“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,Courage to change the things I can,And wisdom to know the difference.”– Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971)The Modi government through its various ministries and departments, however, seems to have done the exact opposite over the last 13 years. It has failed to meaningfully reform systems and institutions in need of structural change, while repeatedly disrupting institutions and systems that require stability and careful stewardship. The resultant chaos is there for all to see, most recently in the state of education in our country.After cancelling and rescheduling the 2026 NEET examination – following a major question paper leak that affected over 22 lakh aspirants – the government is now faced with yet another national level fiasco, this time involving class 12 students who recently appeared for their Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) board examinations.This year, 18 lakh class 12 students submitted 98 lakh answer booklets – with the total number of pages running into crores. But instead of evaluators physically checking these answer sheets, the answer booklets were scanned, uploaded digitally and evaluated online. When the exam results came out on May 13, many students were dismayed to see they had received much lower marks than expected. In fact, the overall pass percentage of students dropped to 85.29% this year from 88.39% last year. There was also a notable decline in the number of students scoring above 90%.When these students requested scans of their answer sheets for re-evaluation, they were shocked to see blurred scans, barely legible handwriting, cropped pages and impossible-to-decipher diagrams and equations.Stuti, who has taught political science at a private school in central Delhi for the last 19 years, talked about the anxiety and anger this sparked amongst students, parents and educators.“One of my brightest students, who has already received provisional admission from an Ivy League college, was expecting to score at least 90% – the minimum required to secure her place – but ended up with only 82%. Is she now going to have to explain to the university that the reason for her unexpectedly low marks is that her own government is incapable of conducting and evaluating crucial examinations properly?”The CBSE’s goals of “eliminating totaling errors,” and doing away with “post-result verification of marks” seem to have come a cropper. Stuti said that schools were informed about the new OSM (On-Screen Marking) barely ten days before the first exam.“We were able to [do it] because our school has the computers, infrastructure, and technical know-how to manage it. But what about other schools who barely have even the basics in place? In fact, at one evaluation centre, an older government school teacher lamented, ‘Humko toh mouse bhi pakadna nahi aataa (‘I don’t even know how to use a computer mouse!’)!” It is a small but telling example of the Modi government’s obsession with digital spectacles without first adequately reckoning with the infrastructural inequalities on the ground.Stuti also pointed out that many examiners were government school teachers, many of whom had also been put on census duty at the same time. Several of them held two circulars in their hands, one telling them to check board exam papers (screens) and the other telling them to count people for the 2026 Census.“Many of our students received an arbitrary 6.5 out of 10 for answers that they should, by rights, have received at least 8 points or more for. One reason for this is probably the inordinate amount of pressure that was put on the evaluators by CBSE to quickly finish the checking. Normally, the checking of papers begins within ten to twelve days of the last exam. This time it didn’t begin for a month. The entire process seems to have experienced huge delays. In fact, a teacher told me that she was asked to come in on the morning of May 13 to finish checking some papers — the same day the results were supposed to be declared,” Stuti alleged.She added that her current batch of class 12 students have all but lost their motivation to study. It is sad that a prime minister – who has lectured school students every year in his elaborate Pariksha Pe Charcha programmes on how to handle examination stress – doesn’t seem too bothered about the unprecedented anxiety, uncertainty and distress that millions of them are facing in the 13th year of his government.Kaaviya, a Class 12 humanities student, who has won many laurels for her school, cannot understand why she hasn’t been given the marks she should have. “It took CBSE five days to send me four of my five answer sheets. I’m still waiting for the fifth and I don’t know what to do about that because their helpline numbers aren’t working. I have noticed odd things in the papers I have received. In my English paper, marks have been cut for no reason at all. In my Maths paper, there is no “steps marking”. Previously, in Maths, even if your final answer was wrong, you would still get marks for doing the different steps correctly, but not this time,” she alleged.“A friend of mine had written answers to two questions in her biology paper, yet the page was marked blank. As a result, she received no marks on those questions because the software seems to have identified the page as empty. Who should we hold accountable for that?” Kaaviya asked.I am tempted to say, “The Non-Biological One,” but I refrain. Instead, I ask her how she is feeling about it. “It’s very disheartening. The whole focus of Class 12, and school for that matter, seems to be to do well in your board exams. I have taken the Common University Entrance Test too, which is evaluated by the National Testing Authority. The NTA is responsible for the NEET exam, so now I am concerned about that as well, considering what happened with the NEET paper leaks.”Nidhi Anand, an educator, said, “As a parent, I feel both anxious and disappointed. Our children put in years of consistent effort, and at such a crucial stage, even small lapses can feel very big to them. What worries me most is not just the outcome, but the emotional impact. This uncertainty can really shake their confidence and sense of security.”Mannat, a counsellor at a private school in South Delhi, is also concerned about the students’ mental health. “Not only are double shocks like the NEET leaks and the CBSE scoring fiasco jeopardising the careers of young people, they are creating a huge amount of emotional turmoil in young minds. It is wrong for CBSE to expect people who are not well trained in technology to handle something as sensitive as the scoring of test papers. I remember during the Covid lockdown, I had to give my B.Ed exam online and my examiner lost my test paper. Luckily, they managed to track it down. So I am well acquainted with this kind of stress. My request to CBSE is either get the system right or don’t do it all! But don’t play with kids’ futures!”The principal of a well-known school in Gurgaon said, “There is a proper way to do these things. Perhaps the CBSE could have run a pilot project on a smaller scale for Class 10 board exams or maybe they could have tried out the OSM during schools’ mid-term exams and iron out the glitches before inflicting a half-baked system on the whole country. But right now, my primary concern is to trace the papers of three of my students who haven’t even received their results. Imagine what they are going through!” Vedant Shrivastava, a class 12 student who posted about his Physics answer on X after not receiving a response from CBSE, said that the answer sheet uploaded under his roll number during the re-evaluation process was not his own. What followed was truly disturbing. Because his newly created X account showed his location as ;South Asia’, he was labelled “Pakistani” and “anti-national” by the troll armies. In what is probably a new low even for Indian news channels, Doordarshan News anchor Ashok Shrivastav publicly asked whether “Pakistanis had also appeared for the CBSE exam”.Vedant’s brother later clarified that the X account had been created simply to raise this issue, and that the location was merely a technical issue. Eventually, the CBSE admitted its mistake and sent Vedant the correct answer sheet, telling him that his marks would be corrected. Kamlesh, an educator in Uttarakhand who has made it his mission to help children and their parents see that education is much more than exams and marks, made an astute observation. “Just like our democracy has been reduced to conducting elections every few years, our education has been reduced to scoring marks in exams. And now it seems they can’t even get that right!”Rohit Kumar is an educator and can be reached at letsempathize@gmail.com.