Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation as Union education minister following months of protests over the NEET paper leak marks a rare moment of political accountability in contemporary India. Yet, reducing the episode to the resignation of a minister risks missing the larger story. The crisis did not begin with a leaked question paper, nor will it end with a change of guard at Kartavya Bhavan.The NEET controversy exposes a deeper structural flaw in India’s education system: the relentless centralisation of power at the expense of states, institutions and public trust. When a single examination conducted by a single central agency determines the futures of nearly two million students, every administrative lapse becomes a national catastrophe. The paper leak was not an aberration. It was the inevitable outcome of a governance model that mistakes uniformity for fairness and centralisation for efficiency.Education as the great equaliserFew ideas have shaped modern India as profoundly as the belief that education is the most powerful instrument of social transformation.For Mahatma Gandhi, education was not merely about acquiring literacy or passing examinations. It was about developing the complete individual; intellectually, morally and socially and creating citizens capable of participating in a democratic society. Dr B.R. Ambedkar viewed education through another equally transformative lens. For those historically denied dignity and opportunity, education was the pathway to liberty. “Educate, Agitate, Organise” was not simply a slogan; it was a political philosophy rooted in the belief that knowledge could dismantle entrenched hierarchies.This explains why Ambedkar’s portrait became one of the defining images during the nationwide student protests against the NEET fiasco. It was not merely symbolic. Students were asserting that when the credibility of educational institutions collapses, what is endangered is not only an examination but also the promise of social mobility itself.In India, competitive examinations are unlike those in most developed societies. For millions of first-generation learners, children of agricultural labourers, daily wage workers and lower-middle-class families, they represent the only credible route out of inherited poverty. Every examination is therefore a test not just of merit, but of hope.When such examinations become compromised, the damage extends far beyond admissions. It erodes faith in the very idea that talent and hard work can overcome social disadvantage.The false promise of one nation, one examinationThe logic behind NEET appeared persuasive when it was introduced. A common national examination would eliminate multiple entrance tests, reduce corruption in admissions and establish uniform standards across the country. On paper, it sounded like meritocracy. In practice, it has deepened inequality.India is not a country with one education system. It is a federation with multiple school boards, varied curricula, different languages of instruction and enormous disparities in educational infrastructure. Students from metropolitan coaching hubs compete against those studying in under-resourced government schools in rural Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra or Assam. To assume that a single examination can fairly assess students emerging from such unequal systems is to ignore India’s educational realities.Uniformity does not necessarily produce equality. Instead, NEET has strengthened an industry that thrives on inequality – the coaching economy. School education has increasingly become secondary to specialised coaching, where success often depends less on conceptual learning than on mastering examination techniques. Families spend years and lakhs of rupees preparing for one examination that can determine the trajectory of an entire life.As leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi has stated on expense of education that families spend almost equal amount of money for one exam (NEET) than the entire education budget. A clear shift from education being a public good to it being high cost competitive marketplace.Ironically, the examination introduced to democratise access has created a parallel private education system that excludes precisely those students it was expected to empower.Centralisation creates single points of failureThe NEET paper leak also reveals a fundamental weakness of highly centralised systems. When one examination governs admissions across the country, one leak affects millions. One administrative failure shakes the confidence of every student. One compromised institution jeopardises the legitimacy of the entire admission process. In engineering, systems designed around a single point of failure are considered inherently fragile. Resilient systems distribute risk. They create redundancies. They decentralise decision-making.The Indian education system has done precisely the opposite.Instead of multiple institutions sharing responsibility, power has steadily accumulated within a single national testing framework. Consequently, every failure becomes systemic rather than local. The irony is impossible to ignore. A system created in the name of efficiency has become increasingly difficult to administer. Perhaps nothing captures this better than reports that question papers required transportation using Indian Air Force aircraft under extraordinary security arrangements. This was presented as evidence of the government’s commitment to examination integrity.In reality, it symbolised something else. When a civilian examination system requires