The NEET exam scandal has emerged as an enormous breach of trust and appears to have caused irreparable harm to the Modi government’s social and political contract with its citizenry, particularly aspiring youth. The rhetorical pitch for an alternative development model in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2014 electoral pitch, away from cycles of corruption, administrative incompetence and policy inertia, was supposed to offer hope and faith among India’s young people in participating (and constructing) India’s growth story. It has done quite the opposite.