Editor,
It is such a shame that the Meghalaya Board of School Education has utterly failed to control the menace of question paper leakage yet again. Though media reports earlier and again on December 3 confirmed that question papers for Mathematics, Science & Technology and Khasi (IL) for the Class IX Internal Assessment Examination have been leaked, word on the street is that question papers for each and every subject was leaked. It is common sense that students are not in a position to lay their hands on the question papers unless the same has been provided to them by either the head of institution of the designated deposit centres or by the teachers or office staff, or, possibly even MBOSE staffers.
Why did MBOSE not take action in 2014 when the Class IX question papers for all subjects had leaked? This is a question that defies all logic. Had the MBOSE taken recourse to exemplary action like blacklisting the errant school and suspending the teachers and heads of institutions involved in the crime, the incident would not have recurred in 2015. I also fail to understand the necessity for MBOSE to get involved in conducting the Class IX examination as individual schools are capable of doing it on their own. Since the time the Board took over the conduct of Class IX examinations, leakage has became the order of the day.In my observation, the Board should resort to either of the two options to save its depleting reputation from being dented further – allow schools to conduct the Class IX examinations on their own from the 2016 academic session or do away with the system of deposit centres and route the question papers through police stations (banks may not be a hundred per cent foolproof). Either way, the MBOSE should own up responsibility for the Himalayan blunder and apologize to the thousands of sincere and meritorious students and their parents who have been burning the midnight oil to prepare for the Class IX examination and also show through deeds that the system can indeed be cleaned up.
Yours’ etc.,
Sanjay Kar
Shillong-2
Awards wapsi misses heartbeat of humanity
Editor,
If you think that education makes one wise, truthful, compassionate, tolerant and forgiving then you’re totally wrong. The educated in India are outrageously more dangerous than the illiterate. Uneducated fools could have far more sense of wisdom and integrity than the so-called educated who espouse the most bizarre ideas. They artfully move about with agendas, often orchestrated by a certain political party that lusts after power than the country that nourishes them. Evidently filled with the poison of prejudice, the literary cabal is vehemently against some while fervently in favour of the certain others. The recent spurt of “award wapsi” has clearly exposed how selectively biased those intellectuals are and how willfully they go astray from the path of integrity and values. Well, these intellectuals drugged with opium of favoritism had maintained a deafening silence while over 5 lakh Kashmiri Pandits were deported from their native land which witnessed their brutal massacre. The heartwrenching carnage of 1984 never prompted such intellectuals to return the awards presented by the bloodstained hand of the then Government. Again, innumerably frequent inhuman bombings and blasts during UPA regimes by a certain section of terror modules targeting others never stirred the sensibility of the literary brigand. They never raised any voice of anger against such inhuman intolerance. Were their hearts so insensitive and their intellectual nerves so numb when blast after blast convulsed the nation and killed countless innocent people? Killings, murders or any kind of criminal acts by any one must be condemned and thus the fitting punishment is awarded irrespective of the caste, creed or race of the perpetrators. But in India some cases are over-hyped and discussed ad nauseum while others are mercilessly undermined and muted. Why are we so choosy in expressing human emotions and compassion towards the hapless? Is this not totally unethical and unpardonable and also unconstitutional in any civil society? I’m afraid, such selective sympathy and tolerance and open aversion to the others will break the country into pieces. Let’s learn first to feel the heart-beat of humanity than the literature of hypocrisy.
Yours etc.,
Salil Gewali
Shillong-2