On July 11, 1961, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru while addressing a public meeting in Jabalpur flagged the necessity of conducting examinations of high quality and standards to ensure India’s progress and advancement. Therefore, he forcefully stated: “If we do not improve the standards and make the examination system more rigorous, we will become backward … What counts is ability and knowledge.”Paper leaks an institutional failureThe Modi regime, which never misses an opportunity to blame Nehru for its poor governance record over the last 12 years, has very surprisingly avoided dragging his name into the issue of the various paper leaks that have taken place recently, including of the NEET-UG exam this year that was cancelled.Lakhs of students who took the exam stand shattered and some of them died by suicide, leaving behind millions of families caught in a whirlwind of despair and hopelessness.Only in 2024 had the NEET-UG paper leaked and none at the highest levels of the education ministry headed by Dharmedra Pradhan were held accountable. The Indian Express after interviewing over a dozen officials, National Testing Agency insiders and experts associated with the exam’s 2024, 2025 and 2026 iterations revealed “a broad internal consensus on an institutional failure that created conditions for the leak”.It is shocking that Prime Minister Modi, who talks about Viksit Bharat at the drop of a hat and engages himself with young students before the onset of school exams in his much-advertised “Pariksha pe Charcha” programme, is silent about paper leaks and on what many call the emergence of a “paper leak economy” over the clandestine sale of leaked papers at huge prices.The Supreme Court while calling the paper leak “very traumatising” for students and their families forcefully emphasised the need for actual individual and institutional accountability rather than just acknowledging the crisis. The solicitor general informed the court that Prime Minister Modi is supervising the actions to deal with the problem.However, Modi never mentioned the paper leak issue in his Mann ki Baat radio show and in contrast leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi met the victims and reached out to them to address their trauma.Combined with the NEET paper leak and the cancellation of that exam is the scandal involving the evaluation of CBSE class 12 papers. When Vedant, a student and victim of that scandal, proved beyond doubt that the answer sheet evaluated by the CBSE giving him low marks belonged to someone else, Doordarshan anchor Ashok Shrivastav described him as a “Pakistani” and the BJP IT cell targeted him viciously.It is truly devastating to note that millions of shattered students are treated with contempt by people manning the institutions of the state. It unambiguously proves the downfall of governance under the Modi regime.The dropping of CBSE class 12 students’ pass percentage from 88% to 85% this year reveals the shocking state of affairs of education for the youth and it is in this context that Nehru’s 1961 warning – that “if we do not improve the standards and make the examination system more rigorous, we will become backward” – is poignantly relevant.Paper leaks have occurred recurrently over the last 12 years of the Modi regime, imperilling the future of the youth and more importantly the future of the nation.Nehru on the fair process of examsOn October 6, 1955, while speaking at a public meeting in Bangalore – now Bengaluru – Nehru informed the audience how the Central Secretariat in Delhi was full of people from south India. “Why are they there?” he asked, and answered by stating: “Well, simply because they were found competent and capable. There is no question of partiality.”What Nehru was signalling was that students from south India cleared the all-India examinations conducted fairly, and worthy and meritorious candidates were selected and recruited without taking into account any factors other than their competence, including the region from which they hailed.Examinations administered to our youth during the Modi regime are devoid of minimum standards of fairness and are marked by paper leaks on a persistent basis. That students face such a compounding crisis every year firmly proves the collapse of institutions of governance, with the effect that students’ future is crushed.The education ministry headed by Dharmendra Pradhan must face consequences for its failure. In fact, Pradhan has owned up responsibility for discrepancies in the CBSE’s on-screen marking process, which in some instances appears to be marked by egregious violations of minimum standards of correcting an answer sheet and could lead to disastrous consequences if not rectified.T.N. Seshan’s remarksT.N. Seshan in his book A Heart Full of Burden that he wrote while serving as chief election commissioner in 1995 included a chapter named ‘Are We Cockroaches?’ and put it in the context of serious maladies plaguing Indian society, including that of paper leaks, pervasive corruption in every sphere, degrees obtained by copying and plagiarising to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, judges, IAS officers, politicians, teachers, etc.Chief Justice of India Surya Kant in his oral remarks in the courtroom observed, among other things, that unemployed youth are like cockroaches. He issued a clarification later that his remarks were misquoted by the media. But it is striking that those remarks of the CJI coincided with the NEET paper leak, and later the satirical Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) established online by Abhijit Dipke has digitally enlisted crores of Indians, with the outfit’s Instagram following far exceeding that of the BJP. The CJP is now consistently demanding Pradhan’s resignation.The inability of the education minister in ensuring the conduct of free and fair examinations for our youth aspiring to excel as doctors and unmistakably proves the total breakdown of governance. It brings out not just the incompetence of the BJP government, but also the ease with which people who conspire to amass huge amounts of money through the “paper leak economy” function, and treat students as cockroaches.S.N. Sahu served as officer on special duty to former President K.R. Narayanan.