Nilekani’s real exam
The appointment of Nandan Nilekani to lead a high-powered taskforce on exam reforms is welcome. It gives India an opportunity to move beyond recurring outrage over paper leaks and fix a broken system. The issue this committee must address, however, is not merely the leaking of question papers. Deeper challenge is how to design and conduct exams of this scale reliably, securely, and fairly when the system has grown far beyond the institutional capacity available today.
These are the five issues the committee should consider.
Examinations such as NEET and CUET involve numbers that few countries handle in a single exercise. When the future of more than 2mn students is compressed into a few hours, the system creates a single point of failure. A local breach becomes a national crisis. A technical breakdown becomes a question of justice. One doubtful question can alter thousands of ranks.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
