No Parliament but JEE-NEET will proceed? Decision on exams shows arbitrariness of India’s Covid plan

Should the entrance examinations for educational institutions catering to key professional areas be postponed given the rising number of coronavirus cases in India? This question has gripped India as a public campaign rages to demand pushing back the Joint Entrance Examinations (for admission to engineering colleges) as well as the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (for admissions to undergraduate medical courses).

The health risks of conducting mass public exams are obvious. With scores and sometimes hundreds of students sitting in one room for hours to take their tests, there would be a high probability of exposure to the virus. This takes special salience in India, given lack of proper infrastructure at the best of times.

Big risk

To add to this are the large numbers at play. Estimates place the total number of NEET and JEE candidates at close to 25 lakh. That isn’t all. If these students then take the infection back home to high-risk groups such as their grandparents, the number of Indians at risk from the infection from this decision could be much larger.

Also at play are logistical problems such as the lack of transport, which means students could face significant problems in even reaching their exam centres. In addition, can isolation wards for students who show Covid-19 symptoms be guaranteed in all centres? Moreover, forcing people with symptoms to travel outside their house is another dangerous way to spread infection, forcing people with symptoms to travel outside their house is another dangerous way to spread infection.

In spite of these red flags, the Modi government has stuck to its guns that the exam will go ahead. The Supreme Court has also backed this up, pointing out on August 17 that students would lose a year if the exams are postponed.

Extreme arbitrariness

Apart from the government ignoring the anxiety of students and their families, the striking thing here is the incredible contrast between the government’s current lackadaisical attitude and its draconian lockdown in March. On March 24, the Modi government ordered the harshest coronavirus containment measures in the world. It was so severe that the government shut down all transport, trapping millions of migrant workers in cities without jobs or the ability to buy food. People venturing outside their homes to buy food were assaulted by policemen with sticks. The dislocation was so extreme that the lockdown itself caused hundreds of deaths, as workers tried to get back home were run over and others died from hunger-related conditions.

At the time, this harshness was justified by arguing that coronavirus posed a signal threat to India. However, since then, the government’s threat perception has been reduced drastically even as caseload has risen exponentially. It is perplexing that the same country that was ready to risk hundreds of deaths to save itself from infection spreading is now ready to risk a spike in cases due to something as relatively minor as a delay in the academic calendar.

To take another example, this arbitrariness means that the Union government is ready to force lakhs of students to take tests – but is yet to allow Parliament to meet even as legislatures are conducting business across the world. It unclear why the threat to a meeting of a few hundred MPs, who would be protected with the entire organisational power available to the Union government, is greater than that posed by lakhs of students on the move to take a national entrance test.

These extreme examples typify how whimsical and knee-jerk India’s coronavirus containment measures have been. The government has assumed emergency powers and used them in unthinking fashion. Covid-19 has been bad enough for India. The government’s chaotic response has made the situation worse.