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Dissecting CBSE Class 12 Result 2026 — The On-Screen Marking Controversy, the 3% Pass Percentage Plunge, the Revaluation Maze, and What It All Says About a System That Treats Students as Data Points

On May 13, 2026, lakhs of students refreshed their screens to find a number that was almost three percentage points lower than what the year before had produced. No warning. No preparation. Just a result, a decline, and a board that had already moved on.

This is not just a story about bad marks. It is a story about a system that decided to run a large-scale experiment on 17 lakh students, watched the results drop, called it progress, and asked everyone to move along. The CBSE Class 12 Result 2026 is a case study in how institutions protect themselves first and consider students second, if at all.

Let us go through it, all of it, from the weeks of manufactured anxiety before the result to the bureaucratic maze that awaits students who dare to question their scores. "Coming Soon" Is Not a Communication Strategy

Before the result even arrived, CBSE had already failed students once. For days leading up to May 13, the DigiLocker and UMANG apps displayed a banner reading "CBSE Result 2026 — Coming Soon." This, for any student who had been checking their phone every hour, felt like a sign. Except it wasn't.

Unlike state boards and the CISCE, where a DigiLocker update typically means results within 24 hours, CBSE had apparently decided that "coming soon" could mean anywhere from one day to several. Students who had been following the April 30 deadline that several media reports had floated were already on edge. When that date passed without a word from the board, the anxiety turned to something closer to dread.

"Stop this 'coming soon' message. Do you even understand the anxiety that students are going through?" — a student on social media, days before the result was declared.

The board's Controller of Examinations eventually clarified that results would arrive in the third week of May. That clarification came after weeks of speculation, rumour cycles, and sleepless nights. Every morning began with "result aaya kya?" and every night ended with nothing. The delay was not just administrative. It was a prolonged, unacknowledged mental health event for an entire generation of students.

What actually happened as per timeline

The Numbers Don't Lie, Even If the Board Doesn't Explain Them

When the result finally came, the headline figure was 85.20%. In 2025, it was 88.39%. That is a drop of 3.19 percentage points. On paper, it sounds like a rounding error. In reality, it translates to significantly more students failing, compartmentalising, or scoring below what they needed for college admissions. For a system that has been gradually nudging pass percentages upward for years, this was a reversal that demanded explanation. Instead, it got a press release.

Girls once again outperformed boys, with 88.86% passing against 82.13% for boys. Transgender candidates achieved a 100% pass rate for the second consecutive year, which is worth acknowledging. Regionally, Trivandrum led with a 95.62% pass rate, followed by Chennai at 93.84% and Bengaluru at 93.19%. Four of the five top-performing regions were from South India, a trend that raises its own questions about the uneven quality of education infrastructure across the country.

But the number that matters most is the one nobody has given a clean, straight answer to: why did 3.19% more students fail this year than last year?

Difference in result from year 2025 to 2026

The On-Screen Marking Experiment Nobody Asked to Be Part Of

This year, CBSE rolled out On-Screen Marking (OSM) at scale for Class 12 for the first time. The premise is straightforward. Instead of handing physical answer scripts to examiners who then mark them with a pen, the sheets are scanned and uploaded to a secure server. Examiners then grade them on computer screens, with the software ensuring every page is reviewed before marks are finalised. The board has consistently presented this as a modernisation effort aimed at reducing clerical errors, improving transparency, and making evaluation faster.

These are legitimate goals. Nobody is arguing that the old system was perfect. Manual totalling errors, skipped sections, and inconsistent application of marking schemes were real problems. The board's instinct to fix them is not wrong. What is wrong is running a first-time, large-scale digital evaluation on the answer sheets of 17 lakh students without adequately communicating what it means for them, and without a transition buffer.

The CEO of Oswaal Books, Prashant Jain, pointed out that any large system change can affect results in the first year. And the changes here are real: under physical checking, examiners could tilt a script to read faint handwriting, quickly flip pages for context, and sometimes extend a small benefit of the doubt during totalling. OSM eliminates all of this. Automated totalling is more accurate in one sense but less forgiving in another. There is no more rounding up, no informal generosity, no examiner going back to give a student one more mark because their answer was almost there.

Multiple teachers who participated in the evaluation process reported significant hurdles: slow software, screen visibility issues, and digital fatigue from staring at screens across long evaluation sessions. None of this is the students' fault. But the students are the ones whose results reflected it.

"CBSE has not directly linked the drop in pass percentage to OSM. The board says the digital system was introduced to improve transparency, reduce human error, and make evaluation faster and more consistent."

That response is technically defensible and intellectually evasive at the same time. When you change the evaluation method, the paper difficulty, and the question format all in the same year, and the result drops by 3%, you do not get to shrug and call it coincidence. Physics papers were reportedly harder than previous years. Certain sets of Mathematics were flagged as challenging. Competency-based questions, introduced as part of NEP reforms, continued to trip up students who had trained for rote-style answering. The system changed. The students were not told. The scores dropped. The board moved on.

On-Screen Marking vs Traditional Paper checking

The Revaluation Maze: Your Grievance, Your Problem, Your Bill

Students who believe their papers have been incorrectly evaluated do have a recourse. It is called the revaluation process, and it is a three-stage exercise that is, to put it plainly, designed to exhaust you before you get to the part that actually matters.

Let us sit with what this process actually asks of a student. You have just received a result that you believe is wrong. You are simultaneously preparing for CUET UG entrance exams that began on May 11. You now need to pay approximately ₹500 to verify, then ₹700 more to see your own answer sheet, and then ₹100 for every single question you want reviewed. If you are appealing three subjects with two questions each, you are already spending close to ₹1,800 before you see a single mark change. And at the end of it, if the re-evaluation gives you fewer marks, that result is final and binding.

There is something philosophically troubling about a system where the institution makes an error, the student bears the cost of identifying that error, pays at every step of the correction process, operates under tight deadlines, and risks ending up worse than where they started. This is not a grievance mechanism. It is a liability shield.

The irony compounds when you remember that OSM was introduced partly to reduce errors. If the system is now more accurate, why are students still paying ₹700 to look at their own answer scripts? And if teachers are experiencing digital fatigue and software glitches during evaluation, who exactly is accountable for that?

The CBSE Re-valuation Process

What This Is Really About

CBSE has over 17 lakh students taking its Class 12 exams. It is one of the largest examination systems in the world. The logistical challenges are real and should not be dismissed. Running on-screen marking at this scale is genuinely difficult. The board's desire to reduce human bias and clerical errors is not cynical. Some of these reforms are necessary.

But there is a pattern here that education institutions in India repeat so often that it has started to feel like policy. The pattern goes like this: a reform is decided at the administrative level. It is implemented without a phased rollout. Students are not informed of how it will concretely affect their evaluation. When results drop, the institution attributes it to multiple factors, names no single cause, and reassures everyone that the process was fair. The burden of navigating the fallout falls entirely on individual students and families.

