Thanks for a clean tread (almost) without the usual "racist" BS associated with discussing these grave and urgent issues. Thanks also for some post nailing some of the problems.
Unfortunately, the real issue is not if someone is "improving" his or hers papers. The real issue is:
1.-The DGCA papers are in-comprehensive and without relevance to safe flying.
2.-The no-"fee"/no result system.
3.-The Light Prop directly to Medium Jet transition.
4.-The Indian Aviation Klondike scene.
1.- Minimum requirement is a syllabus + relevant study material + known question types (within the syllabus). If genuine results does not improve your competence as a pilot, then bogus papers or not does not make a difference. Google JAR FCL or FAA to see how it shall be done. Sadly, the Brits left the Indians with an academic system based on "Memory Items Only" which, to this very day, has preventing them from "learning-by-understanding", and by making the tests in-comprehensive DGCA (and learning institutions in general) believes that they are at a higher academic level.
2.-And this opens for a market where for a small fee (actually less than the regular fee when taking the JAR ATPL theory exam) you can slip through. I know only of a handfull Indian colleagues who skipped the bribe and battled it out. The ongoing investigations may produce the wonder that the exams will be clean; I doubt, though.
3.-You cannot tell if an Indian pilot is a fake or not, because the entire Airline Ops Training is missing. I can tell within 10 minutes if my new co-pilot has flown abroad with a "real" airline, mostly because they have their operational priorities right. Those who come straight home with a fresh CPL from "Cheap Billīs Flying School" and start directly in the 737 right seat do not have a clue about anything ("This line represent True North, son") except "Yes,Sir".
"Unstabilised...Go Around"....?? On the moon!
Many of the young Indian pilots actually do a wonderful job after a short while, but the point is that they could in reality have done their training on MS Flight Sim and you cannot tell the difference, because they push the buttons well, know all the limits but dunno how to use them.
The big fraud is that these guys are offered a job WITHOUT PROPER TRAINING, and whatever little training they may get is based on.....You guest it: Endless recitations.
Memorise and repeat alone is NOT what makes a safe pilot.
4.-I failed an F/O on his captains upgrade as he could not answer correctly one single of many elementary and easy questions. The company passed him on grounds that they needed him "and we have to use whatever is available". That makes my blood freeze (I am no longer doing captain selections), and it demonstrates The Real Problem: Demand greatly outnumbers supply of qualified pilots here (I know you wannabes feel differently), so we have to do with whatever is available. This is not only an Indian thing; over the years there have been peaks in World Pilot Recruitment where we saw some very marginal pilots landing an airline job, but nothing compared to present day India. And they were given rigorous training once they had joined the airlines.
No, I do not endorse bogus hours/exams/competence, but my real worry is an environment where you have to land repeatedly on the nose wheel to be singled out.
Be careful out there, T.