Uneasy heads
Dr. Ashok Ganguly, chairman of the pan-India Central Board of Secondary Education (number of affiliated schools: 8,700), is under investigation by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) for flouting service rules and allegedly promoting textbooks of private publishers at the expense of government publications. Preeti Karmayogi, a Delhi-based correspondent of the Asian Age who filed an application under the Right to Information Act, 2005 to the CVC to solicit information on this issue, has received confirmation that Ganguly is being investigated by the commission. However the CVC declined to provide better particulars on the ground that "it may impede the process of investigation," says Karmayogi. Educationists in the national capital are inclined to discern a link between a mysterious shortage of NCERT textbooks and Ganguly having penned the complimentary forewords of six textbooks of private publishers. An allegation against Ganguly is that he deliberately under-ordered textbooks from the government-owned NCERT (National Centre for Education Research and Training), so that private publishers make up the shortfall running into millions of copies of popular textbooks.
Yet the reclusive Ganguly (who has repeatedly denied interviews to EducationWorld ) is not facing the firing squad alone. Francis Fanthome chief executive of the country’s most upscale school examinations board, CISCE (Council for Indian School Certificate Examination), was suspended and sent on long leave in May 2005 on charges of unauthorisedly "authoring, editing, presenting, compiling and endorsing" 47 textbooks. An enquiry by the Bangalore-based Justice (Retd) M.F. Saldanha is reportedly being spun out to coincide with Fanthome’s retirement next month (June).
Uneasy indeed are the heads that wear the crowns of India’s top two school examination boards.
Advertiser’s flight
The small but growing community of the discerning who appreciate the importance of hoisting education to the top of the national development agenda, and who follow the steady pilgrim’s progress of this pioneer publication, will no doubt have noticed that our modest effort to advertise EducationWorld as cost-effectively as limited budgets will allow, has driven us to advertise the newsstand availability of EW on national television. Thereby hangs a tale with a moral in it. Instinctively the first choice television channel to advertise EW’s unique charms was the English language Delhi-based NDTV 24x7, promoted by the nationally heralded Cadillac communists Prannoy Roy and spouse Radhika, who by mysterious alchemy swung the remarkable feat of getting requisite permissions to take NDTV public and raise over Rs.100 crore in 2004 despite the company never having made a profit and showing a loss of Rs.47 crore in the year preceding. Following this with the channel riding high in the public esteem, your grovelling editor was obliged to importune the effortlessly superior prima donnas of the NDTV Bangalore office (since the Comrade Roy neither returns calls nor replies letters) for a twice-monthly slot on the 9 o’clock news for a chastening, non-negotiable Rs.1,000 per second. Under the terms of the unequal contract, all paperwork had to be just so and dispatched to the Delhi politbureau on the dot with the advertising material, or else. When particulars were solicited regarding NDTV’s viewership ratings and soaring popularity, the answer was that the company "doesn’t see the need to divulge such information". Ironically eager-to-please marketers of EW provide such information in the minutest detail to the smallest advertiser, actual or potential.
Unfortunately circa mid 2005 the reported unwillingness of Roy to share prosperity — despite his ideological leanings — and allot a modest equity stake in the company to its star reporter, Rajdeep Sardesai, prompted the latter to put in his papers at NDTV. Bent upon revenge for perceived ingratitude, Sardesai roped in a formidable phalanx of partners including the domestic TV-18 and the US-based Time-Warner Inc which owns the original round-the-clock transnational news channel CNN, to launch the competitive CNN-IBN 24-hour news channel. And although the new news channel has been operational for only a few months, it has begun to give the hitherto high-riding NDTV a hard run for its money, prompting a flight of advertisers — EducationWorld included. For this struggling publication, it means lining up behind the somewhat scary demeanour of Sardesai who quite obviously believes in leading from the front, but it seems the better option.
Meanwhile look out for EW’s ad spot on the CNN-IBN news at 9 p.m in the third week of every month. There’s an important message in it.
Cheating epidemic
If only students in India’s Hindi heartland state of Uttar Pradesh displayed as much innovation in their scholar-ship, as they do in cheating in exams, the country’s most populous state could well emerge as the epicentre of learning.Recently two final year MBBS students of Lucknow’s King George’s Medical University — Ashutosh Kumar and Sailesh Kumar — were fortuitously discovered using mobile phones while writing their exams. The duo used specially tailored shirts with wires stitched to the insides and running down to mobile phones strapped onto their thighs. At the other end, the phones were connected to ear pieces and microphones stitched into the cuffs of their shirts.
Seated in the last row of seats with their mobile phones set on vibrator mode, they dialled friends in Agra and Kanpur to dictate the questions. After a while the friends would call back with model textbook answers. This hi-tech arrangement worked for two hours before an alert invigilator got wise to them. Two days later another alert invigilator seized a cell phone hidden inside a marker pen from another would-be medical practitioner.
Unnerved by what seems to be a cheating epidemic, King George’s has announced the formation of a committee to look into the charges, as well as investigate the use of such devices for copying. Particularly since six other students suddenly opted out of the exam, there is growing apprehension that such cheating is widespread.
Given their hi-tech cheating skills there’s a suggestion that King George’s Medical produces better engineers than doctors.