India's medical entrance exam was meant to clean up admissions. Instead, it appears to have institutionalised corruption and pushed talent away from public service.

For the third time in recent years, the NEET examination has been marred by a paper leak — a phrase that has become, with grim predictability, a seasonal feature of India’s medical admissions calendar. The hopes of 22 lakh students are once again temporarily dashed. They go home, not relieved of a burden but still high-strung, facing a repeat examination and all the uncertainty that lies beyond it. Young men and women who have spent years in relentless preparation — after-school coaching, sleepless nights, the full weight of family expectation — have met their first roadblock before their journey even began. The frustration on their faces, visible in images circulating on social media, is not the frustration of a single bad morning. It is the accumulated anguish of years.

The paper leak raises questions that ought to disturb us deeply. In an era of digital encryption, blockchain-secured communication, and multi-layered cybersecurity protocols, how does a national examination of this magnitude remain so porous? The answer points, regrettably, toward structural corruption. Well-organised networks — often traceable to the commercial interests of large coaching institutions anxious to demonstrate the success rates of their students — appear to have cultivated contacts within the examination ecosystem itself: Those involved in question setting, collation, or distribution. It must also be said that NEET has provided an unintended but powerful impetus to the mushrooming of coaching centres across the country, several of them operating in conditions of overcrowding, unrelenting stress, and performance pressure that exceed reasonable human limits, driving a distressing number of aspirants toward depression, and some to suicide.