Dilshad Hossain Dodul :
What is the definition of ‘news’? Most of us tend to define news as the information about unusual events. When something unusual happens around us, media houses grab it, process it and disseminate it in a ‘news report’ format. But leaking questions at the day before the examinations whether it is public exams like PSC, JSC, SSC or HSC or admission tests of universities or other educational institutions certainly cannot be valued as ”news’ for this has been very common and one of the most repeated incidents during the last few years.
But when students, victimized by these incidents agitated together against these ‘normal matters’, become news. Some of the students who did not qualify in medical admission tests are demanding that the questions of medical admission test had been leaked before the exams whereas maximum of the students who qualified on the tests actually collected the question papers before the exam. They were agitating at the Central Shaheed Minar and Shahbagh intersection, pushing for the cancellation of the result of the ‘debacle’ entry tests and holding another fair admission tests. As all we have seen police charged batons on the agitating students and arrested some of them from the protests.
This discussion is not about whether those students are right or not, but it is about what initiatives are taken by the government to stop such accusation of leaking questions after the result of almost all of the public exams.
In public exams, like SSC or HSC, held in the last two years, leaking and having questions via social media Facebook or coaching centers has been hugely exposed before the nation. This malpractice has become a tradition and admission tests were also not out of this. Government repeatedly seems the least bothered by ignoring this matter and saying everything is under control and people involved with such incidents will be identified and brought to the book.
Though we, at a regular interval, get news of arresting people involved in fraudulence and mastering admission tests; which definitely is not a solution either as maximum aspirants whether qualified or not are collecting and buying question papers of the tests to ensure a place in public universities and colleges.
In recent years, almost after every public university admission tests, we found students in the streets, protesting against the published result and instead of formulating an efficacious committee to find a solution to this while the government remained trying to oppress the protests. Police attack on agitating students who were in the Shaheed Minar demanding the retake of medical admission indicate that government is showing its despotic attitude towards the democratic rights like protesting against a decision.
We have noticed ‘cool and calm’ behavior of police in the recent demonstrations of private university students involved in ‘no vat on education’ movement, held last month. On the contrary what police are showing with the students, demanding cancellation of result of medical admission tests, is just the opposite to what they did with the private university students. The reason may be that the VAT protesters might get the police sympathy because they were huge in number and from that part of the society who is able to pay for higher education.
Here comes the matter of business. Private universities, whether colleges or engineering universities are doing business in the name of education, particularly private medical colleges charge a huge amount of money on their students while comparing with other universities. Hence as guardians get the chance to buy questions of medical admission tests, they instantly adopt the unfair means by purchasing those papers before exams. Instead of paying fees to private medical colleges years after years, buying question of public medical colleges is much more secured and reasonable. While such instances of buying leaked questions of admission tests and securing place in a medical college are available in number, morality hardly can refrain one from being a part of this culture.
From the comments, posted in different groups in Facebook, demanding the cancellation of medical admission result, it can be said that students still have faith on government as they have already created an discreet example of solving the tension arisen among private university students about vat on their education. Government has to response positively to their faith instead of trying to suppress their movement by law enforcement. Bangladesh’s education system contains full of flaws in every part of it; which will produce professionals without knowledge, citizen without responsibility towards country and human without morals. This is the time to act with prudence to identify the reasons behind the destruction of education system and solve it with fruitful initiatives.
(Dilshad Hossain Dodul, Senior Lecturer, Journalism and Media Studies Department, Stamford University Bangladesh)
