Exam-related malpractices: The solutions...

This is a comprehensive article dealing with various aspects of the problem. Since the article is long, it is being serialised in two parts. This the second part. The first part, dealing with the reasons for high level of examination related malpractices in India can be visited here: Exam-related malpractices: A systemic failure....

PART – II

LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS: WHO WILL BELL THE CAT?

Let me start with a negative proposition: There is no one prepared to bell the cat. So, the status quo remains. Malpractices, big and small, continue to take place, bad candidates are selected and they spoil the system, governments remain as aloof as now - just covering up recent lapses that got exposed in the media, politicians indulge in blame games and leave the scene when the dust subsides.

There is a strong reason to feel sadly pessimistic. I have already listed the major reasons for examination failures in India. Kindly permit me to bring some of these again into the discussion.

Politicians will not bell the cat

The political leadership, with constitutional responsibility and mandate to efficiently run the nation, or a State, should be belling the cat. But they would not, unless it somehow serves their electoral goals. 

Being a dull and unemotional matter, examination reforms have never been an electoral issue and, sadly, they are not likely to be so in future too. 

In fact, politicians often take examination reforms one step backwards. The way the representative democracy based on elections works, political parties do not hesitate in sheltering criminals. Many criminals who have been bookedfor examination-related offences in the past have had political affiliations and/or protection. 

No concerted effort will be taken to bell the cat

A concerted effort, even if bureaucratic, at national level could bell the cat. Alas, that is also not likely to happen. 

In fact, part of the weakness in the examination system comes from working in silos. The Centre as well as States conduct their own education- and job-related examinations in which lakhs of students/ candidates appear. Though all-India examinations are much larger in size and are more complex, big States face similar issues.

However, there is no strong system for coordination and experience sharing even among agencies of the same government, forget inter-State and Centre-State coordination. 

Recruiting agencies will not bell the cat

A related question is, why are the top examination-conducting bodies not able to bell the cat? Yes, they have the resources, but the system - both within and outside - is so prone to the ills enumerated earlier that they can be compromised. Since a large number of individuals, technologies, processes and physical resources are involved, it is easy for determined criminals to exploit a small hole somewhere in the chain. 

As said earlier, when the goal of the recruiting agencies is to somehow complete an examination and push irregularities under the carpet, they will not take the bother to make their system zero-tolerant to any malpractice – something that would need an enormous amount of effort. 

Law enforcers will not bell the cat

Can, and will, the policing agencies bell the cat? No way! 

In most States, the police force is inefficient, under-staffed, unmotivated, and corruption-ridden. When the police are unable to efficiently perform even thecore law-and-order duties, giving a full-fledged cover to an examination cannot be a priority for any State police department. 

In the case of some high-profile examinations conducted by the UPSC, State governments provide full support. Some examination-conducting bodies seek the help of paramilitary forces and deploy private security for examinations. As is expected, leakage of question paper and large-scale cheating are not reported in these examinations.

However, when the police cover is not there or the police look the other way – which is not uncommon – miscreants and criminals have a field day. 

Even when criminals and cheats are apprehended, the police leave them with a warning or minor punishment. When criminal syndicates are involved, crime branches of State police and top investigative agencies are asked to look into the matter. They too have a narrow perspective - to book the culprits and close the case.  

In rare cases, when the culprits are nabbed and the matter is taken to courts, the long-drawn judicial process does not act as a disincentive to the culprits. Even when the judiciary takes a decision, it has to be based on evidence, which is not easy to collect in many such cases. 

Look briefly at what happened when there were reports of paper leak in the 2024 NEET examination conducted by the NTA. When there were reports of paper leak, the authorities denied that. Later, paper leak was reported from more than one location and a large number of accomplices were arrested. Some candidates were given grace marks for having suffered disruption, which led to a number-related anomaly in the results. The case was handed over to the CBI and the country’s top court decided upon the issue. The Supreme Court took cognizance of paper leak and made strong observations, but did not accept the plea to cancel the examination. Like the Supreme Court, the government also stated that it was committed to zero-error testing but would ‘not penalize lakhs who cleared the examination over a few malpractices’. 

It is true that there are consequences of cancelling an examination in which lakhs of candidates participate, but in this process, those who might have benefited but did not come under the radar of the investigating agency escape scot-free.Both the supreme authorities had practical reasons for winding up the case after some curative actions, but the spirit of ‘zero-error’ went for a toss.  

Examination-Related Crimes Can Be Curbed Decisively, If…

Pessimism gives us no solution, so what I have discussed above should not lead to pessimism. It should help us keep grounded so that practical solutions emerge.

All problems have solutions. Thankfully, there are many ways for curbing examination-related malpractices, and these are already known to experts. I am sure that even if the desperados invent new ways of compromising the system, the available expertise will be able to quickly evolve preventive as well as curative solutions. 

This part of the discussion demands that we look at a few well-known ways to deal with the menace.

A strict law, implemented effectively, helps

A strict law to deal with examination-related crimes is necessary to make such crimes much riskier. If properly implemented, this should cause a severe blow to such crimes. 

It has been seen in the past that in absence of a specific law to deal with present-day examination-related crimes, various courts, including the Supreme Court, have been giving the benefit of doubt to the candidates despite clear-cut indicators that they had indulged in malpractices, because the evidence submitted by the recruiting agencies lacked necessary legal backing.

