India's Examination System: Social Mobility, Inequality, and Governance Failures

India's public examination system rests on a constitutionally shared foundation. Education is a Concurrent List subject under the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. Both Parliament and state legislatures may legislate on it. This design has historically produced coordination gaps and diffuse accountability. Article 21A, inserted by the 86th Constitutional Amendment, 2002, guarantees every child aged six to fourteen the right to free and compulsory education. This was operationalised through the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. No equivalent fundamental right exists at the competitive-examination level. However, Article 16 guarantees equality of opportunity in matters of public employment. This guarantee is rendered hollow when the examination process itself is compromised.

The National Testing Agency (NTA), established under the Ministry of Education, was created to centralise and professionalise high-stakes examinations. These include NEET-UG (medical admissions), JEE Main (engineering admissions), and UGC-NET (university faculty eligibility). Its mandate was to reduce fragmentation and improve standardisation. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 sought to shift toward competency-based learning. Implementation has remained uneven, leaving the high-stakes single-examination model largely intact. Before a dedicated central statute existed, examination offences were prosecuted under general provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and state-level anti-cheating laws. The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 was enacted to fill this gap.