The photo was just about perfect. Cheating is rampant in the Indian educational system but it's hard to illustrate that. Unless you managed to find a school where people were clambering up to windows to pass chits into examination rooms. That's what Rajesh Kumar, a photographer in Bihar, did, resulting in a photo that quickly went viral across the world and even got the local courts and police involved.

The responses were also predictable. Angry indignation about cheating from authorities and promises to crack down on the process. Muffled laughter from the cities where such behaviour seems too gauche. And former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav saying he would have ensured students were all given open-book tests so that at least the cheating was equitable. Cue more muffled laughter from the cities about country bumpkins making cheating a universal right, with the Yadav's suggestion being referred to as "unique" and "bizarre" in English publications.

That is of course, because those of us in the cities never cheat, as Crocodile in Water, Tiger on Land demonstrates.


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