By: Simanta Barman
“Let there be finality, we are not in a perfect world. Let the exams happen on August 21. Let there be certainty for students,” Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said on August 12 while dismissing a plea against the re-conduction of the UGC-National Eligibility Test (June, 2024). I agree with him that we are not in a perfect world, but can it not be a little more sensible and sincere? The National Testing Agency (NTA), entrusted with conducting such high-intensity national-level exams every year, should have more accountability than they have shown in the recent past.
June 2023, you sit for NET in Mass Communication & Journalism subject. Fifteen minutes into the paper, you scratch your eyes thinking if you read it wrong. No, you did not. You are baffled to find out grammatical errors and obscure sentence structures throughout the paper. That was my experience. I had to turn the language to Hindi to comprehend some questions; such was the level of insincerity in typing a paper for a computer-based test by supposedly the ‘highest’ authority in conducting nationwide examinations, not to mention a ‘Kasauti Zindagi Ki’ surprise feature in Paper Two.
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Cut to 2024 June edition, they decide to bring back the offline paper mode, and there were no such blunders in setting the papers as such. But lo, before the students can even sit down to analyse their answers at home, news breaks out of possible ‘integrity-breach’ and the exam gets cancelled in its entirety, in an instant. All considerations for students’ invested time and resources, its implications in their next course of academics, the logistical hassle to reach venues, etc. go for a toss. Discontentment erupts, some join the ongoing chorus for the NEET fiasco, case reaches the CBI, and their initial finding discards a potential paper leak (although the investigation is not over yet and findings are yet to be disclosed in full).The verdict is in favour of a re-examination, which brings back the CBT (computer-based test) mode.
Whenever there is a system’s failure, it bears varied implications for different sections of society, experts have argued time and again. And it cannot be more true for students from rural India. The offline-mode now-cancelled June 2024 NET had seven centres in Assam, the state with the most number of centres among the northeastern states. Only two of the seven catered to students from lower Assam, and only one to students from the Barak valley. Meghalaya had three, Nagaland and Manipur two each, Sikkim, Tripura, and Mizoram with one each. For the states boasting such hilly terrains, how can the logistical, transportation and other challenges be overlooked? Although the re-examination schedule has added or reshuffled a few centres here and there, the tally remains unchanged mostly. For applicants to go through the challenges of reaching venues on time, sorting out return arrangements (especially pertinent for shift two students), and braving the odds that come their way, is a recurring cycle of uncompromised hassle. This is more taxing on students from the less privileged section and the ones from remote areas. To top that, there is always the fear of computer system’s failure, as it had happened quite often across centres, in the past. It had taken more than an hour’s delay on various occasions.
Moreover, in the context of PhD admissions and career prospects, this gap brings added challenges and, in some cases, despair. Some raised their concern about having to lose a year or missing out on opportunities due to age-based and other time-bound regulations. Some institutions even follow stricter adherence to NET scores, which aggravates the implications of such cancellations further.
These are not one-off concerns that can be attributed to one such cancellation. These are recurring issues and shall be deliberated by every stakeholder. In the meantime, one can wait and hope that the systems would work fine this time, computers would not break down midway, one would not have to miss their trains or buses to return home, one would not have to blink an eye looking at an obscure sentence, and most importantly an out-of-place ‘Kasauti Zindagi Ki’ question would not smack you in the face. (The author is a media professional who can be reached at simantabarman.work@gmail.com)
