Anitha was a fighter for her right to get the medical education that was denied to her by the grid of tests imposed upon her young mind by the system obsessed with tests. Anitha fought legally and went up to the Supreme Court. Unable to take unnecessary pains at the young age, Anitha, a Dalit girl, committed suicide. One can just imagine the pressure a young girl might have borne despite the fact that she was so well qualified to be a doctor.

Anitha is not just one person, but there are millions of Anithas throughout India who had died and will continue to die due to the inhuman obsession with the tests of the policy makers.

Uniform tests can only become reality if there is uniform and common education throughout India. Such is not the case and therefore those who are well trained in answering a particular test will have an advantage over those who can handle other sets of similar tests. Judging by Anitha’s marks in the two sets of tests, she was well qualified to enter the MBBS course, her life time aspiration of and her mother sewed clothes to make both ends meet. Despite poverty, Anitha and her family dared to challenge the highest court in the country.

The Indian media is busy in publishing the minute details of what happened in the Modi’s meeting for shuffling ministers and media had no time to print the news of the kind of agitation that is taking place all over Tamil Nadu, the state Anitha came from. It is not only sad but disappointing that the young minds are lost to death so easily in India and there is no discussion on it.

The tests in any form is not an indication of one’s knowledge and answering the questions is not the test of one’s genius, otherwise, the world would have never seen Einstein who failed his entrance test. One can understand that there should be some entry qualification and may be some “entrance tests”, but there cannot be just one test for all when the students are studying different curriculums and in different languages.

It is really sad. The only way out of this is to create a common education system which is free and accessible to all and based on that the common tests can then be created. Until that time, the different states need a different set of tests or we will see many Anithas dying in India for nothing.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist