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By:

Anuradha Rao

3 March 2025 at 3:48:19 pm

A Protest Needs an Outcome

The protests at Jantar Mantar have brought together students, activists and political leaders over the NEET paper leak. Actors and filmmakers have offered support, the latest being Salman Khan (the actor, not the educator). The anger is understandable. An examination on which millions stake years of preparation cannot become a commodity available to those with money, influence or access. But what, precisely, must the protest achieve? “Improve education” cannot be its demand. It is a worthy...

A Protest Needs an Outcome

The protests at Jantar Mantar have brought together students, activists and political leaders over the NEET paper leak. Actors and filmmakers have offered support, the latest being Salman Khan (the actor, not the educator). The anger is understandable. An examination on which millions stake years of preparation cannot become a commodity available to those with money, influence or access. But what, precisely, must the protest achieve? “Improve education” cannot be its demand. It is a worthy aspiration, but too vast to negotiate. Education encompasses teachers, curricula, examinations, infrastructure, regulation, funding and access. No government can say when it has “improved education” enough and no protester can establish when that promise has been fulfilled. Even India’s Independence movement, despite its enormous moral canvas, had an unambiguous objective: freedom from British rule. The movements within that struggle were more specific. The Salt March challenged the salt laws. Non-Cooperation sought withdrawal from institutions sustaining colonial authority. Restoring Integrity The larger cause at Jantar Mantar may be the state of Indian education. But the subject of this protest is the integrity of public examinations. The state invited students to compete and promised that their performance - and not money or privileged access - would determine the result. A paper leak breaches that promise. The immediate demand must therefore be an examination system whose integrity can be independently established. The government’s defence is that it acted by arresting the alleged perpetrators and holding a re-examination. But these necessary actions hardly indicate that the system has changed. Every paper leak follows a familiar script of outrage, arrests, investigations, re-examinations and solemn assurances. But accountability seldom travels beyond the immediate culprits to those who designed, supervised and were entrusted with safeguarding the examination system. Arrests merely acknowledge that the crime has already been committed. Re-examinations compel honest students to pay a second time with their time, money and mental anguish for the state’s failure. The consequences extend beyond examination security. A leak tells students that effort may not produce opportunity. It tells parents that years of sacrifice can be defeated by money and access. For students without wealth, connections or a private route into higher education, a fair examination may be the only counterweight to inherited privilege. This is why the relative absence of educators from the public conversation is striking. Students, activists, politicians and celebrities are visible. But where are the collective voices of teachers, principals, educators, university leaders and educational institutions? Perhaps they are speaking and are not being reported. That is revealing in itself: a celebrity’s support is considered news while an educator’s judgement is not. But if educators are largely silent, their absence is more troubling. Teachers ask students to believe that preparation matters. Principals defend the credibility of the institutions they lead. Universities admit students on the assurance that examinations distinguish merit fairly. When that assurance collapses, educators cannot remain sympathetic spectators. Celebrities can amplify anger and politicians can convert it into pressure. Educators must explain what has been broken and help define the repair. Silence is not neutrality when the credibility of one’s profession is being contested. Restoring Confidence Identifying those responsible for the leak is only one part of the state’s response. Restoring confidence in the examination system is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education. It must bring students, teachers, principals, assessment experts, universities and parents into a structured dialogue - not merely to record their grievances, but to define the safeguards and accountability required before the next national examination. That process must be led by the person at the helm of education. An Education Minister must see a breach of the social contract between the state and the student. Political will is visible not only in policies and budgets, but also in whom a government chooses to lead a department. External Affairs, Home, Defence and Finance are led by figures whose political weight is evident. We may disagree with them, but we do not doubt the importance assigned to their portfolios. India’s history with education presents a different pattern. Most education ministers since Independence have come from political, legal or administrative careers; only a handful possessed substantial experience in education or academic policy. This does not mean that only educationists can lead the ministry. It means education has too often been treated as a department to administer rather than a complex system requiring domain-informed leadership and sustained political ownership. The question is therefore larger than whether Dharmendra Pradhan resigns. If he understands the leak as an institutional failure, he must demonstrate it through public ownership and measurable reform. If he sees it merely as a crime for investigators to solve, the demand for his removal becomes a demand for someone capable of recognising what has actually been broken. A resignation may establish that failure carries a political cost. It cannot be the only outcome. Changing the minister without changing the system would be one more transaction. The government need not create another institution or promise to transform education overnight. It must take two immediate actions. First, commission an independent, time-bound audit of the examination chain and publish where it failed, who was responsible and what action followed. Second, require the Education Ministry to place an examination-integrity framework before Parliament ahead of the next national examination, followed by a public report after every major examination detailing breaches, complaints, action taken and vulnerabilities that remain. One establishes the truth about what happened. The other prevents accountability from disappearing when the protest ends. The students at Jantar Mantar have already transformed private anxiety into organised pressure. Their protest cannot transform Indian education in its entirety. But it can compel the state to restore one foundational promise: when it asks a student to compete, it will guarantee an honest competition. That is specific enough to win and significant enough to begin changing everything around it. (The writer is a learning and development professional. Views personal)

Why is Mamata Seeing Ghost of Bangladesh?

