Few institutions shape how citizens experience the modern state more profoundly than its public examinations. The abolition of China’s imperial examinations in 1905 closed what many regarded as the principal route to social mobility under the Qing dynasty and helped erode its legitimacy, contributing to the 1911 Revolution. Changes to university admissions in Sri Lanka convinced many Tamils that equal citizenship was slipping away. In South Africa, the 1976 Soweto uprising began with school students protesting against the imposition of Afrikaans as the language of instruction and examinations, and the brutal repression that followed. These are only some of the better-known examples; from Bangladesh and Chile to Ethiopia and France, disputes over examinations and educational opportunity have repeatedly spilled into wider political conflict. Do India’s examination scandals belong to this larger history?

The immediate crisis appears to have passed. The Education Minister has resigned, a high-powered task force has been constituted, and penalties for examination fraud are being strengthened. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that the crisis has ended.

A sense of systematic exclusion

Examinations do far more than allocate marks or jobs. They allocate the future. They embody fairness and connect citizens to the state, from the poorest to the richest. Indian families organise hopes of education, livelihood, marriage, honour, and prestige around them. A Damocles sword hangs over tens of millions of students and parents as examinations approach. Administrative failures may be corrected by stronger encryption, tighter invigilation or better technology. But was the outrage aroused only by administrative failures? Or was there a deeper sense of systematic exclusion, perpetuated through the education system itself, of which examinations are the crowning glory?

The 2.2 million students who took the NEET this year may be reassured by promises of reform. But their trauma is already being watched by the 17 million students who sit for secondary and higher secondary Board examinations every year, and by the more than 30 million enrolled in the final two years of schooling. Behind them stands an entire generation of roughly 125 million Indians between the ages of 15 and 19, anticipating its own encounter with the examination system. The grievance of one cohort is, therefore, experienced as the looming nightmare of the next.

The students who gathered to express their demands have travelled through markedly different educational systems. India’s school system is deeply segregated: elite English-medium schools affiliated to national Boards; low-cost private schools of varying quality; and under-resourced government schools, mostly following State Board curricula in regional languages. A clear hierarchy marks this system, with government schools occupying the lowest rung. Parents compensate through private tuition. These separate educational worlds then converge at a handful of national entrance and recruitment examinations — NEET, JEE, the civil services examinations and others — that claim to rank them by a common standard.

Seeking upward mobility

For a Class 12 student in a Hindi-medium government school in eastern Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, the examination is not simply a test of knowledge. It is an attempt to cross the divide between one India and another. Each examination represents the possibility — however remote — of escaping precarious work, entering higher education, acquiring the credentials and English-language skills demanded by much of the organised economy, and securing dignified employment. Yet, in India’s high growth economy, the fastest growing jobs are in construction, informal and domestic services, delivery and ride-sharing. Barely one in five Indian workers holds a regular salaried job, and only a tiny minority enjoy written contracts and employment benefits. Exams hold the promise of being incorporated into a better world.

It is this promise that gives public examinations their extraordinary legitimacy. They are among the few institutions before which students educated in profoundly unequal systems appear together. Their legitimacy does not lie in erasing those inequalities. It lies in sustaining the belief that inequalities can be overcome, because while the competition is stiff, the rules are impartial. Despite corruption in public life and imperfections in many public institutions, faith in this promise has proved remarkably resilient.

Ironically, the more unequal a society is, the more powerful the appeal of public examinations, provided they are perceived to be fair. Whether the state is formally “democratic” or “authoritarian” matters less than one might suppose, because most citizens do not experience the state primarily through elections. They encounter it through schools, universities, examinations, and recruitment Boards that mediate access to mobility. The Chinese imperial examination system endured for centuries because it persuaded people that public office was allocated according to standards. People do not have to believe that everyone succeeds. What they must believe is that “someone like me” could succeed.

