99% People are Idiots on NEET Leak 2026
The outrage over the recent NEET paper leak is understandable. More than two million students spend years preparing for one examination, and when the integrity of that examination is compromised, anger is inevitable. What I find astonishing, however, is not the anger itself. It is the selective nature of that anger.
Suddenly, social media is flooded with criticism of the Education Minister, the government, examination authorities, and the Indian education system. People are acting as if the NEET leak is the great revelation that exposed a broken system. As if the system was functioning perfectly until a question paper found its way into the wrong hands. That is precisely where I disagree.
The NEET leak is not the disease. It is merely a symptom. A visible crack in a structure that has been collapsing for decades.
The real question is not why the paper leaked. The real question is why nearly 22 lakh students are fighting for roughly 50,000 medical seats in the first place. Before discussing corruption, malpractice, or administrative failures, one must ask a more fundamental question: what kind of society creates such a bottleneck and then acts surprised when the pressure explodes?
Every year, students are told that their entire future depends upon a few hours in an examination hall. Every year, families spend fortunes on coaching institutes. Every year, students sacrifice hobbies, friendships, sleep, curiosity, and sometimes even their mental health, and I don’t know why this is celebrated. I mean, the childhood is supposed to be enjoyed, Education is supposed to be enjoyed. But this bartardly born Indian society full of motherfukers, romanticise this. They romanticise breaking friendships and family. Yet somehow the public conversation only begins when a paper gets leaked.
Where were these self-proclaimed defenders of students when reports repeatedly showed alarming levels of student stress, depression, and suicide? Every hour one student do a suicide due to academic pressure. Where were they when students were collapsing under impossible academic expectations?
Where were they when educational institutions were responding to suicide concerns not by addressing the causes of despair but by sealing hostel fans? Think about the absurdity of that solution. Instead of fixing the conditions producing hopelessness, the response becomes making suicide more difficult. The institution protects itself while the underlying problem remains untouched. And these are not obscure institutions operating in forgotten corners of the country. Some of the nation’s most prestigious educational establishments have adopted such measures like IISCs. If this is how elite institutions think, what should one expect from the rest of the system?
The truth is uncomfortable.
Most Indians do not care about educational problems until those problems directly affect them. The average citizen does not wake up one morning concerned about academic pressure, institutional failure, or intellectual decline. Concern emerges only when consequences become visible. A leaked examination. A shocking news report. A viral social media trend. A scandal too large to ignore.
Then suddenly everyone becomes an expert.
Then suddenly everyone discovers their concern for students.
Then suddenly everyone wants accountability.
But genuine concern would require asking deeper questions.
Why does a child spend eight hours in school, then attend coaching classes, then tuition classes, then YouTube lectures, then mentorship sessions, then test series, and still emerge from the process hating education?
How is it possible that after investing so much time, money, effort, and institutional energy, we have created generations of students who view learning as punishment?
The answer is simple. Because the system does not teach education. It teaches survival.
Students are not taught to explore knowledge. They are trained to navigate examinations.
They are not encouraged to understand. They are conditioned to memorize.
They are not inspired to think. They are rewarded for conformity.
As a result, students do not aspire to become doctors, engineers, scientists, or administrators. They aspire to clear NEET, JEE, UPSC, and other examinations. A society that produces future doctors should cultivate curiosity about medicine, biology, health, and scientific discovery. Instead, it produces students obsessed with rank lists, cutoffs, and percentile calculations.
Many students choose biology not because they are fascinated by the human body but because they dislike mathematics. Many choose engineering not because they love technology but because engineering appears to offer a respectable career path. The dream itself is often manufactured long before the student has the maturity to question it. Parents, society, coaching institutes and the entire ecosystem manufactures it. And coaching institutes have every incentive to keep that machine running.
Fear is profitable.
The fear of failure.
The fear of unemployment
The fear of missing IIT.
The fear of missing AIIMS.
The fear of falling behind in the definition of society.
An entire industry has emerged around convincing students that one examination determines the worth of their existence. Meanwhile, information about alternative pathways, emerging careers, vocational excellence, entrepreneurship, and global educational opportunities remains buried beneath the noise. And this is not accidental. Because,
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Scarcity creates dependence.
Dependence creates markets.
Markets create incentives.
And incentives ensure that the cycle continues.
The government’s role in this cannot be ignored either. A country with India’s population cannot continue operating with such limited access to quality higher education while pretending that competitive examinations alone are the solution. The shortage of high-quality institutions with reasonable returns on investment creates artificial desperation. When opportunities are scarce, examinations become battlegrounds. When battlegrounds become overcrowded, corruption becomes inevitable. That does not excuse paper leaks. It explains why they keep happening.
People today are angry because NEET was compromised. Fine. But I have a simple question.
Will this anger remain after the headlines disappear?
Will people continue questioning the system when the next examination cycle begins?
Will they challenge the culture that equates marks with human value?
Will they question the obsession with prestige degrees?
Will they challenge parents who force ambitions onto their children?
Will they challenge coaching industries that profit from insecurity?
Will they challenge educational institutions that produce obedient test-takers rather than educated citizens?
Or will the outrage simply dissolve until the next scandal arrives?
I already know the answer.
Because this is how public outrage functions in India. It erupts dramatically, trends briefly, and disappears conveniently and the students remain trapped inside a machine designed not to educate them but to sort them.
So no, I do not see the NEET leak as the central issue. I see it as a mirror. A mirror reflecting a society that mistakes examinations for education, credentials for competence, and compliance for intelligence. And until that mirror is confronted honestly, every leak, every scandal, every controversy will be treated as an isolated incident rather than evidence of a deeper structural failure.
The question is not whether the system failed.
The question is whether the system was ever designed to achieve what we keep claiming it exists to achieve.
And dear Indian students, I am also 18, please do not let your kids to even know what this JEE, NEET etc. You guys either go to abroad or send your kids to study abroad, otherwise this whole society will eat them to pursue shitty competetive exams.
Author’s Note
As a 18-year-old, I acknowledge the limits of my current knowledge. There are many crucial issues I have yet to explore, and many more I wish to address but haven’t been able to, yet. This article is not an exhaustive manifesto, but a starting point. My upcoming writings will dive deeper into both major and overlooked subtopics that demand serious national attention.
Stay tuned.
📘 You can explore my book “The Education Hoax” https://www.amazon.in/Education-Hoax-Vidyansh-Chauhan-ebook/dp/B0F28796CY#:~:text=%22The%20Education%20Hoax%22%20is%20a,a%20sharp%20and%20insightful%20perspective
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