Bowing the lid on the biggest racket of all times. Cheating and the ingenious ways that seem to be doing the rounds. Caution : This is not an article that gives you ideas on the art of cheating but merely attempts to give you a behind the scenes on the modus operandi!

Yashovardhan was sweating profusely. Looking at his watch didn't help, only brought him closer to his doom. Fresh out of the school in the eleventh standard, he opted for the only course available to hi troubled  mind. The classroom was a typical during class-time-scenario. Students hunched over desks, cramming last minute or pouring over memorized formulae. Except for the nervous shuffling of papers, pens whizzing at a fast speed, the hall was silent. Till Yashovardhan was caught surreptitiously talking to a senior  on the mobile phone. Cheating...........

Rakhee knew that she would never be able to pass all the five papers in her second engineering semester.  The thought of failure loomed large enough for her to contact her seniors and finalize a stratagem.  The morning before her paper,  she was locked in her room and  let out just half an hour before the exam .... the question paper supplied.  Living in a hostel, to shell out R. 1000 for each paper was simple.  Her parents would never even question the disappearance of Rs. 5000/ from her account as she was sick and needed all the money to pay for expensive antibiotics, the doctors, the fruits ....

Synonymous with the much dreaded term exams our tension, copying, cheating, results, anxiety, depression guilt. Some psychologists would probably diagnose, fear, parental and peer pressures as the driving forces behind this social malady.  Whatever it is, the fact remains that a system that can compel students to use unfair means, has deteriorated from its very roots.  They start young these days as cheating is traced to school and is not a forbidden word anymore.  With parents abiding and abetting their kids on their escapades, it is virtual windfall for the shopkeepers who go around selling the exam papers.  Imagine, education being sold at a paltry  sum of Rs. 2 and 3/- !

Technology the biggest boon for education has become its biggest bane as pagers and mobile telephones are the new messiahs, the new partners in crime.  Gone are the days of writing on chits and handkerchiefs. Pagers, electronic diaries and watches are being used to record mathematical formulae, equations et al. Education! what's shocking is the manner in which today's students flaunt the connections with aplomb.  Discussing how easy it is to buy a paper makes easy coffee table conversations at all popular hangouts for college students.  Proxy writing too, though difficult, is in demand - what with fake identity cards and signatures ... things money can buy !

The list of incidents could go on and on, as could the names of  schools and colleges involved - for none are excluded.  In the final analysis it is the marks that count.  Once you have managed to get admission into a prestigious college, everything  else history.  How you manage to get your passport into a particular college does not matter.  It is a closed chapter - to be opened only when it is time for the following academic year.