Students who wrote this exam prepared for it under one set of assumptions. They studied from NCERT textbooks, followed previous years' patterns, and expected a certain kind of evaluation. The board changed the evaluation method, increased the complexity of questions, aligned with NEP guidelines that many schools had not fully operationalised yet, and said nothing specific to students about what OSM would mean for how their answers would be read. COVID-era learning gaps, which are real and documented across several years, were factored in by nobody at the planning stage.

The result is a 3% drop that the board will acknowledge as a data point and move on from. For the students behind that number, it is not a data point. It is a college application, a family's expectations, a year of work, and in some cases, a future that has been made harder without any warning or accountability from the institution responsible.

"Every morning starts with: result aaya kya? Every night ends with fear, overthinking, and pressure."

The question is not whether the system needs reform. It does. The question is who gets to absorb the cost of that reform. Right now, the answer is very clear: not the board, not the administrators, not the policy writers. The students do. As always.

Conclusion: Reform Without Responsibility Is Just Institutional Convenience

In the end, the CBSE Class 12 Result 2026 controversy is not just about a lower pass percentage or a difficult Physics paper. It is about the deeper culture of educational governance in India. The one where reforms are introduced at industrial scale, communication remains vague, and accountability becomes strangely invisible the moment students are affected. 

On-Screen Marking may genuinely reduce clerical errors. Competency-based education may genuinely be necessary. Digitisation, standardisation, and NEP-driven reform are not inherently bad ideas. But reforms do not become progressive simply because they are technological. A system cannot call itself student-centric while treating students as testing grounds for abrupt policy shifts they were never adequately prepared for.

What makes this year particularly unsettling is not merely that results dropped. It is that the drop arrived alongside silence, speculation, contradictory expectations, and a grievance process that places the emotional, financial, and procedural burden almost entirely on students themselves. The institution experiments with scale; the student deals with consequences individually.

And perhaps that is the central contradiction of modern Indian education. Boards increasingly speak the language of innovation, efficiency, and transformation, while students continue to experience uncertainty, opacity, and pressure. The rhetoric is future-ready. The support systems are not.

A fair education system is not judged only by how efficiently it evaluates answer sheets. It is judged by how responsibly it handles change, how transparently it communicates uncertainty, and how much dignity it affords the people whose futures depend on it. On that front, CBSE’s 2026 result cycle leaves behind less of a success story and more of a warning.

Because when an institution changes the rules mid-game and calls the fallout inevitable progress, students stop feeling educated by the system. They start feeling managed by it.

Written By Kashvi Upneja

A Crisis India Doesn’t Want to Look At

Every year India keeps repeating the same line that we are the youngest nation, that our youth are our future, that we are sitting on a demographic goldmine. But behind all this noise there is a truth nobody in power wants to face. Our education system is quietly, slowly, brutally crushing the same young people it claims to celebrate. And honestly, this isn’t some dramatic exaggeration. The reality is visible everywhere like in classrooms, in hostel corridors, in newspapers, and the worst of all, in the rising number of student suicides that we pretend not to see.

YoY- Indian Student's Suicide Rate Trends ( Source- NCRB Data)

The numbers are very sad. In 2012 8,423 students killed themselves.. Instead of getting better the numbers kept going up. By 2024 it was 14,910. This is like watching someone die slowly. Even when the numbers go down a little they always go back up again. This shows that nothing is getting better. The education system is not working.

And this is not by accident. This is the result of an education system that worships ranks more than children, cutoffs more than mental health, perfection more than individuality. It rewards fear. It celebrates competition. It punishes curiosity. And then we act shocked when students cannot survive inside it.

Numbers Rise, But Nobody in Power Moves

Crossing ten thousand student suicides a year should have been a national emergency. Any country with even little humanity would have hit pause and asked what went wrong. But in India, we created committees, gave statements, and then went back to business as usual. The system continued exactly as it was. Students still drowned under pressure. Parents still pushed. Coaching centres still expanded like factories. Nothing changed.

The second chart makes this even clearer.

Total Demographic Breakdown( Source- NCRB)

The numbers show that the problem is not just in one area or with one type of student. It is a problem with the education system. The numbers went up quickly from 2020 to 2024. This is when the competition and pressure to perform well became even stronger. Of helping students the education system is hurting them.

The Coaching Empire: Where Fear Becomes a Business Model

Nobody wants to talk about it openly, but India’s coaching industry is basically a polished factory of anxiety. Cities like Kota, Hyderabad, and some parts of Delhi literally operate on the business of fear. Teenagers are packed into small rooms, made to study 12–14 hours daily, and constantly reminded that if they fail, their whole life is finished. They don’t live there. They just survive.

And when someone dies? Institutes say the same old lines: “personal stress”, “family issues”, “they were weak”. They never mention the pressure they themselves created. They never admit how their environment suffocates students. They never accept responsibility. Because admitting it would mean accepting guilt.

Failure Has Become a Curse in India

In India failing is seen as a bad thing. One bad grade can ruin a students life. A wrong answer can make someone feel like they are not good enough. In a society where grades decide everything students have no room to breathe. Imagine being 17. Being told that one exam will decide your whole future.

This is not an individual weakness. This is a national-level cruelty.

Mental Health: We Talk About It, But We Don’t Believe in It

India loves to celebrate “mental health awareness” on social media, at events, in posters. But when it comes to actual support for students, there is nothing. Most schools don’t have trained counsellors. Some have teachers pretending to be counsellors. Parents still believe depression is laziness. Teachers think anxiety is drama. Institutes hide mental breakdowns because it “hurts their brand.”

So the child suffers silently. And when they reach their breaking point, suddenly everyone acts shocked, as if the signs were invisible.

The Data Proves It: The System Is Collapsing, Not the Students

The two charts together show something blunt: the pressure on students is rising way faster than the system’s capacity to support them. Student suicides are not random tragedies ,they follow a pattern. And patterns mean something is fundamentally wrong.

But to fix it, we need courage. That means ending the obsession with one-shot exams like NEET and JEE. That means regulating coaching institutes. That means reducing academic load, fixing toxic school cultures, and teaching children that marks don’t define them. But courage is what our policymakers lack the most.

Reforms Aren’t Enough, India Needs a Revolution in Education

We have been making changes to the education system for years but it is not enough. We need a revolution. The education system is old and rigid and only cares about grades. Students are. Dying. We need to change this.

Conclusion: A Country That Cannot Protect Its Children Is Already Failing

India dreams of becoming a superpower, but a nation where student suicides rise every year is not a strong nation. It is a hurting one. Every number in your charts is a child who had a story, a future, a dream. And the system took that away.

India wants to be a country but it is not. It is a country that is hurting its children. Every number, in the statistics is a child who had a dream and a future.. The education system took that away. We do not need committees. We need to take responsibility and make changes. We need to care about our children. Until we do the numbers will keep going up. India will keep losing its future.

