Just a day after T.K.S. Elangovan, senior DMK leader who is also a Rajya Sabha MP, expressed concerns over Tamil Nadu Finance Minister PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan’s public rants on social media, the latter once again took to Twitter to hurl abuses at his own colleague.
In an interview with journalist Sandhya Ravishankar, the DMK MP said that Palanivel Thiagarajan gets provoked easily. “For a politician, one must be little restrained. That is what I used to tell him. Opposition will try to provoke (sic) you, but don’t get provoked (sic). Because being a politician is a different ballgame as people are watching us. When we are in power, people expect action from us. Not fight with others. That is what I always advise him. But he gets easily provoked (sic). That is the problem.”, he said.
He also said that MK Stalin had already advised Palanivel Thiagarajan to not be loose with his words.
In light of this, Palanivel Thiagarajan posted a derogatory tweet on Thursday (September 23) attacking the DMK MP without naming him.
Attacking journalist Sandhya Ravishankar too in the tweet, who had apparently reached out to him for his reaction on the senior DMK leader’s comments about him, Palanivel Thiagarajan made a below-the-belt attack.
This tweet which has now been deleted has not gone down well with people including supporters of the DMK who are dismayed by Palanivel Thiagarajan attacking on his own party senior.
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After the Pakistani Army supported the Taliban to take over Afghanistan to fulfill its long-held desire for strategic depth, a major power struggle has developed between Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt General Faiz Hameed.
As per news reports, Gen Bajwa – who had appointed Hameed as the head of the ISI – is now trying to remove him from his post. But Gen Bajwa has not been successful due to the strong influence of the Pakistani spy agency, which practically nourished the Taliban.
“Over the years, ISI have nurtured and taken care of Taliban leaders and used them to run their interest and operations inside Afghanistan. Now, when the Taliban are in government, the Pakistan Army also wants to influence the decisions there, which is being resisted by the ISI,” sources told India Today.
The ISI has strong links with Haqqani Network, which even the Taliban leaders like Mullah Baradar consider more radical as they do not want an inclusive government and now occupy strong positions in the new Afghanistan government.
When the Afghan government fell and Ashraf Ghani fled the country, to help the Taliban form the new government and ensure various factions and their leaders who lived in the ISI safe houses in Peshawar and Quetta got along, Faiz Hameed travelled to Kabul to take charge.
However, this action was not well received by the Pakistan Army chief Gen Bajwa, who considered it as an act of insubordination. But the fact of the matter is, Bajwa was also interested in trying to push his agenda there, and Faiz Hameed has not allowed it to happen.
Now the constant interference by the Pakistan army to help form the new Afghanistan government has also resulted in fissures inside the Taliban, particularly among supporters of Mullah Baradar because they feel Baradar and Baitullah Akhunzada have been sidelined.
Due to the constant interference by Pakistan, there is now a strong possibility of a civil war in Afghanistan as it happened after the Soviet Union left in 1989. Now the situation is such that there is disagreement on every decision that is being made, leading to governance paralysis.
There are also reports that the ISI wants a share of the money or aid that Afghans may receive from western nations.
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The DMK government in Tamil Nadu had constituted a committee headed by former Justice AK Rajan to study the impact of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) on medical college admissions in the state.
The committee which submitted its report to Chief Minister MK Stalin on September 14 makes a case for doing away with NEET claiming that it puts rural government school Tamil medium students at disadvantage.
However, many have pointed out that the report is not at all objective and has been prepared to buttress the ruling DMK government’s needless and endless politics over NEET.
The report is laden with empty rhetoric and makes unsubstantiated inferences through selective usage and willful omission of data. What should have been an objective study has ended up as a document dictated by the DMK.
In this article, some of the claims made in the report have been busted.
Claim: NEET puts government school students at disadvantage
Fact: 336 government school students have secured MBBS seat after the previous AIADMK government under Edappadi K. Palaniswami introduced the 7.5% reservation for government school students. This is the highest number of government school students admitted in a single academic year in the last decade and a half. In total, 347 government school students have secured medical admissions just in the year 2020-21 whereas only 108 government school students were admitted from 2014-15 to 2016-17 as per the report. One is left to wonder why the report does not disclose the number of government school and private students securing medical admissions before 2014.
