Skip to main content

On Kapil Sibal and his flawed proposal

Kapil Sibal has lost it. He is taking the one fair exam that the nation has and turning it into something that is vehemently unfair.

When I went to IIT, I met a range of people with extremely diverse backgrounds. One of them was from a village called Kaimganj which doesn't have even the basic schooling infrastructure in place. There is no way his school would have produced someone in the top bracket. That is the problem with most villages. At least this way with one common examination they have a chance.

At first glance his arguments have a point. The coaching institutions do give an advantage to those who study there but at least the teaching body and the examining one are independent of each other unlike the boards. Also his argument about money is flawed to say the least. Money always bestows an advantage no matter what the system may be. A student with the right parents will always have an edge over the poor one. Thats the way life works but as far as possible the government should at least strive for equal opportunity.

Kapil Sibal thinks that the Boards are fair system but they are in fact the opposite. The logistical issue of  reconciling the different boards aside, the fact remains that certain schools have more weight with the boards and technically even though all schools are equal some are more so than the others. At least the coaching institutions cannot influence the results in any other way apart from teaching the students well.
In my personal experience the boards were the dumbest and least interesting exams I gave. Their purpose is not judge your intelligence but simply to pass students. The boards encourage rote learning on a nationwide scale. Concepts take a back seat and if you do not write exactly what is asked for and deviate from the keywords you are a lost cause.

The big schools DPS, CMS et al will always get marked leniently in comparison to other schools. They get these advantages because they have money and a lot of school affiliated to the board under their belt. The boards cannot afford to piss these schools of. With the increase in weight age of the boards these schools will have the most number of students in the eligible bracket making the IITs truly elitist. The end result of this will be the fact that the IITs will be far less diverse. Kapil Sibal seems to think this solution will eliminate coaching institutions but there will always be a demand for teachers and the teachers will simply coach students for Boards rather than the competitive exams and it is far easier to coach someone for the board exams than the IITs.

The common entrance exams for all their faults are the fairest solution that we have but it seems politicians only know how to make break things and not fix them.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An ode to Hall 1

This goes out to Hall 1, the hostel where all the 4th year students of IIT Kanpur live. Indeed this hostel serves as a meeting ground between familiar foes some of who go on to become friends. A lot of factors make Hall 1 what it is. It acquires a mythic quality right from the first year when juniors are often threatened with “Aaj raat hall 1 main chal”. The seniors who live in Hall 1 seem to have a totally different existence as compared to the rest of the campus. On a visit to the hostel in the first year all one hears is the constant swearing, and sees everyone in shorts or in suits. Legends surround Hall 1 and in our first year the stories we hear are of Hall 1 and none other. Indeed Hall 1 residents perpetuate this myth as well acting as if they are the scariest beings on the campus. Indeed the fear is such that if a fresher goes to Hall 1 they are not expected to come back. There is something about Hall 1 that separates it from the rest of the Halls. For starters, Hall 1 has

The best of Paul Graham

Paul Graham is a startup incubator. He also happens to write essays which are really really good. In general I wish I had them read them a lot earlier. I have been reading his essays for a while now. Here are some extracts which I liked and so it begins. Addictive things have to be treated as if they were sentient adversaries—as if there were a little man in your head always cooking up the most plausible arguments for doing whatever you're trying to stop doing. If you leave a path to it, he'll find it. And my main computer is now freed for work. If you try this trick, you'll probably be struck by how different it feels when your computer is disconnected from the Internet. It was alarming to me how foreign it felt to sit in front of a computer that could only be used for work, because that showed how much time I must have been wasting. From Disconnecting Distraction How do you avoid copying the wrong things? Copy only what you genuinely like. That would have sav

Chapter 2 - Kunti learns a Mantra

Preparations for the arrival of Durvasa were in full swing. The Brahmins were busy perfecting their intonations and enunciations. (Usually they could get by with many mistakes and even chanting the wrong mantras but Durvasa and his retinue would spot it in an instant.) The preparation of the food, lodging arrangements were supervised by Kunti in name only. The king had ensured that his entire advisory was on the task and that Kunti merely knew what was going on. He was after all trying to do what was best for the kingdom. Sage Durvasa and his retinue finally arrived. They were spotted by the tower guards and information was relayed across stating that a band of safron wearing mendicants has been seen. Durvasa of course was the leader of the pack. He was the only one sporting a beard while the rest were bereft of hair from head to toe. (These brahmins never did anything by halves, either they had beards upto their feet or they had nothing, Tapasya(meditation in plain english) was th