Written By Saatwick Mukherjee

The Day It Happened. Again.

May 3, 2026. Over 22 lakh students sat down across exam centres in India and abroad to write NEET UG 2026. They had spent years preparing for this. Some had taken drops, some had given up on social lives, some had not seen their families properly in months. The exam ran from 2 PM to 5 PM in a single shift, and at the end of it, students walked out feeling like they had fought their battle. Then came the silence. Then came the news. And then came the complete collapse of everything they had been holding their breath for.

On May 12, 2026, the National Testing Agency officially cancelled the NEET UG 2026 examination that had been conducted on May 3. The decision was made with the approval of the Government of India, in the interest of maintaining transparency, fairness, and credibility in the national examination system. In simple language, the paper had been leaked. And the system, for the second time in two years, had no answer. What makes this moment so painful is not just the cancellation itself. It is the feeling of having seen this before. The exact same chaos, the exact same language from authorities, the exact same helpless students. If you thought NEET 2024 was the wake-up call that would finally fix things, NEET 2026 is proof that no one even picked up the phone.

Timeline shows repeat cycle and pattern

How the Leak Actually Happened: The Rajasthan Trail

Concerns about irregularities were first raised after the exam concluded. The matter was referred to central agencies on May 8 for verification. Meanwhile, state-level investigations by the Rajasthan Special Operations Group also looked into possible malpractice. 

The Rajasthan SOG's IG Ajay Pal Lamba stated that more than 150 candidates, along with their friends and guardians, were interrogated. After questioning, it became clear that the examination paper had been circulated in Rajasthan before the exam even began. One individual from Haryana was identified as the person who sent the paper, and during interrogation it was found that he had received it from Nashik in Maharashtra. 

This is not a story about one careless mistake. This is a deeply organised network. The paper travelled from Maharashtra to Haryana to Rajasthan before students even sat down in exam centres. WhatsApp groups and Telegram channels were being used to circulate what were being called "guess papers." Reports stated that these circulated guess papers allegedly matched more than 100 questions in the actual examination paper. More than 100 questions. Out of a paper that tests years of preparation. Think about what that means for every honest student who sat in that hall. 

On assessing the findings, NTA decided to cancel the examination conducted on May 3, 2026. The government also ordered a CBI probe into the matter. 

The Paper's Journey Before the Students Got It

The Official Statement That Said Everything and Explained Nothing

When NTA finally spoke, here is what they offered. The National Testing Agency stated that the decision to cancel was taken in the interest of students and in recognition of the trust on which the national examination system rests. NTA also stated that the government has decided to refer the matter to the CBI for a comprehensive inquiry into the allegations of paper leak, and that the agency will extend full cooperation to the investigation and provide all materials, records, and assistance required. 

Read that again. "In recognition of the trust on which the national examination system rests." The trust. The same trust they have broken twice in two years. The same trust that 22 lakh students extended when they registered, paid fees, travelled to exam cities, and sat for three hours. NTA's statement did not name anyone responsible. It did not explain how the security system failed. It did not offer any apology. It offered bureaucratic language dressed up as concern, and expected everyone to be satisfied with that.

This is a pattern we have seen before on this blog. Whether it was the CBSE QR Code fiasco or the VIT Bhopal situation, institutions in India respond to failure with image management, not accountability. The format of the response changes, but the emptiness stays the same.

What NTA Said vs. What Students Needed to Hear

22 Lakh Students and What That Number Actually Means

People throw around numbers in news headlines without really letting them land. Over 22 lakh MBBS aspirants are now in a state of confusion and deeply skeptical about the sanctity of the national medical entrance test. 22 lakh. That is not a number on a page. That is 22 lakh individual human beings who studied for months, who slept less, who sacrificed more, who had families depending on them, who had built their entire identity around this one day. Every single one of them now has no date. No certainty. No closure. Their coaching subscriptions may have run out. Their study material had already been revised for this exam cycle. Some students had given away their notes thinking the exam was done. Some had booked travel to come back home. Some had started mentally preparing for results. All of that is now suspended in air with no answer from the authority that caused it.

The cruelty here is not just systemic, it is deeply personal. And the worst part is that the people responsible for this will face no comparable disruption in their own lives. They will keep their jobs, keep their salaries, and release another press statement the next time this happens.

The Human Cost of NEET 2026 Cancellation

Re-NEET 2026: The "Solution" That Is Not Really a Solution

So what happens now? NTA announced that the examination will be reconducted on dates to be notified separately. Candidates do not need to register again, as their previously submitted application details will remain valid for the fresh examination. New admit cards will be issued and revised schedules will be shared on the official website. Testbook

On the surface, this sounds like a reasonable response. The exam will happen again. Nobody needs to re-register. Great. But let us actually think about what this means in practice.

Students have already spent months preparing specifically for this exam cycle. Many had planned their lives around the May 3rd date. The re-exam date is still not announced, which means students are now sitting in a vacuum, not knowing whether they have two weeks or two months. Coaching institutes have already announced crash courses and study plans for the re-exam, which means another round of money being spent by families that have already stretched their budgets. The cycle of expenditure continues. The cycle of anxiety continues.

And here is the question nobody in power seems to want to answer: if the security system failed this comprehensively on May 3rd, what exactly changes before the re-exam? What is different? What has been fixed? If NTA is the same body conducting the re-exam, through what logic does anyone believe the second attempt will be safer than the first?

What Happens After NEET Gets Cancelled

The CBI Enters the Picture, But History Is Not Encouraging

The NEET UG 2026 controversy has now turned into a national investigation after the CBI formally stepped in. Authorities are reportedly examining Telegram groups, coaching links, digital records, and financial transactions connected to the alleged paper leak network. The CBI has taken custody of the NEET UG 2026 paper leak accused. 

The CBI probe sounds serious on paper. But here is the thing: we had investigations after 2024 as well. There were committees, probes, and reports. And here we are in 2026, reading the same news again. Investigations in India's education corruption cases have a long and uncomfortable history of moving slowly, resolving partially, and resulting in minimal structural change. The real test is not whether people get arrested. The real test is whether the system that allowed this to happen gets fundamentally redesigned. So far, there is no indication that anyone in power is seriously planning for that.

The arrest of accused individuals satisfies the public's demand for consequence in the short term. But if the infrastructure that enabled the leak, the physical paper chain, the examination centre selection process, the role of coaching institute networks, stays exactly the same, then the next set of arrested individuals will just be different names in the same story.

A graphic showing the NEET 2024 investigation timeline vs. the NEET 2026 investigation timeline side by side.

The Supreme Court Steps In and What It Is Actually Asking For

This is where things get more serious and more urgent. The Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) has moved the Supreme Court challenging what it called the "systemic failure" of the National Testing Agency in conducting NEET UG 2026. 

