Kapil Sibal’s IIT stunt

Our dynamic Human Resources Development (HRD) Minister, Mr. Kapil Sibal is hell bent on reforming the education system of our country. It is a good move because its high time someone takes the onus of changing our shammed educational pattern. But the thought process & the think tank behind it is not entirely right. I say this on the basis of the comment by Sibal that the min marks required in class XII for taking an IIT entrance exam should be raised to 80% from the existing 60%.

Why? To curb the growing influence of coaching centres? To reduce the influx of Bihari’s into IITs because they generally fare low in their class XII boards but manage to crack the IIT-JEE? Or to ensure that only those who are excellent muggers can aim for these exams, defying all logic?

This would be a very futile move, specially because it would rob the thousands of brilliant students, who for some reason do not fare well in board exams, the opportunity to take a shot at the big leagues. And an opportunity lost for life. We commonly hear students preparing for entrance exams by dropping 1-2 yrs after school, but rarely does any student retake the Class XII boards in case of low marks. Also, the coaching centres are a source of livelihood for many retired Professors and school teachers. They actually nurture raw talent by helping candidates sharpen their basics first, rather than propagating the ‘learn by-heart’ technique adopted by teachers in most schools these days.

Moving further, Mr. Sibal could apply the same funda to the IIMs as well. The minimum cut off at graduation required to take the CAT could be raised between 75-80%. One can only imagine what would happen if this bar is raised. On the one hand, students would actually start taking their graduation studies seriously, just like the way they did at school. This would result in a spurt in the attendance levels at Colleges. But on the other hand, I can bet that this would dip the number of CAT aspirants each year, because every institution/college/university has their own unique marking/grading scheme which is not a unified pattern centrally. Hence the best of students would not be able to score the cut-off average, for no fault of theirs. (For eg, in Pune University, the marking is so strict, the University topper only scores around 70-72%. On the contrary, at Bangalore University, the topper scores anywhere between 85-90%).

But we need not worry. None of this is going to happen. Because unconfirmed reports doing the rounds in New Delhi have suggested that coaching centres have collectively bribed Mr. Sibal to the tune of Rs. 122 Crore to leave the pattern untouched and retract his statement, which he has already done. As always, its only about money, honey!