Futures, it would seem, are not being traded on the bourses alone. The recovery of question papers from touts hours before the Common Admission Test (CAT) was to commence on Sunday morning has cast a shadow on recruitment to top educational institutions. The Indian Institutes of Management are not just the country’s premier business schools. Along with the IITs, they are symbols of world-class training and scholarship. Lakhs of students devote slabs of their high school and undergraduate lives to preparing themselves for entry to these centres of excellence. The multi-tiered entrance procedures may be a tough tumble through the wringer, but no one has ever complained that it is unfair or inequitable. For, the underlying criterion for admission has been that great leveller, merit. It is this confidence in centres of higher learning like the IIMs, in the trust that it is ability alone that qualifies an aspirant for admission, that is now on the line.Entrance examinations are much more than simple assessments of intelligence quotients and classroom learning. The manner in which a candidate is quizzed and sized up gives proof of the institution’s priorities and ethics. Certainly, it is no one’s case that the IIMs are responsible for the leak this weekend. However, the speed and focus with which they now set about, first, rescheduling the examination and, then, re-assessing the weak security links in delivering copies of the test to more than 20 centres on the appointed day, will be closely watched. This will, of course, afford them a chance to restore faith among candidates that the entire procedure is fair and accountable. It would also give the IIMs a chance to reaffirm their elite status, to establish that they do indeed uphold the highest standards.But it’s not the IIMs alone that must examine their question paper delivery chain. Preliminary investigations indicate that the same gang caught selling papers to CAT candidates could have been offering medical and bank examination papers as well. Establishing the reach and geographical spread of these touts is critical in identifying the weak links in the examination machinery. Else, brilliant futures will be widely construed as saleable commodities.
