Corruption exists in so much of public life in India that most of the time 'we' the citizens simply resign ourselves to it and try to make the best of a rotten system. However, there are times when the system is made so hollow and rotten by endemic corruption that people mobilize against it. The currently ongoing protests against the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) scam and the alleged leak of the Combined Graduate Level (CGL) exam paper seems to be one such instance.
The SSC exams are held for the recruitment to Group C posts in Ministries/Departments of the central government and elsewhere. Students from all over the country are alleging that the Combined Graduate Level (CGL) exam papers have been leaked and that students who pay bribes are benefitting by scamming the system. Job aspirants have been protesting outside the office of the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) in Delhi since 27th February 2018; many eating and sleeping at the spot.
According to the protesting aspirants, the questions and the answers of the quantitative paper were uploaded to a Facebook page called SSCTube just before the actual exam on 21 February. Following this, the exam was rescheduled for 9th March.
The protest involves thousands of aspirants who feel cheated and who feel that given the endemic corruption of the system, there is no longer a level playing field for those seeking government jobs. The protests have spread to other locations such as MP and Bihar, with a Rail Roko agitation disrupting train movements in Bihar.
Protestors are alleging that this is a huge scam in terms of scale and the number of people involved. The charge is that the government is either unwilling to deal with it or is denying the magnitude of the scam.
The students are demanding that the CBS should investigate the issue; particularly the nexus between the exam service provider and the SSC. The matter is now before the Supreme Court, and CJI Dipak Mishra will hear the matter on 12 March.
According to the Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, the government has complied with the demand for the CBI probe so the protests should now end. However several days into the protests, the agitation is still ongoing even a week later.
The demand is not limited to a CBI inquiry; they want the inquiry to be conducted in a time bound manner. The protestors also want a stay on the conduct of exams pending the inquiry and also want checking of labs and a time bound selection process.
The claim of “world class” examination centers is clearly a laughably inaccurate one. These and other shortcomings of the system have also been highlighted by the ongoing protests against this scam. So clearly there is much that is wrong with the system, and protestors are not shy about highlighting all the ills.
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