The petition, filed through advocate Tanvi Dubey, seeks directions to replace or fundamentally restructure the NTA and to conduct a fresh NEET-UG 2026 examination under judicial supervision. The plea asks the Court to direct the Union Government to replace the NTA with a more robust, technologically advanced, and autonomous body for conducting NEET examinations.

The plea also seeks the constitution of a High-Powered Monitoring Committee chaired by a retired Supreme Court judge, along with a cybersecurity expert and a forensic scientist, to supervise the re-conduct of NEET UG 2026 until a new independent examination body is formally constituted.

This is not a fringe demand. FAIMA is a mainstream medical association. The fact that a body representing the medical community has gone to the highest court in the country and used the words "systemic failure" tells you everything about how deep the loss of trust has gone. When doctors and medical associations stop believing in the system that produces doctors, you are looking at a crisis that goes far beyond one exam.

The petition also asked for the CBI to file a status report before the Supreme Court within four weeks regarding the investigation, including details of the network identified, arrests made, persons charged, and progress of prosecution. At least now there is a demand for transparency and a timeline. That is more than what NTA voluntarily offered. 

Further, the plea seeks directions for digital locking of question papers and a transition to a Computer Based Test (CBT) model to eliminate the physical chain-of-custody risks.

What the Supreme Court Has Been Asked to Fix

Student Protests: The Anger That Is Not Going Away

Medical aspirants across India have expressed intense anger after the sudden cancellation of NEET UG 2026. Social media platforms are flooded with reactions from students questioning how repeated irregularities continue despite strict monitoring claims by authorities. Student protests erupted in Delhi after the cancellation announcement, with protesters demanding strict action and reforms to prevent future paper leaks. 

DMK president M K Stalin called the situation a scam that has affected lakhs of medical aspirants. 

What is happening on the streets and on social media right now is not just anger, it is grief. These students have been grieving for a year. They are grieving for certainty. They are grieving a system they were told to trust. And when you lose trust in the one gateway that controls your future, the emotional impact is not temporary. This is the kind of disillusionment that stays with a generation.

It is also worth noting something that does not get discussed enough. The students who are protesting right now are not doing it because they failed. They are doing it because the exam was unfair from the start. The honest student who scored 600 in a legitimate paper will never know if they deserved a seat, because the merit list itself is now compromised. That specific kind of injustice, where your hard work becomes impossible to verify, is uniquely devastating.

The Coaching Industry and Its Uncomfortable Role in All of This

Let us have a conversation that mainstream news tends to avoid. Every time a paper leak happens, attention goes entirely to the accused individuals and to NTA. But the coaching industry sits in a very interesting and uncomfortable position in this entire ecosystem.

When guess papers that "accidentally" match more than 100 questions from an official exam are circulating on WhatsApp and Telegram, the question that must be asked is: where did this information originate? Coaching institutes in India have enormous reach, enormous money, and enormous motivation to appear prescient in their predictions. The incentive to have insider access is built right into the industry's business model.

We talked about this in the context of dummy schools in an earlier blog. The coaching ecosystem has essentially replaced the formal education system for medical aspirants. Students do not go to school to learn, they go to coaching centres to prepare for NEET. And when these coaching centres somehow keep ending up connected to paper leak investigations year after year, the question of structural collusion cannot be swept aside.

This does not mean every coaching institute is complicit. But it does mean the relationship between the exam body and the coaching industry needs to be put under serious scrutiny, and not just after every new scandal.

Who Benefits When NEET Gets Leaked?

The One-Exam Model and Why It Will Keep Failing

There is a more fundamental problem underneath all of this that nobody in the government wants to address directly. India has built its entire medical admissions system on one single exam, conducted in one single day, in physical pen-and-paper format. This structure has a physical paper that has to be printed, transported, distributed, and collected across hundreds of cities. Every single step in that chain is a potential point of failure. Every single person involved in that chain is a potential vulnerability.

The demand for a Computer Based Test model is not new. The Supreme Court petition explicitly asks for digital locking of question papers and a transition to a CBT model to eliminate the physical chain-of-custody risks. This is a demand that has been made since at least 2024. The fact that NEET is still being conducted in pen-and-paper format in 2026, after two back-to-back leaks in major cycles, raises genuine questions about whether the people in charge of this system actually want to fix it, or whether the current system serves interests that a more secure format would disrupt. livelaw

A CBT model, conducted in multiple shifts with different question sets, would not just reduce leak risk. It would also allow more equitable access by reducing the catastrophic stakes of a single day. But that requires investment, infrastructure, and will. And so far, the system has shown more interest in releasing press statements than in making those investments.

"Pen & Paper NEET" vs. "Computer Based Test Model" 

Zero Accountability: The Most Consistent Thing About This System

After NEET 2024, there should have been a complete overhaul of the examination process. There should have been resignations. There should have been public accountability from the Education Ministry. There should have been a transparent report published explaining exactly what failed and what would change. None of that happened at the scale it should have. A committee was formed. Some individuals were arrested. And the system continued.

Now in 2026, the Education Minister has not held a press conference with substantive answers. NTA has released a notice that uses careful language to communicate cancellation while accepting no direct responsibility. No senior official has stepped forward to say, on the record, "this happened because of specific failures in our system, and here is what we are doing about it."

This is not a coincidence. This is how the system protects itself. When institutions are not required to be accountable, they will not choose to be. And students, who have no institutional power and no union, and whose only tool of resistance is protest and social media, have very limited ability to force accountability.

As we have argued in multiple posts on this blog: the real problem is not any single bad actor. The real problem is a system that is structured to insulate authority from consequence, and to push all the burden of failure onto the students who depend on it.

What Real Reform Would Actually Look Like

This blog is not going to end by just expressing outrage, even though the outrage is entirely justified. Here is what actual systemic reform would look like, not just surface fixes.

First, the transition to CBT format with digitally locked question papers has to happen. This is non-negotiable. The physical paper chain is too vulnerable. Second, third-party audits of the examination process, conducted by independent bodies with no financial relationship to coaching institutes, need to become standard. Third, there has to be legal and professional accountability at the institutional level. When NTA fails, the director does not just get transferred. Real consequences, including criminal liability for negligence, have to be on the table. Fourth, the one-exam, one-shot model needs to end. Multiple attempts, staggered testing, and more flexible pathways into medical education exist in countries across the world. India's refusal to adopt them is a policy choice, not a logistical inevitability. Fifth, an independent examination authority, truly insulated from political appointment and coaching industry influence, needs to replace NTA.

FAIMA's Supreme Court petition has asked for exactly this: a more robust, technologically advanced, and autonomous body for conducting NEET examinations, and a High-Powered Committee with judicial oversight to supervise the transition. These are not radical demands. They are minimum standards. livelaw

How many of these existed before NEET 2026? Zero.

Conclusion: The Trust Is Not Running Out. It Has Already Run Out.

