NEET – Working against Underprivileged Indians
The NEET (National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test) is a national entrance exam for students wanting to get admissions into MBBS & BDS medical programs. This exam is organized by the CBSE Board.
There has been opposition to NEET from the beginning. And that makes a lot of sense. What doesn’t make any sense is for the Central Government to push through this.
All entrance exams are discriminatory
Let’s get this straight folks. Any entrance exam is a hindrance for rural and poor students.
One reason is that entrance exams lend themselves well to being coached in a specific way. And so many coaching centers and books targeting such entrance exams crop up in no time. Rural and poor students will usually not be privy to such coaching.
That is why States such as Tamilnadu have removed all such barriers. In Tamilnadu, for instance there is no entrance exam either for Engineering or Medicine.
But NEET takes discrimination to a whole new level.
NEET is Unfair to State-Board Students
The NEET has the CBSE/NCERT syllabus as its backbone. So the NEET exam is clearly an unfair one for students from State Boards and from rural areas where the standards may be lower.
When the Indian union has multiple syllabi that vary in great measure in term sof standard and content, the idea of having a single national entrance exam is appallingly short-sighted to say the least.
Unless every Indian student has moved to the CBSE syllabus, this exam is a cruel joke played on the non-CBSE students.
NEET is Unfair to Linguistic Minorities
It also gives students who are fluent in Hindi/English a clear edge (have you seen the online NEET application form with its Hindi/English verbiage?)
NEET, as of now is being offered in only 10 languages – Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Assamese, Telugu, Kannada, Oriya and Tamil apart from English and Hindi.
Of the 1000 or so languages spoken in this great land of ours, we have a mere 22 listed as the Scheduled Languages as per the Indian Constitution. And NEET is not conducted even in these 22 languages!
The Central government thinks that a student who has studied his entire syllabus in language XYZ can suddenly turn around, learn a new language and write an entrance exam in that new language.
If you take for instance a student who has studied in Malayalam or Urdu medium, what does he/she do? Learn a new language? Wait for a few years before NEET is finally conducted in Malayalam or Urdu?
Can the Central government really be so non-inclusive? It looks like they can – no problem there.
NEET Infringes on State-Rights
This is a long-term issue that needs to be looked at with a long-term-perspective.
NEET is, in a way, an infringement on the Rights of States.
NEET belittles the State’s ability to manage its higher education which is under the concurrent list of Schedule 7 in the Indian constitution. And NEET works towards tearing down the federal structure of our great nation. Soon we can dissolve all the states and all our district collectors can directly report to the Prime Minister of India. Perhaps that is what the current central government envisions – a country bereft of any diversity.
Unfair to Rural Students
The very application for NEET requires that you have access to the Internet!
How about students in remote villages with no access to any computer let alone the internet? Has the Central Government of India ensured that every household has access to internet? I hope people realize that even today, in 2017, there are villages in Northern India with no electricity.
The woes of the rural student are poorly understood by policy-makers who may have never set foot in a remote rural school. Can you imagine you are a student in a mountainous/remote village where there is only one bus that comes once a week to take you to the nearest town (which in itself is just a larger village.) We have thousands and thousands of such students across India.
It’s easy to sit in Delhi or Mumbai or Chennai and say “everyone has access to the internet.” Someone even said “Just go the nearest Common Services Center (Facilitation Centres.)!” Are the Facilitation centers found in remote rural areas? No! Are they free? No!
Also while the urban student may be able to have access to some coaching center of some sort, the rural student is left high and dry. And the wealthy among the rural have to send their children to urban centers for the duration of the NEET coaching.
Unfair to Poor Students
The NEET exam is not free.
It has an application fee of Rs.1400 for the UR/OBC category. And Rs. 750 for the SC/ST. This is not a small fee!!
In a country where one-third of the population doesn’t have even one square meal a day, the Government thinks that it is okay to charge this exorbitant amount of money from a STUDENT?
Without any doubt, lakhs of students from underprivileged families will simply not write NEET because of this high entrance-fee. At the very least the Government could have made NEET free for the SC/ST.
Why don’t we put out large boards outside all Medical Colleges that read like this – “Admissions only for the wealthy! “
Not to mention their inability to buy coaching books or their inability to attend NEET coaching centers.
Another unfair use of Aadhar
Yes if you don’t have the Aadhar card, then you cannot write the NEET exam.
The government has taken this to be yet another opportunity to push for people to take the Aadhar card. While this may be legal, given the privacy concerns of many, the mandatory usage of Aadhar for such simple exercises by minor-citizens seems like over-kill.
This may seem like an innocuous issue – but it is yet another long-term problem.
NEET a Clear Attack on the Poor, the Rural, and the Linguistic-Minorities
It gives wealthy urban students who study under the CBSE curriculum a clear advantage. And the corollary is true.
Every rural/poor/non-CBSE student is at a grave disadvantage.
The best part? It does NOT cough up high-quality doctors.
So NEET works against our poorest and most rural of Indians. Way to go!
If Gandhi were to be alive today, he would have started an agitation against NEET – no question about it.