Bluetooth, babus and underwear: Why cheating is alive and kicking in India

In PG Wodehouse’s Right Ho, Jeeves, there is a delightful description of the prize distribution ceremony at Market Snodsbury Grammar School where Gussie Fink-Nottle, the chief guest, delivers this nugget - "Bertie Wooster won the Scripture-knowledge prize at a kids' school we were at together, and you know what he's like. But, of course, Bertie frankly cheated. He succeeded in scrounging that Scripture-knowledge trophy over the heads of better men by means of some of the rawest and most brazen swindling methods ever witnessed even at a school where such things were common. If that man's pockets, as he entered the examination-room, were not stuffed to bursting-point with lists of the kings of Judah --". 

He could have been describing what transpires at examination centres all over the country, especially in the north. Except that the fictional account in the book elicits joy and laughter; and the real life happenings, contempt and loathing. 

During my government service days in Delhi, I decided to study law in the evening classes. The deadline for applying to Delhi University having passed, I enrolled in a college in Ghaziabad, affiliated to Meerut University. It was a decision I am not proud of. I used to spend two hours to reach the college only to find a sprinkling of disinterested students and an even more disinterested faculty.

On many days, the classes would be cancelled without warning. I was then advised by the head of department, informally, not to bother with the unproductive treks every evening, but to stay at home and stick to self-study. Don’t worry about attendance, he assured me; we don’t hold back any student. I gladly complied. Come the exam. The examination centre was in Ghaziabad. I was surprised to see a huge police presence; barricades, police vehicles, tents; the full bandobast. What took my breath away was the presence of an SDM sitting in a tent with his team, red-beaconed car standing on one side. But what really shook me was the presence of a prison van, standing menacingly at one end.

What was going on, I wondered! Before entering the building, all examinees were placing textbooks, registers, papers, notebooks at a designated place, to be retrieved after the exam was over. I had left mine in the car. Almost immediately after the exam started, out came the papers from pockets, wallets, socks, pencil boxes; I saw one worthy even fish it out of his underwear. To be fair, these rogues were only boys; didn’t see any girl do it. Conversations started in full swing. Consultations were taking place in right earnest.

"Contract Law" was never discussed so animatedly in classrooms as it was unfolding before my disbelieving eyes. The invigilators chose to ignore it all. After having distributed the question paper, they had beaten a hasty retreat to the relative safety of the head-table where they stood huddled, oblivious of the goings-on right under their nose.

My neighbours (none excluded) asked me to elucidate the "Carbolic Smoke Ball" case, one of the first cases taught to law graduates, but I ignored them. One of them even threatened to deal with me outside after the exam. This, in short, was the scene inside the hall. Then the flying squad struck. A massive contingent of officials descended on the examination centre and raided all the halls together. Students who already had their material on the table were immediately caught. Others were made to stand and subjected to thorough frisking. Out emerged everything they had hidden on their person. Answer sheets were scanned and some loose papers emerged from inside. Desks were searched – many revealed incriminating stuff. A sizeable number got caught and ordered to troop outside.

Then began the beating in the corridor; heavy blows and slaps accompanied by loud expletives invoking the cheaters’ mothers and sisters. They were then taken outside, booked by the attending SDM, and sent to jail in the waiting prison van. A journey of a different kind had begun for these students! The next four exams went on uneventfully! This was 1992. Rajnath Singh, the then education minister of UP, had instituted the Anti-Copying Act that made cheating a non-bailable offence.

A year later, when Mulayam Singh Yadav became the CM, this was one of the first laws to be withdrawn. The percentage of meritorious students showed a dramatic improvement thereafter!  Thankfully, I left the course after finishing the first year owing to my transfer out of Delhi. I joined the law course at Delhi University many years later and the experience during exams was diametrically opposite. Has cheating come down over the years? Readers would recall last year’s photograph of images of friends and relatives climbing wallls of an examination centre building in Bihar to assist students.

That photograph encapsulates the status of this scourge in India. Cheating is still alive and kicking in India, thank you. Exam cheating has long gone beyond the issue of personal ethics. It has become part of the system in many places. Everybody, including school principals, teachers, parents, policemen and students has become part of the cheating enterprise. No wonder, attempts to curtail it have fallen flat. When the rule breaker and the rule enforcer collude, the cancer cannot be stopped.

