India cracks down on exam cheating

India has been plagued by cheating in its university and job entrance exams for years. The large number of students competing for a small number of spots creates fertile ground for cheating.

Spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy exam questions

Earlier this year, hundreds of students were bused in to spend the night at Nature Valley Resort, a mid-priced resort on the outskirts of India’s capital, New Delhi. There were no parties or outdoor activities; instead, the students pored over a test they had each paid between $15,000 and $20,000, sometimes as much as $50,000, to preview.

The people who planned and organized the fraudulent vacation were arrested. Police filed a 900-page indictment against at least six suspects, including one police officer who had advance access to the exam for his involvement in cheating on the police recruitment exam.

More than 4 million people took the police exam in early 2024, competing for 60,000 jobs in the country’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, while 2 million took the medical exam for about 100,000 places. Both exams were marred by fraud. In 2024, exam papers were sold at exorbitant prices, according to Ashok Rathore, a police officer investigating medical exam fraud in India.

Indian youth protest against exam cheating. Photo: WSJ

According to Indian police, cheating rings can make millions of dollars. “It’s a money game. Anyone with money can buy these papers. The deserving candidates are devastated,” said Vivek Pandey, a student activist who filed a case against the students for cheating.

Harsheen Khera, 17, studied hard but failed the medical school entrance exam in May. Khera’s score wasn’t low, but she was pushed down by a number of unusually high-scoring candidates this year. Soon, the unease among students exploded into accusations, street protests and lawsuits. “After years of hard work, all I got was cheating and fraud,” Khera said, heartbroken. In India, the path to university is largely through written exams, making test scores the deciding factor. The exams also provide a window into government jobs amid a dearth of good jobs in the private sector.

Find ways to prevent

Exam scandals are becoming a major problem for the Indian government . In Uttar Pradesh, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party lost its majority to the opposition coalition in this year’s national election. Some young voters said the shock result was partly due to anger over the police exam, although under pressure the results were later declared invalid.

Test takers cheat in a variety of ways. In some cases, they ask someone else to do it for them or sneak their phones into the exam room. But most cheating occurs before the test taker enters the room, often by cheating rings that act as test prep centers and infiltrate departments with access to the answers.

There have also been cases of cheating rings sending people to printers to steal exam papers. In 2022, India’s federal investigation agency arrested a Russian national for allegedly hacking exam software for India’s top engineering schools so that some candidates could grant remote access to others to take the exam on their behalf.

The Indian government has taken a range of measures, including trying to block the internet and installing surveillance cameras inside exam rooms to prevent cheating; a new law passed this year carries jail terms of up to 10 years for those who facilitate cheating.

In June, as allegations of cheating in the medical school entrance exam mounted, New Delhi replaced the head of the national testing agency that conducts the exam. In late August, the state of Uttar Pradesh re-ran its police recruitment exam, this time with enhanced security measures: fingerprints, iris scans, and facial recognition tools to verify candidates’ identities, as well as drone surveillance.

Cameras streamed live feeds from the exam centers to the control room and exam boxes were monitored at all times. Everyone was quite satisfied with the results afterward.

Compiled by THUY VU

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/an-do-chan-chinh-nan-gian-lan-thi-cu-post759110.html