Towards an open society

Independent India transformed a colonial institution into one of the Republic’s principal foundations. Though the intention was to select Indians who could help administer British rule, colonial examinations introduced a new political imagination — that advancement could be acquired through education, which was hitherto denied by birth to large sections of Indian society. After Independence, public examinations, together with reservations, became the Republic’s commitment to opening society and the economy to all. The promise was never that everyone would succeed, but that every citizen possessed a legitimate claim to compete.

India has, in this sense, become a republic of examinations. Parents lament the stress examinations impose on their children, yet enrol them in stressful pre-schools and coaching centres because they trust that the rules will be fairly applied in the end. Every education policy since Independence has promised to reduce the tyranny of examinations, yet no government has seriously displaced them because no alternative commands the same confidence as a publicly conducted examination in a deeply unequal society. During the COVID-19 pandemic, India kept schools closed for over two years — far longer than China, most of Latin America or many African countries. Yet, public examinations went ahead. Few episodes better illustrate the institutional authority that examinations command in contemporary India.

That is why the recent protests acquired an unusual political intensity. Ordinarily, examinations individualise disappointment: I failed. Examination scandals collectivise it: we were cheated. By who? By the very system that asked us to work hard, make sacrifices, wait your turn, and the competition will be fair. Educational disappointment becomes political grievance. The promise of accessing a better future looks hollow. The outrage of being dismissed as “cockroaches” resonated so deeply because it captured the reality of the present education system: that those who fail to climb the examination ladder and get good jobs are individually responsible and socially disposable.

Address inequality and injustice

The republic of examinations begins to unravel when public examinations lose their authority as impartial arbiters of the nation’s future. Paradoxically, that authority also generates resistance to fundamental educational reforms, not only among the elite but also the masses. These reforms need to address the inequality and injustice in a hierarchically organised system of institutions. More than half of Class 5 children cannot read a Class 2 text, fewer than one-third can perform basic division, and fewer than half of graduates are judged employable by employers. Public examinations nevertheless retain extraordinary legitimacy. Technology and tighter supervision may restore confidence in procedure. But is it enough to restore faith in the constitutional promise, or is it necessary to address the fundamental problems of the education system and the broader economic inequalities? Failure to do so may only pave the way for a deeper crisis.

History suggests that educational legitimacy can unravel in three ways: through arbitrariness (the rules no longer appear fair), exclusion (access to education is experienced as unequal citizenship), and domination (education becomes an instrument of one group’s domination over another). Imperial China illustrates the first: the abolition of the examination system without a credible alternative undermined confidence in one of the Qing state’s principal sources of legitimacy. Sri Lanka and Chile exemplify the second, though in different ways. In Sri Lanka, university admissions policy came to symbolise unequal citizenship between linguistic communities. In Chile, a deeply marketised education system came to embody entrenched social inequality rather than equal opportunity. Students did not respond as disappointed investors of private capital, but as citizens who invoked fairness and justice. Soweto exemplified the third, where Apartheid used schooling and examinations as instruments of racial domination. In each case, education — and especially the public examination that marked its culmination — ceased to embody legitimate membership in the political community.

Constitutional compact

India’s examination crisis is, therefore, not simply an administrative failure waiting to be corrected through digital safeguards or harsher penalties. In the Indian story, examinations became part of a constitutional compact that promised fairness in an unequal society. The more unequal the education system, the more public examinations embody hope; they not only select students but also organise aspirations, confer legitimacy, and mediate the relationship between citizens and the state. But there is no avoiding the fact that the Republic must also confront the inequalities that precede the examination — in schools divided by language, curriculum and resources —and the narrowing opportunities that await students afterwards in a labour market that offers too few secure and dignified jobs. Only together can they sustain the political imagination on which the Republic ultimately depends at this stage: that every child, regardless of where they begin, can reasonably believe that education, ability and effort may still lead to a life of dignity, self-worth and meaningful work.

Sajitha Bashir is a former Education Practice Manager and Global Adviser in the World Bank. She has led educational policy reform initiatives globally for over two decades and managed a large portfolio of education projects in Africa region and Latin America.