pariksha: It’s politically vital for GoI to restore confidence among those who comply

The NEET student protest requires closer political scrutiny. Unlike most other protests, this was an agitation of the compliant - of those willingly invested in the system, yet feeling let down.

At the core of this resentment is the political question of whether GoI has taken those who comply with rules and policies for granted. This is a constituency that instinctively adjusts to changes. And if issues do arise, it's mostly inclined to give GoI benefit of doubt, believing that broadly the system works, howsoever tardy.

But as events of the past month have shown, National Testing Agency's (NTA) admission to the NEET paper leak, and a nationwide retest, proved to be a tipping point. It wasn't the first instance of a paper leak, but authorities have often found them to be localised. But, this time, the leak was serious enough for NTA to order a retest.


The scale of this collapse, as admitted by NTA itself, has now raised a series of legitimate questions on India's system of exams. While the Nandan Nilekani-led task force gets its act together, it will not be first panel to take a jab at this issue. Setting up of NTA itself was meant to be a reform, aimed at de-burdening CBSE and AICTE from conducting exams, develop computer-based testing as the norm, and work towards a single aptitude test - preferably on a percentile system that could be used by all institutes and colleges to select candidates.

The big idea was that this would break the back of the coaching industry, which has profited the most from multiple exams. Less than a decade into NTA's existence, the number of exams remains largely the same, with coaching available now for NEET and CUET. In other words, each new test spawns a coaching accompaniment - a parallel commercial system that thrives on just examinations.

In this context, shifting the balance of power from coaching centres back to schools is necessary. Now, there are three broad categories of exams that students encounter from 16 yrs onwards - proficiency exams like boards; aptitude/entrance exams like NEET/JEE/CUET; and recruitment exams for jobs like what UPSC and state PSCs conduct.

Ideally, all three should complement each other. But as things stand, they all exist in separate universes. What it means for the average student is preparation and performance in one category has no link-up with another.

As a result, illegal dummy CBSE schools have cropped up, where students preparing for entrance exams like JEE and NEET are enrolled for just the purpose of giving Class 12 board exam and obtain the minimum needed to sit in the entrance without attending a day's class. All time is spent attending coaching institutes, drastically bringing down salience of the school and school-leaving exams.

On the one hand, CBSE is working to reduce exam pressure, on the other, coaching centres rank it up for entrance exams. There's a dire need to restore value of the school-leaving exam, so that it can serve the purpose of being the first check for admissions into higher education institutions, not just a legally mandated certificate.

In the case of NTA, it's vital that GoI crafts its role carefully. It needs to be at an arm's length from the testing process. For which a closer political assessment is needed on whether NTA should be made a constitutional body like UPSC. Because its present status as a statutory body with autonomy has not perceptively delinked it from GoI. Or insulated it from the politics of the day.

But GoI has big support role in ramping up the IT infrastructure, especially creating reliable foolproof computer labs for testing and aid putting in place the building blocks for expert manpower that NTA desperately needs. The current problem is that while school-leaving exams stand devalued, NTA infrastructure and expertise is inadequate to conduct tests for large numbers of students.

The final section on recruitment exams is where the states come in. The big exam mafia - several cases of leaks in state-level recruitment exam question papers, tests cancelled, results not announced on time, among a host of other irregularities - is where disillusionment truly gets entrenched. This time, many of them also showed up at the NEET protests.

Yes, one answer is to go for a supply-side solution and expand, to create more seats. But it should also be matched on the demand side in terms of more job opportunities. A lot of young people at this stage move overseas. But with employment norms growing stringent abroad, pressure will increase domestically. Hence, a longer view on what happens after the cycle of exams runs its course is equally crucial.

So, the body of issues - putting the school back in the centre of things, and restoring the credibility of testing institutions - the protests have unravelled is beyond just fixing this or that exam. Above all, what's politically vital is to restore confidence among those who comply, the rule followers and system upholders. For, in their success rests a key pillar of democratic governance - institutional legitimacy.