India’s exam fiasco fuels rising youth discontent

{"text":[[{"start":10.85,"text":"Manish Kumar was ecstatic when he aced India’s national exam for medical university applicants last month. But less than two weeks later the government of Narendra Modi cancelled the tests after revelations that answers had been leaked before the test. "}],[{"start":26.799999999999997,"text":"“My dream was so close,” sighed Kumar, 19, in an interview in Kota, a northern city that is India’s premier exam-coaching hub and where he had been studying for 12 hours a day for the past three years. “Why is this happening with such a high-level exam taken by millions of students?” "}],[{"start":47.05,"text":"Kumar’s outrage is widely shared. The scandal around the national medical entrance exam, taken by more than 2.2mn applicants competing for 130,000 places, has fuelled growing frustration among young Indians already grappling with high unemployment and economic uncertainty."}],[{"start":64.9,"text":"It has also helped spark a rare challenge to Modi in the form of the Cockroach Janta Party, a viral new satirical online campaign whose creator has called for a mass demonstration to demand the education minister’s resignation. "}],[{"start":79.60000000000001,"text":"Party founder Abhijeet Dipke, who is based in Boston but plans to return to New Delhi on Saturday, has said the medical entrance exam fiasco along with other leaks, marking mistakes and system failures demonstrate the “sheer incompetence and failure of the government”."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":95.45,"text":"Under-30s make up about half of India’s 1.4bn people — the world’s largest youth population — and according to a March report by Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, nearly 40 per cent of graduates aged 15-25 and 20 per cent of those aged 25-29 are jobless."}],[{"start":114.05000000000001,"text":"While those unemployment rates are higher than for those less educated, many young people and their families see success in public exams as their best hope for economic advancement and security."}],[{"start":124.80000000000001,"text":"Every year about 200,000 late-teen students travel by train, bus, car or motorbike from all over India to cram in Kota, a city in Rajasthan that Modi once hailed as being as important to education as India’s holy city of Varanasi is to Hinduism. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":143.4,"text":"After Kumar discovered his exam had been voided on his return to his hometown in Bihar, India’s poorest state, he made a 36-hour train journey back to Kota to prepare for a re-test scheduled for June 21."}],[{"start":156.9,"text":"Kumar also joined the Cockroach Janta Party “to express my frustration”, he said."}],[{"start":162.45000000000002,"text":"India has not seen demonstrations of youthful discontent of anything like the intensity of neighbouring nations such as Bangladesh or Nepal, where young people have in recent years led mass uprisings. "}],[{"start":175.10000000000002,"text":"But Rahul Verma, a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi think-tank, said economic anxieties were building fast for young adults."}],[{"start":184.8,"text":"“We have a massive population that don’t see improvement in their life chances, either through education or other available employment means and opportunities,” Verma said."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":195.4,"text":"Members of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have denounced the new CJP, which took its name from Chief Justice Surya Kant’s description of young unemployed people as “cockroaches”."}],[{"start":208.4,"text":"Government minister Kiren Rijiju has accused it of seeking its 22mn social media followers from arch-enemy Pakistan and the “anti-India gang”, claims strongly denied by Dipke. "}],[{"start":220.05,"text":"A survey released this week by pollster CVoter found more than 75 per cent of respondents aged 18-34 agreed that education minister Dharmendra Pradhan should resign."}],[{"start":230.45000000000002,"text":"In a written response to a request for comment, Pradhan said the government had treated concerns about the leaks with “utmost seriousness and sensitivity” and acted “solely in the interest of safeguarding the aspirations of honest and hardworking students”."}],[{"start":244.10000000000002,"text":"He wrote: “Ensuring a transparent, credible and secure examination system remains our unwavering commitment to students and their future.”"}],[{"start":253.40000000000003,"text":"The government is widely reported to be considering deploying the air force to transport papers for this month’s re-test for would-be medical students such as Kumar."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":262.75000000000006,"text":"It is not the first time there has been angst over India’s public exams. The country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, warned in 1961 that “if we do not improve the standards and make the examination system more rigorous, we will become backward”. "}],[{"start":279.15000000000003,"text":"A popular recent three-season show on Netflix, Kota Factory, was a drama that illustrated the stresses on students. The exam system, which governs entry to opportunities ranging from railway jobs to places at state engineering schools, is notoriously strenuous and has been blamed for numerous suicides."}],[{"start":297.85,"text":"The warden at one boys’ hostel in Kota, where an applicant threw himself off an upper floor a day before the May exam, said the facility already had “anti-hanging devices” installed on its ceiling fans and had now put safety nets on its balconies. "}],[{"start":312.8,"text":"Vijay Soni, vice-president of the Allen Career Institute — one of Kota’s largest coaching centres that has trained 3mn students over the past nearly four decades — said most could “handle pressure”."}],[{"start":326,"text":"But the exam system needed to be improved because after the leaks “their morale is down”, Soni said."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":332.3,"text":"Umesh Chandra travelled 800km by train from his village in northern Uttar Pradesh to Kota to place his 17-year-old daughter at the Allen Institute."}],[{"start":342.95,"text":"“Our children won’t have a chance if they don’t come here,” Chandra said. “Now that the paper leak has happened, what can we do? We don’t have much money. We exhausted our savings. Shouldn’t there be at least a foolproof examination system guaranteed by the government?”"}],[{"start":357.15,"text":"Koppillil Radhakrishnan, who headed a committee Modi set up to advise on reform to the public exams two years ago following a previous leak, said Pradhan should stay as education minister because measures taken to secure the system had been “working phenomenally well”. "}],[{"start":371.54999999999995,"text":"He added: “Conducting the exams is not rocket science, but the stakes are very high when 2-2.5mn young faces are involved in the process. The June 21 exam is a re-test for the candidates and a real test for those who conduct these tests.”"}],[{"start":395.59999999999997,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1780713647_9080.mp3"}