Yes, less number of students had joined in the 3 immediate academic years post the introduction of NEET. But that has got to do more with the rotten ‘Samacheer Kalvi’ syllabus introduced by the late DMK patriarch Karunanidhi, which encouraged rote learning and suppressed critical thinking.
What the AK Rajan Committee Report doesn’t tell is the number of government school students who have been admitted to government medical colleges in the last 15 years. That is because it will expose the DMK’s lies and claims.
Source: The Hindu
From 2007 to 2016, only 314 government school students made it to government medical colleges. The best year for government schools was 2007 when 62 students were admitted. The worst year was 2013 when just 18 students made it. 74 students from government schools were admitted to aided/private medical institutions, with annual admissions in the single digits, with the exception of 2014, when 12 students were admitted.
This being the case of the pre-NEET years, how is the admission process of using 12th standard marks benefitting government school students?
Such willful omission of data to mislead the public is not just intellectual dishonesty but is also criminal.
Claim: NEET puts Tamil medium students at disadvantage
Fact: As evident from the data in the report, the number of Tamil medium students have been decreasing over the years while a consistent increase has been observed in number of English medium students.
The number of students who who have studied science stream in English medium has been increasing while the number has dropped for Tamil medium students.
If both the overall number of students studying in Tamil medium and Tamil medium students taking science stream has been decreasing year-on-year, so will the number of Tamil medium students getting into medical colleges.
This is not because of NEET but because the education system in Tamil Nadu itself is tilting towards English medium.
If one looks at the data, it is evident that English medium students have always been at an advantage when compared to Tamil medium students.
Yes, there was a lapse (teething trouble) in the initial years of NEET as the exam could be written only in English or Hindi. Now, the exam is being conducted in almost 10 languages including Tamil.
With the 7.5% reservation, 299 Tamil medium students have got medical admissions in 2020-21 academic year.
This number cannot be compared to the numbers in the years pre-NEET as there has been a proportionate decrease in the number of Tamil medium students taking science stream.
It is important to note that the Tamil Nadu government is itself trying to promote English medium education in government schools to attract admissions as parents be it in rural or urban areas want their children to study in English medium.
Claim: NEET favours CBSE students
Fact: Table 7.14 in the report shows that before NEET, the number of CBSE students studying in the state who secured an MBBS were abysmal. It is only post-NEET that those studying under CBSE board have a fair chance of competing with their state board counterparts and their numbers have increased.
Does the AK Rajan committee not consider those studying under CBSE board as students? Should the CBSE students not aspire to secure a seat in Tamil Nadu?
Even after NEET it is the state-board students who still have the edge and have secured the bulk of the seat as evident from the below table.
It seems like the AK Rajan committee has considered all CBSE students to be rich and well off. If so, on what basis have they made that assumption?
The reason why high number of state board students found it difficult to crack NEET was because of the substandard ‘Samacheer Kalvi’ syllabus which dumbed down both the student as well as the teachers of the Tamil Nadu state board. They had gotten used to the board exam pattern of Tamil Nadu which encouraged rote learning as questions given at the end of a lesson were directly asked as questions and did not test the understanding of the concepts.
The CBSE syllabus on the other hand encourages critical thinking and develops problem solving abilities which is what NEET and other exams demand.
Claim: NEET favours urban students
Fact: The only people the previous system favoured were those running private schools (read jails) in the Erode-Namakkal belt. Students belonging to wealthy families studied in these private schools These schools that charged in lakhs put children through torture robbing them of their childhood. They taught Class 12 syllabus for 1.5-2 years by skipping Class 11 syllabus. It was students from these schools who were taking the bulk of medical seats in the past before NEET.
For example, 1750 students from these districts alone have enrolled in medical studies in 2016 which is almost 50% of the seats.
Source: The Hindu
Therefore it is these students who get reflected as rural students in the data put out by the AK Rajan Committee Report and not the rural government school students. After all, Table 7.14 in the report clearly shows that number of government school students who secured MBBS seats were less than 40 from 2014 – 2017.
