Behold the latest Indian ‘film’

• In which Bihar parents show the world how to cheat for our children in public exam

BY CHIKA ABANOBI

Do Nigerians still watch Indian films with such passion like they did in the 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s, in cinema houses scattered across the Nigerian entertainment landscape?

If so, then they must be have been appalled by the latest Indian ‘film’ in which parents from the Indian city of Bihar showed the world how to cheat in public exam for  their children, by scaling four-storey building, with some of them precariously perched on the windows, to pass notes to their wards sitting for an Indian public exam conducted by Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB), an exam much like our Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) exams. 1.4 million candidates were said to have sat for this year’s exam, across 1, 200 schools.

Although authorities were said to have posted policemen to all the schools where the examination was being held, it was characterized by mass copying and cheating as parents/guardians were reported to have compromised the security men by bribing them either to help or to look the other way while the cheating lasted, during the exam. In fact, remarkable photo footages by an Indian national TV station showed not only scores of friends/families scaling the four-storey building, unmindful of the danger of falling off the walls, to pass to their children/wards study aides/ papers having on them the answers to the questions, but also policemen, their officers and school staff simply standing by, looking on and doing nothing while the show of shame lasted.

In some of the cases, the cheating was so brazen that five to six people were found trying to help a candidate pass the exam that was said to be characteristically tough that many students in India drop out of school if they failed it. Hence they see it as a make-or-mar exercise or do-or-die affair.

In one of the photo footages, a candidate was seen checking some notes on her lap, apparently passed to her by a benevolent parent. While the exam lasted, she referred to them, from time to time. Videos also showed school inspectors slapping young girls as they pulled out such notes from under their tables.

BSEB, like JAMB in Nigeria, is a big deal in India as it determines not only who gets into the country’s best universities, but also which students get a place in popular courses like medicine and engineering. Top universities are known to ask for a score of 95 percent or more. This is why middle-class Indians see these exams as crucial to their chances of a successful career. Hence they put some enormous pressure on candidates to do well.

This, in turn, puts some pressures on them to cut corners, to cheat. More than that, knowing that everyone else is involved in the mass cheating makes friends and families to look for other more ingenious ways of out-cheating one another. If there’s a chance another student could beat you by smuggling in notes, candidates always make sure they come up with other means of out-foxing others in the cheating game.

All these have contributed to making mass cheating a sub-culture in India. “The exam season could well be called cheating season,” writes Mridula Chari, a reporter with the country’s popular newspaper, Scroll. “Everybody, including school principals, teachers, parents, policemen and students, is suspected to be part of the cheating enterprise. Notes are routinely consulted during tests; at the more high-tech end, students get the answers relayed to their desks through earpieces. The parents climbing the walls in Bihar are just a particularly visible example of this practice. Cheating sometimes happens with the tacit or even active approval of teachers; there are regular reports of them writing the answers on the blackboard, leaking tests in advance, and taking bribes to let cheating take place. Last year, a high school student set himself on fire because his teacher demanded payment for the right to cheat but his mother couldn’t afford it.”

In a bid to curb this evil practice, authorities have enacted an anti-cheating law that, in the past, saw dozens of candidates expelled and their parents detained. Secondly, CCTV cameras have been installed in some examination halls, but such measures sometimes provoke violent protest response from students who want to be allowed to carry on cheating and who knew photo footages got from the cameras could be used to prosecute them in law courts. In fact, last year, there were reports of students using rocks to pelt and disable the cameras.

In this year’s exam, more than 600 students who were caught cheating especially in subjects like Mathematics and English have been expelled and may later be prosecuted. “The students were expelled on charges of adopting unfair means,” Lalkeshwar Prasad, chairman of BSEB, which is conducting the examination said. Sriniwas Tiwari, secretary of the board said students caught cheating could be barred from taking the exam for up to three years, ordered to pay a fine or even sent to jail. Bihar’s education minister P. K. Shahi, refused to accept any blame for the mass cheating.

“You tell us what can the government do to stop cheating if parents and relatives are not ready to cooperate?,” he asked. “Should the government give orders to shoot them? The government cannot stop cheating in exams. It is also the responsibility of the society to ensure a cheating-free exam. State authorities posted police at all schools where examinations were being held, “but we can’t use force to drive away the parents.

“Three to four people helping a single student would mean that there is a total of six to seven million people helping students cheat. Is it the responsibility of the government alone to manage such a huge number of people and to conduct a 100% free and fair examination?”

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