September 5, 2026
Mr. Nandan Nilekani,
Chairman,
High Powered Task Force on
Reforms in Public Examinations,
Ministry of Education,
Government of India
Dear Mr. Nilekani,
I have pleasure in writing this letter on the birth
anniversary of Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, called the Philosopher King by
Bertrand Russell, one of the finest teachers the modern world has ever come
across, whose birthday we celebrate as the Teachers’ Day.
The education system in India is in terminal
decline owing to short sightedness, corrupt- incompetent academic leadership.
The public education system is practically dismantled. Ever since the National
Education Policy 2020, introduced unilaterally without discussion and debate in
Parliament and consultation with the principal stake holders the states, is
implemented, nearly one lakh public schools are closed across the country,
while private schools mushroom, depriving the poor children from the lower economic
strata the constitutional right to quality public education.
There are multiple issues that remain unaddressed.
I posted 27 articles on my Blog discussing the issues. The rapid privatisation
of education, right from the basic primary stage to the college-university
level, has plunged our education system into a serious existential crisis, good
quality education becoming beyond the reach of an average child, particularly
the children from the marginalised sections, thus defeating the very purpose of
education. Education for whom? What purpose does it serve?
Examination reforms per se
make no sense unless the core issues of education- massive indiscriminate privatisation, withdrawal of
state funding, downsizing of public funded institutions, lacks of teachers’
posts remaining vacant, appointment of substandard teachers on
contract, through a hire-fire system, with meagre salary, political
interference, saffronisation of education and controlling the thought process
of teaching and learning, chopping off inconvenient chapters of history from
the school and the university curriculum and depriving
children of holistic education; hand picking
the people having affiliation to the political ideology of the establishment
and appointing them, by side stepping the open merit system, as the
heads of higher educational institutions, like universities, IITs
and IIMs; and curbing academic freedom and critical thinking - are
comprehensively addressed.
It is shocking that even in the elite institutions
like the IITs, the TISS, the premier State and Central universities, like
Mumbai University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Delhi University, to name a
few, the RSS affiliated ABVP students’ wing imposes its diktat and decides who
should speak at the academic seminars and conferences, with the spineless heads
of these institutions meekly acquiescing in to its demand. It is so disgraceful
and shameful. The higher education system is getting increasingly irrelevant to
a vast majority of young people, in the absence of non-discriminatory quality
public education and lack of employment opportunities. Nothing good will come out of the system that aims at producing only
loyalists and conformists, discourages free thought and critical thinking,
incapable of producing great creative minds.
Today, the brain drain has reached an alarming
proportion. Hundreds of thousands of skilled professionals,
scientists, doctors, and top students are leaving India every year to work and
settle in countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, and Germany. It is an irony that a huge chunk of rich and wealthy people, who take
full advantage of the education system in India, leave the country in search of
greener pastures abroad, while a vast majority of the poor and socially
disadvantaged people who stay in India, face a bleak future with increasing
cost of education and growing unemployment. This is resulting in a heavy loss
of intellectual and human capital that India spends public money to educate.
There is a massive outflow of high skilled human
capital. Nearly 20 million Indian students study abroad, and tens of thousands
of elite STEM, medical, and management graduates are permanently relocating
annually, and hundreds of thousands renouncing their citizenship to join an
ever-growing overseas diaspora of around 18 million people. The government data
shows that over 1.6 million Indians have renounced their citizenship since
2011, with over 200,000 individuals surrendering passports every year. Around
75,000 skilled engineers and medical professionals leave the country annually,
alongside a booming student migration pipeline where over 25 Indian students
leave the country for foreign universities for every single foreign student who
enters India.
And 30% of engineering graduates from the
prestigious IITs,50% of medical post-graduates and over 60% of premier research
PhD scholars eventually settle outside India. The subsidized training at
institutions like IITs, IIMs and AIIMs costs taxpayers heavily, ranging between
10 to 25 lakh rupees per student. The permanent exit of these professionals
costs India an estimated 35 to 50 billion dollars a year in terms of loss of
productivity, R&D momentum, and tax revenue.
It is important to understand the anger and
resentment among the youth – Gen Z, millennials and Gen Alpha. They have lost
faith in the education system and the examination system. And with employment opportunities drastically declining in all sectors
of economy, the youth look to government jobs, working heard for years,
spending lakhs of rupees that their parents raise through loans mortgaging
their properties, hoping to crack public examinations and find a secure
job. However, their dream is shattered with repeated
leaking of question papers and the cancellation of public examinations.
That the so-called National Testing Agency, created
in 2017, is simply unable to measure up to the task and ensure integrity of the
public examinations that it conducts is an indication of its failure, a blot on
the system. The NTA is mired in corruption, transparency and accountability
going for a toss, commercial interest overriding the national interest due to
political patronage, and the paper leaks becoming a regular recurring feature.
