Researched by: Sara Varghese & Prafula Grace Busi

What’s happening in Tamil Nadu?

The legislature passed a bill exempting the state—and its students—from taking the NEET exam. The bill went to the governor—who sat on it for 140 days and then sent it right back to the legislature. His argument: The state has no legal right to ban the test. The result: For the very first time in its history, the TN Assembly re-adopted the exact same draft of a bill without amendments. All parties voted in favour except the BJP—which staged a walkout. 

What Tamil Nadu wants: Students’ admissions should be determined by their performance in board exams–as they are with other kinds of educational institutions.

What happens next: The bill will go to the governor who is now required to forward it to the President. He can’t reject it a second time. But the President has rejected a previous version of this bill in 2017. So he may do so again. The issue will then become a constitutional question. The reason: Education falls in the concurrent list—and powers are shared by both the state and union government.

Remind me about NEET…

The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test is a common entrance exam for admission into all medical and dental colleges across India. Students are placed in different institutions based on their rankings. First proposed in 2010, it has had a troubled history:

• In 2013, the Medical Council of India introduced NEET. 
• It aimed to replace the All India Pre Medical Test (AIPMT) and state level entrance tests with a single national entrance exam. 
• But a number of state petitions challenged the move—and the Supreme Court held that NEET deprived State-run institutions of their right to admit students according to their own criteria—and declared it unconstitutional.
• In 2016, the Supreme Court did a big U-turn and recalled its previous judgement. And NEET staged a comeback
• In 2020, the government also abolished the separate entrance exams for AIIMS and JIPMER.

Meanwhile, in Tamil Nadu: Most other states have surrendered to the NEET requirement, but Tamil Nadu has remained defiant: 

• In 2017, the state government passed an ordinance that would exempt the state—which was soundly rejected by the Supreme Court, which said, “You can't compromise on intellect." 
• The government also tried to reserve 85% of the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) and Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) seats for state board students—which was squashed by the Madras High Court.
• In 2020, after the President rejected the previous bill exempting TN from NEET, the then AIADMK government introduced a more modest 7.5% reservation for government school students—which remains in place.
• But even since MK Stalin came to power, banning NEET has become a top priority. Hence, the faceoff in the making today.

Isn’t a common exam a good thing?

On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with a common exam. NEET was introduced to achieve several laudable goals:

• Make merit the sole criteria for admission.
• Establish a minimum academic standard in critical professions—which is surely essential for future doctors and dentists.
• Eliminate corruption in medical colleges which favoured wealthy students with middling grades—but who could afford their exorbitant capitation fees—that were often north of Rs 50 lakh. 
• Remove the pressure on students to take multiple entrance exams.

So what’s the problem?

Here are the various objections raised at various times over the years—and they remain unchanged.

One: NEET is based on the CBSE curriculum—and puts kids who study in state board schools at a huge disadvantage. Example: Arivalur Anitha who studied in a Tamil-medium school and got top marks in the 12th board exams. But she failed her NEET exam—and was among many children who committed suicide for the same reason. The argument, therefore, is that you can’t have a common exam without first establishing a common syllabus.

Two: While NEET is conducted in 11 languages, the tests are riddled with translation errors. The 2018 exam in Tamil had errors in 49 questions—which can determine whether a student passes or fails.

Three: The move to a single hyper-competitive entrance exam only makes the ‘Kota problem’ much worse. This refers to powerful coaching institutes for NEET and JEE (engineering entrance exam) located in places like Kota, Rajasthan. As The Wire notes:

“The economics of NEET coaching classes is staggering, with the cost to a student in Kota, for example, amounting to at least Rs 5 lakh for higher secondary education and entrance coaching classes… the increasing number of [repeat takers of] the entrance examination system also decreases the possibility of first-time aspirants clearing the examination.”

Data point to note: The percentage of students gaining medical college admission from repeat attempts at NEET rose from 12.47% in 2016-17 to 71.42% in 2020-21. Taking multiple shots at the exam requires ample resources.

Four: NEET also disadvantages students from rural areas—according to the Rajan committee which was set up by the TN government to study NEET’s impact. Before NEET was introduced in Tamil Nadu, 62.8% of students in medical colleges hailed from rural areas. This number had dwindled to 48% by 2018-19. It also found a substantial reduction in the percentage of first-generation learners, those with household income below Rs 2.5 lakhs.

Point to note: The introduction of a common entrance exam for IIT has had a similar impact. As of 2015, only 2.86 % of the students who were admitted into the institutes were from poor/rural, uneducated families. Another point to note: IIT-JEE affects only the admission of 3% of the total engineering graduates.

Five: Finally, there is the argument of federalism. As we mentioned earlier, education falls in the concurrent list in the Constitution. In the case of NEET, a centrally administered test will determine admission into government medical colleges—which are funded by state governments. 

The bottomline: A common entrance test is not a magic wand that will solve the very real problems of corruption and privilege that infect our educational system. Nor is blind opposition—and insistence on the status quo—an answer to these woes. The problem is that no one on either side has the will or interest to tackle the real problem: The vast disparity in the quality of education afforded to Indians based on their caste, class and language.

Reading list

Indian Express has a good explainer on the Tamil Nadu bill. New Indian Express lays out the reasons why the governor rejected the bill—and the Rajan committee’s findings. NDTV offers a history of the NEET. The News Minute explains why it thinks NEET is a terrible idea in this explainer and this analysis by Salem Dharanidharan. The Print looks back at all the other states who have rejected NEET in the past—including Gujarat under CM Modi. The Wire looks at medical entrance exams around the world.