No one expected the Mayawati Government to come up with useful executive action, so its decision to reinvoke Kalyan Singh's Anti-Copying Act comes as a pleasant surprise. The recent spate of copying incidents, involving institutions of the highest stature, indicates that other States ought to think in terms of similar legislation. The latest scandal, at Roorkee, is over admissions to a campus that numbers Dr Rajendra Prasad among its alumni. Even the Indian Institutes of Technology, which produce some of the most creative workers in industry and science, have been hit by a similar scam. In Andhra Pradesh, the Minister for Higher Education had to tender his resignation after the intermediate question papers became publicly available. In Delhi, a former waiter was found masquerading as an invigilator and selling answer papers right in the hall for a paltry Rs 100. And of course Bihar has been in the game long enough to have an organised `education mafia', with none other than Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav, who has more colleges named after him than even Mahatma Gandhi, for its godfather.

The Indian education system is leaking like a sieve. Worse, it is out of touch with the real world. Today's education criminals have taken a leaf out of the book of their betters in Tihar Jail they run their operations with cellphones and pagers. They xerox and return question papers to prevent detection, then leak them across the country with fax machines. Yet school and college authorities continue to believe that their question papers will remain confidential if only the seal on the package is intact. Clearly, it is time for changes in the way students are evaluated, if the education system itself is not to lose all credibility. Enactments like the UP Act and the recent Andhra Pradesh ordinance can help curb malpractice, but they cannot entirely stop it. A few basic changes in the system of examinations, however, would make malpractice irrelevant.

In the past, the stress was on basic skills and information levels. Today, these are redundant. Thanks to the cheap calculator, no one has to be able to add and subtract with infallible accuracy. No one has to carry a database in his head either, because information is freely available. Yet students are not allowed to use calculators. Paradoxically, they are given access to mathematical tables and slide rule again, technology that is redundant.

Instead, they ought to be encouraged to use calculators and computers effectively, to give them an edge in the job market. At the same time, learning by rote needs to be discouraged. How much information students carry in their heads is not a decisive factor, unless they plan to be quizmasters. What they can do with information, however, is of crucial importance. Analytical skills, not databasing abilities, are the real test. So students should be allowed to consult textbooks and question papers should focus on the interpretation and manipulation of information. Finally, the examination format could be changed from the one-time affair it is now to a process of testing over a period of time. Regular seminars, for instance, would be an effective alternative. Provided there are enough such events, the law of averages would ensure that the process is unfair to none, and the education criminal will have no place in the examination system.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.