The state boards may install cameras and mobile jammers to nab offenders, they may put up security backed by raids, but when the stakeholders are complicit, these measures don’t help beyond a point. In some places, cheating has become so institutionalised that the rates are fixed. In UP, a student set himself on fire after his family was unable to raise money to pay his school principal to allow him to cheat in his class 10 exams. His mother had pawned her necklace and bangles, but only managed to gather part of the sum demanded.

Students haven't taken kindly to anti-cheating efforts. In a West Bengal town, CCTV cameras were installed in certain sensitive centers. These cameras did not prevent students from vandalising a school after being stopped from cheating. They complained the invigilation was too strict!

In UP, crude bombs were flung at a car containing members of a flying squad. These members had prevented mass cheating at Allahabad University. If flying squads face security threats, the well-meaning invigilators stand no chance at all of preventing cheating.

Of course, there are exceptions; stakeholders who are repulsed at this egregious behaviour but the system is too well-entrenched for them to bring about any change.

Students have also adopted high-technology cheating strategies. There are several websites peddling dubious electronic goods that aid cheating such as wireless earpieces. A wireless earpiece can receive a signal through the cell phone for many hours, ideal for any accomplice lurking outside the school. Munna Bhai, it may be recalled, did something similar in the MBBS exam.

The Army found a rather innovative and novel solution.

Around 1,100 candidates who showed up to sit for their army recruitment exam in Bihar's Muzaffarpur earlier this year were asked to strip down to their underwear and sit in an open ground by the local invigilating staff. This was done so that the candidates did not resort to any unfair means in the exam.

The idea was mooted by a large number of candidates who complained that many among them were resorting to unfair means, including using cell phones and Bluetooth devices hidden in personal clothing, to cheat during the exam.

However, the Army headquarters was not amused and directed that corrective measures be taken for ensuring fairness without causing embarrassment to the candidates. The incident only shows how desperate the situation has become and how frustrated the bright students and the examiners feel. Cheating in Odisha has come down though. The Odisha board attributes this to multiple-choice question papers that give them no time to cheat. But not all subjects lend themselves to multiple-choice format; hence, the scope is rather limited.

In view of last year’s All India Pre-Medical Test, which was cancelled by the Supreme Court due to reports of widespread cheating, the CBSE imposed strict guidelines for the first phase of the National Eligibility and Entrance Test on May 1 this year to prevent any wrongdoing.

Aspirants were allowed to carry only their admit card and two photographs, and nothing else. Caps, rings, bracelets, watches and religious symbols were forbidden.

The candidates were also asked to take off their shoes before being scanned with a metal detector and torchlight. Girls had to tie their hair.

Students who failed to follow the stipulated dress code – light colour half-sleeve clothes without buttons or brooches were prevented from entering the exam hall. Of course, with tough laws and strictest controls, even if cheating miraculously stops, how does one stop the paper checkers? The candidates who cannot cheat resort to requests, threats, bribery (by stapling currency notes inside the answer sheet). No information is so sacrosanct that details of examiners cannot be found out. If invigilation is a dangerous activity, so is paper checking. 

Whilst in Mumbai, I was appointed as a checker for the UDC exam. Which roll numbers were being checked by which officer was not a secret. I got a call from a senior officer requesting that I be liberal with the marking of a particular woman clerk who had been selected through the sports quota and hadn’t found the time to study. She was an excellent athlete, bringing laurels to the department.

As the head of the departmental sports board in Mumbai, I also knew her. When I opened the answersheet, to my shock, I found that she had written answers to questions that were not even asked. She had memorised some responses and planned to use them irrespective of the questions. I had no hesitation in giving her a big zero! 

In China, they do things differently. The case of graduate admissions examination fraud in China’s northern Heilongjiang province has been described by official media as an “illegal acquisition of state secrets”, in what is seen as stepping up the campaign against cheating in state-held exams.

In recent years, the classification of examination papers for exams such as the gaokao and the graduate entrance examinations has been upgraded to "top secret" from "secret" in order to curb misconduct.

This, of course, is too drastic a measure for India. But what the BJP did in UP when I took the exam works and making cheating a non-bailable offence seems to be a good solution to this disease, backed by strong enforcement. Unless the rogue students do not undergo what their seniors went through 24 years ago in Ghaziabad, the diseased system is here to stay!