…has the ring of
an effective and memorable slogan. Whatever be the merit of the proposal (“one
country one test”) this slogan refers to, it is a bad slogan, an irresponsible
slogan; what is worse, it is potentially a dangerous slogan. I do not know for
certain where this slogan originated – hopefully not in the concerned ministry
of the government of India! - but very soon it became part of the Common Entrance
Test (CET) discourse. Now, effective slogans tend to have a long life, which is said
of a bad idea too. After some time, the context of such a slogan is forgotten,
and users of the language start playing with it (not at all unexpected;
linguists have told us that language use is characteristically creative) and
new phrases, new slogans come into being. Suppose someday the language users
substitute “test” by “language” – “one country one language”. Would it not be
an entirely unacceptable slogan, as unacceptable as the idea it embodies?
Much has been
written about the advantages of a common admission test for engineering and
medical undergraduate students in our country; it seems to be a reasonably good
proposal in principle. One only hopes that there will be a careful review of it
after about, say, five years of its implementation for possible remedial action or even
some thorough overhauling, should that be felt necessary. The government’s
proposal (based on the recommendations of a committee of a few academic
administrators and bureaucrats) of taking into consideration the marks at the
relevant school examination in some form for this test, is again, by no means
unjustifiable in principle. However, during the first few years of the
implementation of this proposal, careful annual monitoring is a must.
The professed
intention behind the latter is to ensure that students do not neglect their
school test and the expensive private tutorial system is discouraged which puts
those who can afford it in a position of undue advantage, which is certainly
unacceptable. Therefore the government is justified to take
corrective steps in this regard. But the question is, are the proposals mentioned above the right solution,
is it likely to be effective? We are quite skeptical. Our apprehension is that
if anything, it will strengthen the tutorial system, which will now extend the
domain of its operation right down to class X and even class IX. This
apprehension is not hypothetical; a tutorial institute has already made an
announcement precisely to this effect. There is very good ground for
apprehension that the proposal would have precisely the opposite effect;
instead of solving the problem, it will aggravate it.
Addressing a
problem of school education at the stage of admission to the technical
institutions is really dealing with it at the surface-most level. Most
optimistically speaking, this approach can lead to very little, if at all. Tutorial
system is nothing new; private tuition has always been there at the school
level; it is just that it has now been organized almost as an industry with big
money coming into it. Private coaching has been extended to the college
level and even the post-graduate level in some states and that it has reached a
pandemic stage and for all practical purposes has become a system of parallel
education, sustained in part by the better among the school teachers, who
neglect work at the school where they are employed. This is one of the factors
that has contributed to the near collapse of the school, especially the public school,
system. This has resulted in the exclusion of the poor and the lower middle
class from reasonably good school education.
Only an
incorrigible optimist or a thoroughly insensitive and irresponsible person
would assert that the process of privatization of education can be reversed or
considerably weakened in our country now. Today just as “bazaar notes” cannot be wished
away, private coaching cannot be wished away too. And just as bazaar notes can be fought best by
better quality bazaar notes, private tutorial institutes can be fought by
public tutorial institutes of comparable quality. This is not even a new idea.
Even in the sixties, provision for special coaching was made available in one
or two government colleges in Odisha to some of those interested in preparing for
the central services examinations (IAS, etc.). The coaching was not very successful
partly because the teaching in the colleges was very good and the best faculty
did not want to teach in the coaching classes as it was considered improper
for them those days. Things have changed.
In the
mid-eighties, the central government arranged for free special coaching for nine months
for some selected SC/ST candidates for admission to the IITs and some other
centrally-funded engineering colleges. Called the “Preparatory Course”, it
comprised Mathematics, Physics Chemistry and English, and was offered at some
of the IITs and was taught by the faculty of those IITs. This facility still
exists. This is an excellent central government initiative and an excellent
model for public tutorial schools. If the government really wants to help those
who want to go for technical education and cannot afford coaching in private
tutorial institutes – the poor and the lower middle class – one of the things
it should do is multiply the Preparatory course model.
And it should
not be very difficult since it is a proposal for extending an already existing
facility. To start with, all those institutions (IITs, NITs, IIITs, etc.) that
are and will become part of CET, must create this facility, and run it with as
much seriousness as with which it is being done now in the IITs. This will make
a huge difference to many students who cannot afford private coaching, and let
it be noted that they will get much better training in these public coaching
centres than in many expensive private coaching centres. Symbolic initiatives
may have a place in the public sphere, but there is no alternative to
meaningful initiatives that make a difference to the lives of the people.
