There is no justification for the alleged actions of officials under the National Testing Agency (NTA) at an examination centre in Kollam, Kerala. On Thursday, according to an FIR filed by a parent, several young women were forced to remove their innerwear by officials as they sought to appear for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for admissions to MBBS and BDS programmes. The current episode is not the first such instance: In 2017, “overzealous” teachers at a Kerala school were suspended for asking a girl to remove her innerwear before entering a NEET exam centre.
To humiliate students for an article of clothing — or, as the “rules” would have it, “any ornaments/ metallic items” — is unconscionable and symptomatic of a deep suspicion of aspirants on the part of the NTA. How can an earring, or a hook on an item of clothing lead to cheating? And exactly how many candidates smugged cheat sheets in these wires? Yet, the NTA’s list of prohibited items — which includes shoes, jewellery and all metallic objects — only empowers the person on the ground to police the bodies of aspirants. Bureaucratic “rules” too must aspire to common sense. As a governance reform in the healthcare and education sector, the NEET has much to recommend it. Like the Joint Entrance Exam for engineering, the NEET has the potential to ensure uniformity in admission standards across states and objectivity and transparency in candidate selection. What is common here is an assumption of guilt — of “cheating” — and the impunity arising from the vaguely-worded rules used to humiliate students.
