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The Audio Long Read

From the archive: The mystery of India’s deadly exam scam

The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

Society & Culture

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2022

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We are raiding the Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2015: It began with a test-fixing scandal so massive that it led to 2,000 arrests, including top politicians, academics and doctors. Then suspects started turning up dead. What is the truth behind India’s Vyapam scam?. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is the Guardian.

0:30.9

I was drawn to the piece when I started reading news reports of this investigation into

0:38.1

allegedly widespread rigging in a major government examination, which isn't always news in India,

0:46.8

but what was new was the fact that lots of people who were suspects in the scandal were

0:52.8

mysteriously dying. And on the one hand, some people said this was a clear conspiracy. The

1:01.3

government insisted it was a series of coincidences that had been stitched together,

1:06.2

and that's what really drew me into the piece. The questions of death and the questions of

1:12.6

this kind of conspiracy remain very unique. I think the underlying factors that the piece

1:18.1

explores around the dynamics of public school or other public service examinations in India remains

1:26.4

very relevant. If anything, India's economic crisis has only exacerbated many of the factors

1:35.4

that led us to the situation that is explored in the piece. One way to enter this piece is to

1:43.6

consider the fact that India has no functional labor laws, that Indians work longer hours than

1:52.7

workers in almost any other country in the world except for maybe China and some countries in

1:57.5

Southeast Asia. And the fact that wage inequality in India is intense and extreme. So the only

2:07.1

job that actually provides a modicum of security, reasonably good wages and reasonably good work hours

2:16.7

is a job in a government service. And obviously with the retreat of the state, government jobs in

2:24.1

India as elsewhere in the world are becoming fewer and fewer. What this means is the government now

2:29.2

has these intensely competitive examinations. And the story looks at one particular organization

2:37.0

in a state in central India, which is in charge of administering these examinations. And it

2:45.4

explores how corruption in this organization had over a period of time wide ranging and well

2:53.6

fatal effects on a group of or rather a cohort of young people just desperate to secure their

3:00.3

future. What I like you to take away from this pieces to consider a question that I think all of us

...

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