‘Everyone must stay vigilant’

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Corruption in education manifests itself in many forms, such as admission fraud, examination fraud, forged degrees etc. It demonstrates a failure of transparency in the functioning of education departments.

The need of the hour is to initiate political reforms to establish transparent regulatory systems. Simultaneously, there should be tough enforcement of punishment to deter unethical behaviour. India should have zero-tolerance policies against fraud practices. Public education campaigns and stiff penalties for corruption can deter incidents that put students at risk.

A conflict of interest needs to be highlighted here. The mushrooming of private institutions, created in many cases by politicians, means that there is not much hope for an honest investigation by our political leaders.

Therefore, parents need to be more vigilant while seeking admission to schools. They should ask for affiliations and the same needs to be cross-checked on respective Board websites. Instead of depending on the brokers and touts, parents should go with the counselling procedure. Likewise, before planning to study overseas, check for the list of fake universities across the globe and determine to go by a straightforward, honest method only.

(The writer is an educationist based in Bengaluru)