Other Lies
Former Vice Chancellor of Anna University Prof. E. Balagurusamy put out a scathing statement against the AK Rajan Committee’s report calling it a lop sided report with skewed statistics. He points out that the report quotes several court cases and and constitutional provisions that have no relevance to NEET.
The AK Rajan Committee report had come out with ‘profound’ findings that the Central Government cannot establish universities and that the Central Government cannot conduct entrance exams for state-run universities.
Prof. Balagurusamy lashed out saying “How could a committee headed by a retired judge with many senior government officers as members make such statements?”
The reports also claims that 99% of the students who have cleared NEET had taken coaching. On what basis was this figure arrived? Did the committee call up all students/parents/guardians in these few weeks and undertake a survey?
The report also makes the absurd claim that the healthcare system of Tamil Nadu would be very badly affected if NEET continues for a few more years. It states that there may not be enough doctors in Primary Healthcare Centres and that Tamil Nadu would go back to pre-Independence days.
Such blanket rhetorical statements are fit to be in an election manifesto and not in a report headed by a former High Court Judge.
It seems like the AK Rajan committee had already fixed the outcome of the study and worked backwards to make a case for doing away with NEET in order to suit the narrative of the DMK
What Students And Parents Should Know
The DMK and its allies will continue to play their politics over NEET. It is important for the students and parents to know that the matter has long slipped away from the legislature. Do not get confused by these futile attempts and empty promises made by the DMK government. NEET has been mandated by the Supreme Court of India and is here to stay. No amount of politicking is going to change that fact.
Also, doctor isn’t the only profession that exists in this world. Parents must not force their children to prepare for these competitive exams just for the sake of it.
There are so many avenues for everyone to flourish and build a career.
So, study, work hard and conquer the world!
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In a positive development for Hindus, the world’s first vegetarian food safety and regulatory compliance for vegetarian and allied adherents – The ‘Sattvik’ Council Certification scheme – was launched with global audit partner Bureau Veritas in Delhi, reports Indiatimes.
The Sattvik certification will be like the halal certification strictly adhered to by Muslims and Kosher by the Jews. This will be the first of its kind global-level certification that will be a one-stop shop for all vegetarians across the globe.
It offers four types of certifications: ‘Sattvik Sattvam‘, ‘Sattvik Vegetarian‘, ‘Sattvik Vegan‘ and ‘Sattvik Jain‘.
Founded by the Sattvik Council of India, the aim, purpose, and objective of the scheme is to ensure a ‘Vegetarian Environment’ for the vegetarian/vegan consumers in India and global markets by creating Standard Operating Procedures in all the applicable areas having the potential for guaranteed 100 per cent vegetarian food and hospitality environment.
Abhishek Biswas, founder of the Sattvik Council of India said, “Sattvik is an umbrella term. For example, there are 200 variations such as food, hospitality, textiles, dairy, etc. We did not want a synonym. So, we zeroed in on this umbrella term.”
“Our certification is aimed at improving the overall performance of the vegetarian food quality and food safety management systems for the consumers. We are not into promoting vegetarianism. We are simply a standard provider, just like an ISO,” Biswas added.
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As the Communist-ruled state of Kerala is still dealing with the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has finally admitted that around 100 Malayalee Muslims and converts to Islam joined the Islamic State until 2019.
For a long time, the state of Kerala has been accused of Muslim appeasement and the best example is the relaxation of Covid-19 norms which led to a massive surge in infection and deaths in the state.
Now it has emerged that after denying the presence of Jihadi sleeper cells in Kerala for years, around 28 Muslims from the state went directly from Kerala to join the terrorist organisation ISIS.
Vijayan said, out of the 28 Muslims who are now with ISIS, 5 are converts from Hinduism and Christianity. The stark reality is that Kerala is home to a very large network of Islamic fundamentalists who are well funded.
Also, the recent statement made by Pala Bishop Joseph Kallarangatt triggered a massive controversy when he talked about the presence of ‘Love Jihad’ and ‘Narcotic Jihad’ in the state.
