Read the passage given below and then answer the questions given below the passage. Some words may be highlighted for your attention. Read carefully.

The Central Board of Secondary Education faces a serious erosion of credibility with the leak of its annual examination question papers on Economics for Class 12 and Mathematics for Class 10. Thousands of students are naturally frustrated that their best shot at these papers has come to nought; they must now make another strenuous effort in a re-examination. Clearly, the Ministry of Human Resource Development failed to assign top priority to secrecy and integrity of the process, considering that its standard operating procedure was easily breached, and the questions were circulated on instant messaging platforms. Yet, the problem is not new. State board question papers have been leaked in the past. When the HRD Ministry was asked in the Lok Sabha three years ago what it intended to do to secure the CBSE Class 12 and 10 examinations, Smriti Irani, who was the Minister then, asserted the inviolability of the process, since the question papers were sealed and stored in secret places and released to authorised officials with a window of only a few hours. In addition, the board has dedicated secrecy officers for each region. But the protocol has failed, and HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar should conduct a thorough inquiry to get at the truth and initiate remedial steps without delay. A major leak such as the one that has hit the CBSE raises a question often debated in academic circles: is a high-stakes test the best option? To some sociologists, the use of a quantitative indicator with rising importance for social decision-making makes it more vulnerable to corruption pressures and distorts and undermines the very processes it is intended to monitor. That seems to be an apt description of what has taken place. The CBSE has assiduously built a great reputation since 1962 as one of the most credible examining bodies in the world. Its reputation and conduct explains its expansion to an agency that has 19,350 schools in India and 211 schools abroad under its ambit.

What happens when one of the world’s largest school education systems is pilloried in the media for all the wrong reasons? Credibility is the first casualty. The sacred thread that binds a student, her faith in examinations and the fairness with which it is conducted, can never be traded. If question papers are leaked, the children of impressionable ages feel deeply cheated by the system as they see the perpetrators benefiting either a small or a large group from amongst them and gaining an unfair advantage over the others. Children and parents invest everything when the examinations are a major event in a student’s life. Administratively speaking, the CBSE suffers from a fatal flaw in that it is not created by an act of Parliament. Therefore, its autonomy cannot be taken for granted. Its overall controlling authority is vested with the Secretary, School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. The Board is answerable to its governing body and functions through various committees that are advisory in nature. A proposal to make the CBSE autonomous, with a pan-India jurisdiction covering schools affiliated to it, was mooted in 2012. But this piece of legislation never saw the light of Parliament. If we need a credible system in place, making the CBSE an autonomous body, headed by eminent academics of impeccable reputation and track record, is of utmost importance.