At the heart of the current controversy over holding the NEET and JEE examinations is the matter of the direction education will take at a time when a pandemic is raging across the globe. With schools and colleges shut for over five months the issue is not just about these two examinations, but also about when students can return to their classrooms. Most parents are not willing to send their wards back to school/college when coronavirus cases are multiplying by the day. And they are justified in being worried, as in Delhi at least, the school going age of 5 to 17 years has been found to be the most vulnerable to the infection. In such a scenario, online education seems to be working rather well, in spite of criticism about its somewhat limited reach and the inability of the poorer sections to have access to the digital platform. But there is a bigger problem that is not being addressed—that of school fees. The complaint coming from schools is that many parents are refusing to pay the fees even though their wards are attending regular online classes. While parents are saying that since their children are not attending school the fees should be waived off. The casualty in this case are the teachers, who are putting in as many hours as they would do on any working day but are now paying a price through salary cuts and job losses. In a country such as India, where very few schools follow the Central government institutes in paying their employees Seventh Pay Commission salaries, teaching anyway is not a high-paying job; and this pandemic has aggravated an already bad situation. As a society, until and unless there is greater realisation of our responsibilities and duties, the fight against the pandemic will not be easy. There has to be cooperation, a middle ground where schools and parents can meet, as else too many people are falling by the wayside, which is not acceptable, especially when the future of this country’s children is at stake.
As for the kerfuffle over holding the NEET and JEE, the matter has got politicised, with the Opposition trying to make common cause out of it in their bid to pin down the government. They know very well that the government does not have much option on it. It is, to repeat a cliché, caught between a rock and a hard place. Opinions are vertically divided on the matter. The choice is between students risking personal safety to sit for their examination, and sitting out and appearing for the examination next year, thus losing one year. There is enough support on both sides of the divide in this particular case, which has emboldened the Opposition to try and play to the gallery. If the government backtracks now and decides to postpone the examinations, the Opposition will go to town calling it their victory. And if the government goes ahead with the examinations and a single student falls ill, it will be international news. There is of course the option of delaying the examinations by two-three months more, but then there is no guarantee that the situation will improve by that time. This is not an easy decision to make and hence there has to be discussion and consensus on the matter, with the states working in tandem with the Centre. This will serve as a template for other examinations to be conducted in these hard times. To start with, politicization of the matter should cease. Also, unilateral and arbitrary decisions such as Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ordering all schools and colleges shut till 20 September, are best avoided. Such decisions deprive students of their examination centres, in case the NEET and JEE are held in early September. Both sides of the divide need to remember that amidst this confusion it is the student community that is suffering the most.