In the official statement released by the Church, it reads, “The ongoing controversy over Pala bishop Mar Joseph Kallarangatt’s remarks is unfortunate. It’s clear he never spoke to defame any community, religion or creed. He also stated the same. At the same time, he warned of some organised anti-social activities. They (the leaders) forgot the fact that the speech was made at a Church addressing its followers. Some politicians and media, through their interventions, presented the priest’s speech as an issue between two religions. Such a wrong presentation paved the way for controversy and meaningless discussions”.
“Those who are consciously campaigning to isolate and attack him by accusing him of preaching religious rivalry are requested to withdraw from it. While context and motive of his speech are clear, we recognise that call for action against him is deliberate,” the Church said.
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A video has been going viral on social media in which a DMK cadre can be seen intimidating a person at a TASMAC liquor outlet for not having DMK chief and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin’s portrait in the shop.
In the video the man can be seen shouting at the in-charge of the TASMAC shop about for not having CM Stalin’s photo in the shop.
“You will keep the photo given by AIADMK MLA but not DMK CM MK Stalin. What do you think of yourself?” the man asks.
The frightened shop in-charge replies that he will keep it to which the DMK cadre replies “When will you put? How long its been since we came to power? Our leader’s picture is not there. You are having Jayalalithaa’s photo.”.
The man further goes on to intimidate him and declares that there should not be a single place where CM Stalin’s photo is not there.
Watch the video here.
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To ensure there is no fallout with India over the new agreement made between Australia, United Kingdom and the United States AUKUS, a US senior government official in President Joe Biden administration has said, the Quad cooperation is a priority, and hosting its leaders was a fundamental demonstration of the importance attached to engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.
The official further stressed that the engagement among the Quad nations — the US, India, Australia, and Japan “would be through new multilateral configurations designed to focus on challenges of the 21st Century, while stressing the promotion of a free and open Indo-Pacific region.”
Biden is hosting the first Quad face-to-face summit at the White House on September 24, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japan’s Yoshihide Suga, and Australia’s Scott Morrison.
“President Biden has made the Quad a priority, as we all saw through the first Quad leaders-level engagement in March, which was virtual, and now this summit, which will be in person,” the senior official was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
He said the main areas of consultations and announcements will be on Covid-19. “In March, there was a commitment to producing a billion vaccines via Quad, by 2022 end. There’ll be some announcements about moving that forward and other forms of Covid assistance,” he added.
The Quad members would also make some major announcements on clean energy and climate-related crisis and he added, Partnering on emerging technologies in cyberspace, promoting high-standard infrastructure, and, of course, an overarching commitment at the core of the Quad to promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific,”.
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The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday (September 20), arrested Tabrez, who was at the forefront in the attack on two police stations in Bengaluru last year.
Tabrez was absconding for over a year and as per a NIA statement, “Tabrez is a member of Sagaipuram ward, SDPI, a political outfit of Popular Front of India (PFI) and was involved in hatching the conspiracy to attack the DJ Halli PS and had instigated many others on Whats App groups. He was also found involved in burning vehicles and damaging public/private property,”.
The NIA had also earlier named Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) leader Muzamil Pasha for instigating the mob and inciting violence.
It all started after a social media post by Congress, MLA’s nephew Naveen, a Muslim mob organised very quickly had turned violent and attacked the MLA’s house and then the mob proceeded to attack the police stations and damaged public and private properties.
“After conducting a thorough investigation, NIA had filed the charge sheet before the NIA Special Court, Bengaluru under various sections of UA (P) Act, IPC and Karnataka Prevention of Destruction and Loss of Property Act (KPDLP Act) against 109 accused persons on 05.02.2021,” the NIA statement said.
The Congress MLA Murthy, who is Scheduled Caste i,e, Dalit, did not get any support from his party and when the Karnataka State Congress chief DK Shivakumar was asked about the riot incident, he declined to comment, citing a lack of information about the incident.
Also, the so-called Dalit-Muslim unity had also gone silent on the issue and this act of communal violence was portrayed as a small law and order problem.
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Rajya Sabha DMK MP T.K.S. Elangovan has publicly expressed concerns over Tamil Nadu Finance Minister PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan’s public rants on social media saying that politicians must exercise restraint and not go ‘free with words’.
