Kavya Mukhija had hoped her performance in one of India's highly competitive public exams after months of preparation would secure her a post as an assistant professor.
But her dream was crushed when the government declared the exam invalid because of “irregularities”.
The National Eligibility Test that Ms Mukhija sat last month is one of three recent federally administered examinations that have caused controversy due to allegations of malpractice and corruption.
This has left tens of millions of Indians angry and anxious about the prospects of advancing their careers or gaining admission to top professional colleges.
“I had been preparing for it for two-three months. It has affected me and my entire family,” Ms Mukhija, who uses a wheelchair because of a congenital condition that causes stiffness of the joints, told The National.
“It was important for me. The cancellation makes me feel very hopeless because the prospects of employment for people with disabilities is already too low. We have to navigate a number of challenges to earn our bread and butter.”
Ms Mukhija is one of about 900,000 candidates who sat for the NET. The Education Ministry has said the exam will be held again between August 25 and September 3, without providing firm dates.
But authorities have not explained what caused it to be annulled in the first place.
Last month, the Ministry of Education cancelled the National Entrance cum Eligibility Exam for post-graduate medical courses a day before it was scheduled to be held on June 23, citing concerns about "the integrity of certain competitive examinations".
A new date has not been set.
Now there are growing public demands for the NEET for undergraduates, held in May, to be annulled because of alleged irregularities in the results.
About 2.4 million students took the test in hopes of getting one of the 110,000 seats available in government medical colleges.
As many as 67 achieved the maximum score of 720, considered almost impossible because of negative marks awarded for wrong answers in the multiple-choice format.
Six of them were from the same exam centre. Hundreds of others were awarded additional marks under rules to compensate for lost time during the test, such as from a delay in receiving the questions papers.
Calls for the exam to be declared void grew after the arrest in mid-June of a gang accused of selling the question papers in advance.
The National Testing Authority that conducts the exam has faced many similar controversies since it was established in 2018, with allegations of paper leaks, the award of discretionary grace marks, cheating and impersonation.
The spate of scandals prompted the government to introduce a law to bring transparency to the public examination system, making cheating or use of unfair means punishable by jail terms of three to 10 years and fines of up to 10 million rupees ($120,000).
Parliament passed the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act in February but it has not yet been implemented.
Cut-throat competition
With a burgeoning youth population and limited education resources and employment opportunities are pushing millions of young people into cut-throat competition for seats in colleges and jobs, with many resorting to corruption and cheating to ensure success.
A recent investigative report by The Indian Express found 41 instances of irregularities in recruitment and admission tests in the past five years that affected 14 million candidates.
In 2015, images of parents and friends scaling the walls of test centres in Bihar state to pass answers to students during a board examination shocked the country.
One of the biggest scandals involved the examination board of Madhya Pradesh state, called Vyapam.
From 1993 until the scam was discovered in 2013, more than 2,000 students conned their way into medical colleges and government posts with the help of test-fixing gangs that included politicians and test administrators. At least 1,800 people were arrested.
Tens of thousands of students spend their days and nights at coaching centres, attending intensive lessons to be able to score highly in national exams.
Academics and education professionals have underscored the disparity between the demand for education, limited number of seats in colleges, affordability, and employment opportunities as the main reason for the corruption, paper leaks and desperation to use such measures.
“The paper leak is just a manifestation of much deeper problems in the education sector,” Kiran Bhatty, senior visiting fellow, Centre for Policy Research and Centre de Sciences Humaine, told The National.
“There is clearly a mismatch between the demands of the labour market and what the education system is currently being able to throw up in terms of skills. Students are competing for less seats and that has created this opportunity for corruption because people are absolutely desperate,” she said.
She emphasised that the government needs to diversify the education system and start offering skill-based education to the youth to create job avenues and decrease the burden on traditional professions.
"The investment in education has, in fact, in the last 10 years, not just stagnated, even gone down a little bit. The quality of school education is not preparing students to compete in the manner that is required for these exams,” Ms Bhatty said.
Protests
The latest scandal is far from subsiding, with India’s political opposition criticising the government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi over its failure to ensure the transparency of such tests.
The government sacked the NTA head and ordered an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation - the Indian equivalent to the American FBI - after protests organised by students and political parties.
Mr Modi’s government introduced the authority to conduct competitive exams at the national level after it decided to centralise medical and engineering admissions to state-run colleges across India.
The decision mirrors his previous policies which have concentrated power within the federal government, undermining the authority of regional governments which used to oversee the examinations in their own areas, making them less competitive in terms of numbers.
Experts say the federal policy is flawed and urgently needs an overhaul.
“The idea of having a centralised agency itself is highly problematic. One, of course, because it's not constitutional in terms of the federal structure,” Ms Bhatty said.
“But also, the capacities within the NTA are extremely poor.”
NTA holds competitive exams outsourcing external individuals to carry out key responsibilities, making them devoid of any public scrutiny and accountability.
“They conduct some 25 such tests, and they have a capacity of just 25 professionals, which obviously for the size and scope and diversity of the country, is extremely little.”
“When you're testing nationally, putting checks and balances in a country of the size of India is not very easy and you don't have the capacity nationally to do it."
"It's better to decentralise it and allow state governments to do it,” she said.
Aditya Chaurasiya, 20, spent a year preparing for this year's NEET exam in hope of meeting the grades for a government medical college but his score fell short - which he blamed on students being able to get higher scores through cheating.
“Our hard work has gone to waste. Our career, admission depends on the cut-off point for college but this year students have scored high marks. How can one score those marks?" Mr Chaurasiya told The National.
“There are not many government colleges and private colleges are unaffordable. If papers are leaked, then it is foolish to run after these exams,” Mr Chaurausiya said.
