Voices Anand Neelakantan Utkarsh Amitabh Ravi Shankar Anu Aggarwal Debashis Chatterjee Swami Sukhabodhananda MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment NEW DELHI June 23 2024 SUNDAY PAGES 12 NEET & Unclean In spite of the government cancelling the NEET exam, repairing the broken medical education system is a long haul K By Kavita Bajeli-Datt ota, the coaching capital of India is like a dystopian world of death, deception and desire to win. Last year, the authorities of hostels installed ceiling fans with springs inside them so that disappointed students, who have enrolled for Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for engineering and the National Eligibility-cumEntrance Test (NEET) for admission to medical colleges, do not end up hanging themselves. In January 18-year-old Bagisha Tiwari, a Kolkata girl who failed NEET, jumped , from the ninth floor of a building. The authorities and owners of private hostels have installed anti-suicide nets in balconies and lobbies to prevent more Bagisha Tiwaris from happening. The NEET-UG exam is the world's biggest medical entrance test, and Kota is where students believe the springboard to success is. The city’s coaching business, which has an annual turnover of `5,000 crore, is run from six large institutes—many smaller ones go uncounted—each of which teaches more than 5,000 full-time students and charges `40,000 to `1.3 lakh a year. The reason why students keep coming to Kota is hope. Like 20-year-old Vidushi Sharma, who spent two years living alone in Kota away from her home in Delhi. She is determined to become a doctor despite failing twice to get into a good government medical college; private colleges charge double or treble the amount. Vidushi says, “I hope the third time will be my lucky charm.” There is every chance she will be disappointed again despite scoring 643 out of 720, which would have ensured a smooth shoe in. “I can’t believe that my dream, as well as the dreams of other honest and hardworking students, has become impossible because of an examination system that is broken, unfair and lacks transparency she exclaims. ,” At the centre of the current NEET heat wave is the issue of inflated marks. According to experts, 640-650 is considered a good score. “Last year, students with these marks would have achieved a rank around 10,000, but now they are getting ranks between 30,000-40,000,” says Dheeraj Kumar Singh, an advocate who has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court on behalf of 20 NEET-UG candidates. Akhil Seelam, a Bengaluru resident, scored an impressive 640 out of 720. His rank, however, is 38,000. “Such a low rank will push me to move out of the city to find a government medical college. I will now have to look at a Tier-2 or -3 city in Karnataka,” he says. He is now considering applying to Kasturba Medical College, Mangaluru, Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences in Hubbali and Mandya Medical College. Last year, 20,38,596 students appeared for the exam, and 13,991 (0.6 per cent) secured 620-720 marks. Last year’s cut-off for government seats was 610. Turn to page 2 Students protest during the ongoing NEET crisis What’s the NEET Controversy? Dr Rohan Krishnan, national chairman, Federation of All India Medical Association “Instead of giving grace marks to those who lost time, the NTA should have given them more time to finish their paper. They decided on their own to give grace marks. All this smacks of corruption and malpractice.” The NEET-UG, conducted by the NTA, is the gateway to admission to a medical college. This year, the results were declared on June 4 ● A total of 2.4 million students competed for just 1,10,000 available seats ● Around 60,000 seats belong to government-run colleges ● This year, an unprecedented 67 students achieved the perfect score of 720 marks ● There was also a significant increase in the number of candidates scoring in the high range of 650-680 marks ● 1,563 candidates were given ‘grace marks’ for delays at exam centres and because a physics question turned out to have two correct answers Brajesh Maheshwari, ALLEN coaching institute, Kota “Ever since NTA took over, systematic failures have occurred. For a student, even one mark makes a difference in ranking. There should be a thorough investigation into NTA’s examination process.” Maheshwar Peri, chairman and founder, Careers 360 “NTA has lost its credibility, and next time they hold any examination, it will be open to challenge. They need to take up forensic and technical audits to ensure scoring is done properly.”
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