Gone are those days when a government job was considered as a matter of privilege for people with political patronage, money and muscle. Now the times have changed and we are living in meritocratic society. Our family lineage, caste and social status is no longer a hurdle in getting a government job; instead, it has become a product of sweat, toil and tears that one puts in to crack a competitive exam to secure a job. In a world full of opportunities, our erstwhile state, now a demoted UT, is still lagging behind in providing timely job opportunities to educated youth. With almost paltry presence of private sector, providing an employment has become a constant headache for the government, and, in turn, all educated unemployed youth have pinned their hopes of earning a livelihood on getting a government job some day.
As per the recent data, J&K’s unemployment rate of 46.3 percent among the educated category is the second-highest unemployment rate after Kerala where the percentage stood at 47 percent. Now the onus is on recruiting agencies like JKSSB and JKPSC to up their ante of advertising vacant posts in government sectors to tame this galloping rate of unemployment before it goes out of control. Cutting a long story short, the point that I wish to raise through this space, is that more than two weeks back the JKSSB held OMR-based MCQ examination for J&K FAA (Finance Accounts Officer) in a transparent manner. But what astonished the candidates most was the standard of questions asked in the paper. Ask anyone who had appeared in this exam if he/she is in a complaining mood rather than in a complimenting mood for the JKSSB holding this exam on time. Outpouring of anger against JKSSB FAA paper on social media platforms by candidates is genuine, considering the disparity in syllabus and standard of paper set by the authorities. These grievances should be taken as positive feedback for future exams.
The JKSSB had framed the syllabus for this post on IAS pattern, based on topics from interdisciplinary subjects like science, maths, statistics, accountancy, etc. So, candidates had to toil hard to read and understand these multiple subjects using mainly digital platforms like YouTube for it, but when it came to framing of the questions paper, the JKSSB seem to have forgotten the syllabus altogether, setting a paper with a standard lower than for a Class 4 post. Such was the level of questions in the paper that a candidate who had worked for years on the syllabus had no advantage over a person who had worked for one month for this exam; with the easy standard of the paper, both ended up performing to same level, thus robbing the genuine candidates of fruits of their hard work.
Personally, I don’t have any qualms about the standard of paper set by the examiner. We have to swallow this bitter pill as the examination is all about catching you off guard and this time the JKSSB surprised candidates in fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar’s style, who used to surprise batters by bowling a slower bowler instead of bowling his usual fast and furious toe-crushing yorker or well-directed bouncers at 150kph, which most batsmen expected from him and thus falling into a trap.
If the standard of paper wasn’t enough to demoralise the candidates, gross errors had crept into questions and options that certainly made the matters worse for candidates. It seems JKSSB had not done any proof reading of this paper before finalising it. The paper had a few questions with confusing language, some questions had more than one correct answer given in options, and there were two to three questions where the correct answer was written more than once in options. For example, questions were like, the capital of India is? Four options given were like (a) Bangalore (b) Delhi (c) Kolkata and (d) Delhi. How can you expect a candidate to mark this question in an OMR sheet? Caught in a quandary, the candidate had to either mark option (b) or (d) or else ignore this question and leave it to JKSSB to nullify this question altogether.
After the examination, the JKSSB asked for representations from candidates on doubtful questions to revise its keys. More than 21,000 representations were received by JKSSB through online mode. But when the revised key was uploaded a few days back, questions that deserved to be corrected have remained as such, thus robbing the candidates of genuine points that ultimately will determine their selection. Fractions determine the merit in JKSSB exams; I have seen people falling short of selection by barest of margins like 0.25 in many exams. So, the JKSSB needs to revise the revised answer key again. They can’t brush these mistakes under the carpet as this will spoil the fate of thousands of candidates whose chances are hanging by the thread to figure in the final selection list. If the JKSSB does not do so, the only option left for candidates is to take the matter to judiciary, which nobody wants.
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MALIK JAVID