The students writing NEET next time, whenever that re-exam happens, will do so with a completely different relationship to the system than the ones who wrote it ten years ago. They will sit in that hall knowing that the paper may have been circulated before they opened it. They will calculate their scores knowing that some candidates in the same room may have prepared from the actual questions. They will wait for results knowing that the merit list may not represent actual merit.

That is not a minor inconvenience. That is a fundamental corruption of the purpose of education. When a system built to identify the most prepared and capable students becomes one that rewards the most connected and the most lucky, it stops being an education system. It becomes something else entirely.

India talks endlessly about its demographic dividend, its young population, its aspirations of becoming a global knowledge economy. But a country cannot build that future on the ruins of its own examination integrity. 22 lakh students deserved better on May 3, 2026. They deserved it in 2024. And they will keep deserving it until the system stops treating their futures as acceptable collateral damage.

The error is not 404. The system is not just missing. The system knows exactly what it is doing. And that is so much worse.

Written By Kashvi Upneja

Another Year, Same Old Disaster

The NEET UG 2026 leak honestly feels like a bad joke at this point. Every two years, the same chaos returns like clockwork, and nobody in power seems shocked anymore. Students and parents panic, NTA releases the same “we will investigate” message, and everything becomes one more chapter in India’s long list of exam failures. What makes this year worse is the familiarity of it. Nothing feels new. Nothing feels corrected. After going through the NEET UG 2024 mess myself, seeing 2026 fall apart like this honestly feels like watching the same nightmare on repeat.

A Personal Memory I Never Wanted to Relive

Back in 2024, I walked into the NEET exam with hope, discipline, and months of sacrifice. Everyone said the cutoff would hover around 590 like usual. But when the results came, it was like the ground just disappeared. The cutoff shot up to 660 for no logical reason and lakhs of us just stood there confused. I didn’t clear it, and the funny part is, I wasn’t sad. I felt relieved because somewhere deep down, I could feel the exam wasn’t fair in the first place. There were leaks, there were rumours, there were screenshots floating everywhere. It was a mess. And now in 2026, watching another generation go through the same pain feels like reopening my old wound. A wound nobody cared enough to fix.

Déjà Vu Where the Script Is Exactly the Same

The 2026 leak is literally a copy-paste of 2024. The same talk of leaked papers, the same “coaching centres predicted exact questions,” the same screenshots, the same confusion. When you see the Rising Exam Leaks graph below, it becomes very clear this isn’t some one-off slip. It’s a trend. A pattern. A system that is consistently failing because nobody is even trying to repair it. It almost feels like India has normalised exam leaks and expects students to just adapt to this madness.

Examination Leaks In India( 2017-2026)- Source: NDTV, India Today compiled lists of exam leak cases (2017–2026)

What the Leaks Actually Expose

The worst part is how these leaks expose the foundation itself. We still believe that one exam, of three hours, should decide a student’s future. That idea itself is completely outdated. The system is built on memorising, speed, and luck and not understanding. And when such a fragile system experiences a leak, the entire thing collapses because everything depends on that one moment being “perfect.” And the truth is, our system is not capable of perfection. Not even close.

The Coaching Industry and Its Strange Power

The coaching ecosystem has become a whole profit machine on its own. Students spend lakhs every year, parents go broke, and coaching centres behave like they know the inside of the exam hall better than NTA. It happened in 2024 and now again in 2026, how predictions from certain institutes “accidentally” match the real paper. When private coaching institutes seem more informed than the exam authority itself, then the system is not just broken, it is compromised. I talked about something similar earlier in my VIT Bhopal piece, how education institutions are acting more like corporations than protectors of students. Both things feel connected deeply.

The Never-Ending Problem of Zero Accountability

What honestly hurts the most is that after every leak, nobody takes responsibility. After 2024, there should’ve been resignations, strict changes, complete restructuring. Instead, they made a committee, wrote a report that no one ever saw, and carried on like nothing happened. Now in 2026, it is happening again. No apology, no explanation, nothing. Students are just expected to swallow the pain and “try again next year.” It feels cruel. Only when the things have gone completely out of hand have they chosen to cancel the paper and still no accountability by the Education Minister or NTA to the students or the media. The students are suffering for their grave lapses.

The Psychological Damage We Pretend Doesn’t Exist

People underestimate how much emotional damage these exam failures cause. After 2024, so many students fell into depression and anxiety because they felt robbed. Students spend years preparing, isolating themselves, sacrificing everything, and then lose out because of a leak. The mental trauma is real and lifelong, but it gets dismissed casually like it’s just another statistic. This year due to the retest the students again have to get their books and notes out which they might have even given away, some students were preparing to leave for trips but it's all gone now. The students are expected to be like machines and have no emotions and again study for this which they have already been doing for years. It's an absolute mockery of students who have studied and worked hard and extremely unfair. NTA and The education ministry should be ashamed and top officials should resign from their posts immediately.

Cutoffs That Make No Sense Anymore

Even the data is screaming for help now. The NEET Cutoff Trends graph below shows how ridiculous the fluctuations have gotten. The jump from 590 to 660 in 2024 was honestly a joke. Cutoffs used to mean something logical once. Now they just reflect the instability of the system, not the merit of students.

NEET Cutoff Trends (Source: National Testing Agency (NTA) Official Scorecards)

India Needs Actual Reform, Not Sympathy Lines

If India really wants trust back in exams, then we need proper, modern reforms. We need secure question banks, encryption, third-party audits, decentralised exams, multiple attempts, everything. The one-shot exam culture needs to end. It gives too much power to leak networks and coaching lobbies. The structure itself needs change because it is not working anymore. Pretending otherwise is just avoiding the truth.

Conclusion: The Trust Is Running Out

The NEET UG 2026 leak is not a small incident, it is a warning that the system is collapsing from within. The similarities with 2024 are too strong, too painful, and too obvious. Students cannot keep paying the price for administrative incompetence. At this rate, India will not just lose doctors; it will lose the trust of its entire student community. And once that trust breaks, nothing can fix it.

Written By Saatwick Mukherjee

Higher education was once about understanding a field deeply. Today it is slowly becoming an all-at-once race to know it all. Classes, diplomas, seminars, distance studies- learning is not a burden anymore, and that is a step in the right direction. In this profusion, however, there has begun, somewhere, to accumulate a new sort of pressure. Students are not merely learning but are in a continuous attempt to keep pace.

It was a time when it was believed that learning one subject was sufficient. The importance of depth over range. Students are now supposed to become multi-skilled even prior to graduation. A marketing student should be familiar with design, analytics, content creation, SEO, and even coding. A student of engineering is not only assessed based on technical expertise, but also communication, management, and digital presence. The concept of just enough is gone.

This appears to be growth at first sight. However, taking a closer look, it starts to get overloaded.

Platform providing numerous courses

Knowledge has become inexhaustible due to the emergence of online learning platforms. Anything can be learnt by anyone at any time. But access has silently become expectation. In case there is a course, students believe that they should take it. When a certification is a trending one, they feel that they need to do it. The curiosity is no longer the driving force behind learning but rather, there is an increasing threat of fear.

