Prime minister Narendra Modi’s native state Gujarat, which he served as chief minister for three consecutive terms before he led the Bharatiya Janata Party to an epic victory in General Election 2014, has become the first state countrywide to install an e-surveillance system which has the potential to curb mass cheating in secondary and higher secondary school examinations.

“In October 2013, the number of students caught cheating in the class X and XII examinations was 1,700. Of them, 745 were found guilty and punished as were 350 invigilators who failed in their invigilation duties. But this year after wide publicity was given to installation of an e-surveillance system by the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) prior to the board’s exams in October 2014, the number of students indulging in malpractices plunged to a mere 31 of the 125,000 who wrote the class X and XII examinations,” says R.R. Varsani, chairman of GSHSEB with evident satisfaction.

Following the success of the GSHSEB initiative, several state governments have expressed interest in the system after Varsani made a presentation at a closed door meeting of the Council of Boards of School Education (COBSE) held in Ahmedabad on November 6-8, attended by 80 delegates from state education boards countrywide. “Though the topic of discussion at the meeting was self-evaluation by schools, the success of our e-surveillance project had three states showing great interest in replicating the initiative,” says Varsani.

With cheating, copying and sundry examination malpractices growing apace across the country — especially in the Hindi heartland BIMARU states (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) which host 37 percent of India’s population — the excitement generated by the GSHSEB’s e-surveillance initiative is unsurprising. Moreover, the fact that the board’s initiative is well conceptualised with great attention to detail, has enhanced its attraction.

Using a combination of 38 CCTVs and 1,213 tablets, a total of 24,260 students in 12 districts writing the class XII examinations were covered on an experimental basis in October 2013. This was scaled up to 340 CCTVs and 1,300 tablets covering 60,000 students in 83 examination centres in March this year. In October, the cover has been extended to encompass 141,180 students in 21 districts through 5,357 CCTVs and 1,891 tablets.

GSHSEB’s e-surveillance initiative — has also resulted in cost-savings for the board and the state government. Hitherto, 400 flying squads in over 100 vehicles were obliged to make surprise visits to exam centres to check for malpractices in which invigilators are often complicit, entailing an annual expenditure of Rs.3 crore. This expenditure has been reduced because now only one supervisor accompanied by CCTV experts is obliged to review CCTV footage at selected centres, and ensure it’s being downloaded correctly.

However inevitably, there’s a downside to this socially beneficial  new technologies-driven initiative. According to Kaushal Desai, principal of the Ahmedabad-based Karmachari Shikshaa Tirth School, a centre for class X and XII board examinations, school managements are obliged to tape all exams, scrutinise the tapes, transfer them to CDs (compact discs) and send them to GSHSEB’s designated zonal centres with full particulars of students and invigilators in every exam centre. “Any laxity in discharging this duty could result in a big problem if a complaint of malpractice is received by the board,” says Desai.

But given that cheating and examination malpractices are assuming epidemic proportions countrywide with the potential to wholly devalue the country’s beleaguered education system, the administrative inconvenience fallout of Gujarat’s e-surveillance system seems a small price to pay.

No pain, no gain.

R.K. Misra (Gandhinagar)