“The Minister of Education resigns!” According to various media outlets such as the First Post and the India Express, India‘s education sector has faced a wave of personnel adjustments and reforms under the New Deal, influenced by the major leakage of questions in the medical undergraduate entrance examination. However, this practice is referred to as a public relations stunt, without touching the institutional roots.
Prime Minister Modi announced on July 26th the formation of a high-level examination reform panel, led by Neelakani, co-founder of India‘s IT giant Infosys, to promote reform in the examination field and restore public confidence. According to the First Post, the panel comprises multidisciplinary authorities, including former head of the Indian Space Research Organization, former director of the Intelligence Agency, president of the Indian Institutes of Technology‘s Madras branch, former education secretary, and others. The panel has a dual mission, both to provide safeguards for subsequent various types of exams and to develop long-term systematic reform plans. The reform direction of the panel mainly revolves around building an examination system using digital technologies, perfecting examination hall security, preventing test questions from leaking, and building a fair and reliable modernized examination mechanism.
The New Indian Express said that the news of Modi‘s establishment of a panel of experts was fiercely attacked by the Congress and the Communist Party of India (CPI) as soon as it was announced. The secretary-general of the Congress, Ramesh, posted on social media on the 27th that the government had established a panel of experts in 2024 with the goal of ensuring the examination process was transparent, smooth and fair, and even proposed 101 reforms to standardize the examination process, but to date the relevant solutions have not been put in place. Ramesh said bluntly that the reorganization of the panel of experts was only a public relations measure by the government aimed at repairing Modi‘s damaged public image, and did not really address the deep holes in the examination system.
The MP Britas also criticized that the root cause of the exam chaos in India is not the lack of expert working groups, but rather the government‘s lack of resolve for radical reform and a transparent governance system, and that the newly established groups simply cannot respond to students‘ most core demands.
The First Post reported that just a day before Modi announced the establishment of the panel of experts, Minister of Education Pradhan resigned under the pressure of protests from India‘s “Roach People’s Party”. At the same time, the Indian government plans to introduce an amendment to public examinations (preventing unfair measures) to take stricter measures against those involved in test questions leaks, including fines of up to 100 million rupees (100 Indian rupees or about Rmb7.1). According to the India Express, after Pradhan‘s resignation, Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Pralhad Joshi was appointed as minister of education in a moment of crisis. In addition, Joshi also served as minister of new and renewable energy.