India's education crisis needs systemic reform, not bureaucratic reshuffles

Our education system is a destroyer of all talent by enforcing learning by rote, and then holding coaching classes to 'crack' competitive exams. And then, papers leak

Direct negotiations between the Narendra Modi government and CJP leaders have begun, Sonam Wangchuk has broken his fast, and one dramatic late-night move has also been made to impress the protesters. This was the removal, Thursday night, of the higher education secretary. 

The protesters, who want the education minister’s head, were obviously not impressed. And here’s why it also reminded me of a tiny framed poster on a wall in my office, given to me by my daughter who knows I so adore the 1942 film, Casablanca. Even if you haven’t seen it, you’d be familiar with the expression it made immortal. That is the character of Captain Louis Renault asking his cops to “round up the usual suspects” after a fatal shooting in Rick’s (bar). These secretarial movements are just that, a rounding up of the usual suspects. 

In any such crisis, the civil servants become a convenient target. Even earlier, some key people in the National Testing Agency (NTA), including its director-general Subodh Kumar Singh (IAS, Chhattisgarh cadre), were removed after the 2024 Neet paper leak. Politicians think it’s convenient. Vineet Joshi, the outgoing higher education secretary, now Panchayati Raj secretary, was the first director-general of NTA. It’s a merry musical chairs of the usual suspects. 

Nobody in this city can say what the Modi government might do tomorrow. But, going by its method and record, it’s almost impossible that it will remove Dharmendra Pradhan. The pressure may indeed bring him a reprieve. The Modi government won’t be seen doing anything under pressure. They blinked once, under the farmers’ protest. They won’t again. 

Further, even if they sacrificed Mr Pradhan and the protesters went home happy, the struggles of the Indian youth will not end. Indian childhood has now become the most stressful, competitive and unidimensional in our history. 

Take Neet. This year 2.2 million appeared for it. About five per cent were selected for 1,39,489 MBBS seats. Another 25,000- 35,000 will go overseas for MBBS, mostly to former Russian republics, the Philippines, even Bangladesh. Clearing Neet (being above the cut-off of 50 percentile) is essential for them too if they want to return and work as doctors in India. This underlines the undersupply problem. 

That leaves out more than two million. Many of them also sat for the CUET (Common University Entrance Test) for all central universities and their affiliated colleges—with quite poor odds. Millions of others are already competing in JEE for engineering colleges. And even for those that climb this first ladder, competitive exams will never end. For post graduation, PhD, teaching jobs and so on. 

From the age of 15, the life of an Indian kid from a middle-class family or below is an endless trap of coaching classes, competitions, and then the paper leaks, so re-examinations. Now you know why so many children are at Jantar Mantar, many with parents. There’s no time for extra-curricular, hobbies, and for heaven’s sake, sport. Then we ask why we do so poorly in sports. Your parents will feel like killing you or themselves if you start “wasting” time on sport. 

To understand how this works, check out the composition of the one sport in which we’re finding world-class talent, cricket. The current teams, across formats for India and in almost every franchise, from IPL to a dozen other local leagues, would rarely field a college graduate. This talent has been picked up by scouts at Class 10-level. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is just an extreme example. 

Our education system is a destroyer of all talent by enforcing learning by rote, and then pushing students to coaching classes to “crack” competitive exams. As a result, we’re creating a generation of nerds or the bitter majority that feels left out and hard done by. Changing any minister won’t reform this mass oppression. It needs to be uprooted entirely, but it’s unlikely simply because it doesn’t go with the philosophy of a “strong” government. Because, what’s the point of a “strong” government in New Delhi if it won’t centralise everything under it. 

You might wonder how come Neet paper leaks weren’t a problem until the other day, which means the pre-Modi era. That’s because there was no Neet. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had also tried centralising medical admissions, but the Neet it set up was struck down in 2013 by a three-judge Supreme Court Bench, 2-1, as unconstitutional. Several states, especially in the South, saw it as the stealing of their federal rights. 

The action of the infamous Medical Council of India (MCI) in setting up Neet in 2010 was intended to indirectly take over the admissions process in private medical colleges. The 2013 order was, however, challenged and struck down by a five-judge Bench in 2016. Now, Neet was a judicially-mandated body. 

The push for this centralisation had come from the UPA-era socialist thinking to curb high capitation fees in many private medical colleges. If they can no longer decide who to admit, how will they charge these extortionate fees? In that sense, it was part-nationalisation of medical education. And because the South and Maharashtra dominated medical education, the MCI and the central establishment tried to strangle the industry by mandating a population-based licensing for new medical colleges. So, one medical college licence per 1 million population. The southern states and Maharashtra pushed back and it was set aside. The fact that so many of these colleges are owned by politicians, many from the ruling party and its allies, helped. 

Pre-Neet, the states followed their own admission tests and processes and the masses of school kids were spared this national stress-fest, as was the central government the risk of holding an examination at this scale. But this government loves to centralise. They’re now ready with a fresh law to make their control of higher education across the country even tighter. Google Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025. This proposes an overarching higher education commission and three regulatory councils, subsuming UGC, AICTE and NCTE or all supervision over university, technical and teachers’ educations. Mercifully, the Standing Committee has stalled it for now. 

Going back to Neet, it was to consummate this centralisation success that the Modi government set up NTA, under the Societies Registration Act. It is supposed to conduct Neet, Jee, UGC-Net (research), CUET for undergraduate and postgraduate central university admissions. 

That’s humongous power for a mere “society” even if it is headed by an ideological faithful in Pradeep Kumar Joshi. He’s an academic, not IAS. Check his record. Chairman of Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission (2006-11), Chhattisgarh PSC (2011-15), UPSC (2020-22), and now NTA. This kind of power and politicisation was bound to create a mess. This is what the Modi government is now caught in. 

As I finish writing this, news breaks that NTA has fired 47 officials. This is the price the Modi government is paying for centralising so much power. And every time there is a crisis, the government gives you the lollipop of a fresh law. There is even a standalone law against cheating in a Neet examination. As if the basic cheating law will not apply. Or special courts that go on forever like the others. There is a reason we once called it “lawlipop politics”. 

Ministers will come and go, but if you want to cut the roots of the problem, start with Neet. Decentralise all technical admissions and restore to the states their autonomy. Abolish NTA. Treat the states as adults in our federal family. Legalise educational institutions for profit and let hundreds more colleges rise. I’d go so far as to say, scrap the Emergency-era 42nd amendment that made education a concurrent subject and thereby restore to the states their autonomy. It won’t happen, but there’s no harm in suggesting. 

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