JEE and NEET exams: #nopostponement
Hon’ble Supreme Court recently disallowed the petition filed for postponement of the JEE Mains and NEET exams slated to be held in September, 2020 after being already postponed many times since April. Students for postponement state that there are many issues in taking the exams such as risks due to Covid, non-compliance of SOPs released by government, flood situation in many parts of the country making it difficult to travel to exam centres and others.
While these are all valid reasons, there is a much larger sub-set of students who have been preparing for these exams for over 18 months and are living in constant fear that there valuable academic year will go waste if they are not allowed to take the exam this year.
Consider the numbers. There are 11,18,000 students taking the JEE mains exam and 16,84,000 students registered for the NEET exam this year. Assuming that similar number of students register for these exams next year, there will be almost double the number of students competing for same number of seats in the engineering and medical colleges respectively in 2021 which is extremely unfair for the students of this year as well as of the next year.
When someone asks for a postponement, first question that comes to mind is – till when – October, November, next year? No one is in a position to confirm as to when this Covid situation will improve. Cases are increasing despite all measures of lockdowns and what not. Exams cannot be postponed indefinitely. This leads to be conclusion that we need to get on with normal life despite Covid risk albeit with intelligent management of the risk associated with it.
Some people argue that may be by end of September/early October, we have a vaccine and then people will be more confident in getting out. A funny argument, that you do not trust the Government when it says that it will ensure all measures are taken to control the spread, but you trust the Government to come out with a vaccine so soon, market it and make it available everywhere. Medically, as per doctors, there are no signs of a vaccine preventing or curing the Covid related disease anytime soon, not for at least 1 year.
Coming to real solvable problems. Because of covid and flood situation in several states, transportation and logistics is a big issue. There are exam centres in 233 cities for JEE and 155 for NEET. So roughly, its 5000 students per city for JEE and 10,000 for NEET. Assuming that 50% arrange for their own transport or do not have to travel inter-city for the exam, its still a staggering number.
As usual, technology can be the answer to this problem.
As per NTA guidelines, a student can give up to 4 choices of the desired centre and the centre address will reflect on the admit card. So an APP can be developed which takes this data from NTA and maps all students, ties up with a bus service such as Red Bus and students can register to avail the bus service from a preferred location from their respective city to their exam centre and back, without worrying about transportation. Same APP can be used to arrange for food and other requirements of the students just before or after the exams.
There are a number of towns or villages which are cut off from main roads and highways due to floods. Unfortunately, the buses will not be of help for students stuck in such areas. Here comes the role of local governments, NGO’s, religious institutions and other responsible institutions and citizens. If boats etc. are not available, they must be made available for the students to be able to reach the centre in time. I am sure that the NDMA and other similar authorities can be connected and they can manage ferrying the students from point A to point B. If local boats are available and the question is of cost of travel, the institutions and other citizens can sponsor a one way boat ride for a kid who will probably become a doctor or an engineer for this country. I know I will, if I had the information as to who actually needs help.
The APP can act as a medium to connect the helper and the helped.
All I am advocating is that postpone of an exam is not the answer, as there will always be issues such as rains, floods, winter, pollution and Covid. We, as a country, need to get back on our feet. And once we do that, we will need every engineer and every doctor to take this country forward. Proponents for postponement need to consider this. It’s a single day exam, in a controlled environment, for 3 hours. Trust your government for 3 hours and you will save a year.