LETTER FROM NEW DELHI
Anger is brewing among India's aspiring doctors. Yet another cheating scandal has tarnished the highly competitive undergraduate medical school entrance exam. After months, if not years, of hard preparation, some 2.4 million students took the exam on May 5 to try to secure one of the 110,000 places available. But when the results came in on June 4, an abnormally high number of perfect scores aroused suspicion.
Nearly 70 students achieved a score of 720/720, an almost impossible feat given the difficulty of the exam. Last year, only two candidates managed this achievement. Accusations of fraud caused quite a storm. Thousands of students protested to demand the cancelation of the exam, and opposition parties took up the issue in Parliament. "I assure the youth of our country, this government will not spare those who cheat and scam you," declared Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 3.
In the face of widespread outrage, the investigation was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, the "Indian FBI." Candidates claimed to have been solicited by hawkers promising them access to the questions, in return for 3 million rupees (around €33,000). Several people have since been arrested, accused of being members of a "solver gang" who leaked the answers to the questions in advance in five states.
The case has even reached the country's highest court. On Monday, July 8, the Supreme Court was examining the complaints of more than 30 candidates demanding that the exams be redone. "Almost three million students are now subject to unimaginable psychological pressure, financial hardship and pedagogical uncertainty," lamented political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta in an article published on June 25 by the English-language daily The Indian Express.
Several other tests have been canceled or postponed. The competitive examination to become a university teacher, taken by 900,000 candidates, was invalidated on June 19. This time, the questions were found on the dark web and circulated via Telegram instant messaging.
Mass cheating is not unusual in India. In March 2015, images showing relatives of candidates clinging to the wall of an examination center to pass answers to them through the windows went viral and led to over a thousand arrests. Another shot of army candidates taking their assessment in their underwear, with the paper on their knees, to prevent them from cheating, made it onto the front pages of newspapers in 2016. In 2019, a university in Karnataka required its students to put cardboard boxes over their heads to prevent them from squinting at their neighbor. The local press can't get enough of these anecdotes.
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