Why should we select tomorrow's engineers primarily through Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics — and tomorrow's doctors primarily through Physics, Chemistry and Biology? It may be time to ask what abilities these professions actually require.
Part I — Rethinking What We Test
For decades, India has largely followed a simple formula for selecting its future engineers and doctors. Want to become an engineer? Master Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. Want to become a doctor? Master Physics, Chemistry and Biology. The formula appears logical because these are the subjects students study in Classes XI and XII.
But there is a question we rarely ask: are we testing what students have studied — or whether they possess the abilities required for the profession they want to enter? Those are not necessarily the same thing.
As India debates reforming its examination system after repeated controversies surrounding high-stakes entrance examinations, reform must go beyond security, logistics and preventing paper leaks. We must also examine the architecture of the examinations themselves.
JEE: Are We Selecting Future Engineers — or Excellent PCM Test-Takers?
Engineering in 2026 is radically different from engineering several decades ago. Today's engineer increasingly works with algorithms, artificial intelligence, data, simulation, automation, optimisation, computational modelling, systems thinking, coding, logical reasoning and complex problem-solving.
Yet entry into India's premier engineering institutions continues to be overwhelmingly determined through Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. JEE Advanced 2026, for example, continues to prescribe the same PCM framework.
Mathematics is unquestionably fundamental. Physics is essential to large areas of engineering. Chemistry too has enormous relevance to chemical engineering, materials science, biotechnology and environmental engineering. The question is not whether Chemistry is important — it is whether it should retain the same entrance-examination dominance for every aspiring engineer when computational thinking has become fundamental to modern engineering.
Consider a student aspiring to study Computer Science, AI, Robotics or Data Science. We test that student extensively on inorganic and organic chemistry before admission — but we rarely test whether the student can decompose an unfamiliar problem, recognise a pattern, construct an algorithm, interpret data, reason logically, optimise a solution, or think computationally. That is an increasingly difficult mismatch to justify.
Interestingly, our school system has already begun recognising this shift. CBSE's Computer Science curriculum identifies development of computational thinking as an explicit learning outcome, and Computational Thinking and AI are increasingly integrated into school education. If computational thinking is important enough to teach children, shouldn't it eventually be important enough to test when selecting India's future engineers?
My Proposal: JEE 2.0
Instead of treating PCM as untouchable, India should examine a redesigned engineering entrance framework — one that retains Mathematics and Physics strongly, restructures part of Chemistry, and introduces a new Engineering Aptitude & Computational Thinking component.
| Component | Weight | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Mathematics | 30% | Mathematical reasoning, modelling, quantitative ability and application. |
| Physics | 25% | Conceptual understanding and engineering-oriented application, not unnecessarily complicated calculation. |
| Chemistry | 20% | Core concepts relevant across engineering, materials, energy, environment and technology. |
| Computational Thinking & Engineering Aptitude | 25% | Algorithms, pattern recognition, decomposition, data interpretation, logical reasoning, optimisation, spatial reasoning, systems thinking, elementary computational logic. |
This does not mean JEE should become a programming examination. A student should not lose an IIT seat simply because he or she never studied Python in school. Computational thinking is bigger than coding — a student can demonstrate algorithmic thinking, abstraction, sequencing and optimisation without writing a single line of code. That distinction is critical.
And Then Comes NEET
The case for reconsidering NEET may be even stronger. NEET-UG 2026 once again generated enormous controversy, including an examination-security crisis and subsequent re-examination — and when the re-examination was conducted, student and faculty feedback reported Physics as the toughest section.
Physics is undoubtedly important for medicine — a doctor should understand pressure, fluids, optics, electricity, waves, radiation, mechanics, medical imaging and instrumentation. Nobody should advocate removing scientific foundations from medical education. But should an aspiring doctor solve increasingly complicated Physics problems simply because difficult numerical questions help separate ranks? Difficulty is not the same thing as relevance. An examination can be extremely difficult and still test the wrong abilities.
What Are We Actually Looking For in a Future Doctor?
Society expects more from a doctor than scientific knowledge alone — clinical reasoning, observation, judgement, empathy, ethical decision-making, communication, the ability to interpret incomplete information, psychological understanding, and decision-making under uncertainty.
Ironically, India's own medical education framework already recognises many of these qualities. The National Medical Commission's undergraduate framework includes Attitude, Ethics and Communication (AETCOM) alongside competency-based medical education. So we have a contradiction: after students enter medical college, we tell them attitude, ethics and communication matter. Before they enter, we select them almost entirely through PCB marks. Why shouldn't the entrance examination begin measuring some of the abilities medical education itself considers important?