The fear is simple: What if I fall behind?

The Fear of Missing Out on Knowledge

This is not the common fear of missing out. It is academic FOMO. Students no longer compare lifestyles, but skills. One is studying AI, one is doing financial certifications, another one is creating a portfolio, and one is already a freelancer. Each scroll reminds one of what he is not doing.

And gradually learning ceases to be a growth, it becomes a catching-up.

What complicates this even more is the fact that there is no definite end anymore. Previously, a degree was a degree. There is never just one way to go, another skill to include, another certification to show. The finish line continues to move.

When Learning Turns Into Anxiety

The system continues to use grades, deadlines and exams as a measure of performance. Students are creating parallel learning experiences out of the classroom that are equally challenging. The outcome is not productivity - it is exhaustion.

Students study in classes, do their homework, study to take their test and the remaining part of their time is to learn some additional skills. The term extra is even misleading in itself. It is no longer a choice; it seems inevitable.

Increase in Learning load connects with Anxiety Levels

Not knowing enough has a kind of silent guilt as well. Rest starts to be unproductive. A break is like losing ground. It is even dangerous to select one skill instead of the other. The plethora of choices has become decision fatigue and this pressure of maximizing each decision exacerbates the situation.

The Illusion of “More is Better”

The education system as well as digital platforms promotes the notion that the more one learns, the more one achieves. More classes, more degrees, more abilities. But this raises an uncomfortable question: Is more actually better, or just more visible?

A lot of students are familiar with a lot of things these days but are not able to go into any depth in any one of these. Superficial learning is on the rise, and substantial learning is steadily decreasing. The system rewards accumulation, not reflection.

And yet the pressure goes on. Since the system is not slowed down, students are not either.

The Classroom is No Longer the Only Pressure Point

The difference in this shift is that the pressure is not of a single source. It is everywhere. Academic performance is anticipated in universities. The platforms encourage lifelong learning. Employers require various skills. Comparison is increased by social media.Students are caught between all of it.

Pressure Beyond Classroom

They no longer are studying to know. Their learning is an endeavor of security, relevance and validation. And in their efforts to have all three, they are thinning themselves.

So, What Are We Really Learning For?

This is where the question becomes unavoidable.

When the students are in a constant learning process and yet they feel unprepared, what does that imply about the system? Suppose we have had a rise in access to knowledge, why then has there been an increase in anxiety? When learning is everywhere, why does it seem like it is never enough? Perhaps it is not that students do not want to learn. Perhaps, it is because the system has lost its definition of what enough learning should be.

And when there is no feeling of sufficientness, then learning ceases to be empowering and becomes boundless.

Because at some point, we need to ask this - Do students really learn more or are they simply becoming more incompetent about what they do not know?

Written By Kashvi Upneja

Higher education was once seen as the primary path to success. Nowadays, it is gradually becoming a plan B to most students. With increasing side hustles, digital jobs, and other sources of income, the purpose of a college degree is evolving. This shift raises a deeper question about what students really expect from education anymore.

It was a time when the aim was a college degree. It represented stability, success, and a clear direction in life. Students made wise choices, defined themselves by them, and thought that with the help of education they will reach a stable future.

But nowadays that confidence is waning. Each day, increasing numbers of students are going to college, not because they feel they want to, but because they are unable not to. A degree has slowly turned into a second choice- something to use as a back-up in case other avenues fail.

At the same time, something else is rising alongside it. Students are developing side hustles, freelancing, content creation, trading, designing, and finding sources of income that are entirely unrelated to their degree. These are not mere hobbies to many. They are serious attempts at building a future.

Marketsize for Freelance Platforms (2018-30)

This creates a strange contradiction. Students are in classes, doing assignments, and studying to take exams, yet they are busy mentally spending their energy elsewhere. Their future is no longer perceived as being formed in the classroom. And even not the most important one. 

The Rise of Parallel Careers

In the past few years, the concept of one career path has been beginning to fade away. Students have been able to earn, experiment and create identities on the digital platforms that were not present in the traditional education setting.

Freelancing platforms, content creation, small businesses, and careers led by creators are no longer uncommon. They are becoming normal. According to reports in the youth and digital economy literature, a large percentage of Gen Z is either already or actively considering side income streams in their college years. It is not necessarily the need to make money. It is also regarding freedom, choice and the ability to be in control of the future.A degree in such an environment becomes more of a parallel, rather than a defining thing. 

The Shift in Value

It is not a change of behaviour only. It is a better shift in the perception of the students towards education. 

Earlier, a degree itself carried weight. Students today are becoming more inquisitive as to what that degree really offers them. Others believe that the syllabus is old, irrelevant to the real world and slow in adapting.

Meanwhile, the skills acquired out of the classroom, such as in the field of editing, coding, marketing, communication, etc., regularly result in instant opportunities. This brings a silent comparison. And slowly, the balance begins to tilt. 

The Classroom Disconnect

The only difference is that it is not only the emergence of alternatives that makes this shift more noticeable, but also the stagnation of the system.

Numerous classrooms still work in the same manner as they did decades ago. Lectures are given, notes dictated and exams are given to test memory rather than understanding. In the meantime, the world beyond is rapidly transforming.

Unemployment Levels rise with the Level of Education in India

Students observe this disconnect. They are in classrooms yet are educated elsewhere. They do not skip lectures, but use the external resources. They graduate degrees but are not fully relying on them. This is not rebellion. It is an adjustment.

The Risk of “Just in Case” Education

When education becomes a backup plan, it changes how seriously it is taken. Students start thinking about their degrees in the just in case mode. They will do what needs to be done, as opposed to what ought to be done. Effort becomes selective. Engagement becomes limited.

Relevance of Learning Modes

Meanwhile, they become focused on something different. This gives a system of students being there but not fully committed. And in the long run, that has an impact on learning and outcomes.

A Changing Definition of Success

In the current times, success is not as it used to be. To most students, it is no longer determined by a degree or even a job title. It is characterized by freedom, flexibility, financial independence and capacity to come up with something of their own. Education remains a part of that process but no longer the focus of it. And that is a drastic change.

This is not about students losing interest in education. It is the lack of exclusiveness of education. Students will want to explore opportunities when they are available outside of the classrooms. When learning becomes accessible everywhere, institutions are no longer the only gatekeepers of knowledge.

But this brings up a challenging question as well.

When degrees become the backup plan, what does it say about the system that once made them a necessity?The fact that students are trying to plan their lives outside of school and yet in school means that perhaps it is not their lack of concentration. Perhaps it is the inability of the system to be central to their future. And if that continues, we might need to ask something more uncomfortable.

Are students abandoning education- or is education gradually abandoning them?

