Students in Jharkhand have been agitating statewide for more than three weeks against corruption in the recruitment exams conducted for government posts. They have good reason. The recruitment system administered by the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) and Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC) is steeped in corruption, the signs of which are many and recurrent: Question paper leaks, systematic cheating by burgeoning coaching centres and touts, and rigged merit lists happen with unerring regularity. At the centre of the current agitation is a private testing agency, Lucknow-based TSR Data Processing Private Limited, which was awarded major examination contracts despite being blacklisted for irregularities.
A coalition of job aspirants and student organisations has emerged to project the frustration felt by job aspirants. Its leader Devendra Nath Mahto and several others have been on an indefinite hunger strike since late July. Their demands include cancellation of the contaminated 14th JPSC Preliminary Examination, an independent CBI inquiry, and formal accountability within the recruitment boards. The coalition government in the State, led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), has kept up a dialogue with the agitators, ordered an investigation by its Crime Investigation Department (CID), and made 19 arrests linked to the exam leaks.
Additionally, it offered to have the Enforcement Directorate probe financial irregularities in the JPSC-JSSC system and institute a committee of experts from the Indian School of Mines Dhanbad, IIM Ranchi, and XLRI Jamshedpur to suggest systemic reforms. Further, three members of the JPSC have resigned. But the agitators are holding out for a CBI probe, which the government says it cannot recommend due to existing High Court and Supreme Court mandates.
The parallels between this agitation and the NEET paper leak agitation in New Delhi last month are obvious. But so is the divergence between the Jharkhand government’s dialogue-driven response and the BJP-led Union government’s utter intransigence in the face of nationwide demands to sack education minister Dharmendra Pradhan to establish the principle of accountability. In New Delhi, the Centre’s police and paramilitary agencies, aided by plainclothes irregulars of uncertain provenance, unleashed brute force against peaceful agitators, not hesitating to use pellet guns, the horror and details of which are still emerging.
That brutality is being followed up with doxxing of women who took part in the protests and intimidation of agitators’ families. Further, the Union government is leaning on social media platforms to block content posted by protesters. While it’s true that the Jharkhand police did use force to stop a march on the Assembly in Ranchi on Monday (August 10), the scale of the use of repressive power by the State and the Centre is simply not comparable.
A more useful response, by all states and the Centre regardless of ideology and affiliation, would be to cease use of all coercive and repressive tactics against youth agitations and seek the counsel of scholars who have done empathetic work on young cohorts. For this to happen, they need to first open their ears to the policy talent available to them rather than to digital marketers, social media influencers, and image management wizards. Only then will government leaders realise the true dimensions of the challenge before them. It’s not something that can be solved by tweaking an exam here and there or impressing youngsters with recollections of ‘campus life’ circa 1968.