Every year, hundreds of thousands of students across India sit for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), hoping to secure a seat in the country’s top medical colleges. For aspirants from the Northeast, however, the journey to the exam centre is often as daunting as the test itself.
While the NEET journey for most Indian students involves navigating city traffic or booking a convenient hotel, for many from the Northeast, it means crossing conflict zones, traversing regions with poor infrastructure and contending with shutdowns and transport strikes that can leave them stranded or late for the exam .
The long road to the test
In Nagaland, the route to exam centres often goes through contested territory. A student from Dimapur travelling to the only centre in the state, located in Kohima, must traverse the Naga-Bodo belt, a volatile area notorious for recent ethnic violence . The uncertainty of travel is so severe that many choose to stay in the state capital days before the exam just to be safe.
A mother from a remote village, whose son had to take the exam, told The Indian Express: “We didn’t know if the roads would be open. What if there is a shootout? What if there’s an ambush?”.
For students from Assam’s Bodoland Territorial Region, crossing the border into neighbouring states is often a logistical gamble. Since the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) does not have a representative in the state government, students often have to depend on local authorities for security guarantees.
Manipur: A state in turmoil
Nowhere is the challenge more acute than in Manipur. The state is already divided along ethnic lines—the Meitei community in the Imphal Valley and the Kuki-Zo community in the hill districts. Travel between the two is heavily restricted, forcing students from one community to take perilous detours through neighbouring Assam to reach the only exam centre, which is in Imphal .
The road to the centre itself is a gamble. Students have reported receiving multiple security checks, threats of being forced to turn back, and the constant fear of being caught in the crossfire of gunfights. The trip, which should take a few hours, can stretch into a day-long ordeal.
A wider issue of access
The NEET test is centralised, but for students from the Northeast, the true test begins long before the examination starts. Students from the interiors of the region must often undertake long journeys without the support network that students in the metropolises take for granted.
In previous years, students from the Northeast have filed a Right to Information (RTI) request to the Union Ministry of Education asking for more exam centres in the region. The number of centres has increased, but the geographical distribution remains sparse. Multiple students from Assam have previously told News18 that they booked hotels worth thousands of rupees in cities like Guwahati or Kolkata just to be close to a centre .
An analogy for the future
The NEET has often been criticised for creating a rigid, one-size-fits-all standard that does not account for the structural inequalities of access. The uneven distribution of exam centres is a symptom of a broader challenge: the lack of equitable educational infrastructure across India’s most vulnerable regions.
Till then, for thousands of students in the Northeast, the NEET will remain a two-stage challenge: to first reach the exam centre alive, and then to conquer the exam itself. As one anxious aspirant put it, “The exam is hard enough without having to worry about getting shot along the way”.
