By Syed Ali Mujtaba,
The amusing picture of how mass copying is done in a high school board exam being conducted in Bihar has attracted eyeballs all over the world. The visuals graphically show the relatives of the students writing the examination, climbing to the window of the exam halls and provide hand written answer chits to them to copy in their answer sheets.
The image that went viral in media and triggered a debate on the way examination is conducted in the state. Reacting to the media reports, Bihar Education Minister P.K Sahi expressed his government’s helplessness in controlling the situation and said that ‘freeing board examination of cheating was impossible in the state without the support of the society.
(Courtesy: HT)
His comments attracted the wrath of Patna High Court. The Court observed that Minister’s comment was ‘unfortunate and shameful’. The High Court converted the report of malpractices in the media as public interest litigation.
Meanwhile in a damage control exercise, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, has directed the top officials to take steps to ensure fair examination in the state. He said, ‘action will be taken against policemen and magistrates on examination duty if they were found abetting cheating.’
The education system in Bihar has collapsed long time ago. In fact the decline has sent in the late 70s soon after the national emergency of 1975. The students who came out of the class room in protest of emergency never were tamed into the classroom again.
The mushrooming of private tuition and coaching centers became the order of the day and since then continues unabated. The teachers went to schools not to teach but only for attendance sake. They took to coaching as their main occupation and started making pots of money doing so.
This resulted in mass exodus of the students from Bihar from 80s and continues till date. Add to it was the reason there was no electricity in the state and student had to burn the proverbial midnight lamp which actually was kerosene lamp to prepare for the exam.
In fact, I was moved out of the state and went to New Delhi to complete my education precisely for these reasons. It was an irony of sorts in my family, because my father had to go to Calcutta, just for the opposite reasons.
In those days education system in Bihar was very tough. Only few can pass the high school exams. Getting First division was a rare feat. Those who got second division were seen as awe, the general rank was third division. Many students went to Bengal to clear high school exam because there was lenient marking and no one failed.
Even during the 70s, the high school was tough nut to crack in Bihar. I know someone who right now works as manager in Punjab Bank had failed a record seven times in the high school and in his eighth attempt managed to get third division.
However, since then continuous decline in education system in Bihar was witnessed. Whatever that was left behind in the system was finally torn apart during the 15 years of the RJD rule.
During those days quite a few parables were in circulation about such forms of cheating. One such was, the answer chits were passed on to the student writing on backside of the doctor’s prescription. The dumb student, instead of copying the answer, actually copied the names of the medicines that were prescribed by the doctor!
Another story was once the person standing on the window actually started dictating the student and commanded to write ‘I know.’ The student asked him back whether it is ‘no’ or ‘kannoow’!
In fact, the joke during rounds was soon there will be no more educated people left in Bihar. In that case parents have to import educated persons from outside the state who can help in copying the students writing the high school exam.
The silver lining to the development of Bihar came only when Nitish Kumar took over the reins of Bihar in 2005. He put the state on the recovery curve and in the first five years of his rule his government did exceptionally well rebuild the state from ground zero.
In fact, Nitish Kumar almost streamlined the decrepit education system in Bihar during the first five years his rule. There was rule 144 promulgated on all the examination centers in state during the board exams. No one was allowed venture near the exam premises except the student. The exam centers were highly guarded place with the deployment of huge contingent of police force.
The answer sheets were sent to a centralized location for correction and the results were published in time. Education department was functioned like old times and there were frequent inspections of the schools. The negligent teachers were taken to task. It was after long time that the malpractices in the exam were completely checked and the education system was put back on track.
Even as all this was sinking in people’s mind and appeared that Bihar is marching ahead at a breath neck speed to catch up with the rest of the states of India, the damaging image of malpractice at high school exam has comes to the limelight.
After seeing the picture, the joke there will no more be educated people left in Bihar certainly may become true.
It gives a sorry account of the state of affairs of education system in Bihar. It pains and angers seeing such a shameful thing happening once again in Bihar.
Checking malpractices in examination is an administrative job. There has to be zero tolerance shown towards it. The government has to tighten the nuts and bolts of the education department to get rid of such malpractices creeping in the conduct of the fair examination in Bihar.
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(Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He belongs to Bihar. He can be contacted at [email protected])