‘Oxford of the East’ for Sale

The NEET scandal exposes the commercial ruin of Pune’s academic legacy.

For generations, Pune wore its scholarly reputation with great pride. It was known by its famous sobriquets - Vidyeche Maherghar (“abode of learning”) and ‘Oxford of the East’. Students from across the country flocked to its colleges and libraries. Reformers built schools there not for profit but for social transformation. Teachers once commanded the sort of reverence now reserved for celebrities and political strongmen.

Today, however, the city finds itself at the centre of a scandal that has exposed the moral collapse of an educational ecosystem long corroded by commerce. The recent leak of the NEET examination paper, the gateway test for India’s aspiring doctors, has turned Pune from a symbol of academic aspiration into a metaphor for institutional decay.

Startling Scale

The scale of the racket is startling. Arrests have been made across Maharashtra, including in Latur, Nashik and Ahilya Nagar. Yet Pune appears to have been the conspiracy’s nerve centre. Among those arrested are a biology lecturer affiliated with a prominent college, a beauty parlour owner accused of recruiting students, and a retired professor alleged to be the mastermind of the operation. According to investigators, students paid lavish sums in exchange for access to examination questions and answer keys before the test itself.

That educators themselves stand accused has shaken public confidence far more than the mechanics of the fraud. India is no stranger to paper leaks or examination scams. From recruitment tests to entrance examinations, the country has witnessed a procession of cheating syndicates thriving on desperation and competition. But Pune’s involvement carries symbolic weight.

Over the past three decades, Maharashtra’s educational landscape has been transformed by the unchecked commercialisation of higher education. Policies intended to expand access to engineering and medical colleges inadvertently created fertile ground for profiteering. Private institutions mushroomed across the state. Education became less a public good than a lucrative enterprise.

Entire educational empires arose, often built through political patronage, opaque land deals and mountains of unaccounted cash. Pune, with its swelling student population and aspirational middle class, became the capital of this parallel economy. ‘Education barons’ emerged alongside the old cooperative strongmen who had long dominated Maharashtra’s politics. Their influence seeped into electoral campaigns, bureaucracy and civic life.

Merit for Sale

Once education becomes a marketplace commodity, merit itself acquires a price tag. Coaching classes proliferate like speculative financial firms, promising rank, success and guaranteed admissions. A symbiotic relationship developed between private institutions and coaching centres, each feeding off the anxieties of ambitious families. Students learnt early that examination success was no longer merely about diligence or intellect, but about access to networks and money.

This ecosystem has also blurred the line between politics and pedagogy. Many educational institutions are directly controlled by politicians or their associates. Colleges provide not only revenue streams but also patronage networks and manpower during elections. Educational trusts function less as centres of scholarship than as miniature political estates.

Such degradation would have appalled Pune’s earlier reformers. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city’s educational institutions were founded upon idealism rather than speculation. Savitribai Phule championed women’s education against ferocious opposition. Dhondo Keshav Karve established pioneering institutions for women. Reformist organisations built night schools for workers and promoted education as an instrument of emancipation, not enrichment.

Those institutions produced generations of scholars, civil servants and public intellectuals. The prestige of Pune University rested not on glossy infrastructure or marketing campaigns but on intellectual seriousness. Teachers enjoyed autonomy and moral authority. Students once touched their professors’ feet in respect upon encountering them in the street - a gesture almost unimaginable in today’s transactional culture.

Coaching-class capitalism has inverted these values. Teachers in schools and colleges increasingly play second fiddle to celebrity tutors and private institutes whose advertisements blanket city streets. The vocabulary of education has changed accordingly to ‘packages,’ ‘placements,’ ‘crash courses’ and ‘guaranteed results’ have replaced older notions of scholarship and character formation. Even cultural life in Pune increasingly revolves around wealthy educational entrepreneurs whose patronage extends into media, festivals and politics.

The NEET scandal is the logical endpoint of a system that has steadily monetised aspiration while hollowing out integrity. When the gatekeepers themselves manipulate outcomes, public faith in meritocracy evaporates.

Governments periodically promise crackdowns after each scandal erupts. Yet meaningful reform rarely follows because the education industry is now deeply intertwined with political financing and local influence networks.

Pune’s tragedy is that a city once celebrated as a ‘republic of learning’ now risks becoming a cautionary tale about what happens when education ceases to be a moral enterprise and becomes merely another market.

(The writer is a senior Pune-based journalist. Views personal.)