Imagine, if at the stroke of the midnight hour, on the night of 14-15 August 1947, just as Nehru was about to make his famous “Tryst with Destiny” speech, Lord Mountbatten snatched the microphone away from him and said, “I’m terribly sorry everyone, but the only draft of the Indian Independence Act in the British Parliament seems to have been stolen. So please go home and wait for a few months while we draft it all over again.”  

The joyous masses crowding Lutyens’ Delhi and huddling around radios all over India would have been beside themselves with grief. “It just isn’t fair,” they would have said.

A similar sentiment is being felt by the lakhs of CBSE students of Classes 10 and 12 who have just been informed that, because of a paper leak, they will have to appear for their Mathematics and Economics exams, respectively, all over again.

Why is it so serious?

Every school going child in India is acutely aware of one exam – the Board exam. These exams are conducted at the end of 10 years and 10 + 2 years of education. The Board in question may be the CBSE, the ICSE or any of the State Education Boards. The Board exams are important because the marks obtained in them are usually the criteria for college admissions.

It is often felt (albeit wrongly) that the Board exams are the be all and end all of school life. Thus, the stress and strain of these exams are felt not only by the student, but also her entire family. It would not be far-fetched to say that the whole family appears for the Board exams and not the student alone. In such circumstances, most students and parents consider the completion of the Board exams as Independence Day.

Who is to blame?

The blame for the paper leak, if it has indeed occurred, would lie squarely with the CBSE. In the present times, security does not mean merely physical security of the question papers, but also digital security which involves safeguarding the drafts of question papers stored on hard drives. There are millions of ways to illegally access such question papers. One may hack into the servers of the CBSE or even bribe a security guard to click pictures of the question paper on his smartphone camera. A lack of sufficient precautions on the CBSE’s part will now lead to students and their parents losing much sleep.

What now?

Alongside investigations into the leak, the CBSE has also declared that re-examinations would be held for the Mathematics paper for Class 10 and the Economics paper for Class 12. This decision has faced a lot of heat. Many parents have launched signature campaigns to persuade the CBSE against holding re-examinations. It would be torturous for students to go through the whole process again, they argue. The fact that Mathematics is one of the two papers is an added source of worry. Mathematics is a scary subject for many students and they heave a sigh of relief at the end of the exam when they feel that they are finished with the subject for life.

Things seem doubly unfair when one considers that students of the ICSE system and the State Education Boards are home and dry. They do not have to take any re-examinations because their Boards have been more competent in guarding the question papers. Of course, one may argue that a lot of paper leaks happen even in the State Education Boards and that these are rarely brought to light. Nevertheless, this time, it is only the CBSE students who are faced with the daunting task of appearing in examinations again.

What’s happened has happened. Given the circumstances, the only logical solution does appear to be the one favoured by the CBSE. Re-examinations are the only way to ensure that the unfair advantage gained by those who have benefited from the paper leak is negated. The re-examinations, howsoever cruel, are to be held soon so that the results may be out well before the college admission season. Given the fact that the subjects are fresh in the minds of the students, it is not that they would have to study all over again.

Lessons to learn

Indeed, this may actually be a valuable life lesson to the students that, despite their best efforts and no fault of theirs, things may not go their way. It is useful to learn such lessons early on in life.

What is more important, systemically, is to learn valuable lessons from this episode and ensure that examination process is not compromised in future. An instance from a few years ago, where “toppers” from the Bihar State Education Board could not answer basic questions in their subjects, proves that the CBSE is not the only rotten apple in the basket. The allegations of the question paper of the Staff Selection Commission exam being leaked are indicative of the rot in the government employment selection system.

Speedy investigation and competent prosecution of the accused in the current scam is a must. Enhancing the security apparatus surrounding the examination process in India at all levels is long overdue. It is not just the students who are being tested. It is all of us.