Cheating to get into India's best colleges

and universities
By Los Angeles Times, adapted by Newsela staff on 04.25.14
Word Count 853

Students from lower castes attend Anand Kumar's prep school in Patna, India. For lower caste people, higher education
is one of the few tickets to success. Photo: Eishi Miyasaka/Yomiuri Shimbun/MCT

MUMBAI, India The voice from the Internet ad sounds condent: No one will suspect
anything, he says. The device has never failed.
He sounds young, but he assures the caller that he speaks from experience. His price:
about $40. Minutes later he texts, offering a 6 percent discount.
Thats the price to cheat on one of Indias all-important tests. The stakes are high. The
exams open the doors to the countrys best colleges, universities and graduate programs.
Anil, a medical student in southern India, was selling a tiny wireless earpiece. It is scarcely
bigger than the head of a pin. The earpiece receives a signal from a cellphone via a
transmitter. During exams, Anil conceals the transmitter under a loose-tting shirt. He texts
pictures of the test questions to a friend at home and receives answers over the phone.
Theres no way anyone can even make out you using the device, says Anil, who sells
three or four a week on eBay to high school and college students. Ive never had any
problems. You just need to have some condence and a good friend who can help you out
during the exams.

All-Important Tests
Tens of thousands of talented Indian graduates go on to do well at universities in the
United States and worldwide. But the extreme importance of the tests has created a
tradition of cheating.
The nationwide tests for 10th- and 12th-graders are called board exams. Achieving good
scores on them determines who goes to the best schools. The board exams are also
important for getting into engineering and medicine programs. Pressure from parents to do
well can be intense, students say.
Even for those not attending college, test results are important for entering job training
programs. They can offer a ladder up to the middle class for many poor students.
Education ofcials say they are tackling the cheating problem. But for every contraption
like the one Anil was selling, more extreme examples of cheating come to light once exam
season begins each February.
At a school in Allahabad, in northern India, members of an inspection team were attacked
with bombs last month. They had caught two students cheating.
At a test center in northern India, inspectors found school staff members writing answers to
an exam on the blackboard. When the inspectors arrived, the staff members tried to throw
the evidence out the window.

A Tragic Case
Sometimes the stories are horrifying. A 10th-grader in Uttar Pradesh, Indias largest state,
accused his principal last month of allowing students to cheat if they each paid about
$100. The students poverty-stricken family could barely manage half the bribe. Upset, he
doused himself with kerosene, a type of fuel, and set himself on re in the family kitchen.
He died the next day.
Some schools have installed closed-circuit cameras to monitor testing rooms. Others
posted armed police ofcers at entrances. They use jamming devices to block the use of
cellphones to trade answers.
Still, Indias national elections are likely to be freer and fairer than the exams, journalist
Mridula Chari wrote.
Teachers and school ofcials say cheating students make up a small fraction of the
millions of those who take the board exams each year. But that still leaves a lot of students
who cheat.
For rule-breakers, low-tech methods remain popular. Hiding cheat sheets in socks,
copying neighbors answers and scribbling notes on walls are common tactics. Tests are
often sold by school employees.

One student said that during his 10th-grade exams, just one supervisor was assigned to
watch dozens of students.
For the major part of the exam, he was not present in the class, the student recalled.
There was open passing of information, noise and even discussions. I remember verifying
most of my answers with my friends."

Closed-Circuit Cameras
Anti-cheating measures begun this year have had mixed success. In Mumbai, ofcials
said that installing closed-circuit cameras reduced cheating by 20 percent. But students in
at least one school broke the cameras by throwing rocks at them.
In the eastern state of Bengal, police stood guard outside test centers. But people still
tossed cheat sheets wrapped around small stones through windows into the exam rooms.
One hundred percent, we can stop this problem, said Lakshmikant Pande. He is
chairman of the board of education in the western state of Maharashtra. If we continue
these types of efforts over two or three years, surely we can stop this.
Teachers remain doubtful that the cheating will stop, saying that school principals often
don't want to report cheating for fear of damaging their reputations. Also, reports of
cheating often trigger long-term investigations.
About 10 years ago, the son of a senior Indian Railways ofcial hired a train conductor to
take an exam for him. The scam was busted and the student was reported.
Yet long after his graduation, the case remains before the police. The teacher who nabbed
the cheat is forced to appear at least once a year at a court proceeding.
We learned a lesson from that, said English teacher Akhil Bhosle. If we register a case, it
will be a headache for us.