By Shalini S. Sharma
The National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) for admission in medical colleges is not turning out to be quite so neat as one would have thought it would. The idea of a single entrance exam, which cuts across a plethora of other examinations and reduces the running around of candidates, does appear appealing and elegant. However, the reality is not so clinical and methodical. Reality is a multi-layered, multi-faceted and multi-coloured creature which defies definitions and which does not fit into any singular form of expectation. Why then try to fit it into a format and play with the future of scores of students?
Why have a single exam?
In fairness to the government, there are two strong arguments in favour of single entrance exams. Corruption in state boards and capitation fee for admissions is one. State technical education boards control admissions in public-funded technical institutions through their own exams and it is common knowledge that money exchanges hands to accommodate candidates who come from wealthy families but are unable to pass the exams. Why this is something which should remain illegal and not be allowed as a practice so that the rich are able to legitimately subsidise the education of the under-priviledged, remains a matter of another debate. But the fact is that the government has often cited capitation fee as the reason behind its move towards centralized entrance exams in various fields.
Entrance exams being run as money making propositions and making a significant dent on finances of parents is the second reason cited for removing duplicity. This again is true to a certain extent. Parents and students invariably fill out forms of several state board exams, in addition to the central exams. They end up paying the fee of several boards and also incur huge travel expenses for different locations. A single exam eliminates that.
Dent on diversity
The two positives of NEET, however, far outweigh the disadvantages. And it is no longer mere speculation either. The new system has already claimed one life in Tamil Nadu and classes in several other states stand disrupted which impacts the entire academic cycle for this year. Several seats are going abegging in states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu. All this for a subject like medicine and at a time when there is critical shortage of doctors in the country. Allocation of seats from a centralized pool means that while there are several students who may have cleared the examination, there are no takers for seats in far flung districts of states where no student wants to go. Had these states been allowed to take students through their own examinations, they would have easily managed to fill the seats as the students would have been local and only a small percentage could have been kept aside for the central quota. In the new system, however, states are virtually at the mercy of students who hail from all parts of the country and may or may not choose to study in a particular place.
The biggest disadvantage of a centralized examination is that it kills diversity which is so essential in a country like ours which thrives on multiplicity. Since education is a state subject and each state has its own education board, its own system of assessment and training, enforcing a unified examination would prove detrimental for some and advantageous for others. Christian Medical College in Vellore, Tamil Nadu has already announced this year that it will not admit any students through NEET and will conduct MBBS classes for only one student who is the son of a martyr and is a Central government nominee. What a colossal waste of resources that would be, if it actually happens.
Government may remain firm in its place citing these as teething troubles in the way of a cleaner and fairer system but the fact remains that even AICTE has had to acknowledge that enforcing a single entrance exam is going to be no cake walk, as it itself was planning to do some time soon. Unless the standard of class XII education is normalized and is made uniform across the country, it says, it would not be wise to implement its scheme of having a centralized entrance exam for admissions in engineering colleges, on the lines of Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for IITs, NITs and other public funded institutions. Wise words those.
(The writer is a freelance journalist)
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