Who Calls a Child Anti-National?

There have been many incidents related to CBSE (and NEET). Nisarga has written a responsible, well-written tech disclosure blog post, followed by Sarthak on the breakage of process and rules. Bugs and breakages happen in large systems. But public exam systems need a much higher standard of transparency and accountability.

Bugs shouldn’t be there; software/workflows should be tested well, and there should be a process. But even beyond that, incidents do happen, and all software/workflows have bugs or loopholes, sometimes obvious and sometimes not so obvious. The most responsible thing to do is to accept it, fix it, hold folks accountable, and continue with the work. Except for these, I think the system is doing everything else.

While this was coming to light, there was a personal incident reported by a 17-year-old CBSE student, Vedant. It was a case where he tweeted about his misplaced answer sheets. The tweets got enough attention and soon attracted haters (it’s a strong word, but it’s true). Most notable amongst them is Ashok Shrivastav, host of Do Took on Doordarshan News, who tweeted (now deleted) that the young student was an anti-national. His Do Took has always been notoriously known for being anti-people.

His tweet showed no empathy or intelligence. It was just pure hate for the kid and his ability to garner attention around the problem he was facing. And every report that came out supported his claim and put the system at fault.

After the backlash, he deleted and tendered a non-apology to the kid and family. But then the harm was already done.

Doordarshan is destined to become Radio Rwanda, especially with the people on it and people who encourage and fund it. If you want an example, you can try Do Took (Known for Anti-Opposition, Communal polarisation, misinformation, etc.). Twitter/X is a medium that just delivers that information virally. It’s been happening in the media and on Twitter for a while; I think a lot of people noticed it this time because CBSE concerns everyone, including the majority. Usually, targeted hate is aimed at minorities, dissenters, activists, etc. And this time, the hate was against the majority. Hence the massive outrage and non-apology. What the majority has to understand is that “They will come for you”.