Growth of Side Hustles

Written By Kashvi Upneja

Universities were always supposed to be places where students feel safe, learn properly in peace and grow in their life. But what happened at VIT Bhopal honestly shows a very different picture. It shows how sometimes management, profit, and image become more important than the actual students living inside the campus. And this whole thing reminded me again of the same pattern we keep seeing in India’s education system, like that CBSE result issue I wrote about earlier, the people who are supposed to protect students are actually ignoring them.

The Reality Behind the Gates: What Happened at VIT Bhopal?

At the center of the whole issue were very basic things. Clean water. Proper food. Hygiene. Even basic healthcare. Around 4,000 students were protesting because the water quality was bad, the food was unhygienic, and overall the facilities were just not okay. Even the police report said the same thing. Then jaundice cases started showing up, and students believed it was because of the contaminated water and food on campus. Many of them said they had been complaining for months but nobody really listened.

The Investigation: E. Coli and Systemic Neglect

Later the Madhya Pradesh Government did a proper investigation. And the findings were honestly shocking but also not shocking, because students were warning about these things earlier. There were serious lapses in how food and water were being handled. Medical help was not enough. Complaints were ignored again and again like they didn’t matter. The most worrying part was when 4 out of 18 water samples actually tested positive for E. coli, which is a direct health threat. Imagine thousands of students drinking that water every day.

Facility Issues at VIT Bhopal

A “Fortress” of Fear: When Discipline Turns Into Intimidation

But the problem was not only about facilities. It also showed a deeper issue in the environment of the campus. The inquiry report by the 3- Member Probe committee formed by the Madhya Pradesh Higher Education Department described the university like a “fortress,” where discipline was based more on fear. Students reportedly faced pressure, threats, and even harassment when they tried to raise their concerns.

This made the situation worse. There were also reports of students being physically assaulted and threatened by authorities, and FIRs were filed against some staff members. In a proper university, this should never happen, but here it became one of the main reasons why the situation got out of control.

Scale of Student Unrest at Vit Bhopal

Why Protests Get Violent: What Happens When Students Are Ignored

The protest later turned violent ,property damage, vehicles burnt, chaos across campus. And yes, violence is not right, but blaming only the students is also not right. Things like this don’t happen in one day. When complaints keep getting ignored, students feel helpless. When you live far from home and even your drinking water is unsafe, frustration builds. This whole crisis shows us the bigger problem that many of the private universities in India behave more like corporate companies than educational institutions. Their focus is on buildings, branding, placements, brochures, but not on the actual living conditions of students.

Even after everything, the university management denied a lot of things. They said the situation was exaggerated even though the government reports showed the complete opposite.This gap between what students go through and what the administration claims only makes students lose trust.

And honestly, this is not just about VIT Bhopal. Many students across India face similar problems. Most live away from their families, depend completely on university facilities, and don’t have anyone to speak for them.

The Verdict: Education Cannot Become a Business

The VIT Bhopal incident should be a warning for everyone, students, parents, government, and universities. We need stricter checks and mechanisms , transparent systems, and proper communication channels where students can speak without fear. Universities are not supposed to be corporations selling degrees. They are responsible for the safety, health, and well-being of thousands of young people. If things don’t change, incidents like this will keep repeating. And each time it will remind us again that the biggest problem in higher education right now is not academics, but management that treats students like numbers instead of humans. Have you faced something like this in your university too? You can share it in the reblogs.

Written By Saatwick Mukherjee

Somewhere in India, a school bell rings but no one actually walks into the classroom. The benches are empty, the board is untouched, and attendance is just marked on paper. This may sound unrealistic, but this is slowly becoming a reality in many parts of India because of dummy schools.

What Exactly is a "Dummy School"?

A dummy school is basically a place where students are officially enrolled but they don’t attend classes regularly. Instead, they spend their entire day in coaching centres preparing for exams like JEE and NEET. What looks like a smart shortcut to success is actually weakening the whole idea of education.

At its core, dummy schooling shows how education is slowly becoming a business. Schools are acting like registration centre's, while actual learning is outsourced to coaching institutes. This system has grown very fast. According to different reports by the Hindu and Indian Express, around 30–35% of students are now dependent on coaching institutes, and the number is increasing every year. This trend is not just visible in theory, it can clearly be seen over time as well.

The Data: A Growing Dependency on Coaching Centers

Growth of coaching dependency in India over the years

Beyond Grades: The Hidden Cost of Personal Development

But the biggest loss here is not academic it is personal development. Schools were never just about textbooks and exams. They were spaces where students learned communication, confidence, teamwork, and emotional understanding. Dummy schooling removes all of this. Students become very efficient in solving questions, but often struggle with real-world skills. Studies are also showing higher stress levels and burnout among such students.

Financial Barriers and the Wealth Gap in Education

This system also increases inequality. Coaching institutes charge anywhere between ₹1 lakh to ₹3 lakh per year, which makes them accessible mainly to financially strong families. Education, which should reduce inequality, actually starts creating more division. This division in the system can be understood more clearly here:

Shift from regular schooling to coaching-based education

And what makes this even more concerning is that this is not an isolated failure, it is part of a larger pattern in India’s education system. We have already seen how basic credibility itself is being compromised in cases like the CBSE exam fiasco, where something as fundamental as exam integrity was questioned. If schools are becoming empty formalities on one side, and examination systems are failing on the other, then the entire structure of education starts collapsing from both ends.

Another serious issue is how normal this has become. Schools are admitting more students than they can handle, maintaining fake attendance, and functioning just for formalities. Even though boards like CBSE have rules like 75% attendance requirement, dummy schooling still continues openly. This clearly shows that regulation exists, but enforcement is almost absent. And when an institution like CBSE fails to ensure even basic compliance, it raises a bigger question that is the system even trying to fix itself?

Symptom vs. Disease: Why the System is Failing

At the same time, dummy schools are not the root cause as they are just a symptom. The real problem is the gap between school education and competitive exams. Students and parents are forced to choose coaching because schools are not aligned with entrance exam patterns. In a system where success is defined only by ranks and marks, learning naturally takes a backseat.

This brings us to a very important question as to what is the purpose of education? If the goal is only to score high marks, then dummy schooling may look efficient. But if education is meant to build thinking, awareness, and personality, then clearly something is going wrong.

India is slowly reaching a point where its education system is losing its real meaning. Classrooms are being replaced by coaching halls, and curiosity is being replaced by pressure.

The irony is very clear. In trying to secure a better future, we are damaging the process that actually prepares us for it. Dummy schools are not just weakening education, they are redefining it into something narrower.

And if this continues, India might produce more toppers, but it may slowly lose thinkers, innovators, and well-rounded individuals.

And maybe the real problem is not just dummy schools but a system where even the institutions responsible for maintaining standards are slowly failing to do their job.

"Did you attend a regular school or a dummy school? Let’s discuss the pros and cons in the replies.