Updated: Oct 21, 2024

Why is Mamata Seeing Ghost of Bangladesh?

Mamata is seeing a ghost of Bangladesh behind the massive outrage and waves of protest over rape and murder of the trainee doctor. And the reasons are many.

It’s been over a fortnight. Yet with each passing day the voice of protest is getting louder and stronger. From the streets of Kolkata it’s pouring into roads of hinterland. The cry for justice for a rape victim has consolidated into a wail of demands to set a lot of wrongdoings right. Here in lies the fear and trepidation. Wasn’t the issue that brought the youth of Bangladesh out on the thoroughfares a simple, innocent one of quota reform?

The chief minister of Bengal, known for understanding the pulse of people better than many, was quick to read the signages floating in the political horizon.

The most obvious reason for her to be tensed is that both the regime change in Bangladesh and the mass protest in Bengal, were student-driven to begin with. The two incidents---end of 15 year old Sheikh Hasina government and turbulence in West Bengal, over the heinous crime, falling back to back, the first on August 5th and the latter from August 9th onwards, give natural scope for comparisons. More so, because in both the cases the movement strayed beyond an affected constituency to include aggrieved people at large, cutting across socio-economic demography. If the quota reform protest started by students in Bangladesh became a mass uprising against an autocratic regime, the campaign demanding justice for the rape victim and overall safety and security of women in Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal soon snowballed into a movement of no-confidence against the government. Slogans--”Mamata must resign” also got floated in social media much in line with the call for ouster of Sheikh Hasina. In fact “Resignation of Hasina” became the single point agenda into which all other fringe demands coalesced.

Incidentally, even before people started drawing parallels, that there could be a thread of commonality in the way the upheaval in Bangladesh and Bengal played out, Mamata was quick to point out that the Opposition were trying to pull off a Bangladesh by politicizing the tragic incident: “A coordinated approach has been executed by the BJP and the CPIM with support from the Centre to defame Bengal and exploit the situation....They want to make a Bangladesh here. They are taking cues from student unrest in Bangladesh and are attempting to capture similarly. I have no longing for the chair. I came here to serve people.”

Not only Mamata, her political lieutenants are consistently equating the turmoil in Bengal with the mayhem in Bangladesh. Cabinet minister for North Bengal development Udayan Guha threatened to take stern action against those, who would be trying to exploit the situation by emulating a Bangladesh like movement. “ Even after the hospital was vandalised, the police did not open fire on anyone. The police will not allow a Bangladesh type situation. We will not allow Bengal to turn into Bangladesh, Guha thundered.

Is the government’s fear unfounded?

Apart from the similarities on ground zero, as to how and where the future course of events are heading to, there are ample reasons for Bengal to mull on-- as to what led to a Bangladesh like boiling point. To begin with, it’ll be appropriate to talk of Bangladesh and the prevailing situation, that made the students’ protest become big in magnitude. The students were out on the streets because of a high reservation in public jobs. Unemployment and stagnant job market in private sector coupled with a high rate of inflation drove the educated youth to rebel against the government.

But soon the students found enormous number of sympathisers, who were equally at the receiving end. According to Bangladesh citizens, the last two terms of the Sheikh Hasina government were a mockery of democracy. Even elections would be compromised. As Hasina grew from strength to strength, she politicized institutions. The rank and file of police owed allegiance to the ruling dispensation. Extortion, harrassment and raids by police and people in power became rampant. An atmosphere of fear and repression reigned and people got restless to overthrow the government.

Politicization of institutions has been happening in Mamata government too. Allegations are quite strong that police in Bengal functions at the beck and call of political bosses. The lapses and alleged loopholes on the part of police in handling the rape and murder of the young doctor have yet again revealed a sense of confused or misplaced loyalty.

But above everything else both Hasina and Mamata governments allegedly seem to have twined in accepting corruption as a way of life. In Bangladesh jobs of primary and secondary teachers got sold at premium, Rs 10-12 lakh in the Hasina regime. Even police had to pay up for prized postings and transfers. In Bengal busting of the teacher’s recruitment scam has revealed how unsuccessful and ineligible candidates got government jobs in schools in exchange of bribes.

Similarities are multiple and inescapable. Mamata has good reasons to be apprehensive. It’s not only she, who can see and connect the dots. People, out on the streets, clamoring for justice, can see a providential pattern somewhere in the unfolding of future events in these two places-- Bangladesh and Bengal. True, they share more than 2,217 odd km of border. They share the same umbilical cord, other than language, culture, ethos, icons. Even emotions are the same. So she cannot take any risk.

(The writer is a senior jounalist based in Kolkata. Views personal)

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