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Exam Debate Betrays India's Next Generation of Leaders

Exam paper leaks cause immense damage to the psychological state of India’s younger generation in pursuit of a better, more progressive future.

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Exam - India

Exam debate betrays India's next generation of leaders | Students sit a NEET exam. The latest scandal surrounding India's exams system risks losing the trust of the nation's young. | Photo courtesy: Whitecirius, Credits CCBY3.0

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Exam scandals such as the NEET breach have emerged as an enormous violation of trust, causing irreparable harm to the Modi government’s social and political contract with its citizenry, particularly aspiring youth.

The rhetorical pitch for an alternative development model in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2014 electoral pitch, away from cycles of corruption, administrative incompetence and policy inertia, was supposed to offer hope and faith among India's young people in participating (and constructing) India’s growth story. It has done quite the opposite.   

Their undistilled faith, hope in being able to contribute towards nation building and serving in its best interests, is credibly damaged when the nation’s main elected government – year after year – fails to effectively ensure a corrupt-free, centralised exam system, or stop paper leaks that have by now become a systemic norm in most states, from Gujarat to Uttar Pradesh to Bihar. 

If the Civil Services exam competitive system collapses, for example, this may very well result in the actual collapse of the elected state machinery and sever its competency. That’s where the current breakdown in trust between young people and the Indian state seems to be heading.

There is a deeper systemic rot that goes far beyond seeing this crisis as an episodic event-embedded in the NEET scandal. 

Psychological damage

What it does is cause immense damage to the psychological state of India’s

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