NEET’s switch from pen-and-paper to computer: damned if you do, damned if you don’t

**Rachel Varghese** (0:01)
This year, more than 2 million students wrote the NEET, all of them competing for roughly 1,20,000 available medical seats. Now, this medical entrance exam is the largest test in the country. And naturally, the stakes are pretty high. And so is the security. DPS tracked vehicles, transport question papers to exam centers that are monitored through AI-assisted cameras. There are even 5G jammers that block electronic communication at the centers. Even the frisking is thorough. For example, on May 3rd, the exam day, security personnel noted that some students were wearing shirts with too many buttons and then flicked them off one by one with razor blades. Other students who had tracksuit pockets saw those pocket zippers get cut out with pen knives. But all of that meant very little. Because the real breach had already happened days before. Ten days after the exam, the National Testing Agency or the NTA, which conducts the NEET, announced that the paper had leaked. Students would have to sit for the exam again. This was the second NEET leak in two years. You see, the NTA runs India's biggest national exams, like the NEET, JEE, CAT and UGCNET. The agency was created about a decade ago, specifically to prevent such leaks, and now it was under fire again.
Then, on 21st May, even as outrage over the canceled exam continued, a parliamentary standing committee met NTA officials to revisit some recommendations that were made after the 2020-4 NEET controversy. The panel, which was headed by K Radhakrishnan, a former ISRO chairman, had identified a structural weakness at the heart of India's examination system. The NTA had become too dependent on outsourced vendors and were lacking the institutional capacity to securely conduct exams at this scale.
And that warning suddenly looks far more urgent right now. Because just days after canceling this year's NEET, the Education Ministry announced that from 2027 the exam would move online. Now, computer-based testing is an area where veteran players such as TCS ION have long-standing relationships with the NTA in conducting various other examinations. An NTA official said that while TCS ION, Eduquity and NSEIT are the NTA partners, the agency is currently focusing on the rescheduled exam. The decision on who the partner for the next NEET will be will only be taken after this.
And all of this is happening in a country where passing a competitive exam is the only path out of tough livelihoods for millions. And the NEET has become a lightning rod for both the students and the state's anger. So, the government's logic to fix this seems pretty straightforward. No paper means no paper leak. But it's not like online exams are foolproof. And even NTA's own computer-based exams have faced destructions before. Which is why even within the official circles, there are conflicting opinions on what the right way to conduct the test is.
Welcome to Daybreak, this is Podcast from The Ken. I'm your host Rachel Varghese and every day of the week, my co-host Snigdha Sharma and I will bring you one new story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 8th of June.
Private tech companies do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to running India's exams. Their services range from providing the software, deploying technical staff at centers, and even processing results. And there's serious money involved in this space. Between FY19 and FY24, the NTA has collected over 3,500 crore rupees in application fees and spent more than 3,000 crore rupees on conducting exams. But it's not all good news for companies like TCS ION. It is an arm of the data consultancy services and the biggest player in the space. Venkateswamy Ramaswamy, who was the global head of TCS ION at the time, said in 2020 that ION held around 85 percent of the market running exams like the JEE main, CAT, GATE and UGC net. He claimed that exam services made up nearly 70 percent of its revenue that year.
Now, the shift to online testing could benefit these vendors in the short term. But the Radhakrishnan Commission, the panel that reviewed the NTA after the 2024 NEET controversy had already flagged a problem. That the NTA's heavy reliance on outside vendors is a structural weakness. The panel recommended that the NTA phase out its dependence on private test delivery agencies and build in-house software and hardware instead. It also suggested using central school chains like K.Indriya and Navodaya Vidyalaya to develop the required digital infrastructure for computer-based testing. The report even noted that there is a strong case for the transition from pen and paper to computer-based testing. It is a direction that does seem viable right now, and that's because the NTA handles so many high-stakes exams. But the path to the solution still remains a little unclear. Stay tuned.