Student Demands for Retest of CAT 2006

Students who took the Common Admission Test this year are now showing their annoyance over the errors in the question papers. Few days back students in delhi went on a candlelight march on this issue and now some students in lucknow has requested the Chief Justice of India (CJI) to look into the matter. Students have asked the IIMs to publicly announce the errors in CAT and the action taken to neutralize the effect under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. CAT and the action taken to neutralize the effect under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Students are also demanding that IIMs should publicize the answer keys under the same act. Few have also gone up to the extent of asking a re-test of CAT 2006, which IIMs have already discarded. Till now IIMs have only confirmed the errors and said that the errors are related to editing and printing and thus the faculties who set the paper can’t be held responsible for it. Though IIM authorize have already announced that they will let every one know the corrective steps taken by them. But the candidates are in no mood of taking any back step. They have decided to go to courts, if IIMs fail to come up with a solution satisfying all.

Guys Outperformed Gals in getting IIM calls

CAT 2006 results are out and all the IIMs have published the short listed candidates for next round of Group Discussion and Interviews. Guys have out performed gals in all departments of CAT 2006. For IIMB the percentage of gals who are short listed for GD/PI is only 17.87 % out of the applied 24.7% .The scenario is almost same for all the other IIMs. The resistance against OBC reservation on the account that many will get a chance to study in IIMs with out scoring at per with general candidates is confirmed wrong. Many OBCs have scored well ahead of the general category applicants; the difference in the average marks obtained between the general category shot listed candidates and the OBC short listed candidates is a just 2%. The average percentile of OBC candidates shortlist is 97.73% - which can never considered as bad. The myth that engineers are not good in English is proved wrong as this time also most of the short listed candidates are from Engineering background though the English section was the toughest in the paper. Following the raising trend of Engineers making in to IIM, this year IIMB have shot listed 904 engineers out of total 1065. This years results shows that indian B schools have started giving importance to Industry experience while sending the call letters . Among all the short listed candidates 61.77% had prior relevant work experience. The most shocking aspect of this years result is that students with ZERO score in English section have got percentiles up to 35. This clearly indicates how tough was the English section with more than one-third of the students scoring zero or less than that. Many students who scored 99 percentile in quantitative analysis and data interpretation secured zero in English.

Candlelight March against CAT Errata.

After a hectic time of few weeks, CAT aspirants got some to show their exasperation against the imprecision of questions in CAT 2006. After CAT many students might not have got enough time to properly analyze the paper due to IRMA and IIFT, both scheduled just one week after CAT. Now IIFT is over and the next scheduled exam JMET is on 10th December , giving all the mba aspirants some much needed time to think about what went wrong in CAT. For a group, it was the erroneous paper and they went on a candlelight march in delhi with black band on their arm to show their disappointment against it. . Admission chairpersons of all the six Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) plan to meet by next week to discuss about the errors in CAT 2006 paper and to figure out some sort of formula so that no cat taker suffer because of it. It is highly unlikely that IIMs are going to publicly declare how they are going to negate the effect of wrong questions in the exam. Even if they decide not to consider those questions for the final evaluation it ‘ll go against those who have attempted it correctly. There was also a question with only 3 options instead of 5. In the mean time students are planning to lunch an internet signature campaign to make their agitation felt in all over the country. CAT has been an exam of repute for many years. Except the questions Paper leak in the year 2003 there was never been any untoward incident. Students got to understand that such minor things might happen when exams are held in such a huge scale. IIMs always do their best to slect students on the basis of merit and they know the best way to select the right candidate for their institutes.

Reservation A Necessity or A burden

Reservation – why, its achievement and its failure to deliver

Well before we slam the politicians and all let’s look in to the past and observe why was the reservations done in the first place and its present impact.

In the past(before independence) its true that the higher classes enjoyed more benefits - I mean what all the titles like Rai Bahadur,  and etc were mean tot create a social unrest which was utilised to its best by the British.

It seems that to reverse things a bit and also appease the SC/ST s reservations were made. Moreover the census of 1932 too showed that the SC/ST s and OBCs were larger in numbers. So it can be said that for general appeasement of masses it was also a political step by the Country makers at that time. Moreover with the proximity to USSR at that time the word "equality" may have sounded different at that time.

Reservations were made not only in castes but also between states at lets keep J & K out of this since it had its own problems to deal with.

If we look into most of the Government PSUs made after independence we would observe that they intentionally kept Maharashtra and West Bengal out of it purview since they were the most developed states during in and around independence. Former being the seat of the commercial capital and the later being the seat of the country's capital in the past. Rather New Delhi being the capital of India only for 96 years whereas Calcutta was the capital from 1772 to 1911 - 139 years.

Now initially there was a time frame for implementing the "social upliftment" - the term coined by all those pro-reservation politicians (may be that includes everyone except Sidhu pajji) now. After that time frame got over it was found that they still lag behind so it was increased and more time was given but it reached its peak with the "Mandal commission".

Now after 60 years of independence if "social upliftment" has not been achieved then it clearly indicates the process thus chosen was wrong. Reservation always meant to deny the deserving from the pie and give it to some who doesn't deserve it. Frankly this whole drama is appeasing the masses but there is a flip side of it. It's this that General Category class is still ahead. It meant that due to competitions for fewer seats the generals are getting better day by day. And they are still ahead despite of all the reservations against merit.

Who is actually benefiting, are the labour class of SC/ST s benefiting? NO!!! The service class is biggest and perhaps the only benefactor. The people whom we meet everybody in our offices, schools, parks, restaurants belonging to this class are "THE" biggest benefactor.

Reservation in my opinion should be made for every one who heralds from a lower economic status for one-time for either govt. jobs or govt. educational institution. Once availed it cannot be used for the next 3 generations and that too after calculating the economic status. This would ensure that it comes to an end one day.

There is another point I would like to make is why did politicians suddenly warmed up for reservations in premier institutions and private firms. Well, during Mandal commission, our present PM Dr. Manmohan Singh did introduce something called "Liberalisation". Credit to him  for having such a long-sighted concept, slowly it became apparent in the late nineties early millennium that there aren't sufficient jobs in the government sector and most of them were going after private firms - that meant that reservation in government sector is not that valuable any more. So this is the only way out. But kudos to Private firms and IIMs, IITs and not forget the medical fraternity who has the biggest influence in the social setup who stood up against this "social menace". But above all the Supreme Court who proved time and again that it would not be the part of cheap politics.