The broken promise of education as an equaliser

We have long called education the great equaliser. The idea is simple: no matter what socio-economic class you are born into, the classroom gives you a fair shot. Study hard, pass the exam, and the ladder will hold your weight.

This year, students on two continents tested that ladder and found rungs missing. Their anger is the clearest evidence we have that the equaliser has stopped equalising.

In India, a generation that adopted the cockroach as its mascot after a judge used the word as an insult spent the summer on the streets of New Delhi. In July, they forced the education minister to resign. In France, teenagers barricaded their lycées with bins and refused to go in, and within weeks more than a thousand schools were caught up in the protests. Neither group was protesting against education. Both were protesting because it had broken its promise to them.

India: the exam that lied

It began on May 15 when, during a court hearing, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant compared unemployed young people who turn to activism and social media to “cockroaches”. He later said he meant people with fake degrees, not Indian youth in general. By then the word had stuck.

The next day, Abhijeet Dipke, a communications graduate, launched the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) online as a parody of the ruling BJP. Within days it had millions of followers. The joke landed because the grievance underneath it was real.

The grievance was news of leaks in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), India’s main entrance exam for admission to medical colleges across the country. NEET is not a minor test. For a family without money or connections, it is often the only door into medicine. Over 2 million candidates sat for the exam only to learn a few days later that it was cancelled after allegations that the questions had been leaked. This was later confirmed by a government inquiry. More than 20 students who sat the exam died by suicide after news of the leak broke.

Also read: Indian police detain ‘cockroach’ movement leaders demanding election chief’s resignation

Think about what a leaked paper means. A student from a small town spends two years in coaching, often on borrowed money, because the exam is supposed to be the one place where her background does not count. Then she learns that the paper leaked before she sat it. The exam was the equaliser. Someone broke it.

The CJP turned that betrayal into a single demand: Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan must go. After weeks at Jantar Mantar, a hunger strike and a police crackdown on a march to Parliament, he resigned on July 25. The government then set up a task force on exam reform and tabled tougher penalties for paper leaks.

The man who found himself at the front of the movement matters too. Dipke comes from a Mahar Dalit family in Maharashtra, a community historically treated as “untouchable” under the caste system, for whom education has always been the only way up. He climbed that ladder all the way to Boston University, then came home to lead a street movement simply to make an exam honest.

France: the classroom that failed

France’s version began in a single school. In mid-September, students at the Lycée Antoine-de-Saint-Exupéry in Créteil, a Paris suburb, walked out over missing teachers and run-down buildings.

Their complaints were not abstract. A 15-year-old in nearby Pantin told Reuters that classes held 35 pupils and there were not enough chairs. Others described timetables stuffed beyond reason and buildings that cannot cope with rising summer heat.

Also read: French school protests resume on smaller scale as students return from break

Then there is Parcoursup, the algorithmic platform that allocates university places. For many students it feels like a black box that decides their future without explaining itself. France built a system meant to replace privilege with neutral rules. Its students now experience those rules as a lottery.

The walkout spread fast. By October 1, France’s Interior Ministry counted 1,027 lycées affected and 222 blockaded. On October 13, unions said 480,000 people joined a day of protest, and the main student union said around 90% of universities were blockaded or closed.

This is the republic that made free, secular schooling a founding promise. Its teenagers are now saying that the promise exists on paper and not in their classrooms.

The ladder with missing rungs

The two movements look different. India’s was organised around a parody party and one resignation. France’s was leaderless, spread school by school, and turned violent in places. But the core complaint is the same.

Both systems run on a bargain. The state promises a fair contest. The student promises effort. In India, the contest was rigged by a leak. In France, it was hollowed out by neglect, with too few teachers, too many pupils and an algorithm nobody trusts.

When that bargain breaks, the students hurt most are the ones who had nothing else to rely on. The rich can buy tutors, private schools or a place abroad. The Dalit student in Maharashtra and the lycéen in Créteil cannot. For them, the public exam and the public school were the whole ladder.

That is why these protests are not ingratitude. They are a demand that the system honour its own claim. Students are not rejecting the idea of education as an equaliser. They are the last people who still believe in it, and they are insisting it be made true.

For decades education has been seen as something that works on its own: build the schools, set the exams, and fairness will follow. This year showed otherwise. The students had read the rules carefully enough to see that the system had stopped working for them.

That is the uncomfortable lesson in Delhi and Créteil. Education did, however, give these young people something. It gave them the language to name what was wrong and the confidence to say it publicly. What it could not do was make a leaked exam honest or put a teacher in front of a class of 35. That took students willing to leave the classroom and demand it.

Education can still be the great equaliser, but only if someone holds it to its promise. In India and France this year, the students did. The question is what happens in places where they have been asking more quietly, and for longer.

Closer to home

Pakistan does not need to look to Delhi or Créteil to see this. It has its own version, and it arrives every September.

The MDCAT, the entrance test for medical and dental colleges, is meant to be our equaliser. For a student in Larkana or Karak, it is the one exam where a father’s connections are not supposed to count. This year, over 100,000 candidates sat the exam.

Over the years the exam has repeatedly faced concerns over paper leaks. In 2023 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 219 candidates were caught cheating with hidden Bluetooth devices, and the test was cancelled and retaken.

Also read: ‘PMDC will not be responsible for paper leaks’: Minister directs universities to ensure transparency in MDCAT

In Sindh, an inquiry confirmed the paper had leaked. The province held a retest in November, and 114 students then went to court alleging that the retest had leaked too, with claims of the paper being sold for Rs1.1 million the night before the retake.

In 2024, a probe committee told the Sindh High Court that around 75% of the questions had leaked before the exam began. The court ordered a retake. FIA investigators questioned about a hundred top scorers, and several said they had received a similar paper on WhatsApp the day before.

The year 2025 was met with more allegations and more denials.

This year, the testing service declared a viral paper fake before the exam. After results came out, complaints about candidates from Karachi led the federal health minister to order a PMDC inquiry on October 3.

The pattern repeats. Students petition. Courts order retakes. Committees are formed. Students sit the exam again weeks later, their admissions delayed. A Pakistani student preparing for the MDCAT now also has to prepare for the chance that it will not count.

Pakistani students have spent four Septembers asking courts to make the exam fair. What happens to the idea of education as an equaliser on the day they stop asking?

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