Don’t Postpone JEE/NEET for Larger Good

 

Frankly speaking, I was afraid and angered after the Supreme Court verdict of not to postpone JEE/NEET. Because not only my brother but some of my friends are going to appear in this exam. I wrote two FaceBook posts against the verdict and also against the government.

But after talking to my brother as well as my friends, I realized that those who have not prepared well, wants it to postpone while the same will a burden for those who have prepared enough. The former thinks that they will have extra time for preparation, while the later has to do regular practice till D-Day.

Before going to see why it is not viable to postpone, let’s see some screen shots which exposes duality and agenda driven demand for cheap political outcome.

This twitter profile says that it is of a NEET Aspirants, but look at the kind of tweets tweeted by this account.

From this, it went on peddling fake content, by using a 2019 photo to show that Bihar is submerged right now.

When it comes to dirty politics, how can AAP be on back seats. On one hand Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal wants to resume metro services stating that situation is under control. But the his ‘handsome’ minister requests Central Govt to postpone JEE/NEET.

Since AAP is baby product of grand old INC, look at their duality. Needless to say that they are doing theatrics by doing 2 hour hunger strike because same INC regime had planned to conduct various exams including very prestigious Rajsthan Public Service Commission Exam.

Politics aside…. What matters is student and its life. Here it will be important to site that only 44% aspirants appeared in exam conducted in Uttar Pradesh for the post of Block Educational Officer(BEO) on August 16, 2019. Fear of COVID may be reason of low attendance but any of such exam has hardly 50% attendance. Just look at the pretentious Union Public Service Commission(UPSC) Data.

Last available data is from 2018 exam, when 11 lakh students applied for UPSE Prelims but less than 5 lakh appeared then, which makes 45% attendance. Nearaly half of the total candidates are non-serious type, who does not even manage to appear in the exam.

Even if we be particular about JEE and NEET. In 2019, there were more than 18 students who registered for JEE, but out of that only 11.5 lakh appeared in the exam. But NEET shows different trends, like 93% of registered students appeared in the exam in 2018.

But given the kind of arrangement done by government, be it allocating first preference of exam city and giving 5 chances to change the preferences, it becomes feasible for students.

Although I believe it is foolish to say that most of the aspirants want to give exam just because they have downloaded the Admit Card, but one can not deny that be it any exam, most of the aspirants never wants to appear in it, as shown in above mentioned statistics(except NEET).

Being particular on NEET, The very concept of ‘social distancing’ is applied in NEET Exam in ordinary situation, so that students can’t talk to each other. Here, we have an extra-ordinary situation. That’s why, the latest notification came from Education Ministry that maximum 12 students will be in each room, earlier this used to be 24.

None can predict that where will this pandemic go in coming months? Situation get worsen with lag of time. If EXAM is conducted within time, which has already been late, then every other practices, from counselling and admission in the college to study can be easily performed online. Since first year of the syllabus in Engineering and Medical are largely same as what students learn in their Intermediate, study would go in sophisticated way.

There is no point in either postponing the exam or wasting one academic year of the students.

Nearly 50 thousands ‘to be doctors’ and 1.5 lakh ‘to be engineers’ put forth for these two exams, other than these, a very large chunk of students do not qualify. So they will have also a fair chance to decide their carrier or study-field, on the basis of their performance.

So for a larger good, our concern should not be to postpone these Exam but to hope and pressurize authorities to conduct a fair exam. Because any attempt of Question Paper Leak or such discrepancies will wash out the effort of meritorious and probably most fertile minds of India.