On May 30, when the Bihar State Education Board declared the Class XII results, Ganesh Kumar, a student of Ram Nandan Singh Jagdeep Narayan Inter College in Samastipur, was in Kolkata performing the last rites of his uncle. Unlike thousands of anxious students, Kumar was calm. According to his family, he was more worried about how he would support them in Giridih, Jharkhand.
Around 2 pm, the results were announced. While a third of the more than 1.2 million students cleared the exam, Ganesh topped in humanities. He had scored 92 in Hindi, 59 in psychology, 78 in English and