REDKP
6-Feb-2022
" I was peacefully doing M-blog's, but I am wanted to take a break from movie's and come back to what I was doing previously. This week there was a controversy related to NEET in Tamil Nadu ( Very usual, it happens every other week), so in no means, I would discuss it."
" In India, at least 60 odd entrance exams are being conducted after the 12th grade. But in the last five years or so the most popular and controversial exam should be NEET."
" NEET [National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) or NEET (UG)] is an all India pre-medical entrance test for students who wish to pursue undergraduate medical (MBBS), dental (BDS) and AYUSH (BAMS, BUMS, BHMS, etc.) courses in government and private institutions in India and also, for those intending to pursue primary medical qualification abroad."
" I fondly remember when this exam for the first time was being conducted in 2016, as a 7th grade student, I set out on a date on the day 1 May 2016 to bloody understand how the atmosphere of the centre was on that date ( That centre was my own school K.V.D.R.D.O. in Bangalore). I saw so many coaching institutions representatives standing in front of the centre. So, I went to every other representative who was distributing their institutions their pamphlets and asked them to give a pamphlet ( Well, to get these pamphlets, these representatives questioned me looking at my height and relatively younger kid like the look, so I had to counter them in the name of a non-existent brother.). What I observed in these pamphlets were very similar claiming they are the best in the market. ( A general observation.)."
" So, coming to the point NEET is boon or bane can be debated later, but I would like to present a case study of a girl."
"Shanmugam Anitha (5 March 2000 – 1 September 2017) was a student from Tamil Nadu, India. She scored 1176/1200 ( Which is 98% by the way ) in the 12th standard exams in the Tamil Nadu State Board. This would have secured her a medical seat if only the State Board marks had been considered for admission. In NEET-UG 2017, Anitha secured a 12.33 percentage of marks while she scored 86 out of 720 marks. The minimum eligibility cut-off for making it into the merit list was 40 per cent for students in the reserved category. On 1 September 2017, she committed suicide by hanging. Her death created a major controversy in Tamil Nadu where the National Eligibility and Entrance Test for medical admissions were strongly opposed. She has become a cause celebre as a victim of the system."
"Anitha belonged to a poor Tamil family in Kuzhumur village, Ariyalur district in rural Tamil Nadu. Anitha was the daughter of a daily wage labourer and her mother had died when she was young. She was brought up by her grandmother and lived in a house without even a toilet. She studied in a Tamil Medium school and was amongst the toppers in her district and she was the only student in Ariyalur district to score 100% marks in Physics and Mathematics in the 12th standard examination. Anitha always wanted to become a doctor. She saw that it was not possible for poor rural students to afford expensive coaching needed to prepare for NEET exams and only if medical admission selections were done based on the 12th standard marks alone would rural students be able to get seats. Anitha was unable to meet the cutoff and secure a seat through NEET. Anitha was offered an aeronautical engineering course seat at the Madras Institute of Technology but as she only wanted to be a doctor she did not take up the offer. She would have been the first from her community in her village to become a doctor."
" Anitha secured 98% in the board exams ( Anyway and any day I could only dream an overall of 98% in my boards, but boards realistically are not competent enough to determine a person's skills. Neither every topper is skilful nor every skilful person is a topper.).But unfortunately, she couldn't get the NEET rank, but what if she accepted MIT's offer, maybe Anitha in some or the other way made the nation proud ."
" But her suicide did impact me. That year I was in the 8th grade. During my final exam that year, in the subject of Hindi, I had a question, where I was asked how to dream an India of your conscience's. I replied to that question where one of my points was that I want an India where I don't find brother's and sister's suicide due to failure in an exam (Do not know how my teacher reacted reading that point and how many marks was I awarded for that question as we do not get to look at our finals answer sheets, we only get informed by what are the marks we have obtained.)."
" But my point was never the reality, instead the trend has bloody increased as the years passed. The stats are quite depressing to be displayed. Now I am very clear about the fact that I don't have a clear stand as of now on this issue, as I lack an idea about the way the questions are been framed in the NEET question paper's and I am not that mature enough to directly make a preconceived stand on this issue as I need a bit more detailed understanding on the perspectives, so consider I am out."
" While reading about Anitha, I questioned myself about the privileges I have got, these were the very same things which struck 7 or 8 months ago while working on the child labour issue. Did I justify the facilities I got during this covid-19 related lockdown? Many of my age during the pandemic lacked formal or informal education, food and fodder and the visuals of people walking back to their respective destinations, the way people lost their lives during the covid-19 second wave just made me tempted to give back something to my 17 years of learning."
" The date 25th May 2021 was the day of relevance for me as Politicho-d-company was started on that day when I published my first blog which I would call it micro-step to give back to the learnings of my life. I don't know how many blogs I could post in the upcoming months, but in the second half of the year, I will be quite active in these activities. I have not even earned a penny yet from blogging but that's not my aim ultimately."
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