military logistics merely to function, it is worth asking whether the architecture itself has become unmanageable.The answer to institutional fragility cannot be ever-expanding layers of surveillance, encryption and security. At some point, governments must ask whether the problem lies not in implementation but in design.The constitutional erosion of the statesThe NEET controversy cannot be separated from a larger debate about Indian federalism.Education was moved to the Concurrent List through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment during the Emergency, allowing both the Union and the states to legislate. Yet the constitutional arrangement never envisaged the states becoming passive implementers of centrally designed educational policies. Over the last decade, however, educational governance has increasingly flowed in one direction, from New Delhi to the states.States continue to run schools, recruit teachers, manage public education and understand local educational challenges. Yet their influence over admission processes, testing mechanisms and educational priorities has steadily diminished. This contradiction has been recognised by several state governments.Tamil Nadu has consistently argued that NEET disproportionately disadvantages students educated in the state board system and undermines social justice policies painstakingly developed over decades. Kerala has repeatedly questioned the growing concentration of authority in central agencies. In a widely discussed essay on federalism and education, former Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin argued that education is too deeply embedded in social, linguistic and regional realities to be governed through a one-size-fits-all framework.Whether one agrees with every aspect of these arguments is beside the point. Their central claim deserves serious consideration. India’s diversity is not an administrative inconvenience to be managed through uniformity. It is a constitutional principle around which governance must be organised.When institutions weaken, shadow institutions emerge. Institutional failures rarely leave a vacuum. They create parallel systems. Every examination scandal strengthens informal networks that promise access to leaked papers, insider information or coaching shortcuts. Every erosion of trust increases dependence on expensive coaching centres that claim to understand the examination better than schools themselves.Gradually, education shifts away from public institutions towards private intermediaries. Schools become places where attendance is compulsory. Coaching centres become places where futures are decided. This is not unique to education. Whenever public institutions weaken, alternative institutions emerge which are less transparent, less accountable and often more unequal. Weak policing produces vigilantism. Weak public healthcare encourages unregulated providers. Weak education creates shadow education.These quasi-institutions are not signs of innovation. They are symptoms of institutional decay. The NEET crisis should therefore concern every citizen, not merely aspiring medical students. It reflects a broader pattern in which constitutional institutions are slowly replaced by ad hoc arrangements designed to compensate for their declining credibility.Reimagining federalism in educationThe answer is not to abandon national standards. Nor is it to romanticise fragmented educational systems. India requires common benchmarks for quality and mobility. Students should be able to pursue higher education anywhere in the country. But national standards need not require national control.The Union government’s role should be that of a constitutional coordinator rather than an administrative monopolist. It should establish broad quality frameworks, facilitate collaboration among states, invest in capacity building and ensure equity in funding. States, meanwhile, should have greater autonomy in designing admission mechanisms that reflect local educational contexts while meeting agreed national benchmarks. Federalism is not the absence of standards. It is the distribution of responsibility.Equally important, school education must once again become the primary site of learning. As long as success depends more on private coaching than on classrooms, educational inequality will continue to deepen regardless of how securely question papers are transported. Finally, accountability must accompany authority. If the Union government claims exclusive control over national examinations, it must also accept complete responsibility when those systems fail.Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation may satisfy the immediate demand for political accountability. But accountability without institutional reform merely changes individuals while preserving the structures that produced the crisis.Ambedkar reminded us that constitutional morality is not sustained by laws alone, but by the habits of sharing power, respecting institutions and accommodating diversity. The NEET crisis is a reminder that these principles matter as much in education as they do in politics. If India wishes to preserve education as an instrument of equality rather than exclusion, it must move away from the belief that every solution lies in greater centralisation. A stronger Republic will not emerge from concentrating authority in New Delhi, but from renewing the federal spirit that the Constitution envisioned.Pradnya Shidore is a policy commentator and social development consultant at GreenEarth Consulting, writing on the intersection of politics, public policy and society.