Ulta Pradesh

It is with a really apologetic feeling that I have started to write this post today… Blogging is turning out to be a really difficult task.. Its okay on those days when something eventful happens, but its really tough to write a post on those days which turn out to be totally uneventful… Like yesterday, when I spent the whole day at home.. I was at my wit’s end to find a topic to fill my blog with, and my mind came up with dumb ideas like telling the readers (I wouldn’t have made this statement, coz I never expected anyone to read my posts… But since I can see a few comments, I am led to believe that there are certain people in this universe who are so utterly bored that they considered reading my blog as a very lucrative option.. At this juncture I would like to mention my special thanks to those people, who posted some comments just to keep me happy) about my choice of music… I know that such a travesty would have caused me to lose whatever little readership I have currently obtained (three people by the looks of it)…

But I am also quite happy to inform everyone around that there was something very eventful today.. Apart from me watching the movie “Shootout at Lokhandwala”, there was a very strange incident that took place in a totally different part of India : U.P… Everyone (hopefully) knows that U.P is a state in India and is the abbreviation for Uttar Pradesh, sometimes jocularly referred to as “Ulta Pradesh”.. And let me tell you that I don’t think there is anything funny about addressing the state with the name of Ulta Pradesh… The most recent occurrence that took place there kind of reinforces that U.P has something Ulta-Fulta associated with it.. Now people may think that I have that stereotypical mentality of considering U.P and Bihar as very eccentric states, and I would like to clarify that this is not the case with me… I myself have resided in Lucknow for 6 years and have really fond (and when I say fond, I mean it!!) memories associated with the city and the state… So its not as if I am going to give a biased description of the current event that took place out there..

As the song “Toh phir aao” by Mustafa Zahid plays on my computer, I embark on the task of describing the strangest examination ever conducted in the world… The Combined Pre Medical Test (CPMT) is an exam given by the residents of Uttar Pradesh for a seat in any one of the various medical universities situated in the state, and as expected, students slog their three-lettered unmentionable body parts to get through the exam.. The funniest thing about the exam is that it is not conducted by a fixed examination board… On the contrary, the different medical universities take it in turns to conduct the exam and this year’s edition was to be managed by a complete novice : Jaunpur University… And due to this lucky turn of events, I got yet another opportunity to criticize the educational system in our country, which is one of my favourite pastime activities… The exam results were announced on the 14^th of June, and U.P has been burning since then… Not due to the excessive heat of the summers but due to mass scale protests and riots in the state, especially in Lucknow and Kanpur.. The reason : Out of the 16000 odd students who gave the exam from Kanpur district, only 20 were declared eligible… Now one more important fact about the exam is that to be eligible, one has to score merely 35% in both the papers.. So how can one explain that whereas last year out of the 60000 odd candidates who appeared for the exam, 55000 were eligible, this time out of the 70000 odd candidates, only 14000 were announced eligible.. There was this rumour doing the rounds that every candidate with a roll number resembling (4n+1) {where n is a natural number} was announced eligible…

Before I move on to describe the other facets of this story, I would like to clarify that though I totally empathize with the protests of the students, I still don’t agree with the means that have been used by the students (or should I say, the means that have been used by those idiotic hooligans who get paid by political parties just for disrupting the law and order in a state)… For one thing, they burnt a bus full of 40 people in the Gomti Nagar area of Lucknow… Although the people escaped unhurt, I think they were as much to be blamed for the exam scandal as the thumbnail of Paris Hilton (who, incidentally, continues to rot in jail)… That is one most peculiar thing about Indian protests… I could go on and on about this topic but I had rather save it for some other uneventful day, when I could fill the blog with my views about the topic…

So going on with the story… I would like to remind the Science students that the eligibility criteria for the CPMT exams this time around kinda resembled Huckel’s rule of aromaticity, the (4n+1) rule.. A very simple way, I would say, of knowing one’s CPMT results this time around… Jokes apart, I was shocked to hear about a guy committing suicide coz he didn’t get qualified in the CPMT after taking a drop for four years… One event for which I think the examination committee should be held solely responsible.. A related event was of this boy getting a 60-something rank in the All India PMT and not even qualifying in the CPMT… Closer to me, one Ms. D was badly depressed coz she didn’t qualify in the exam, whereas one of her really dumb friends got a 500-odd rank, only to realize that the results were withheld by the U.P Government.. Another really funny thing about the OMR sheet used in the exam : Normally questions are given with choices like A,B,C,D , but in this exam the choices for questions were printed as A,A,A,A; B,B,B,B and so on.. There are also allegations that the question paper codes were tampered with, that is, question papers with the same code had a different order of questions… I commend the organizers on how efficiently they managed to so badly screw up the procedure of a totally computerized exam..

Now I have this totally out-of-the-earth explanation of this scandal… I know this is just a conspiracy theory, but who gives a damn… Methinks when Mulayam Singh Yadav was about to resign from his office as the Chief Minister of U.P, he resolved to have Mayawati embroiled in some type of controversy… What better way than to screw up the CPMT papers?? I know it might sound strange, to the extent of being hilarious, but if Mulayam can make Amitabh Bachchan appear as a farmer on paper (refer to the newspapers for this piece of news, in case you haven’t heard of the controversy yet), this is something really accomplishable…

After such a brilliant mockery of the Indian education system, I, an ardent fan of Uttar Pradesh and Uttar Pradeshwaasis, have to admit that addressing U.P as Ulta Pradesh is not totally unjustified… Paper leaks can still be understood, but paper code tampering is something which I am sure is totally unheard of… But of course in U.P, you need to expect the unexpected… And Ms. D, get happy, coz this post was for you…