A Global Reference Point: The UCAT Model
This idea is not as radical as it may sound. The UK's UCAT, used by many medical and dental schools, assesses Verbal Reasoning, Decision Making, Quantitative Reasoning and Situational Judgement — the last of which evaluates a candidate's capacity to understand real-world situations, identify important factors, and judge appropriate behaviour. India does not need to copy UCAT, but it should learn from the principle behind it: medicine requires more than the ability to remember Biology and solve difficult Physics numericals.
My Proposal: NEET 2.0
A national expert committee should examine whether NEET should gradually move toward a structure such as:
| Component | Weight | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Biology & Biological Competency | 50% | Less 'which line appeared on which page of NCERT'; more patient-based situations, biological interpretation, experimental reasoning, graphs, clinical scenarios, cause-and-effect and competency-based problems. |
| Chemistry | 20% | Retain the scientific foundations genuinely useful for medicine and biological sciences. |
| Physics | 15% | Focus on medically and biologically relevant Physics rather than using extremely difficult numericals merely as a rank separator. |
| Medical Aptitude, Reasoning & Behavioural Understanding | 15% | Logical reasoning, decision-making, ethical judgement, psychological understanding, interpretation of information, prioritisation, situational judgement, patient-centred thinking. |
The exact percentages are debatable. The principle should not be.
Can Psychology Really Be Tested in an MCQ Examination?
This is where reform must be careful. A 20-question psychology section cannot determine whether a 17-year-old will become a compassionate doctor. Personality can be coached, situational questions can be gamed, and cultural or linguistic differences can create bias.
This is why a simplistic 'personality test' should not decide medical admission. Instead, India could introduce validated situational-judgement, reasoning and behavioural-science questions carrying limited weightage, study the results for three years, compare them against subsequent performance in medical college, and increase their importance only if the evidence supports doing so. Reform should itself be evidence-based.
We Must Stop Using Difficulty as a Substitute for Selection Quality
There is a problem common to both JEE and NEET. When lakhs of candidates compete for limited seats, examiners naturally need questions capable of differentiating between students. The easiest solution is often simply to make the questions harder.
But suppose Physics is made extraordinarily difficult. We may successfully separate Rank 500 from Rank 5,000 — but what exactly have we separated them on? The capacity to solve exceptionally difficult Physics under severe time pressure, or the capacity to become the better doctor? Those are different questions. A good entrance examination should maximise discrimination on relevant abilities — not merely maximise difficulty.
From Knowledge Testing to Competency Testing
This reform would be consistent with the direction India's education policy has already taken. The Ministry of Education's work on competency-based assessment explicitly discusses moving away from rote memorisation and theoretical knowledge toward problem-solving and flexible assessment. Yet our most consequential entrance examinations remain heavily dependent on a traditional subject-content model.
Our education policy says: understand, apply, analyse and solve. Our entrance culture often tells students: master the syllabus, master previous-year questions, master examination patterns and maximise your score. Entrance examinations ultimately shape classroom behaviour — change the examination, and preparation will change with it.
Keep Coaching Industry Gusssing
Today's coaching ecosystem is extraordinarily efficient at reverse-engineering examinations. Give the industry a fixed syllabus and a predictable question architecture, and within a few years enormous question databases emerge — every reaction, every exception, every previous-year variation, every probable numerical model. Students spend two or three years learning to recognise examination patterns rather than to think and this will make coaching industry also guessing and make it difficult for coaching centers to guess the paper.
A greater proportion of unfamiliar competency questions, data interpretation, reasoning and novel problem-solving could shift the advantage from 'have you seen this type of question before?' toward 'can you think through a problem you have never seen before?' That should be a fundamental objective of a national entrance examination.
Could JEE and NEET Eventually Become Adaptive Examinations?
India should at least study Computerised Adaptive Testing, where candidates do not receive an identical sequence of questions — the examination estimates ability progressively and adjusts difficulty accordingly. Research on adaptive testing shows its potential for efficient ability measurement, though it requires large calibrated question banks, psychometric validation, item-security safeguards and fairness controls.
For an ecosystem as large as India's, this cannot happen overnight, but pilot studies should begin. A future JEE or NEET could use massive encrypted item banks, algorithmic paper generation, calibrated question difficulty, multiple examination windows, adaptive question pathways, statistical equating across sessions, and AI-assisted anomaly detection. This would simultaneously improve assessment quality and make theft of 'the question paper' far less valuable, because there would no longer be one universal paper waiting to be leaked. Technology cannot eliminate corruption, but examination architecture can make it considerably harder.
Part II — Why NTA Failed Students and the Examination System
Redesigning what JEE and NEET test is only half the reform. NEET 2026 also exposed how badly the delivery of the examination itself can fail — and that failure was not one incident but a chain of weak links, each of which had to hold for the system to be trustworthy, and each of which gave way.
A Systemic Diagnosis: The Chain That Broke
1. Paper-Setters — The First and Most Vulnerable Link
The very officials entrusted with setting question papers turned out to be the weakest point in the chain. With no independent oversight at the point of creation, a leak at this stage compromised the exam before a single student ever entered a centre.
