India just banned Telegram for an entire week to stop students from cheating on one exam.
22 lakh students. One test. 51,000 signal jammers. 1.38 lakh CCTV cameras. 7 lakh officials deployed nationwide. The Air Force, multiple federal ministries, and four national banks all involved in running a single entrance exam.
This is NEET-UG, the only way into undergraduate medical school in India. 2.4 million people compete for roughly 100,000 seats. The original exam in May was cancelled after the question paper leaked before anyone sat down to take it.
The re-exam was today.
The pressure behind this: getting a government medical seat in India is one of the few paths to a stable upper-middle-class life that doesn't require capital or connections. Families plan for it for years. Some students attempt it four or five times. The cheating syndicates exist because the expected value of buying a leaked paper is enormous relative to the cost of getting caught.
So the government banned Telegram. Turned off message editing to prevent people from backdating "leaked" screenshots. Deployed jammers across 5,440 exam centers in 551 cities. Put a standby ambulance outside at least one exam room.
The security apparatus required to run a fair version of this exam is larger than most countries' military operations.
That's the cost of a system where one exam controls everything.
IANS (@ians_india)
Bengaluru, Karnataka: Students are seen crying after arriving late at the NEET examination centre
Video
— https://nitter.net/ians_india/status/2068615764358336521#m