Lesson from Bihar toppers scam: Students are being taught that life ahead is a jugaad

Two recent developments in the field of school education that have come to light should shatter the belief, if any, that it seeks to groom children by instilling knowledge, discipline, honesty of purpose. One is the undeserving being made “toppers” in Bihar’s Std 12 board examination, and the other is the doling out of 27 marks to over a lakh of students in Punjab so that the number of students who pass nearly doubles.

These “toppers” in the Bihar secondary school examination have been arrested, and one of them has reportedly said, “I only told Papa to get me passed, but they went ahead and made me a topper.” This points to two things: The child knew that such mischief was possible; and the parents not only obliged her, but to give her a better gift.

However, the arrests of the children were unwarranted, because they are the victims, first of parental neglect in not getting them to study, and two, of the system which is so malleable that a student who cannot write an essay beyond “Tulsidas, pranam”, can be so brazenly ranked fully knowing that television crew were bound to land up at the doorstep and ask questions.

The focus has to be on the scamsters, which appears to be so as of now, with arrest of a former MLA, and the Bihar State Education Board chief Lalkeshwar Prasad, his wife, and the principal of the college from where the two students wrote the exam. However, it remains to be seen if the focus will remain on the toppers or a thorough probe into the school education system in Bihar will be done. It had better be the latter as this incident has revealed how rotten the system is.

This is a case of parental neglect and getting false marking with the connivance of officials – there is hardly any other way this could have happened, unless a ‘computer glitch’ is trotted out as the cause. The students may have been lazy and had not studied, or possibly be ignoramuses, but they could hardly be the members of a gang operating the scam.

If her post-arrest version is true, there have been reckless parents, middlemen, and evaluators who willingly fixed the marks. If they thought that it would not be found out one time or the other, they would have been stupid, though subsequent stings have shown that adding undeserved marks is a wide practice. Perhaps that is one reason why students don’t study, apparently unmindful of the consequences as they navigate their lives in future.

Of late, cases of students copying in exams, aided by outsiders, possibly relatives, who pass on chits and pages from books to students inside, have come to the fore. Teachers on duty are lax, even conniving, but the sabotage of education and manipulation of the system is more than evident. Above all, it is a fraud on the students. The probe may reveal the play of money.

Allotting 27 ‘grace’ marks to more than a lakh of students so that the proportion of students who pass goes up from a pitiable 39.5 per cent to 72.25 per cent in the Class 10 school leaving final examination is galling. A year ago, media reports say, a similar step shot the pass percentage from 48.22 per cent to 65.21 per cent. It was less, I would wager, for the students’ benefit as is made out, but more to dress up statistics. It is all about creating illusions of worth.

It is surprising that by these steps, the students are being taught that the undeserving too would get honours, and that life ahead is a jugad, where only money, connections, and clout matter. It seems not to have struck anyone that a disservice is being done to the students, and the education system in the country is being reduced to a farce.