‘Not a whistleblower, just a student asking why lakhs were affected’

Pune: At 18, when most students are taking entrance exams and rushing about for college admissions, Ranchi’s Sarthak Siddhant was spending his time reading procurement documents, comparing tender revisions and tracking decisions that affected lakhs of CBSE students.

His curiosity soon turned into a closely watched citizen-led assessment of CBSE’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) rollout. Sarthak used simple web-scraping tools, public records and persistence, and raised difficult questions about planning, accountability and transparency. In a conversation with TOI, Sarthak spoke about technology, public institutions, civic responsibility and why asking questions is often more powerful than making accusations.

Q I You don’t want to be called a whistleblower. How do you see yourself?

Sarthak I I don’t see myself as a whistleblower. I was asking questions and looking for answers in public documents. The word “whistleblower” creates an impression that someone has exposed a scam or uncovered secret information. Everything I examined was available publicly. I connected the dots and tried to understand how decisions were being made. Ultimately, I am a student who grew curious and asked questions.

Q I How did you uncover the tender trail behind the OSM project?

Sarthak I I built a custom Python script using the Beautiful Soup library and Python Requests in 15 minutes. The script scraped publicly available tender documents and extracted relevant details. I also used tender aggregators to locate RFPs more efficiently. To verify document changes, I compared metadata, including file sizes and versions, and downloaded copies for analysis. The entire process relied on publicly accessible information and web-scraping techniques.

Q I How did you go through hundreds of CBSE tenders?

Sarthak I The technical part was easier than the reading part. The real work involved going through documents section by section. I divided the RFPs into smaller chunks and organised them by topic. I experimented with Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems to improve search and retrieval, but that did not help much. Manually reading and carefully comparing sections helped. There is no shortcut.

Q I What did this investigation teach you about public institutions?

Sarthak I Citizens can ask questions. Moving to Ranchi helped me understand municipalities, civic administration and how public systems function. It made me realise that even if questions are not immediately answered, institutions can still be held accountable. My parents encouraged rational thinking. They never shut down discussions. They encouraged debate, perspective and logical reasoning. That shaped the way I approach public issues today.

Q I You are developing a Tender Aggregator and Accountability Engine. What is the idea?

Sarthak I Most people can access tenders, but very few can understand them. The platform should help people interpret tender terms, compare them with accepted practices and identify common risk areas or possible corruption indicators. It will function as a tender aggregator, but the larger goal is transparency and accessibility. I do not intend to charge money for it. I want it to be open source so that anyone can use, improve or audit it.

Q I What did you learn from the ethical hacking community you worked with?

Sarthak I I am an ethical hacker. Reporting issues does not always guarantee action. In my experience, responses from CERT-In are often slow and sometimes nothing changes even after a response arrives. I also realised that many people in mainstream discussions do not fully understand technical terminology. Words like “hacker” often become attention-grabbing labels. The same with “whistleblower”. Those labels spread quickly, even when they are not entirely accurate.

Q I Where was the biggest failure in the OSM episode?

Sarthak I All of it is connected. Procurement design, implementation oversight and post-award accountability cannot be separated. If multiple parts of the system fail at once, the result is what students experienced. You cannot look at one piece and say that alone caused the problem. The overall outcome reflects failures across the chain.

Q I What should CBSE do to restore students’ trust?

Sarthak I The answer is simple: Testing. Ask stakeholders whether they even want a particular digital transformation. Present the proposal openly and listen to feedback. If there is strong opposition or unresolved concerns, pause and reassess. Second, if digital transformation is necessary, implement it gradually. Seventy-four days is not enough time for a change of this scale. Conduct extensive testing before a rollout. Third, be accountable when something goes wrong. And fourth, remain transparent throughout the process.

Q I What role should technology play in education?

Sarthak I Technology is the future. But it should solve problems and not create new ones. Innovation must be tested thoroughly before it affects students. I support a broader framework for digital assessment, but excessive standardisation is not always good, especially in education which should encourage curiosity, flexibility and learning rather than force everyone into a single model.

Q I How do you deal with public attention?

Sarthak I I try to stay connected to real people I know. Friends and family help me stay grounded. They remind me why I started asking these questions in the first place. I am a teen. I do not claim to know everything. But I believe asking questions is important, especially when those questions affect students.

Q I Has this experience changed your view of technology and democracy?

Sarthak I Yes. Technology can become one of the strongest tools for transparency. It allows citizens to access information, analyse records and participate in public conversations in ways that were not possible earlier. I think technology will help make institutions more transparent and accountable.

Q I If CBSE invited you to help shape future reforms, what would be your non-negotiable demands?

Sarthak I The first would be that no student should suffer because of system failures. Even if it requires a larger or more expensive system, errors affecting them must not be unacceptable. Next, transparency must become the default. Every RFP, revision and supporting document should be published openly and made easy to access. Third, accountability must exist when something goes wrong. Every affected student deserves a fair remedy and a clear process for justice. Without these, trust cannot be rebuilt.