Mainstream WeeklyThe recurring controversies surrounding the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) are no longer merely about examination malpractice. Repeated allegations of paper leaks, impersonation rackets, irregularities and abrupt cancellations point to a deeper structural crisis in India’s education system. Unless this crisis is understood beyond the narrow framework of policing and surveillance, such scandals will continue to recur.
After every leak, the official response follows a familiar script: arrests, inquiries, tighter security protocols, biometric verification and promises of technological safeguards. Yet the leaks persist. This persistence suggests that the problem cannot be reduced to criminality alone. It is rooted in an education system that has become excessively dependent on centralised, high-stakes examinations.
Over the past three decades, India has steadily transformed education into an examination-centred enterprise. When the future of millions of students is determined by a single test conducted over a few hours, enormous social, psychological and financial pressures inevitably emerge. Coaching corporations, private intermediaries and organised cheating networks flourish in such an environment. The examination begins to acquire greater value than education itself.
The result is an educational culture in which students are increasingly reduced to ranks and scores rather than recognised as individuals with diverse intellectual and social capacities. Excessive dependence on standardised testing distorts curriculum, pedagogy and teacher-student relationships, while simultaneously narrowing the very purpose of education. The crisis surrounding NEET must therefore be located within this broader context.
The Expansion of the Examination Economy
The creation of the National Testing Agency (NTA) in 2017 was presented as a major reform intended to professionalise and streamline entrance examinations. Ironically, the years following its establishment have witnessed repeated controversies over examination integrity. From allegations of impersonation to the large-scale irregularities in NEET-UG 2024, the credibility of centralised testing has come under sustained public scrutiny. Even beyond NEET, the cancellation of UGC-NET 2024 and investigations into several recruitment examinations have raised serious concerns about the integrity of centralised testing systems.
These incidents are not isolated administrative failures. They reveal the emergence of an examination economy where enormous financial stakes intersect with coaching industries, private agents and criminal networks.
The roots of this crisis can be traced back to the infamous Vyapam Scam in Madhya Pradesh. The Vyapam scandal exposed how high-stakes entrance systems can generate entrenched underground economies involving impersonation, bribery, organised cheating and political patronage (Ghatwai 2015). Internationally too, similar tendencies have emerged. The 2019 “Operation Varsity Blues” scandal in the United States revealed how affluent families manipulated college admissions through bribery, fabricated athletic credentials and tampered entrance examinations. The scam, orchestrated by consultant William Singer, exposed the enormous pressures and anxieties surrounding elite admissions in a deeply unequal society (Sandel, 2020).
Yet, despite the lessons of Vyapam and Varsity Blues, India has continued to expand the architecture of centralised testing rather than reconsidering its underlying logic.
Coaching Culture and the Commercialisation of Education
NEET has also produced one of the world’s largest coaching economies. Entire cities now function as coaching hubs where adolescents spend years preparing for multiple-choice examinations. The scale of India’s examination economy is reflected in the rapid expansion of the private coaching industry itself. Policy analyses estimate that the sector, valued at around USD 7 billion in 2022, may grow to over USD 16 billion by 2028 (Khaitan & Co. 2024). In such a system, paper leaks become immensely profitable. When a single medical seat is linked to social mobility and economic security, unethical practices inevitably proliferate.
What is particularly troubling is that public policy increasingly treats this coaching culture as inevitable. Instead of strengthening school education and reducing dependence on private coaching, regulatory frameworks largely seek to manage the industry. The Union government’s Guidelines for Regulation of Coaching Centers, 2024 itself acknowledges the rapid growth of “unregulated private coaching centers,” the charging of exorbitant fees, growing student stress, suicides, fire accidents and various malpractices within the sector (Ministry of Education 2024).
The guidelines further recognise that the present examination system has intensified a harmful “coaching culture,” echoing the concerns raised in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which calls for reforms in entrance examinations to reduce dependence on coaching institutions (Ministry of Education 2024). Ironically, however, the policy response does not fundamentally challenge the examination-centred model that sustains the coaching industry. Instead, it largely focuses on regulation, registration and counselling mechanisms.
The guidelines prohibit coaching centres from making misleading rank guarantees, enrolling students below sixteen years of age, and conducting excessively long classes (Ministry of Education 2024). They also recommend psychological counselling, weekly offs, mental-health workshops and mechanisms for stress management (Ministry of Education 2024).
These provisions reveal an important contradiction. The state now recognises that the coaching economy generates severe emotional pressure, anxiety and psychological distress among students. Yet, rather than reducing the structural dependence on coaching itself, the reforms attempt to humanise and regulate an already normalised culture of extreme competition.
