Hi Friends,

Even as I launch this today ( my 80th Birthday ), I realize that there is yet so much to say and do. There is just no time to look back, no time to wonder,"Will anyone read these pages?"

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
27 June 2013

Now as I approach my 90th birthday ( 27 June 2023 ) , I invite you to visit my Digital Avatar ( www.hemenparekh.ai ) – and continue chatting with me , even when I am no more here physically

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Saturday, 31 October 2026

Smart Glasses in Exam Halls – Make Every Wearable Bright Yellow

 To: Shri Pralhad Joshi, Hon. Union Minister of Education

Subject: Smart glasses cheating has arrived – make every smart wearable sold in India bright yellow

Dear Shri Pralhad Joshiji,

South Korea has just announced that students caught cheating with smart glasses in its national university entrance exam will face criminal charges and a three-year ban from retaking it.

India, with crores of candidates sitting NEET, JEE, CUET and state exams every year, will face the same problem at a far larger scale. And our invigilators cannot be expected to tell a smart glass from an ordinary pair of spectacles.

In my blog below, I propose a simple rule: every smart wearable sold or used in India must be bright yellow. A cheat's best weapon is that the device looks ordinary. Take that away, and any invigilator can spot it from across the hall.

I request that the Ministry examine this with MeitY and the Bureau of Indian Standards, alongside the hall-level checks I suggest.

With regards,

Hemen Parekh

www.HemenParekh.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / 31 Oct 2026

Blog: Make Every Wearable Bright Yellow

The news

South Korea will file criminal complaints against students who cheat with smart glasses in the Suneung, its national university entrance exam, and extend the retake ban from one year to three (The Star / AFP). The trigger: three students caught wearing or carrying smart glasses in university essay exams in Seoul.

Korea's main detection plan is telling. It is assigning a "designated staff member" at each exam centre to identify suspicious eyewear, in other words, a human trying to spot a gadget designed not to be spotted.

How hard is that? At Yonsei University, proctors were specially trained to recognise smart glasses. Even so, one candidate wore ordinary glasses through the pre-exam check, then swapped to concealed smart glasses after receiving the paper. A sharp-eyed proctor caught it only because the frames looked slightly different (Herald Corp).

This is a worldwide wave:

  • National Taiwan University disqualified an entrance candidate for using AI smart glasses.
  • The US College Board banned smart glasses from the SAT from March 2026 (abit.ee).
  • In China, students rent AI glasses for exams at a few dollars a day.
  • England's regulator Ofqual found phones and smart devices behind 44% of all malpractice cases in summer 2025 (IET).

What I had envisioned

In August 2026, when Maharashtra set up a committee under ADG (Cyber) Shri Yashasvi Yadav to draft an SOP for AI smart glasses and wearable cameras, I wrote him an open letter. My worry then was privacy: a smart glass needs no pointing, so nobody can tell whether it is recording.

My core suggestion was mandatory colour-coding. Every smart glass sold in India should have a bright red front rim and bright yellow side-arms, so it is recognisable at a glance, like a police car or an ambulance. The same rule would extend to smartwatches, rings, pendants and AR/VR headsets, along with an audible chirp while recording.

The Korean news shows the same idea solves a second problem. What protects a stranger's privacy also protects an exam's integrity. A cheat, like a voyeur, depends on the device looking ordinary.

The detection problem

Dozens of smart wearables are flooding the market: glasses with cameras and displays, smartwatches, rings, pendants, earbuds. Many models are deliberately designed to look exactly like ordinary spectacles or jewellery.

Now picture an Indian NEET centre: hundreds of candidates, a handful of invigilators, many of them schoolteachers on exam duty. Asking them to tell a ₹20,000 AI glass from a ₹500 pair of spectacles is asking the impossible. Training and frisking can't keep pace with new models every few months.

My proposal: bright yellow, by law

Mandate that every smart wearable sold or used in India must be bright yellow.

  1. One standard colour. BIS notifies a single, unmistakable bright yellow shade. The entire visible frame or casing of any wearable with a camera, display, microphone or wireless link must be in that shade.
  2. Enforced at the point of sale. Manufacturers, importers and e-commerce platforms may sell only compliant devices. Customs blocks non-compliant imports.
  3. A transition window. Existing devices get a fixed period to be replaced or fitted with a compliant yellow sleeve.
  4. Any non-yellow smart device is illegal. Owning or using one becomes an offence in itself, so a disguised device no longer offers deniability.

The beauty is in the rule for the invigilator: anything yellow on a candidate is out; anything not yellow is ordinary. No technical training needed.

It even defeats the Yonsei trick. A candidate who swaps to a bright yellow frame mid-exam is visible from across the hall.

Honest objections, and what to add

No single rule will stop every cheat, so let me answer the obvious objections:

  • "Cheats will paint over or cover the yellow." Possibly, but then the device is illegal in itself, and the offence is proven by the object alone. Most people will not risk that.
  • "Hidden earpieces and micro-cameras aren't wearables you can colour." True. For these, exam centres should add Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signal scanners, already used by exam bodies abroad.
  • "Some candidates need prescription smart glasses." Like the SAT, require them to bring a plain backup pair for the exam.
  • "Smart contact lenses will come next." As I admitted in August, colour cannot solve that. It is a problem for the next round of rules.

So the yellow mandate is the first and cheapest line of defence: it removes disguise from the mass market. Signal scanners in the hall and the stiff penalties already in the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 handle the rest.

Closing

Korea is reacting after the fact, with prosecutions and a staff member squinting at spectacles. India can act before the wave arrives, with one simple rule that makes every smart device announce itself.

With regards,

Hemen Parekh

www.HemenParekh.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.HemenParekh.in / 31 Oct 2026


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