“IN MY MEMORY, I have only heard that people who speak against the Indian government are ‘anti-national’,” Pragya Gautam, a 20-year-old Dalit student from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, told me at a protest site in Jantar Mantar, in the heart of Delhi. She had taken an overnight train to the national capital, without informing her parents and carrying only INR 200 and her smartphone. “In the last week, I have realised that it is not those people but the Indian government itself that is anti-national.”
Gautam wants to become a doctor. For the past three years, she has been preparing for and trying to crack the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), India’s unified examination for medical studies. She took the exam in 2024 and 2025, and appeared for it again on 3 May this year. She thought it went very well. “I was sure I would get through this time.”
Nearly 2.3 million students took the test, competing for about 130,000 medical college seats. On May 12, the National Testing Agency, which manages entrance exams and admissions for the ministry of education, announced that the NEET held on 3 May had been cancelled because the exam paper had been leaked. A retake was scheduled for 21 June. The NEET paper had also been leaked in 2021 and 2024.
Gautam’s parents had given her three years after she finished school to secure admission to a medical college or else get married. The retake was her fourth and final attempt at the exam. She had been staying at the protest site for a few days when I met her. “Had I not joined the cockroaches in Delhi,” she said, “I would have killed myself. ”
At least 12 NEET aspirants took their own lives between the cancelled test and the retake.