Test of fortitude

A new, countrywide college entrance test has Class 12 students across India on edge

- SNEHA BHURA

At the Pariksha Pe Charcha held in Delhi on April 1, Prime Minister Narendra Modi fielded an interesting question from Hari Om Mishra, a Class 12 student of Cambridge School in Noida. Mishra said he had his concerns regarding the Common University Entrance Test (CUET), which has been made mandatory for admission to all central universities in India. “What should we focus on,” he asked the prime minister, “board exams or CUET?”

Modi, who had earlier encouraged students to think of exams as a “festival”, responded by invoking the image of a khiladi (athlete) who must compete at various levels—from the tehsil and the district to the national and the international arena. Competition, he said, was one of life’s greatest gifts. “What is life without it? We should welcome competition in our lives,” he said to a round of applause.

The words, however, are unlikely to assuage Ujjala Bhattacharya’s anxieties regarding CUET. A Class 12 commerce student at Delhi Public School in Noida, Bhattacharya has been attending CUET coaching classes thrice a week. This is in addition to the regular tuition in maths, commerce and economics—her “domain subjects”, in CUET parlance—that she attends every day. She tops her rigorous routine with late-night, self-study sessions to prepare for board and pre-board exams. “My life would have been easier if I didn’t have to prepare for CUET as well,” said Bhattacharya.