The failure of the National Testing Agency (NTA) to conduct various competitive examinations in a fair manner has not only exposed the corruption that has crept into it, but has also pointed towards the collapse of our entire education system which is being tried to be suppressed under the guise of false claims of inculcating values in everyone through the new education policy and curbing matters like paper leaks through law. The entire matter is being covered in the guise of ‘morality’ and the opposition and the people of the country are being appealed not to do politics in these matters, whereas the issue of education system is a matter, directly related to politics. The real issue is whether the country’s education system will be made universal and public or like other sectors, it will be completely privatized and made a ‘commodity’ and a monopoly of some individuals and groups will be established. BJP and its allies want to avoid this basic question.
First about NEET. The result of the exam which was supposed to be declared on June 14, was declared on June 4 and that too at a time when the whole country was caught up in the uproar of the Lok Sabha election results, was a surprise. From this it can easily be concluded that there was a clear conspiracy to bury the results of the exam in some noise. The irregularities that came to light in the exam results are enough to prove this.
What anomalies have raised questions about the results of this exam? There are at least 61 candidates (after re-NEET), who have scored 720 out of 720 marks, while there were only 2 such people in the last year’s exam. There are many candidates who have scored 718 and 719 marks. Mathematically, such marks are impossible, because in an exam based on MCQs, 4 marks were allotted for each correct answer and one mark was deducted from the total correct marks for each wrong answer. Thus, a candidate who cleared the paper with one wrong answer could have got only 715 marks. NTA’s explanation is that this is because of grace marks given to 1563 candidates who had less time than the prescribed time for the exam, or they got grace marks for giving wrong answers because the Class XII NCERT textbook had errors and incorrect information. But there was no concept of grace marks in the original scheme of the exam and this brought forward the candidates who were far behind. Later, on the orders of the Supreme Court, NTA withdrew the grace marks and conducted the examination again for such candidates. It is also now under controversy whether it was appropriate to conduct the examination for such candidates, because the in-charges of the respective examination centers have denied that the candidates were given less time. This naturally raises the question whether some examination centers were made for some special candidates, where they could be given unfair advantage? This apprehension is also correct because some candidates of some examination centers have got such high marks in a line. Along with this, the accuracy of our text books prepared by NCERT under the direction of the government has also been questioned. After the exposure of this scam, other competitive examinations have also been postponed one after the other without any disclosed reason, from which it can be clearly assumed that the question papers of these examinations were also leaked and a setting had been done to give unfair advantage to some candidates.
Every year around 1.25 crore students appear in the competitive exams conducted by NTA and at least 50 lakh students have been affected by the NEET scam and other postponed exams and therefore if the student community of the country is demanding to re-conduct NEET and abolish NTA, then there is nothing wrong in it. The central government cannot be absolved of corruption, opaqueness and procedural failure in the exams conducted at the national level, therefore the demand for compensation to all the affected students by the central government and resignation of the education minister is also gaining momentum. In this matter, student organizations of political parties associated with the India Group are also uniting, who have called for an all India student strike on July 4 after holding a big protest at Jantar Mantar on July 3.
Now about NTA. Till the year 2018, exams like NEET and NET were conducted by CBSE, which is controlled by the central government and which has direct accountability towards the public. After 2018, the responsibility of conducting these exams was handed over to NTA, which is just a registered body under the Society Act. Although its members are appointed by the central government, this institution is not governed by any act of the government and hence it has no accountability towards the general public. In August 2023, the Modi government appointed a person named Pradeep Joshi as the chairman of this institution, whose special qualification was that he was a “genuine volunteer (Khantee swayam sewak)” of the RSS and former ABVP leader, (after the NEET scandal, this gentleman has now been removed). This institution has only 25 regular employees and it conducts exams across the country only through other private institutions (outsourcing). At what level and what kind of irregularities, manipulation and corruption these institutions are involved in, it becomes clear only when the future of lakhs of students is ruined and no one comes forward to take responsibility for it, not even the government. It is clear that in Modi Raj, a public and transparent examination system has been completely privatized through outsourcing, in which the element of transparency and accountability is completely missing.
According to a report by ‘The Indian Express’, at least 48 cases of paper leak have been reported in 15 states in the last five years and this has affected the lives of at least 1.4 crore applicants for about 1.2 lakh posts. In all these, state level examinations were conducted through outsourcing. It is clear that the state governments going on the path of privatization have also abandoned their responsibility of conducting clean, fair and transparent examinations.
Privatization of every sector is the basic mantra of the Modi government and conducting exams through NTA is a part of this policy. Anyway, the Modi government wants to take the right of recruitment to higher posts directly in its hands, so competitive exams will also have no relevance.
Now a tribute to the collapsing education system. Though education as a subject is in the concurrent list of the Constitution, the Modi government is usurping the rights of the states in this area too by violating the principle of federalism. The main objective of the new education policy being implemented by the Modi government is to privatise education and inject the communal perspective of the RSS into the curriculum, thus sacrificing the secular objectivity required to provide universal and scientific education. As a result, government schools are closing down and the number of private schools is increasing across the country. According to the data of the Modi government itself, the number of schools in the country was 15,50,476 in the year 2018-19, which decreased to 14,89,115 in the year 2021-22. The reduction of 61,361 schools in just two years means 5-6 crore children out of the education sector. Of course, these children belong to the weaker socio-economic community and most of them will be from rural areas. It is clear that this education policy, which claims to “culture” our children, is going to prove to be pushing the children of poor and backward communities into the darkness of ignorance. This policy is a well-planned policy to deprive the general public of the level of higher education.
The campaign to establish mythology and myths as history will only serve to distance the people of the country from a modern and scientific worldview. In this context, the errors in NCERT textbooks should not be ignored. A healthy and scientific education will promote our country’s ‘unity in diversity’, but a bigoted and communal education will ‘destroy the unity in diversity’, promoting hatred instead of harmony and goodwill. The Sanghi giroh led by Modi-Shah wants to use the education policy as a weapon through which secular India can be transformed into a “narrow-minded and fascist Hindu nation”.
The common people and the student community of this country will have to fight against the Modi government’s conspiracies to ruin the entire education system by turning education policy into a communal weapon and to ensure ‘opportunities’ for a few wealthy people by privatizing the examination system. The All India Student Strike called on July 4 is a stretch of this, there is more fight ahead. This struggle is a declaration that the fight against the misdeeds of the Modi government will continue until they are undone.
Sanjay Parate is the former President of Students’ Federation of India, Madhya Pradesh and Vice President of Chhattisgarh Kisan Sabha, affiliated to All India Kisan Sabha. Contact: 94242-31650)
