The leakage of the Neet question paper, its cancellation and the mess that followed are a creation of the lethargic bureaucracy that refused to apply its mind to the conduct of an examination that would be attempted by more than two million students. The very same lethargy is back, manifesting itself in finding the easy way out
The Union government’s decision to restrict access to the online streaming platform Telegram ahead of the fresh holding of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Neet) on June 21 is a move that is too clever by half. While it is important that the government takes every possible measure to ensure that the retest is conducted with utmost integrity, it makes little sense to introduce steps that may or may not achieve the target even while they are sure to inconvenience a larger section of the population.
The leakage of the Neet question paper, its cancellation and the mess that followed are a creation of the lethargic bureaucracy that refused to apply its mind to the conduct of an examination that would be attempted by more than two million students. The very same lethargy is back, manifesting itself in finding the easy way out.
It is not that the National Testing Agency (NTA) is the only agency that conducts competitive examinations across the country. Neither is Neet the only such examination taken by lakhs. The Joint Entrance Examination for admission to undergraduate courses in the Indian Institutes of Technology and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) is the best example of flawless conduct of examinations for decades. A key point of difference in the case of the JEE is the willingness of the stakeholders to adopt technologies and improve upon them.
The NTA ought to become a professional agency which can put to use the best technologies available to discharge its duties instead of consistently failing students, whether it is Neet or the Common University Entrance Test. Its inability to draw from the best examples from the world and conduct the examination in a flawless manner should be no reason to ban certain services people enjoy. Bureaucratic shortcuts are no match to professional tools for trouble-shooting.