Written By Saatwick Mukherjee

Beyond the Brochure: The Reality of Modern Campuses

Universities are supposed to be spaces where students grow, where thinking expands, and where learning is not just about books but about understanding the world better. They are meant to feel like places where ideas flow freely and people evolve, not just academically but also emotionally and socially. But sometimes an incident happens which breaks this image completely and makes us question what is actually going on behind all this. The recent Galgotias University situation is one such case. It is not just about one campus or one moment, it is about what that moment is showing us about private higher education in India today.

What makes such incidents more uncomfortable is not just what happened, but the environment in which it happened. Private universities today present themselves as modern, advanced and full of opportunities and big campuses, international tie-ups, attractive brochures talking about “holistic development.” But behind this, there is often a gap between what is shown and what is actually real. The Galgotias incident clearly reflects that gap. It shows how institutions that claim to be progressive sometimes fail in basic responsibilities like maintaining a safe and respectful environment.

The Commercialization of Learning: Education as a Product

There is also a bigger pattern which cannot be ignored. Many private universities in India are slowly becoming more commercial. Education in these places starts feeling like a product instead of a process. This is not even limited to universities as even school-level systems have shown similar cracks, like in the recent CBSE exam fiasco where basic credibility itself came into question. From schools to universities, the problem seems to be the same that there is more focus on image than actual substance. Fees are high, expectations are high, but the focus quietly shifts towards branding and image. Events become more important than actual engagement, and how things look becomes more important than what they really are. And in all this, the seriousness of education slowly starts getting lost. Incidents like Galgotias are not just random as they are showing deeper issues in the system.

The culture that develops in such spaces is also very concerning. When institutions care more about image than values, students also start behaving in the same way. Everything becomes about performance and how things appear rather than what they mean. Discipline becomes selective, accountability is not consistent, and slowly the campus stops feeling like a learning space. The Galgotias incident is not just one situation, it is showing a culture where such things can happen.

Reputation vs. Accountability: Why Transparency Matters

Another important issue is how institutions respond to such problems. In many cases, universities react only after something happens instead of preventing it. Policies may exist, but they are not properly followed. There is also hesitation in being transparent because institutions are worried about their image. But this only makes things worse. When reputation becomes more important than accountability, problems don’t get solved as they get hidden and over time this silence becomes normal.

Placements over Principles: Finding the Lost Soul of Education

This also makes us think about what the real purpose of higher education is. Are universities just meant to produce graduates, or are they supposed to shape individuals? Right now, it feels like the focus is more on placements, packages and rankings, things which are easy to show. But qualities like critical thinking, ethics and responsibility are not given the same importance. As a result, students may be skilled, but not always grounded in values, incidents like Galgotias expose this imbalance very clearly.

At the same time, it is not fair to blame only students as institutions play a very big role in shaping the environment. If universities create spaces where open discussion, discipline and mentorship are encouraged, students also behave differently. But when the system feels transactional, students also start treating it that way. Learning becomes secondary, and everything becomes more about survival or performance.

A Mirror to the Future: Breaking the Cycle of Normalization

What is most worrying is how normal such incidents are becoming. There is some outrage, then silence, and then everything goes back to normal. But this normalisation is dangerous because it shows acceptance. Education is one of the most important parts of society as it shapes how people think and act, If problems exist here, they don’t stay limited to campuses, they spread outside as well.

The Galgotias incident should not be seen as just a controversy as it is like a mirror showing the current state of private higher education in India both its strengths and its problems. It forces us to ask questions about what we expect from universities and whether those expectations are being met. Because at the end of the day, a university is not defined by its buildings or marketing. It is defined by its culture, its values and the kind of people it creates.

And if such incidents are happening again and again, then maybe the real issue is not what is happening on campuses but what is missing from them.

AI Robo Dog which is the centre of the fiasco ( Pic Credits- India Today)

Written By Saatwick Mukherjee

The Prank Heard 'Round the Exam Hall

In a country like India where board exams are not just normal tests but like turning point of life, where even 1 mark can change everything, expectation from Central Board of Secondary Education is very basic that everything should be accurate, serious and proper. Students are told from childhood that discipline is important and even small mistake can cost marks. But in March 2026 something happened which totally opposite of what system teaches. A QR code printed on Class 12 Maths paper, which was for security, ended up taking people to “Never Gonna Give You Up” song by Rick Astley which is internet meme prank. A thing which should be serious became a joke and this tells us a lot about the system.

From Security to Satire: What Happened?

The incident itself sounds very unreal. QR codes were introduced to make papers more secure and stop leaks which is already big issue in India. Idea was simple use technology to increase trust. But when students scanned it, instead of verification they got rickroll video. Social media got filled with memes and reactions. Some people laughed but many people also got concerned that how such basic mistake can happen in such important exam. CBSE said paper was real and no problem in security, but that answer didn’t solve actual issue. Issue was not only about paper being real, issue was how such important system can fail so easily.

A Crisis of Digital Trust

This situation shows problem of fake digital security. Education system is using technology but not implementing it properly. QR code looks modern and advanced, but what is the use if it is not working properly. It makes question that was there no checking before printing so many papers? Who was responsible for linking it? Is there any accountability or not? If security feature itself becomes joke then it is not security it is just show off.

On bigger level, this shows pattern in Indian education system where image is more important than reality. Many new things are introduced like digital platforms, skill based learning, QR codes, but base system is still weak. Everything looks good on paper but execution is poor. This QR code issue is just one example of how these reforms are not properly planned.

Another big issue is lack of accountability. CBSE only tried to calm situation instead of explaining properly. No clear answer was given about how mistake happened, no one took responsibility. When millions of students are connected with system, there should be transparency but here mistakes are just ignored. System is very centralised where decisions are taken but responsibility is not clear.

For students this is not funny matter. Board exams are already very stressful. Students prepare for months and years. In such situation even small problem can create doubt. If QR code behaves like this, students will think is paper real? Was there leak? Can system be trusted? Once trust is broken, it is very difficult to rebuild.

There is also irony in system. Students are expected to be perfect, even small mistake leads to mark deduction. But when institutions make mistakes at large level, nothing happens. Students are punished for errors but system is excused for negligence.

If we see bigger picture, this is not just about QR code or meme. It shows real condition of Indian education system. System is still exam focused, still struggling in execution and trying to become modern without strong foundation. Technology is added but without proper support it is exposing weakness instead of solving problem. Continuous issues like paper leaks, result mistakes and now this kind of glitch is reducing trust of people.

Beyond the Meme: The Cost of Negligence

At the end, this incident may look funny and viral moment but actually it is serious. It shows how system responsible for future of millions can fail in basic things. Rickroll here is not just prank, it is symbol. Symbol of system which looks strong but has many cracks inside. System which talks about perfection but cannot maintain its own standards. And when stakes are so high, even small mistake becomes big problem.

Image Credit- Aadityaprakash and Youtube

Written By Saatwick Mukherjee