That the alleged “topper” in this year&’s Intermediate examination in Bihar believes that Political Science deals with cooking – as exposed during the retest to confirm her merit – is but a symptom of a deeper malaise that plagues education in a problem state. Just as fish rots from the head, so too is the canker deep-seated if the arrest of the former chairman of the Bihar State Education Board, his wife, son and a host of relatives is any indication. As a report in this newspaper has exposed, the entire family is alleged to be engaged in the “business of cheating and fraud”.

That fraudulence has been institutionalized in the education board; students are in cahoots with the board to sustain the fiddle. This is the core of the issue; the fact that eyebrows have been raised over the spurious toppers is a feeble response to an ugly truth. That truth has exposed the sinister, almost criminal, underbelly of education in Bihar when governments both at the Centre and in the States are chewing over education reforms.

The scandal leaves no scope for tinkering; nothing short of a stern response from the administration in Patna will do. If the conduct of public exams at the threshold has been entrusted to a board that is a cesspool of corruption, it becomes direly imperative for the state&’s education department to change the affiliating authority. Prima facie, it appears that the fraud was remarkably calibrated by the family of the BSEB&’s former chairman Rs abrupt change in examination centres, the award of fake certificates, printing contracts for the question papers, manipulated evaluation, and the grant of affiliation to as many as 250 colleges with scant regard for the rules of engagement. It was a fair amount of money Rs crores of rupees according to a modest estimate Rs that was in circulation during the exam season.

The principal of a college in Vaishali, now in jail custody, has confessed that he had to shell out crores of rupees to the BSEB&’s ex-chairman to slot the toppers in the Class 12 exam and to make sure that students of the college were awarded first class marks.

There is little doubt that genuine candidates were reduced to pawns on a chequerboard. Bihar&’s education department and the police have reduced the rankings to a form of merchandise that can be bought and sold. It would be a gross understatement to suggest that the examination system has been denuded; not to put too fine a point on it, it has been criminalized in a phased manner.

The certificates and the marksheets mean nothing; even the printing has been fictitious. Altogether, the credibility of education is at stake. More than generic reforms, it is the Bihar State Education Board that needs a dramatic revamp.