“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” — Nelson Mandela
Last summer, while giving a keynote at the World Intelligence Congress in China, I had the opportunity to visit the Temple of Great Compassion (Dabei Yuan) in Tianjin. This is the temple that once held the skull remains of Xuanzang, the great Chinese scholar. As I stood in this sacred space, I was deeply moved by the remarkable journey of Xuanzang, who traversed the Silk Road from China to Nalanda University in India, driven by his tremendous appetite for knowledge. His legacy continues to shape China’s perception of India to this day, a testament to the enduring power of his remarkable journey.
This summer, Nalanda University was re-inaugurated in a refreshed sense in a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other dignitaries. However, this event was overshadowed by a stark irony — a massive paper leak. This incident is the latest in a series of annual paper leaks that have plagued the country’s education system, perpetuating a cycle of scandal and disillusionment and threatening the future of its students. Ironically, Nalanda itself is a paper leak hub.
Indian households are all too aware that the recent National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) and the National Eligibility Test (NET) exam leaks are just the tip of the iceberg, a symptom of a deeper problem that has afflicted Indian education for decades. The lack of faith in the system is starkly evident in the reluctance to fully cancel the NEET exams, and the alarming number of students — 48% of 1563 — who chose not to appear for the NEET re-exam on June 23, highlighting the widespread disillusionment and erosion of trust in the country’s education framework.
Bollywood has underscored this issue of endemic skepticism through movies like 12th Fail or Hindi Medium, highlighting the struggles of students and parents navigating this corruption year on year. Everyone, truth be told, also knows about the convenient fall guys, when one sees a replacement of a National Testing Authority chief (like Government of India has now done), recognising fully well that the leaks will continue ad infinitum.
I have personal experience with the devastating impact of exam leaks. In 1997, I became a victim to the first-ever paper leak scam in the IIT JEE exams, forcing me to retake the exam as the first was cancelled. The leak was allegedly traced back to a hub in Lucknow. Three years later, my sister’s experience in medical school entrance exams was even more appalling. While studying in Delhi, a friend casually remarked that a payment of Rs 5 lakh through the “appropriate channels” would guarantee a seat.
Also read: Ranjit Don, Mastermind of Pre-Online Exam Paper Leak Scandals, Has Close Ties With NDA Leaders
As a development economist, while pondering about global education, its distortions and long run economic growth for economies, I have come to realise that this issue plaguing India’s education system is not unique to the country. Around the world, similar scandals have rocked education systems till as recently as last month in Hong Kong when there were reports of IB paper exam leaks. Earlier, in China for instance, the Gaokao exam scandals resulted in the arrest of many officials and harsh punishments. In Japan, it was revealed that entrance exam scores were manipulated to limit women’s admission to medical schools, including at Tokyo Medical University in 2018 and South Korea has continued to grapple with college admission scandals involving high-ranking officials, ministers and their family members.
While this may be an Asian phenomenon and has cultural imprints with serious impact coming from the shadow education ecosystem on which I have some research, will India change the yearly normal this time with accountability, resignations and punishments at the highest levels and policy interventions to clean up this mess? The expectations, knowing personally at least some 25 years of this annual cycle of paper leaks, should be kept at a minimum.
Techno-entrepreneurial solutions meanwhile have sprouted to contain exam leaks. Online proctoring from startups like Mettl (on whom I have written a Harvard case study as full disclosure) has been claimed to be a positive intervention in this area. Stricter punishments, like imprisonment and fines, have been enforced in some nations like Singapore, acting as a deterrent, another matter that the board of advisors in the NTA comprised of top educators including IIT and IIM directors but they have all turned a blind eye to these exam leaks so far it seems.
Blockchain technology has also been explored to secure exam data and prevent leaks not just in developed economies like Australia but also in India, with global applications. For instance, the United States has successfully conducted online SAT and ACT exams with proctoring. However, as The Telegraph notes, there is a significant disparity in resources between US-based testing agencies like Educational Testing Service (ETS) and India’s NTA, which has limited personnel and infrastructure to administer a high volume of exams — 25 exams conducted with a team of less than 25 permanent staff.
Thus, it is not that solutions don’t exist. But the cat and mouse game continues and the urge to cheat and find low-hanging pathways to surmount exams, perhaps a primordial urge in human civilisations globally, keeps flourishing in Asian countries.