In an interview with journalist Sandhya Ravishankar, the DMK MP said that Palanivel Thiagarajan gets provoked easily. “For a politician, one must be little restrained. That is what I used to tell him. Opposition will try to provoke (sic) you, but don’t get provoked (sic). Because being a politician is a different ballgame as people are watching us. When we are in power, people expect action from us. Not fight with others. That is what I always advise him. But he gets easily provoked (sic). That is the problem.”, he said.
He also said that CM Stalin is watching every Minister’s actions and has been advising them on how to talk to the media and public. He said that MK Stalin had already advised Palanivel Thiagarajan to not be loose with his words and that he would re-emphasize it once again.
Palaniel Thiagarajan has been making headlines for matters unrelated to his portfolio. He has made a number of contentious statements against different public personalities on his social media and frequently indulges in cyber-bullying of even common netizens.
Recently, he had spewed abuses on journalists, opposition politicians as well as common netizens who had questioned him his non-participation in the recently concluded GST Council Meeting at Lucknow.
He kept making ‘cow urine’ barbs which is usually done by rabid Hindumisic elements to insult those who worship cows.
Responding to a woman cadre of the BJP who had asked him if he really skipped the GST Council meeting to attend baby shower function of his sister-in-law, Palanivel Thiagarajan cyber-bullied her and called her a person ‘whose brain has been spoilt by drinking cow urine’.
வடிகட்டிய முட்டாள்தனம்🤦♂️
கூட்டம் நடந்தது டெல்லியில் இல்லை லக்னோவில்🤦♂️
எனக்கு கொழுந்தியாள் இல்லை, எப்படி இல்லாதவர் மகளுக்கு விழா நடக்கும்🤦♂️
பொய் சொல்வதற்கு கூட ஒரு குறைந்தபட்ச அறிவு வேண்டுமடா மாட்டு மூத்திரம் குடித்தே மூளை கெட்டுப் போனவர்களா🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️ https://t.co/0uoSq3Aalc
He had also used derogatory words like ‘schizophrenic’, ‘dolt’ and other abuses on BJP Tamil Nadu President K. Annamalai unbefitting of the position he holds.
So…the schizophrenic “Kannadiga till I die,” except when “100% Tamil”, OR “IPS-version” threat issuer, turns out to be the Fake-News-Dolt-in-Chief🤣
And his position on Petrol/Diesel in GST is 100% opposite of BJP Govt’s @ Delhi, UP, Gujarat etc.
After security agencies intercepted three tonnes of heroin valued at $2.7 billion in the international market, more information has been released by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI).
Two persons were arrested while further search is taking place across India.
As per the latest information, authorities suspect the involvement of an Afghan national, whose whereabouts are currently unknown but the security agencies are hot on this trail.
When the ship was boarded after receiving “specific intelligence”, they discovered that the contraband was mixed with talc stone powder and the drugs were being shipped from Bandar Abbas Port in Iran via two containers, weighing 40 tonnes.
“Specific intelligence was developed that a consignment imported by M/s Aashi Trading Company, Vijayawada, declared as semi-processed Talc stones originating shipped from Bandar Abbas Port to Mundra Port is suspected to contain narcotics drugs. Intelligence indicated that these drugs have originated from Afghanistan,” the officers said in a statement.
The DRI official informed that in 1999.579 kg that was recovered from the first container and 988.64 kg from the second container, totalling 2988.219 kg of heroin.
“The examination was conducted in presence of experts from Forensics Science Lab (FSL), Gandhinagar. During the examination, suspected narcotics drugs were recovered from both the containers. The FSL conducted tests and confirmed the presence of heroin,” it added.
Now intelligence officers are conducting searches in Ahmedabad, Delhi, Chennai, Gandhidham and Mandvi in Gujarat and the focus is on Afghanistan, from where the seized heroin originated.
Afghanistan is the world’s biggest producer of heroin from the poppy crops harvested by farmers which is later turned into raw opium and its derivative heroin. The sale of this drug world over and the monies received from the sale have been key to the Taliban fund its insurgency against the Western forces.
As per data shared by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the area covered under poppy cultivation expanded from 8,000 hectares in 2001 to 224,000 hectares in 2020.
