Pradhan Has Become The Face Of A System Without Credibility

By K Raveendran

Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan has finally resigned, owning responsibility for the NEET fiasco. There could not have been another honourable exit for the minister and the Modi government from the current situation.

There is no persuasive basis for portraying the demand for Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation as a campaign driven by personal hostility. Neither Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke nor the young protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar have placed a private grievance against the minister at the centre of their mobilisation. Their case was political and institutional: Pradhan headed a ministry under whose watch the credibility of national examinations has suffered a severe breakdown, and they want responsibility fixed at the top.

That distinction matters. Governments frequently respond to uncomfortable movements by questioning the motives, affiliations or personalities of those leading them. Such tactics can distract attention for a while, but they cannot answer the central charge that candidates preparing for life-defining examinations have repeatedly encountered leaks, cancellations, irregularities and administrative uncertainty. The protesters were not merely demanding the punishment of brokers, officials or criminal intermediaries. They were challenging a governing culture in which responsibility appears to travel downwards while authority remains protected at the top.

The agitation turned Pradhan into more than an individual minister. He has become the public face of an examination machinery that millions of young Indians no longer consider trustworthy. His resignation was being demanded not because every leak can be directly traced to his office, but because ministerial responsibility has meaning only when political authority carries consequences for systemic failure.

The government’s response has tacitly acknowledged the seriousness of the crisis. Officials have been removed, recruitment practices within the testing establishment are being reconsidered, stronger measures against paper leaks have been promised and fast-track judicial mechanisms have been offered. Negotiations with protest representatives have continued, while the Centre sought more time on the demand involving Pradhan. These were not the actions of an administration confronting a marginal demonstration. They were signs of a government attempting to contain an issue that has moved beyond examination management into the realm of political legitimacy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention also reflected that pressure. His appeal to students and assurances of accountability came only after the agitation had expanded, the Jantar Mantar confrontation had intensified and images of police action had circulated widely. The delay weakened the impact of his message. By the time the prime minister spoke, the dispute was no longer only about one leaked paper. It had become an accumulation of anger over competitive examinations, shrinking employment opportunities, years of preparation lost to administrative failures and the belief that ordinary candidates bear the cost while powerful institutions escape scrutiny.

This is where the agitation collided directly with the government’s larger political vocabulary. Modi has consistently presented India’s youthful population as a demographic dividend and the principal force behind Viksit Bharat. Yet a demographic dividend is not created by slogans, population size or motivational speeches. It depends on credible education, fair recruitment, expanding employment and confidence that merit will not be defeated by money, manipulation or access to leaked material.

The protesters were effectively telling the government that this social contract is breaking down. A candidate who studies for years and then sees an examination cancelled does not experience India’s youth advantage as an opportunity. A family that spends its savings on coaching only to encounter allegations of compromised papers does not see institutional reform as an abstract administrative question. For them, the failure is immediate, financial and often devastating.

The movement’s organic expansion is particularly significant. It did not begin with the organisational machinery of a major opposition party. Its language, symbols and mobilisation emerged largely from young people themselves, with opposition leaders joining only after the agitation had established its own momentum. That made it harder for the government to dismiss the protests as a conventional partisan exercise. Even where political parties attempt to appropriate the anger, they did not manufacture the conditions that produced it.

Police restrictions, detentions, surveillance and disruptions to communications may control the geography of protest, but they cannot restore confidence in examinations. On the contrary, excessive force risks transforming a demand for administrative accountability into a wider argument about democratic responsiveness. Each attempt to treat frustrated candidates as a law-and-order challenge strengthens the protesters’ contention that the government is more concerned with suppressing embarrassment than correcting failure.

The demand for Pradhan’s resignation had consequently acquired symbolic importance. Removing him would not repair the examination system by itself. It would not compensate every affected student, eliminate organised cheating networks or guarantee flawless tests. But it would establish that political accountability is not an obsolete convention and that ministerial office is not insulated from the consequences of prolonged institutional malfunction.

The argument that a resignation would amount to conceding guilt misunderstands democratic responsibility. Ministers need not be personally involved in wrongdoing to accept responsibility for failures within their jurisdiction. Resignation can be an acknowledgement that public confidence has been damaged beyond the point at which the same leadership can credibly supervise reform.

Jantar Mantar has exposed the distance between celebrating young Indians in speeches and listening to them when they demand consequences. Pradhan’s continuation in office communicated a message more powerful than any promise of reform: that a minister may preside over a system facing a profound credibility crisis and still consider resignation unnecessary. (IPA Service)