The limitations of this approach become clearer when contrasted with the measures adopted by China. In 2021, China introduced sweeping “Double Reduction” reforms aimed at curbing the excessive commercialisation of private tutoring (Wang, Luo and Yang 2022). For-profit tutoring in core school subjects was effectively prohibited, coaching institutions were required to function as non-profit entities, and restrictions were imposed on tutoring during weekends and holidays. The reforms explicitly sought to reduce academic pressure and restore the centrality of formal schooling (Xue and Li 2022).
India’s regulations, by contrast, largely accept the permanence of the coaching economy while merely attempting to regulate its excesses.
International Lessons and the Limits of Standardised Testing
There are broader international lessons as well. Finland minimises standardised testing and places trust in public schooling. Germany relies substantially on continuous school performance and decentralised educational structures. In the United States, growing criticism of standardised testing and concerns regarding educational equity have led a vast majority of universities to adopt test-optional or test-free admissions policies. According to FairTest, more than 2,000 American colleges and universities no longer require SAT/ACT scores for admission (FairTest 2024). Even Japan disperses risk by combining national testing with university-specific evaluations and interviews.
These systems are not free from inequality or competition. However, they avoid placing the entire burden of educational opportunity on a single examination.
Meritocracy, Anxiety and Social Legitimacy
The deeper danger of hyper-competitive entrance systems lies not only in malpractice but also in the social values they cultivate. Michael Sandel argues that meritocratic societies often create the illusion that success is entirely self-made, while ignoring the unequal social conditions that shape opportunity (Sandel, 2020). When examination scores become the sole measure of merit, those who succeed are encouraged to believe they alone deserve success, while those who fail internalise humiliation and inadequacy. Education gradually ceases to be a democratic public good and instead becomes a mechanism for competitive sorting.
This is precisely the social psychology that fuels both the coaching industry and examination fraud. The desperation surrounding NEET is not simply about becoming a doctor; it is also about securing dignity, status and social legitimacy in a society increasingly organised around credentialism. As Sandel notes, the obsession with elite admissions reflects widening inequality and the belief that educational success alone determines moral and social worth (Sandel, 2020).
Rethinking Admissions and Public Education
The solution to NEET-related crises cannot therefore be confined to encryption technologies, surveillance mechanisms or policing reforms. India must fundamentally rethink the philosophy underlying its admission system.
First, school education must regain centrality. If twelve years of schooling are rendered secondary to a single examination, schools and teachers inevitably lose educational significance.
Second, admissions processes must become more diversified. School performance, aptitude assessments, interviews and region-sensitive criteria should complement entrance examinations. Over-centralisation increases both inequality and systemic vulnerability.
Third, public investment in quality higher education must increase substantially. Scarcity of affordable medical seats intensifies desperation and fuels the black-market economy surrounding examinations.
Fourth, India must seriously regulate the commercialisation of coaching institutions instead of treating them as inevitable parallel systems of education. Unless public schooling is strengthened and dependence on coaching reduced, examination-centred inequality will continue to deepen.
Finally, India must move beyond the assumption that extreme competition automatically produces educational excellence. Excessive academic competition often generates anxiety, alienation and malpractice rather than meaningful learning.
Conclusion
The recurring NEET controversies are therefore not merely failures of examination management. They are symptoms of a deeper transformation in which education itself has become subordinated to rankings, coaching markets and standardised competition. Unless admissions are reimagined within a broader democratic and equitable educational framework, paper leaks will continue to recur, public trust will continue to erode, and millions of young people will continue to bear the emotional burden of a system that mistakes testing for education.
(Author: Adama Srinivas Reddy (sreevare13[at]gmail.com) teaches at the Kakatiya Government College (Autonomous), Kakatiya University, Hanumakonda,Telangana and is a Founding Member of the Society for Change in Education, Telangana.)
References
- FairTest (2024): “Overwhelming Majority of U.S. Colleges and Universities Remain ACT/SAT-Optional or Test-Blind/Score-Free for Fall 2025,” National Center for Fair and Open Testing, 21 February. FairTest Report
- Ghatwai, Milind (2015): “Timeline: Story of the Vyapam Scam,” Indian Express, 8 July. Indian Express
- Indian Express (2015): “Vyapam Scam: The Back Story—How Scorers and Impersonators Won Jobs, Seats for Candidates,” Indian Express, 30 June. Indian Express Report
- Khaitan & Co. (2024): “Regulating Coaching Centres in India,” KCO Compass, 5 July.
- Ministry of Education (2024): Guidelines for Regulation of Coaching Center, Department of Higher Education, Government of India, January.
- Sandel, Michael J. (2020): The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Wang, Qichao, Xiaotong Luo and Jie Yang (2022): “Understanding China’s Double Reduction Policy on Educational Economy,” Global Economic Observer, Vol 10, No 1, pp 63–69. Global Economic Observer Article
- Xue, Eryong and Jian Li (2022): “What is the Value Essence of ‘Double Reduction’ Policy in China?,” Educational Philosophy and Theory.