For nearly a decade, the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) has been presented as India’s answer to corruption in medical admissions, a uniform examination that ostensibly ensures merit, transparency and equal opportunity. Its proponents argue that a single national examination eliminates irregularities, creates a level playing field, and ensures that only the most deserving students enter medical colleges. However, beneath this rhetoric of uniformity lies a different reality.
For thousands of students from rural areas, government schools, marginalised socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and linguistic minorities, NEET has become less an instrument of merit than a mechanism of exclusion. Rather than reducing inequality, the examination has institutionalised it by privileging those with access to expensive coaching, English-medium education and urban educational infrastructure.
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