However, there are limits to the effectiveness of a strict law: First, because there is no reason why it would be efficiently implemented when other laws are grossly ineffective in dealing with crimes. Many Sates have enacted laws to deal with examination-related crimes but they have not been effective enough. Second, the law would deal with the crimes enumerated in it, leaving aside petty crimes and unethical practices that are not considered illegal. Moreover, new technologies (e.g. radio communication, hacking, and now artificial intelligence) will make laws quickly obsolete unless the laws are constantly updated. 

So, a strict law, such as the one already enacted recently, might curb the menace, at least to some extent.

There are many technical solutions to reduce, even completely curb, the menace of examination-related malpractices. 

Multi-tier examinations make it hard to dodge the system

One time-tested method is to hold many tiers of tests, and conduct the final test in a highly sanitised single location. Each subsequent tier makes it more difficult for the criminals and individual deviants to compromise the system. If this is applied to all big job examinations, this single measureis likely to filter out unsuitable candidates in final stages even if they are able to compromised previous tiers. 

Though the elimination of interviews for lower-level posts by the central government some years back is a welcome step in many respects, it has introduced an enormous loophole in the examination system for such posts. There is a need to introduce at least one more tier for examinations for these posts. 

A rolling test followed by specific examinations might help

A new system of examination has been in the works for the last many years at the central government, for all Group B and C posts (mostly posts belonging to junior officers, clerks and lower roles), but it is yet to see the light of the day. 

In this framework, candidates seeking public sector jobs in the central government organisations will have to take an examination, which will give scores to candidates.

Candidates will be allowed to improve their scores in subsequent attempts. Recruiting organisations such as the SSC and Railway Recruitment Boards will screen candidates based on these scores, and allow only the screened candidates to appear in their requirement examinations.

Technology can provide novel solutions

In recent years, technology has made it possible to plug many loopholes in public examinations. For example, it is much more difficult to steal question sets in computer-based examinations. New technologies that secure data, its transmission, storage and processing (e.g. user-end randomization and anonymization, secure transmission of data, cryptography, etc.) have made it much more difficult for examination syndicates and stray criminals to provide their ‘services’ for malpractices. Though many new technologies, such as mobile/ radio-based communication using miniature devices, have also made it easier to compromise the system, alert recruiting agencies can quickly invent ways to subvert them. 

The list of possible solutions and reforms can go on and on. Let us leave the job to experts, who are capable enough to deal with them effectively. The real need is to give public recruitment the high priority it deserves, and examination reforms will follow suit.  Examination related crimes and malpractices are a symptom of the rot in the system, and recruitment is one of the fountainheads of that. It is not basically a problem of lack of expertise or the criminals being one-up on the recruiting agencies, but a symptom of the attitude of the governments, the agencies, the political leadership and the society at large.

After the two major examination-related scandals in the first quarter of 2024, the Prime Minister declared in Parliament that ‘the government was working on a war footing’ and ‘those who manipulate the future of young people will face the consequences’. If the government is that much serious to deal with these two events, that is fine; however, that is not likely to act as a long-term deterrence. The central government must take the lead towards eliminating the malaise once for all, going beyond dealing with the situation post-facto. The present NEET, NTA and UPSC episodes provide those at the helm of the central government an opportunity to do so; will they oblige?

Appendix

A NEW LAW ON EXAMINATION MALPRACTICES: IT HAS WEAKNESSES, ALSO STRENGTHS

In June this year, a new parliamentary law, the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means ) Act, 2024, came into force. It has provisions for harsh punishments for ‘unfair means and offences’ committed in relation to certain ‘public examinations’. Being the latest law of its kind, the Act and the rules promulgated subsequent to it have provisions dealing with computer-based examinations and computer resources used in the conduct of examinations. The punishment can go up to five years of imprisonment and a fine of Rs. one crore.  Provisions of the new penal code, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita,2023 will also be attracted where relevant. 

The law applies only to the examinations conducted by five ‘public examination authorities’ - UPSC, SSC, Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs), the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) and the National Testing Agency (NTA).

It is important to note that there already exist many State laws to deal with examination-related crimes, some going back to pre-independence times. Some public organizations have been legally empowered to take strict actions against offenders. Yet, a specific law with all-India coverage, which encompasses provisions for dealing with latest types of irregularities and offences, can be a major deterrence if implemented effectively. 

Since the law leaves examinations conducted by other recruiting agencies, those agencies will have to deal with examination-related malpractices according to general laws as at present. The education boards are also left uncovered. That reminds of Vyapam scam of 1913 and the CBSE paper leak of 2018, two major scandals relating to examinations conducted by other examination-conducting bodies.

The law in question also does not go into the ramifications of major malpractices, such as re-examination. Of course, a law is not required to go into the nitty-gritty of the process of cancelling and re-scheduling an examination or giving compensation to affected examinees; yet, unless such aspects are also pre-decided in an objective manner - in the form of rules or a code -  there will be charges of unfairness, even manipulation, in remedial actions taken after cancellation of an examination. 

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The author has held the posts of Member, Staff Selection Commission, and a senior officer in the UPSC. He has also written research papers on civil service recruitment in India. He has been associated with a few committees on overhauling the examination system and overall administrative reforms.

(डिस्क्लेमर : इस लेख में व्यक्त विचार लेखक के स्वयं के हैं। रागदिल्ली.कॉम के संपादकीय मंडल का इन विचारों से कोई लेना-देना नहीं है।)