An interview with SEBA Chairman Mr Shantikam Hazarika . Ever since you became the Chairman, SEBA seems to be in the news very often. It has been reported that you are facing obstacles in bringing reforms to SEBA. What in your opinion are the problems facing SEBA? I would like you to give me some time to answer your query. You must remember that SEBA was set up 50 years ago, when the environment was different, the kind of people were different and the values were different. Recently, I came across a letter written by the indomitable Dev Kant Barooah, who as Education Minister set up SEBA. In this letter to the Education Secretary, he elucidates his vision for the Board, how he wants SEBA to be a dynamic set-up, heralding an educational revolution in the State. I am really awestruck by his far-sightedness, the clarity of his thoughts and the potential he saw in the organization. So, you will appreciate that SEBA has a rich legacy. Expeditions from SEBA were very high. It has a vast mandate to uphold. Well then, has SEBA lived up to the expectations? I believe in its initial stages, SEBA did live up to people’ expectations. Also, I feel a very sound academic foundation was laid, the momentum of which still sustains SEBA. How do you say that? Well, I have met many products from the SEBA system, who in their later lives competed very successfully against products of other education systems, even internationally. They have always attributed their success to their teachers who basically exploited the SEBA system and its contents to the hilt. Then why is SEBA’s image so low today? What do you think really happened? For an organization like SEBA to succeed, leadership is very important. Earlier, SEBA seem to have been led by stalwarts. The organization also attracted some of the best brains to work in it. Many of them had the calibre to shape government’s thinking on education. However, gradually I believe, SEBA’s leadership got diffused. That cannot be the only reason. There must be something more than poor leadership responsible? The government also, step by step, reduced SEBA’s domain. Many of its functions and roles were taken away from it. Of its own, SEBA abandoned many of its roles and activities that could have contributed to the qualitative aspects of its mission. Frankly, apart from organizing the annual HSLC examination and designing the syllabus for Class IX and Class X, SEBA nowadays has no other major work. SEBA plays no role in advising the government in academic matters. SEBA has stopped designing and executing teacher training programmes or instituting scholarships and prizes. Organizationally SEBA has become very weak; its human capital base has forgotten what its mission is. Financially, SEBA’s accounts have not been finalized since 2003. SEBA carries out a few thousands of transactions amounting to about Rs 30 crore a year. Yet SEBA’s accounts are still kept manually. The gap between SEBA’s accounts book and the bank is quite staggering that has no been reconciled. There has been hardly any academic innovation or original thinking inside SEBA. Research and deep academic studies have been largely absent. There is no dynamism in the organization. In other words, SEBA has not changed with the times? Well, I would rather say, SEBA has been left behind. It still works as it must have worked in the beginning when it had only a few thousand students spread over a few hundred schools, operating in a very staid and serene environment where the expectations of its client base and stakeholders were rather limited. And today? What is the scene like? Today, SEBA is responsible for the destiny of eight lakh students spread over nearly 7,000 schools, functioning in an environment that has seen revolutionary changes in the last few decades and where the stakeholdres are not willing to take anything for granted. SEBA today also caters to a large number of schools in remote inaccessible areas where majority of the students may be first generation students. The challenge is huge. How do you think SEBA will meet the challenges? Is SEBA equipped to deal with them? I will not say that it is not equipped. But some basic changes are required. Take the Assam Secondary Education Act enacted 50 years ago under which SEBA was formed. Since then, many changes have taken place in the field of education that have not been incorporated in the Act. Fifty years ago, we had posts like Additional DPI, Principal of the Assam Agriculture College. All these are not there anymore. Yet in the statute of SEBA, they still continue as Board members! On the other hand, the Higher Secondary Council, the SCERT, the Elementary Education Directorate etc. are not represented in the Board. So, the very basic composition of SEBA requires a relook. How do you explain this year’s admit card problems, the anomalies in declaring the results and other matters that kept SEBA in the news constantly in recent times? It is not that the examination related problems have not occurred in the past. In fact, they appear every year. Regarding this year’s problems, let me tell you, we had only 980 students out of 3.66 lakh, who got wrong admit cards or had to be issued temporary admit cards. The error was less than 0.5 per cent, yet it was blown out of proportion by the media. I talked to some other Board who stated that their error proportion was much higher. And all these problems were due to SEBA’s own data base that was not updated. Similarly, in result processing, some of the evaluation zones did not provide the data correctly. In any computerized system, if the data is erroneous, the result would be garbage. Garbage in, Garbage out (GIGO). We, however, corrected the errors as soon as they were detected. But I do agree that we should strive for zero-error situations. The problem is that SEBA has never learns from its mistakes. So mistakes get repeated. This year, instead of looking for scapegoats, we are trying to analyze the causes of the errors and see that they get reduced next year. What have you learnt and what you would like to do? First of all, we have to develop our human resource base. We propose to invest heavily in training and development. I have done some training need analysis which I would like to implement. In addition we have to train the teachers and other functionaries through whom we conduct the examinations. Else we shall continue to have problems of wrong question papers being distributed or situations like cows entering strong rooms! We also have to improve our internal systems. We propose to digitize our records and data to improve our service to our stakeholders. We also propose to design a suitable ERP system for SEBA and make it a more stakeholder-friendly organization. You have not said anything about the internal maladies of SEBA. We hear a lot about large-scale corruption, manipulation of student records, issue of false certificates etc in SEBA. Is there a mafia controlling SEBA? Corruption and other such aberrations are endemic to any system like the one prevailing in SEBA. I may not have succeeded in eliminating them completely so far. It may also be possible that the adversarial situations I faced in SEBA could be attributed to some concerted efforts on part of the entrenched vested interests. However, I feel the cleansing will take place automatically once the reforms are in place. Since the reforms have the support of the government, SEBA will emerge as a sound and efficient organization soon. The drifts towards CBSE that we hear so often, what do you say about that? Here too, occasionally I come across teachers from schools that shifted to the CBSE system. They bemoan that the SEBA system was much better. And, though I am not a SEBA product, I honestly believe that contentwise, SEBA is much better than CBSE. The move towards CBSE is an urban phenomenon where scoring marks is more important than getting educated. That is another matter all together.
(The Sentinel,19.09.2012) http://www.sentinelassam.com/mainnews/story.php?sec=1&subsec=0&id=132325&dtP=2012-09-19&ppr=1#132325 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ সমাজৰ কাৰণে ভাল কাম কৰাজনৰ পৰিচয় ৰাইজৰ আগত দাঙি ধৰিব লাগে আৰু ভাল খবৰবোৰ যিমান পাৰি ৰাইজৰ মাজত বিলাব লাগে। ---- বুলজিৎ বুঢ়াগোহাঁই _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