The gum harvested from poppies which are then processed into heroin is shipped to Central Asia, Europe and the United States and India where the demand remains high and the UNODC report states, the opium economy in Afghanistan is estimated at $1.2 billion to $2.1 billion annually, which is 6 to 11 per cent of the Afghan Gross Domestic Production (GDP).
Though drugs are forbidden in Islam and are deemed as ‘Haraam’, the Taliban never really stopped harvesting, processing and selling them in the international market with the support of Pakistan and a US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR) report states, the Islamic terror group derives up to 60 per cent of its annual revenue from the illegal narcotics trade,
A BBC investigation revealed that the Taliban’s annual income surged to $400 million from 2011 onwards and by 2018 it was at $1.5 billion.
After the take over of Afghanistan by the Taliban, it said that the state will not allow the production of narcotics drugs. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, “We are assuring our countrymen and women and the international community, we will not have any narcotics produced. From now on, nobody’s going to get involved (in the heroin trade), nobody can be involved in drug smuggling,”.
However, the seizure of drugs worth over 2.7 billion dollars is a far cry from the promise made by the Taliban because as of now, no country has given them aid and the US has frozen its assets which is over 10 billion dollars. So it simply cannot give up on the drug trade.
Also, the Taliban is a lose conglomerate of warlords and those who depend on the drug trade cannot be convinced to stop.
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Lies, damned lies and statistics: Busting the claims of AK Rajan committee report on NEET
The DMK government in Tamil Nadu had constituted a committee headed by former Justice AK Rajan to study the impact of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) on medical college admissions in the state.
The committee which submitted its report to Chief Minister MK Stalin on September 14 makes a case for doing away with NEET claiming that it puts rural government school Tamil medium students at disadvantage.
However, many have pointed out that the report is not at all objective and has been prepared to buttress the ruling DMK government’s needless and endless politics over NEET.
The report is laden with empty rhetoric and makes unsubstantiated inferences through selective usage and willful omission of data. What should have been an objective study has ended up as a document dictated by the DMK.
In this article, some of the claims made in the report have been busted.
Claim: NEET puts government school students at disadvantage
Fact: 336 government school students have secured MBBS seat after the previous AIADMK government under Edappadi K. Palaniswami introduced the 7.5% reservation for government school students. This is the highest number of government school students admitted in a single academic year in the last decade and a half. In total, 347 government school students have secured medical admissions just in the year 2020-21 whereas only 108 government school students were admitted from 2014-15 to 2016-17 as per the report. One is left to wonder why the report does not disclose the number of government school and private students securing medical admissions before 2014.
Yes, less number of students had joined in the 3 immediate academic years post the introduction of NEET. But that has got to do more with the rotten ‘Samacheer Kalvi’ syllabus introduced by the late DMK patriarch Karunanidhi, which encouraged rote learning and suppressed critical thinking.
What the AK Rajan Committee Report doesn’t tell is the number of government school students who have been admitted to government medical colleges in the last 15 years. That is because it will expose the DMK’s lies and claims.
From 2007 to 2016, only 314 government school students made it to government medical colleges. The best year for government schools was 2007 when 62 students were admitted. The worst year was 2013 when just 18 students made it. 74 students from government schools were admitted to aided/private medical institutions, with annual admissions in the single digits, with the exception of 2014, when 12 students were admitted.
This being the case of the pre-NEET years, how is the admission process of using 12th standard marks benefitting government school students?
Such willful omission of data to mislead the public is not just intellectual dishonesty but is also criminal.
Claim: NEET puts Tamil medium students at disadvantage
Fact: As evident from the data in the report, the number of Tamil medium students have been decreasing over the years while a consistent increase has been observed in number of English medium students.
The number of students who who have studied science stream in English medium has been increasing while the number has dropped for Tamil medium students.
If both the overall number of students studying in Tamil medium and Tamil medium students taking science stream has been decreasing year-on-year, so will the number of Tamil medium students getting into medical colleges.
This is not because of NEET but because the education system in Tamil Nadu itself is tilting towards English medium.
If one looks at the data, it is evident that English medium students have always been at an advantage when compared to Tamil medium students.
