TW: Mentions suicide
Bagisha Tiwari was an 18-year-old aspirant for medical from Reva district in Madhya Pradesh. She was disappointed after seeing her result of 320 out of 720 marks. She jumped from the ninth floor of her building, tragically ending her life. Bagisha is not part of the scam in which NEET has been in the news. If not for suicide, she would have learned about the NEET scam – that 67 students scored a perfect 720. Surprisingly, six of them were from one center. However, the fraud is not just about the paper getting leaked and some students not getting full time to solve the paper. Bagisha and the other two million NEET aspirants are part of the massive scam – the exam circus of India.
The first exam circus scam in India is the parallel education system running with the mainstream school system. Let us take the example of NEET and JEE, the two large-scale exams in India. The Indian coaching industry for JEE and NEET is substantial, with reports indicating that it is worth around Rs 58,088 crore annually. The research also adds – approximately seven crore students in India take private tuition. Students spend an average of 9 hours per week on these classes. The fees for these coaching institutions average about 1.5-2 Lakhs per month.
The buck does not stop with these high fees in the coaching industry. This coaching industry brainwashes people with the utopian promises of getting IIT or AIIMS. Refer the table to get the number of seats and applicants for these exams.
Some of the coaching starts from the fifth standard. I still remember the massive hoarding at the center of Nagpur – “IIT JEE FOUNDATION” put by ICAD and FITJEE. They were offering early JEE coaching from fifth grade till twelfth. Sri Chaitanya Group of Institutions also partnered with my school – VT Convent (now known as School of Scholars). My mother convinced me – that I should join the course for my extra knowledge even though I didn’t plan to pursue engineering and medicine. Among all the schoolmates who prepared with me from grade five, one landed in IIT, two got in NIT, and two got admission to a reputed government engineering college. The strike rate of my batch was worse in medical, with just three or four getting a government medical college.
Can we ever imagine going to a restaurant that serves stale or bad-quality food? But even with a poor strike rate, the coaching industry continues and flourishes at a high rate.
It is hard for me to understand why the government stays comfortable with this coaching cartel. The government, through the central as well as state boards, is indulging in intellectual genocide by promoting rote learning. However, the same government expects the students to solve the most difficult questions in such exams. What stops the state from teaching what it expects or aligning its exams to the board syllabus?
The students are scammed further with this coaching-government jugalbandi. There are tie-ups of the coaching institutions even with the aided junior colleges in Nagpur. I am not sure about other cities, but some residents have resonated with the same fact. Arunabh Kumar aptly portrayed in Kota Factory, where students are supposed to attend their colleges only for the practicals. The bonhomie between the coaching industry and the government scammed poor Indians the most, who cannot afford the fees. The exam instituted to ensure fair entry for students is responsible for filtering out the poor Indians who cannot afford the heavy fees.
The coaching-government bonhomie is more apparent after the cancellation of UGC NET. While the government and the independent judiciary are taking forever to reach a final decision for NEET, the decision to cancel UGC NET came overnight. Dharmendra Pradhan is taking an eternity to conclude if NEET is a scam, but the decision on UGC NET was in a second. Ankit, a PhD scholar from Jawaharlal Nehru University, attributes this to the commercialization of NEET, unlike UGC NET. Ankit pinpoints the billions of rupees at stake, preventing the state from reaching an autonomous decision.
This chronology of having substandard education through CBSE or state boards and a get-together with the coaching industry is a more considerable scam. The scam gets intricate if we look at the number of abysmally low government-aided seats. In a country where doctors are in shortage, we have 54,000 seats in GMCs (Government Medical Colleges). While things are not fair even for B.E. and B.Tech courses, private colleges are filling the gap by offering engineering programs at slightly affordable rates. This leeway is still absent in medical courses.
In such pathetic conditions, where numerous people aspire to be doctors coupled with the non-availability of medical programs, a scam liking to paper leak is not inevitable. In its editorial, ‘Examine the Examination,’ the Indian Express wrote that – high competitiveness coupled with difficulty motivates the mafia. The critics of NTA, which includes the opposition, are doing a big disservice by not questioning the nature of the exam. While the newly formed Modi government deserves criticism, the NEET scam goes beyond the paper leak.
There are two immediate areas of attention that the state should prioritize. Firstly, how can we expand the choice and scope of people and not make them over-dependant on one particular exam? We have made some advances in technical and management programs where private institutions are filling the gap, but something urgently needs to be done in the case of medicine. However, the AICTE, in the case of the engineering programs, stopped with the inequity that IITs and NITs have with the local government and private colleges. There is a long road to that as well.
Secondly, we need to work on the larger question – can we revolutionize the competitive exams to align with the current needs? NEET evaluates the knowledge of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, while JEE replaces Biology with Mathematics, starting the era of compartmentalization of education. With the fields being dynamic, why are we still resorting to the 1900s era of the MCQ exam?
Talking about alignment, while I believe that the MCQ-based exam has flaws, it at least filters the critical thinkers required for the advanced programs of the IITs and IIMs. Things are way worse with another exam that got canceled this week – UGC NET. I did not prepare for these exams but cleared UGC NET in International Relations and Area Studies. As a PG student in that subject at JNU, it was not that difficult for me. However, though I was happy to see a ‘Qualified’ remark on the mark list, the amount of competition for Assistant Professor does not make me stand anywhere in the domain. However, in my case, I was worried about two other things. Firstly, about a million apply for NET, but the CEIC Data tells the number of universities in India is just above 1000. Are there 1000 applicants per seat of a professor? The second concern lies with the alignment of the exam and the job. The exam of UGC NET, which just recently got canceled, is an MCQ paper. It gauges a candidate for three positions – Assistant Professor, Junior Research Fellow, and very recently – a PhD applicant. Which sort of MCQ paper can test a narration of a professor? How can factual MCQ questions on the domain single out a JRF or a doctoral applicant? Scrapping the June exam is not a scam; its mere existence is. It repeats when it comes to UPSC; I don’t know how the factual knowledge of Indian polity and topography would check the administration skills of a typical civil servant.
Talking about UGC NET, I do not wish to see it reformed. Instead, I want to see it scrapped. Why is the government lying to the people about the fairness of appointments of Assistant Professor? We all know that, except for the government educational institutions, all the private management demand ‘donation’ to become an Assistant Professor. The government has done nothing to stop UGC NET and PhD qualifications, a joke. The UGC grants academic points to the applicants for Assistant Professor. The academic points include a research paper, PhD, masters degree, and experience, to name a few. I wish UGC would be honest and say – “ancestral and sellable property of 20-50 Lakhs with award more academic points on pro-rata basis”.
For me – the leaking of NEET and UGC NET cancellation is the magnum opus of the fraud. However, the scam lies in the existence of the madness for these exams. While Bagisha sadly ended her life, many others have messed up their mental health while preparing for these exams. Families have become bankrupt to fund their wards. It is high time we examine the nature and relevance of these exams and stop ruining the students’ lives.