2. Support Staff — Typists and Printers With No Vetting
The people typing, formatting, translating and printing the papers were contractual hands with no background verification and no accountability. A question paper passed through dozens of untracked hands before it ever reached a sealed envelope.
3. Transportation That Betrayed Its Own Sensitivity
Question papers — meant to move under the tightest security — were shockingly casual in transit. In 2024, a rickshaw was reportedly used to transport examination material, exposing how little the sanctity of the paper mattered once it left the printing press.
4. Centre Superintendents Who Became the Leak
Trust broke down at the very centres meant to enforce it. In 2024, the Hazaribagh centre superintendent was caught facilitating a leak — proof that even the final custodians of the paper could not be relied upon.
5. Centre Allotment That Enabled, Not Prevented, Cheating
Examination centres in locations like Godhra and Belgavi have a documented history of organised cheating. Allotting centres without factoring in this history meant NTA was, in effect, choosing venues where malpractice had a track record of going unchecked.
6. Biometric Officials Who Looked the Other Way
The officials responsible for biometric verification — the last checkpoint before a student sits for the exam — allowed impersonators to write papers on behalf of candidates, turning a technological safeguard into a formality.
7. OMR Sheets Left Unsecured for Hours
Answer sheets were reportedly left lying in the open for nearly five hours after the exam concluded, before being collected and secured — a window wide enough for tampering that no 'robust system' should ever have allowed.
8. Scamsters Monetising Student Data
Data collected at the time of form-filling — names, contact details, application records — found its way to scamsters, who then approached students directly, offering to inflate their scores for a price.
9. No Statutory Discipline, No Real Verification
Contractual staff, no statutory banking discipline, no independent audits, no transparent tendering, and no genuine background checks — the system's foundation was built for convenience, not integrity.
10. Checks and Balances That Existed Only on Paper
CCTV and internal monitoring were meant to deter exactly this kind of breach. In practice, paper-setters found ways around them — a safeguard nobody actively enforces is not a safeguard at all.
11. Leadership Without Academic or Ground-Level Expertise
At no stage did NTA have academic experts at the top — people who understood examinations from the ground up — to design and implement a genuinely fool-proof system. Officials were drawn from unrelated departments, and oversight became procedural rather than real.
12. Reform Recommendations Left on the Shelf
Of the 101 recommendations submitted by the Radhakrishnan Committee after the 2024 crisis, 27 reportedly remain unimplemented — including the very first: reducing NTA's dependence on contractual staff in favour of a permanent, domain-specific workforce.
13. Capability That Collapsed Under Scale
NTA could manage online exams at moderate scale. But when volume met complexity — nearly 24 lakh NEET-UG candidates across 5,400 centres, or CUET's sprawling subject variety — the 'robust, tamper-proof' system it repeatedly promised was the first thing to give way. Mistake followed mistake, without evidence that the system was learning from any of them.
Part III — From Diagnosis to Design: Structural Reforms for NTA
Each of the thirteen failure points above is not just a lapse — it is a design gap. A trustworthy examination system has to close each gap deliberately, not with another circular or a fresh set of CCTV cameras, but with structural change. The table below maps each failure to the reform it demands.
| NTA Failure Point | Structural Reform |
|---|---|
| Paper-setters as the first point of compromise | Move paper-setting to an independent, statutorily protected body separate from the exam-conducting agency; enforce a two-person integrity rule so no single individual ever has access to a complete paper; use large calibrated item banks rather than one fixed paper per session. |
| Unvetted, contractual printing and support staff | Mandatory police verification and background checks for every printing and formatting role; rotating small crews so no one team assembles a full paper; legally binding non-disclosure bonds carrying criminal, not just administrative, liability. |
| Casual, insecure transportation | GPS-tracked, tamper-evident containers with digital chain-of-custody logging at every handover; secure government transport only, monitored from a live control room — never ad hoc local arrangements. |
| Centre superintendents facilitating leaks | Algorithmic, last-minute assignment of superintendents so they do not know their centre in advance; rotation across districts; independent central observers stationed at every centre with power to report directly to an oversight authority, not to NTA itself. |
| Centre allotment ignoring malpractice history | Data-driven, risk-scored centre allocation that flags or excludes locations with a documented history of malpractice (e.g. Godhra, Belgavi); permanent debarment for repeat-offender centres; independent monitoring weighted toward high-risk centres. |
| Biometric checks reduced to a formality | Independent, third-party biometric verification rather than centre-controlled staff; Digi Yatra-style facial recognition with liveness detection linked to Aadhaar, verified centrally in real time rather than manually at the centre. |
| OMR sheets left unsecured after the exam | On-site digital scanning and sealing the moment the exam ends, eliminating any handling window; tamper-evident, numbered sealed bags with continuous chain-of-custody tracking until sheets reach the processing centre. |
| Candidate data monetised by scamsters | Encryption and strict access-logging on the candidate database; data minimisation at the point of form-filling; criminal penalties for data leaks; firewalling of application data from any party without a defined, audited need to access it. |