Yes, there was a lapse (teething trouble) in the initial years of NEET as the exam could be written only in English or Hindi. Now, the exam is being conducted in almost 10 languages including Tamil.
With the 7.5% reservation, 299 Tamil medium students have got medical admissions in 2020-21 academic year.
This number cannot be compared to the numbers in the years pre-NEET as there has been a proportionate decrease in the number of Tamil medium students taking science stream.
It is important to note that the Tamil Nadu government is itself trying to promote English medium education in government schools to attract admissions as parents be it in rural or urban areas want their children to study in English medium.
Claim: NEET favours CBSE students
Fact: Table 7.14 in the report shows that before NEET, the number of CBSE students studying in the state who secured an MBBS were abysmal. It is only post-NEET that those studying under CBSE board have a fair chance of competing with their state board counterparts and their numbers have increased.
Does the AK Rajan committee not consider those studying under CBSE board as students? Should the CBSE students not aspire to secure a seat in Tamil Nadu?
Even after NEET it is the state-board students who still have the edge and have secured the bulk of the seat as evident from the below table.
It seems like the AK Rajan committee has considered all CBSE students to be rich and well off. If so, on what basis have they made that assumption?
The reason why high number of state board students found it difficult to crack NEET was because of the substandard ‘Samacheer Kalvi’ syllabus which dumbed down both the student as well as the teachers of the Tamil Nadu state board. They had gotten used to the board exam pattern of Tamil Nadu which encouraged rote learning as questions given at the end of a lesson were directly asked as questions and did not test the understanding of the concepts.
The CBSE syllabus on the other hand encourages critical thinking and develops problem solving abilities which is what NEET and other exams demand.
Claim: NEET favours urban students
Fact: The only people the previous system favoured were those running private schools (read jails) in the Erode-Namakkal belt. Students belonging to wealthy families studied in these private schools These schools that charged in lakhs put children through torture robbing them of their childhood. They taught Class 12 syllabus for 1.5-2 years by skipping Class 11 syllabus. It was students from these schools who were taking the bulk of medical seats in the past before NEET.
For example, 1750 students from these districts alone have enrolled in medical studies in 2016 which is almost 50% of the seats.
Therefore it is these students who get reflected as rural students in the data put out by the AK Rajan Committee Report and not the rural government school students. After all, Table 7.14 in the report clearly shows that number of government school students who secured MBBS seats were less than 40 from 2014 – 2017.
Other Lies
Former Vice Chancellor of Anna University Prof. E. Balagurusamy put out a scathing statement against the AK Rajan Committee’s report calling it a lop sided report with skewed statistics. He points out that the report quotes several court cases and and constitutional provisions that have no relevance to NEET.
The AK Rajan Committee report had come out with ‘profound’ findings that the Central Government cannot establish universities and that the Central Government cannot conduct entrance exams for state-run universities.
Prof. Balagurusamy lashed out saying “How could a committee headed by a retired judge with many senior government officers as members make such statements?”
The reports also claims that 99% of the students who have cleared NEET had taken coaching. On what basis was this figure arrived? Did the committee call up all students/parents/guardians in these few weeks and undertake a survey?
The report also makes the absurd claim that the healthcare system of Tamil Nadu would be very badly affected if NEET continues for a few more years. It states that there may not be enough doctors in Primary Healthcare Centres and that Tamil Nadu would go back to pre-Independence days.
Such blanket rhetorical statements are fit to be in an election manifesto and not in a report headed by a former High Court Judge.
It seems like the AK Rajan committee had already fixed the outcome of the study and worked backwards to make a case for doing away with NEET in order to suit the narrative of the DMK
What Students And Parents Should Know
The DMK and its allies will continue to play their politics over NEET. It is important for the students and parents to know that the matter has long slipped away from the legislature. Do not get confused by these futile attempts and empty promises made by the DMK government. NEET has been mandated by the Supreme Court of India and is here to stay. No amount of politicking is going to change that fact.
Also, doctor isn’t the only profession that exists in this world. Parents must not force their children to prepare for these competitive exams just for the sake of it.
There are so many avenues for everyone to flourish and build a career.
So, study, work hard and conquer the world!
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