The other factor in this annual heist is also the astounding lack of empathy for students and households and the bewildering absence of accountability. Just like these days ministers in India don’t resign because of train accidents, the education minister Dharmendra Pradhan humbly obliged with a press conference last week taking responsibility but didn’t offer a resignation (another matter, the docile media didn’t push for a resignation too). Meanwhile, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has promptly patted the home minister for his swift action. One only knew about Pyrrhic victories, we now see Pyrrhic Pats in Indian education.
The prime minister, meanwhile, was sauntering around Nalanda last week. His own degree certificate has been under the scanner, incidentally, an issue raised earlier by Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, the case now almost dying with it being refused to be entertained recently in the Supreme Court. A new session in the parliament has started with the education minister being shamed while taking oath but so far outside of the Nalanda University related pronouncements and grandstanding, the prime minister has not mentioned a word on exam leaks. One wonders if there are political compulsions at play here as many are discussing political linkages from all sides in Bihar. This should not be news to any parent or student though, one is simply seeing here a replication of another scam — Vyapam scam —which emerged in one of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) electoral strongholds, the state of Madhya Pradesh. And to be absolutely fair, exam leaks have continued much before the BJP and its allies assumed power in 2014.
Also read: In Haryana, Six Toppers Wrote the NEET Exam at a School Run by a BJP Leader’s Family
The situation is also eerily similar to what happens with quality scandals in Indian spices or with India’s much vaunted generic pharmaceutical industry, on which I have done some past research especially around lackadaisical attitude to quality of medicine facilitated many times by irrational prescribing behaviour of clinicians. Many now acknowledge these quality issues from Indian firms that spill over across its borders but nobody really knows where the buck stops here too, when it may stop and how. The malaise thus around spices, education or healthcare in India reflects a lack of socio-political intent to cleanse up heists in these important ecosystems on a mission mode.
In the long run, the consequences of such scams are going to be, to put it mildly, dire. Not only does it impact the Made in India brand, economic growth is also hindered by a lack of skilled, gainfully employed workers, while the country’s youth are denied a fair chance at education amidst leaks and scandals. The country proudly talks about solutions in space, technology, medicine or democracy but just can’t seem to fix its own education heists.
Even more worryingly, these scandals are not just local issues but have far-reaching global consequences for human capital supply, economic growth, and global competitiveness. When education systems fail, societies worldwide looking at Indian students for skills supply suffer. Cheating in exam papers also percolate upstream behaviourally with the Fake Leonardo effect in resume inflation. All of this is rather concerning even more so because the World Economic Forum estimates that by 2025, India will face a shortage of 1.5 million skilled workers, while China will face a shortage of 2.5 million. Clearly, the worry is that it’s just not a gap in skills but also a likely mushrooming of fake skills and resumes from a shadow labour market ecosystem that the country is likely engendering for itself and the world.
With gen-AI additionally now another education sector disruptor, many have also debated that labour-rich countries like India will have its own crowd-out effects in jobs causing technological anxieties. Paper leaks compound those anxieties, when even those graduating from an IIT Mumbai (the country’s highest QS ranked University at 118 this year) are finding it hard to be employed in the current job cycle. Let’s also not forget this is amidst increasing self-harm and suicidal tendencies reported for the young in Indian campuses with a burgeoning of their mental wellness issues.
Overall, this is evidently a non-trivial problem that mere demand side expansion of education through college campuses, fancy educational policies inviting overseas universities, or supply side technological decongestion through entrepreneurialism alone may not be able to solve. A mission mode driven multi-stakeholder orientation from society is needed where one can draw inspiration from successful grassroots campaigns of the past like one saw with the National Polio eradication project. Another example platform to emulate here may be www.ipaidabribe.com, might one need something similar to crowd-source paper leak information going forward?
Education, Nelson Mandela once said, is the most powerful weapon to change the world but if repeated paper leaks are what India keeps offering to its young, Xuanzang would perhaps reevaluate his decision today to travel to the land of Nalanda, enduring the great Gobi desert along the way.
Chirantan Chatterjee is a Professor of Development Economics, Innovation and Global Health at the University of Sussex and holds visiting positions at the Max Planck Institute of Innovation and Competition and at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