| No statutory discipline in staffing or procurement | Convert exam-conducting roles into permanent, domain-specific statutory positions rather than annual contracts; transparent, competitive public tendering for printing, transport and IT vendors, with independent financial audits. |
| Oversight that exists only on paper | An independent audit and integrity authority — structurally separate from NTA — with the power to inspect, penalise and publish findings, including to Parliament; real, escalating penalties for non-compliance rather than internal warnings. |
| Leadership without academic or security expertise | Reconstitute NTA's leadership to include psychometricians, educators and cybersecurity professionals; create a permanent Examination Commissioner role requiring both academic and security-domain expertise, not a generalist administrative posting. |
| Committee recommendations left unimplemented | A statutory, court- or Parliament-monitored implementation tracker for every Radhakrishnan Committee recommendation, with a public dashboard of status; on-site paper printing under lockdown at each centre a few hours before the exam, removing the transport risk altogether; Digi Yatra-grade biometric technology deployed nationally. |
| Capability collapsing under scale | Phased, independently audited capacity-building before onboarding new examinations under NTA's remit; movement toward Computerised Adaptive Testing with multiple windows and encrypted item banks, so no single leaked paper can compromise an entire cohort. |
Additional Structural Recommendations
Beyond closing the thirteen specific gaps above, a small number of further, more fundamental reforms would materially raise the integrity floor of the entire system:
- Separate the referee from the player: examination conduct and examination oversight should never sit within the same organisation. NTA investigating its own failures is a structural conflict of interest, not merely an optics problem.
- Whistleblower protection and reward: staff and centre officials who report malpractice internally should have statutory legal protection and a meaningful incentive to come forward, rather than facing career risk for doing so.
- Standing forensic analytics, not crisis-triggered ones: statistical anomaly detection — score clustering, response-time irregularities, item-response pattern analysis — should run as a routine part of every exam cycle, not only after a scandal forces an investigation.
- Visible, consistent legal deterrence: prosecutions under the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 need to be fast-tracked and publicised. A strong law that is inconsistently enforced deters no one.
- Real-time public transparency: a live, public dashboard on exam day — flagging any centre-level anomalies as they are detected — would do more to rebuild trust with students and parents than a post-facto press release weeks later.
- Independent capacity certification before scale-up: before any new examination is added to NTA's portfolio, an independent body should certify that NTA has the verified infrastructure and staffing to run it securel.
- Conduct neet twice, reduce number of attempts and restrict age limit.
- CBT mode should not be adopted till we have 15 lakh computer seats across India and normalisation would be unfair on the part of students.
- Offline mode should be followed for 2027 with lockdown of typists and paper setters( 4 for each subject), printing paper on day of the exam at the exam centers and biometric must be done using Digi Yatra technology as these three are the root cause of paper leak.
NEET 2026 Has Given India an Opportunity
The controversies surrounding NEET should not result only in another round of stronger locks, more CCTV cameras, biometric checks and tighter question-paper transportation. Those reforms are necessary — but they answer only one question: how do we protect the examination? India should simultaneously ask another: what should the examination actually be testing? Both conversations are equally important, because an examination can be conducted with perfect security and still select candidates using an outdated model.
The Question India Must Ask
For JEE: are we selecting students who are excellent at PCM — or students who possess the strongest potential to become engineers?
For NEET: are we selecting students who are excellent at PCB — or students who possess the strongest potential to become doctors?
There will obviously be substantial overlap. But the two are not identical. The entrance examination of the future should combine knowledge, application, reasoning and profession-relevant aptitude — for engineering: Mathematics, Physics, essential Chemistry, Computational Thinking and Engineering Aptitude; for medicine: Biology, essential Chemistry, relevant Physics, Clinical Reasoning, Situational Judgement and Behavioural Understanding. Over time, carefully validated technology can make these examinations more adaptive, secure and competency-driven — and a system that is structurally redesigned, not just more heavily policed, can finally be trusted to deliver them fairly.
Don't make JEE easier. Make it more relevant.
Don't make NEET easier. Make it more relevant.
India does not need less rigorous entrance examinations. It needs better-targeted, more trustworthy rigorous examinations — because the purpose of JEE is not to discover who became the best JEE candidate, and the purpose of NEET is not to discover who became the best NEET candidate. Their purpose is to identify the people with the greatest potential to become outstanding engineers and outstanding doctors. Perhaps the next great examination reform should begin with one simple principle: test students for the future they are entering — and build a system worthy of the trust they place in it — not merely for the textbooks they are leaving behind, or the last scandal that made headlines.
