GLOBAL GOENKARS SPEAK
The writer is professor at Columbia University in the USA who hails from Cortalim
As India grapples with the fallout from the recent NEET controversy, recruitment examination irregularities and paper leaks, I find myself returning to a personal experience that reminded me why merit is worth protecting.
A few months ago, while I was at my wife’s ancestral home in Verna, we needed a new electricity connection. All paperwork had been submitted before I arrived. I walked into the electricity department office in Verna expecting what many of us have come to accept as inevitable in Goa: repeated visits and bureaucratic delay.
Instead, I encountered something entirely unexpected.
I was asked for my application number. Within minutes, a ledger was opened, my file was located and a junior engineer handled my application, a young man, courteous, composed and eager to help.
He explained the additional documents still required and then said something I had not expected to hear from a government official.
“Once you have them, just give me a call.”
He shared his personal WhatsApp number, which surprised me.
I smiled politely but remained sceptical. His office was bustling. Surely he would not remember me the following day.
I was wrong. After obtaining the necessary documents, I called him. True to his word, he arranged a site visit and personally ensured that the process moved forward. Today, our home has an electricity connection because a young public servant simply did the job he had been entrusted to do.
In all my years of dealing with government departments, I cannot remember being treated with such efficiency, courtesy and professionalism.
A few days later I asked him a question that had been on my mind. Why had a bright young electrical engineer chosen a government job in Goa instead of a better-paying position in the private sector?
His answer was surprisingly simple. “My parents at home in Margao are getting older,” he said. “I want to remain close to them.”
Later I learnt something even more important.
He had not secured his position through the recommendation of a politician. He had paid no bribe. No influential relative had opened doors for him. He had earned his appointment through the Goa Staff Selection Commission recruitment process. He was there solely on merit.
Perhaps that explains why he carried himself differently. He had no political debts to repay. No investment to recover. No obligation except the one every public servant should feel: to serve the public.
That encounter has stayed with me because it illustrates what is truly at stake in the protests unfolding across India.
Belief in merit
The students demonstrating are not fighting only against the NEET paper leak. They are standing against every examination that has been compromised, whether for medical and engineering admissions, high-profile Staff Selection Commission recruitment, police recruitment or any other public service examination.
They are defending something fundamental: the belief that every young Indian deserves an equal opportunity to succeed through ability rather than influence. Over the years that belief has become increasingly fragile.
Many government vacancies in Goa remain unfilled. As elections draw closer, trumpets within the political establishment have begun blowing, calling for recruitment to be accelerated by bypassing or diluting the Staff Selection Commission process.
For once, I was encouraged to see Chief Minister Pramod Sawant resist those pressures from within his own cabinet. If public recruitment is to regain credibility, merit, not recommendations, patronage or nepotism, must remain the only criterion.
Goa has already witnessed recruitment scandals involving crores of rupees, and many quietly faded from public discussion. The consequences are visible. Hospitals, police departments, and many public offices too often become populated by individuals who owe their positions to political influence rather than competence. Delays, arrogance and demands for favours or bribes are often symptoms of a system that was compromised long before an employee’s first day at work.
Yet my experience at the electricity department office in Verna reminded me that another kind of public service is still possible.
While in Goa, I lived on both sides of the recruitment table.
I owe my own career to the Goa Employment Exchange that sent me the postcard for my interview, and to two remarkable scientists, Dr Mavinkurve and Dr Parulekar, who during the panel interview believed I deserved an opportunity at the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) in Goa.
While at the NIO, in the late 1990s, I was shortlisted from thousands of applicants across India for Japan’s prestigious Monbusho Scholarship. Even then on our long train journey to New Delhi, there were whispers among my fellow applicants suggesting that their political connections would determine the outcome. It did not. I was selected thanks to the Japanese Embassy diplomats who oversaw the selection process.
Japan taught me something that has remained with me ever since: if you work hard, remain curious and persevere, merit still has the power to prevail.
Belief in fairness
Experience teaches you to absorb such moments and move forward. Young people today are often less fortunate. Many in Generation Z feel that the system itself is stacked against them, that even before they begin, someone else has already been handed the answer sheet.
They see paper leaks. Recruitment scams. Jobs awarded through influence. They breathe polluted air, drink contaminated water and are repeatedly told to simply work harder while watching rules bend for others.
It is difficult to ask a generation to believe in fairness when fairness appears negotiable.
That is why the battle against paper leaks matters so profoundly.
Every recruitment examination must be transparent, secure and beyond political interference. Every deserving student should know that success depends on preparation rather than connections. Every government appointment should be one that citizens can trust.
Because every leaked paper steals far more than an examination.
It steals something infinitely harder to restore.
A young person’s faith that honesty, effort and merit still matter.