It is a very depressing scenario. There is no future for the youth, the future
of tomorrow.
The Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means)
Act 2024, passed after the NEET paper leak, is supposed to address the
examination malpractices and prevent the paper leaks, yet the NEET exam 2026
was cancelled as the Act failed to prevent the unfair means adopted in
conducting the examinations not only just the NEET, but also the other all
India competitive public examinations like NET, JEE, CMAT,CUET etc. that the
NTA conducts. The NTA has no institutional mechanism to fix the
responsibility for the paper leaks; the examinations being outsourced to
private commercial agents, who have nexus with the politicians and accountable
to none. It is a farcical exercise. The 2026 amendment to the Public
Examinations Act brought out during the last monsoon session of Parliament is
an eye wash.
The amendment to the Act is
supposed to provide more stringent punishment to people involved in paper leak
and corrupt practices to make the examinations, hoping to have a zero-proof
leak, by increasing the jail term and the penalties from 5 years to 10 and from
1 core to 5 core rupees. It is more a rhetoric than an intent of
substance. Just enhancing the jail term and the
penalties will not address the root causes of paper leaks; nor does it prevent
paper leaks. It is a cosmetic surgery.
The Supreme Court which is hearing a batch of
petitions on the NEET paper leaks has emphasised the need for
institutionalising reforms within the NTA. They should not be a knee-jerk
reaction after a catastrophe. There ought to be meaningful continuity in
resolving systematic problems. Had the Centre acted upon the recommendations of
the Radhakrishnan Committee, constituted after the NEET paper leak in 2024, the
NEET paper leak again this year resulting in the mental trauma that followed
and the suicide by some 22 students could have been
averted. Who is accountable for this tragedy?
No examination reforms will succeed unless the
people connected with the examination system are of impeccable integrity and
their background is thoroughly scrutinized to ensure they are not overtly
affiliated to the ideology of the ruling party, before they are
appointed. That is unless the questions paper setters, the
examiners, and the persons involved in the printing process are of impeccable
integrity, free from political interference and patronage, and the offenders
promptly given exemplary punishment, no amount of reforms will ensure the
integrity of the public examination system.
And unless the rapid privatisation of education is
halted and the public education system restored by spending at least 6% of the
GDP on education, as envisaged in the NEP, the education reforms, if any, will
make no sense to a vast majority of the youth at the bottom of social
ladder. What is the sense in the top-ranking rich children
of the NEET grabbing the seats in government medical colleges, in the name of
merit, forcing the poor students who may have succeeded in cracking the NEET to
opt for admission in private medical institutions, where the fees charged runs
into lakhs of rupees that they cannot afford. It is a paradox. Why are the
students from the poor economic background not given the first preference for
admission to government medical colleges where the fees is not so exorbitant?
It is desirable to decentralize the public
examinations. In the face of regular paper leaks and the corrupt incompetent
NTA administrative structure, with poor infrastructure and inadequate regular
staff, failing to ensure the integrity of the examination system, affecting
millions of students across the country, there is a strong case for scrapping
the all-India entrance examinations like the NEET and the CUET. The centralised
examination system has only benefited the coaching centres with the students
depending on the coaching classes, and relying on dummy schools, to crack the
examinations, spending lakhs of rupees on the coaching, a luxury only the rich
and the affluent children could afford, leaving the economically poor children
left high and dry. It is an extortionist system.
Let every state have its own entrance tests for the
admission to medical institutions and to other courses, reflecting the regional
and linguistic diversity and its needs. It is a misnomer that all India tests
ensure merit-based admissions. It weighs heavily in favour of English medium
students coming from elite institutions, putting the students of vernacular
medium from villages and small towns to a great
disadvantage. The idea of an all-Idia medical test like the NEET is
misconceived; it is arbitrary and discriminatory. Even if there are paper leaks at states’ level, it won’t have the
devastating nation-wide effect on millions of students across the country,
unlike the centralised NEET examination. And it is essential to insulate
education from politicisation to subserve a partisan political agenda.
Yours truly,
Dr.G. Ramachandram
____________
A Professor of Political Science and retired
Principal; the only scholar who undertook a full-pledged research on the first
Prime Minister of India; awarded a PhD by the University of Bombay for his
thesis Jawaharlal Nehru: His Contribution to World Peace, published
as a book Nehru and World Peace; his autobiography – a Magnum
Opus- The Trial by Fire: Memoirs of a College Principal is called a
‘saga of virtuous struggle versus evil’ and ‘a Bible for the young teachers to
mould their academic careers, retaining all the noble values humans are
inherently imbued with’; the author of Nehru’s Idea of India.
I/502, Mody Park, Iraniwadi No.3, Kandivali (West),
Mumbai-400067
Mobile: 9892367111: Email id: g_ramachandram@yahoo.com,
Blog: https://nehrusideaofindia.blogspot.com
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