High-pressure national exams draw intense public and political scrutiny. | Photo Credit: BALACHANDAR L

India is emulating China’s stringent playbook ahead of the national medical exam retest as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government seeks to rebuild trust after a paper leak imperiled the future of more than two million students.

The government restricted the use of messaging platform Telegram until June 22, according to a statement by the National Testing Agency Tuesday. That followed the decision to deploy the Indian Air Force for the first time ever to transport question papers and put individuals setting papers under strict surveillance with restricted access to phones and communications, Bloomberg News reported earlier.

The extraordinary precautions mirror China’s approach to secure the Gaokao, the examination for admission to its top institutions. Authorities deploy police escorts for exam material, maintain vigil outside examination centres and impose sweeping controls on the flow of information. Question papers are transported and stored under armed guard, while teachers preparing tests are isolated from the outside world for weeks. Last year, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd, temporarily blocked certain artificial-intelligence tools to prevent students from using chatbots during the test.

“Factories paused. Roads quieted. The entire nation rallied for its students,” Yu Jing, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in India, posted on X on June 10, drawing attention to the Gaokao taken by 13 million students this year even as Indian authorities dealt with the fallout of the leak.

Ensuring the sanctity of these papers is crucial for India and China as they oversee some of the world’s largest and toughest examination systems. For millions of young people, demanding tests for a limited number of seats in elite institutions offer a pathway to socioeconomic success.

“In both countries, the pressure is immense. Education is the main way, if not the only way, to upward social mobility,” said Gilles Verniers, a researcher at the Paris-based Center for International Studies. “But China has an edge because it has invested so massively in educating the populations generally, which is not something that India has done.”

High-pressure national exams draw intense public and political scrutiny. In India, the paper leak scandal and a separate controversy over online grading exposed by three teens evoked protests from the opposition parties and spawned a youth movement. The Cockroach Janta Party, which started out as an online joke, has since organised street demonstrations demanding accountability and the education minister’s resignation.

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Published on June 17, 2026