[Reader-list] 'Open School'
Ravikant
ravikant at sarai.net
Mon Jan 28 15:44:29 IST 2008
Here is a piece, 'another product of a lazy, hot summer afternoon! The events
are true', in author Shobhit Mahajan's words. I certainly enjoyed it.
Ravikant
Not so long ago, on long walls of moffussil towns, there were two preponderant
kinds of advertisements for people who were on the brink of losing hope. One
kind publicized quacks who had a cure for “Gas, Namardi, Dhatu Rog, etc.”
These were usually smartly attired, healthy looking men who visited the small
towns on fixed days of the month to provide succor to various suckers! The
other kind of advertisements gave hope to students who had failed Class 8-
they could now directly give the Class X or XI exam and pass “privately”.
The private “college” industry was a very lucrative one. A neighbor of ours
had done yeomen service in ensuring a school certificate for literally
thousands of unfortunate kids in the small town where I grew up. The modus
operandi was simple- you registered with this college and during the month of
May or June, you would be taken to places like Gwalior, Bhopal etc. to ‘sit’
for the board exam. And lo and behold, you would come back with t
certificate. The choice of the city or board was dictated presumably by the
ease with which such humanitarian ideal could be achieved. Our neighbor
became prosperous in this business till the eighties when he moved into the
other “sunrise” industry- that of naturopathy, magnetic healing and
acupressure!
Sometime in the eighties, the government decided to get into this in a big way
and the Open School was started for students who had not completed formal
schooling. The idea was a good one- a lot of school dropouts pick up jobs
before completing the secondary school. Give them an opportunity to get a
certificate by passing a standardized examination. A huge infrastructure and
bureaucracy was put in place. Books were written specifically for the Open
School- books whose quality was usually not very good. Nevertheless, the idea
of bringing some level of quality control in this booming private sector was
admirable. Or so I thought till the other day.
A peon in our office applied for leave for 15 days to appear for the Class
XII exams from the Open School. I thought this was very creditable till I
learnt that he had never even seen the books or the syllabus! On my
persistent questioning on how he intended to pass the exams, he sheepishly
told me that everything has been “set”. Apparently, the supervisor ship of
the examination centers is a very lucrative business. There are people who
will ensure that students are given all the “assistance” for clearing the
examinations. These range from taking the papers out to be solved by “tutors”
to leaving the paper blank for someone else to fill it up! In one case, the
invigilator worked out the paper on the blackboard. Of course, all this comes
at a hefty fee of about Rs. 1000/- to Rs. 2000/- per student per paper.
All this was not happening in some way out place like Basti or Monghyr. It was
in the heart of the capital of India! I must confess that I was a bit shocked
by the ‘openness’ and brazenness of this whole modus operandi. But on
thinking about it, I realized that this is how most things end up in our
system. Any kind of regulation in any sphere by the government leads to
certain vested interests prospering in cahoots with easily corruptible public
servants. This goes on till someone in the government realizes it is time to
replace one kind of regulatory system with another. Within a short time, the
smart operators figure out a way around this new system. And this goes on
till the next change! The survival of the fittest in the face of evolutionary
pressures in a true Darwinian sense! Fortunately, the other advertisers on
moffussil walls, the purveyors of masculininty don’t seem to be under any
threat from any regulation!
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