India’s most testing scandal

The alleged manipulation of exam results is a reminder of how outmoded the system is

People join in at a mass political rally held in New Delhi. Graham Crouch / The National

Even by Indian standards, the ongoing Vyapan corruption scandal is simply staggering for what it says about the gaps in systemic coherence, safeguards – and yes, the way the country still conducts examinations. The alleged scam, which is said to have run for years in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, revolves around a massive scheme to manipulate the results of entrance examinations for medical colleges and government jobs. Every job one can think of – doctor, dentist, vet, forest ranger – is said to have been up for grabs. Police say that for at least eight years, tens of thousands of students and job aspirants paid hefty bribes to rig test results.

Nearly 2,000 people have been arrested so far, hundreds of medical students are in prison, as are several bureaucrats. Even the state’s governor is implicated. What’s more, many witnesses and alleged participants have been dying under “mysterious circumstances”, most recently a TV reporter who was investigating those deaths. One Indian news portal has described the scandal as one of the most complex to affect public life and one that “is fast acquiring the shades of a macabre crime thriller”.

Several corruption scandals have rocked Asia’s third-largest economy in the past decade but the alleged scam in Madhya Pradesh says something larger. It focuses attention on India’s outmoded exam system – a process that interrogates mostly rote learning and all at one go, rather than grading after a series of aptitude and ability tests whose results cannot be bought (or faked) however hard anyone tries. Though cheating in examinations is commonplace in India, what’s different about the alleged racket in Madhya Pradesh is its sophistication – different methods were used, including fake identity cards for people who impersonated examinees and crooked testing board officials inflated scores. This is low-level graft, yes, but the stakes are high.

It was once said that two intertwining strands run through Indian history: the incredible potential of the place and the betrayal of that potential, for example, by corruption. Perhaps this is the point at which they must be disentangled.