The perfect fraud is finally here

THIS FACT is based on fiction. Strange as it may seem, the hundred per cent cut-off for applicants at a premier college of the University of Delhi stems from the popular imagination that our students are getting smarter every year. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) keeps this propaganda alive by doling out marks to many who are not even considered fit for low-end jobs at a later stage in their lives. NASSCOM, a high-virtue conglomerate in a rapidly expanding service sector, has recently complained that it is becoming increasingly rare to find job-seekers with average linguistic, cognitive and ideational skills that will render them fit for employment. And, yet, every year, around the time the board results are declared, bureaucrats in the CBSE and policy experts on secondary education emerge from their cubbyholes with self-congratulatory grins and loud shows of pomp.