Predictably, the worst-ever result kicked up a political storm. A spate of suicides and attempted suicides by students who failed didn’t help matters. "Digvijay Singh may crow about the so-called international awards his government has received for work in the field of education. But these results are an eye-opener. They show what the ground reality is," says Uma Bharati, the bjp’s CM-aspirant. "The unscheduled power cuts, faulty administration and abolishing of the formal education system are responsible for the poor results this year," she added.
The government’s take is that efforts by the board to raise exam standards in MP is reflected in the poor results. This year ‘grace marks’ were reduced from 20 to 5 and steps were taken to check copying, leaking of question papers. Also, a system was introduced to ensure objective evaluation.
All this may be welcome, but there is some truth in the student community’s complaint about the prolonged power cuts. Students and parents say the 14-hour cuts in the summer made studying virtually impossible. The government counters this by saying if power cuts were solely responsible, results should have been poor across the board in competitive exams (university and college), which is not the case. Rajesh Tiwari, principal of the School of Excellence, Bhopal, says holding power cuts responsible would be tantamount to taking a very superficial view of things. "The rot goes much deeper...neither the students, nor the parents, nor the teachers can forego their responsibility," he says.
