How seriously do we take UGC's new guidelines against plagiarism?

The new guidelines against plagiarism at universities are a first step in a journey that needs to cover a lot more ground

Krishan Agarwal can’t recall the boy’s name. He identifies him as the gangly, bespectacled boy with a square face who has been coming to his shop for a few years now. “He ‘buys’ projects every semester,” says Agarwal, whose shop lies tucked away in a crowded corner near Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute in Delhi University’s North Campus.

There are other instantly recognisable faces, he adds — regular customers who drop in every once in a while, usually a couple of days before their project submission dates. “Undergraduate or postgraduate students?” I probe further. “Both.”

For years, Agarwal has been tapping