Can India legislate trust into public examinations?

This article is authored by Shreyasi Singh, founding managing partner, Jetri.

Every time a public examination is cancelled because of a paper leak, the immediate costs are obvious. Millions of students must prepare again. Governments scramble to reschedule examinations. Investigations begin, accountability is demanded, and public attention turns to identifying those responsible.

Exam (Shutterstock)

The greater cost is harder to see and slower to unfold. It is trust.

Public examinations remain among the few institutions that millions of Indians believe can change the course of their lives. Whether it is recruitment into government services, admission to universities or professional licensing, these examinations represent a simple social contract: work hard, compete fairly and merit will determine the outcome.

When that promise is repeatedly broken, the damage extends well beyond a single examination. It begins to erode confidence in the institutions that govern opportunity itself.

It is against this backdrop that Parliament has proposed amendments to the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act. The amendments rightly seek to strengthen accountability.

Stronger penalties, broader definitions of unfair practices and sharper investigative powers are intended to deter organised malpractice and restore confidence in public examinations. The prescribed prison term increases from three to five years to five to ten years. The maximum fine rises from ₹10 lakh to ₹50 lakh. For organised examination crime, the minimum fine rises from ₹1 crore to ₹10 crore. Service providers face fines of up to ₹5 crore and debarment for eight years instead of four. Investigations must conclude within two months and trials within three months of the chargesheet, through Special Fast-Track Courts designated by every state and Union Territory.

What they do not yet do is focus equally on prevention. They also invite a larger institutional question: can stronger penalties, by themselves, rebuild public confidence?

Laws are indispensable. They define offences, assign accountability, and create consequences. They make cheating more expensive and organised fraud more risky. No serious examination system can function without a robust legal framework.

We often think of trust as a moral quality. It is also something institutions earn. It is built through governance, process, transparency, and continuous improvement. Good laws matter. They cannot compensate for weak institutions.

Around the world, the most trusted examination systems rely on specialised institutions rather than legislation alone. Singapore's Examinations and Assessment Board does far more than administer examinations: It develops assessments, conducts research and continually strengthens examination design. In England, Ofqual oversees qualifications while independent awarding bodies are held to rigorous standards of quality, security and transparency. Organisations such as the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in the US have spent decades investing in psychometrics, identity verification, test security and fraud detection.

What distinguishes these organisations is not that they never make mistakes. It is that their primary job is to learn from them. They investigate failures, redesign processes, strengthen security and adapt continuously as new technologies and new forms of organised cheating emerge.

India now faces the same challenge. Artificial intelligence is making impersonation and document fraud more sophisticated. Digital networks allow leaks to spread within minutes. Millions of candidates now sit public examinations on a scale unmatched almost anywhere in the world. Yet who is responsible not merely for conducting examinations, but for making the examination system stronger year after year? These are questions that legislation alone cannot answer.

India itself offers an instructive example. The Union Public Service Commission has conducted some of the country's most consequential examinations for nearly a century. It is not immune to criticism or litigation, yet few would argue that its credibility rests primarily on criminal penalties. Instead, it rests on decades of institutional legitimacy: established processes, operational discipline, confidentiality, and the public belief that examinations are administered independently and fairly.

No examination system will be flawless forever. What earns public confidence is the ability to recognise weaknesses quickly, fix them and keep improving before the next failure occurs.

The proposed amendments deserve support. They recognise that examination integrity requires serious legal protection. But they should be seen as the beginning of the conversation, not the end of it. The world's strongest examination systems do three things well: They deter malpractice, detect vulnerabilities early and learn continuously from failure. These amendments strengthen the first. India's next challenge is to build the institutional capability needed for the other two.

Lasting trust will depend not only on how firmly we punish those who cheat, but on how systematically we improve the system they seek to undermine.

(The views expressed are personal)

This article is authored by Shreyasi Singh, founding managing partner, Jetri.