FAKING NEWS-Number portability in education mooted; retain your marks, change institute

[rohit bansal]

Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, who is also the Telecommunications
Minister now, is planning to introduce the number portability service
in the education sector as well. Mr. Sibal is reported to be too
impressed with the idea of Mobile Number Portability (MNP), a service
that was launched in Haryana today by him, and thought it was pretty
relevant to the education sector as well.

“Imagine a meritorious and hardworking guy, who studies earnestly and
tops the merit list of IIPM,” Mr. Sibal said setting the premise of
the proposal, “He’d still be considered an ordinary and fraud
candidate for a job by many employers just because he has this IIPM
tag on his certificate.”

“It’s just like you are stuck with a bad service provider even though
you have a decent looking and well publicized mobile number,” Sibal
added.

If the proposal is implemented, such IIPM guys can pay a small fee to
the institute of his choice and get a new certificate with the same
marks. The service is being called Academic Number Portability (ANP).

“Yes, IITs and IIMs too would be brought under the ambit of ANP,”
Sibal informed, though he clarified that the basic terms and
conditions of the service was still to be worked out and it was still
at the proposal stage.

But the news has already outraged many students, especially those at
IITs and IIMs, who feel that ANP would rob them off of their hard
earned reputation and social status.

“Many girls would not mind accepting my friend request on Facebook
just because of my institute’s name in my profile,” a student from a
premier institute confided on conditions of anonymity, “Now one can
befriend beautiful girls just after paying 19 rupees? Bullshit!”

Experts believe that the fee for ANP would not be as low as 19 rupees,
which is the case in MNP.

“This could be a nice source of revenues for IITs and IIMs, which
otherwise have to depend upon government grants for meeting their
expenses,” said Pratham Pandit, an education sector expert, “I believe
that the transfer fee should be made as high as 19 lakhs rupees or
more.”

Institutes like IIPM, which are being seen as the major providers of
users for the ANP service, have hinted that they could accept the
proposal if the students were required to pay a fee to the old
institutes as well.

“Let them pay the same amount as severance fee to us and go to any of
those ubiquitous IIMs or any other institute, which are intellectually
far inferior to us,” IIPM Dean Arindam Chaudhuri said and promised all
support to the HRD Minister.

The proposal would be discussed in the parliament, once it
(parliament) starts functioning normally.