The National Testing Agency (NTA) and the National Education Policy (NEP) have erected a “grand private model of education” in front of a public model in which examinations such as NEET were central, and made “private coaching industries to flourish” at the expense of the public, student leader Neha Bora contended on Thursday.

Ms. Bora, who emerged as one of the prominent student leaders during the Jantar Mantar protests in New Delhi recently, was in the city as part of her ‘Gen Z Rising’ national tour.

She said that students from north India also extended solidarity to students in south India protesting not only against NEET, but also to uphold the federal structure of the State, against imposition of a particular kind of uniform culture and language, and also against delimitation, which was “being forced against southern States.”

Ms. Bora, the national president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), pointed out that the NTA was registered under the Societies Registration Act and formed its own internal committees. When a probe was carried out following incidents of question paper leaks, she charged: “We find that the people responsible for the paper leaks are the very people who have been recruited by the NTA to its own committees. When further investigation happens, we find that these very same people, who are recruited by the NTA through non-transparent means, are also members of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha. So first you make a system which promotes corruption in paper leak, then you ensure that your very own people are sitting inside that committee, and then you ensure that paper leak happens.”

With such a system set up by the NTA, it was no wonder there were incidents of question paper leaks and also extreme mismanagement and technical glitches that have affected the students in the country, charged Ms. Bora. Education was “no more going to be the right of the young people, but education is going to be an opportunity to profit,” she said. The “deadly” combination of the NTA and the NEP made school education “irrelevant,” as they gave “no value” to State Board schools and government schools, she alleged.

The NTA-NEP combination had an impact on the higher educational institutions too, as it forced institutions to take loans and forced them to increase fees, impose heavy fines and cut down on scholarships in order to pay back such loans, Ms. Bora said. The kind of politics prevailing in the country “favours the greed of a few at the expense of the people,” she said.