The validity of the vintage observation that a picture is worth a thousand words was not only proved right, but amplified to a million when a photograph of dozens of parents, friends and relatives scaling the walls of a four-storey building in Manhar village (Vaishali district), 60 km from Patna, to pass notes and chits to children writing the class X exam of the Bihar State Education Examination Board (BSEB), went viral on the social media on March 18.

The photograph — telling proof of brazen unchecked cheating at all levels of education which is de rigueur in India’s most backward state (per capita income: Rs.30,930 per year, literacy: 63.82 percent) — not only hit the headlines in India’s print and broadcast media, but in foreign media, including the New York Times and The Economist.

Initially, Bihar’s education minister P.K. Shahi, expressed the state government’s helplessness in preventing the uninterrupted and continuous cheating and malpractice which is an open secret of Bihar’s education system. “There are around 1,200 exam centres in Bihar where 1.4 million students are appearing for the matriculation examination. It’s not humanly possible to ensure that copying is stopped within examination halls,” said Shahi, addressing the media in Patna on March 19.

But after the cheating photograph taken in Manhar village went global on the social media, and taking suo motu cognisance of media reports, a division bench of the Patna high court sharply reprimanded the state government for turning a blind eye to exam malpractices in the state, the Janata Dal (U) government belatedly swung into action expelling 113 students and arresting over 161 parents, friends and relatives for aiding and abetting their wards to cheat in the recently concluded school board exams.

“Use of unfair means in examination centres cannot be tolerated. I have instructed the education minister, director-general of police and the principal education and home ministry secretaries to take strict action,” said chief minister Nitish Kumar, addressing a media conference in Patna on March 20.

With successive governments in India’s socio-economically most backward and lawless state having tacitly or explicitly thrown in the towel on the issue of rampant cheating and malpractices in education — media reports at the time of writing (March 30) indicate that over 1,000 people were arrested for impersonation in a police constables recruitment examination held in Patna on March 28-29 — it’s hardly surprising that learning outcomes and education standards in this agriculture-dependent state (pop. 99.02 million) are rock-bottom.

According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2014 published earlier this year, only 44 percent of independently-tested class V children in Bihar’s rural primaries can read class II textbooks as against the national average of 53 percent, and only 14 percent of children in the age group 5-16 can solve a 2-digit by 2-digit subtraction sum with carryover — the lowest percentage nationwide. Unsurprisingly, Bihar is ranked #34 in the Education Development Index (2013-14) of the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, Delhi, above only Uttar Pradesh.

Comments The Economist in a report on the latest BSEB scandal titled ‘Wall of shame’ (March 28): “The pictures from Bihar will encourage employers (globally) to be more skeptical about Indian qualifications”. A mild observation about the education system of a nation with global superpower aspirations.

Arun Srivastav (Patna)