On a day when the Telangana government took pride in announcing that its IT exports for 2018-19 had crossed a historic Rs 1 lakh crore mark, 16-year-old Anamika’s grandmother lay on the floor of her house, heartbroken. B. Uma did not care about the strides made by the state in the software industry. The government, she said, had killed her baby and brought shame, not pride, to the state.
Anamika had committed suicide, hours after finding out that she failed in Telugu in her intermediate first year exams. Like her, 24 other students have taken their own lives in the state after intermediate first and second year (class 11 and 12) results were announced on April 18.
Anamika lived in Chacha Nehru Nagar, a lower-middle class settlement between Hyderabad and Secunderabad. Her relatives wanted to know how a student who had got 80 per cent in Telugu in class 10, had scored such low marks this time.
About 12km away, in A.S. Rao Nagar, a suburb in Hyderabad, another bright student, G. Nagender, hanged himself after failing in maths in intermediate first year. His parents said he had scored more than 90 per cent in the subject in class 10. His family and neighbours blamed the government's negligence for his death.
A large number of students found discrepancies in their marks sheets this year and thronged the office of the Board of Intermediate Education in Nampally, Hyderabad. One of them, G. Vikram, an inter second year student, said he was happy when the results were announced as he cleared all his papers. But the joy was short-lived. On the website, his memo showed that he failed in one subject in the first year. "How is this possible? I passed the exams last year with good marks," he said. "I have been asked to file a complaint. I am hoping they will correct it, or my future will be ruined."
Outside the board office, one came across many such unusual grievances—students who attended the exams were marked absent; a student who actually got 99 was given zero; and in many cases, individual marks and total marks did not add up. Out of 9.7 lakh students who appeared for the first and second year exams this year, 3.28 lakh failed. The board claims that the suicides were not due to technical errors on its part, but rather to underperformance of the students.
Much of this mess has to do with the government's recent shake-up of the system. Till last year, data processing before the exam was done by Centre for Good Governance (CGG), a government body, and the processing of results was done by a private IT company. In 2017, the board decided to integrate the two and have one private entity handle everything. A tender was floated with 11 conditions to be fulfilled. A closer look reveals that Hyderabad-based Globarena Technologies, which won the bid in December 2017, did not fulfil these conditions convincingly. The company lacked experience in processing such large data and had not worked with credible educational institutions. Globarena was given a contract worth Rs 4.3 crore for three years, after which it would hand over the software to the board for the entire process to be carried out in-house.
It was clear that Globarena was struggling to fulfil its commitments. To start with, the company could not process admission data for several weeks in August last year. The board stepped in and assigned the work to CGG. The next sign of inefficiency was when they had to launch a website for students to pay fees. Even this could not be completed on time. During the exams, there was a shortage of answer sheets for the students. Sources in the board said officials were not confident of releasing the results on the day they did.
Grandmother and a relative of Anamika at their house in Hyderabad
"It is very unfortunate that when the board is celebrating 50 years, mistakes in results are causing pain to students and parents," said P. Madhusudhan Reddy, president of the Junior College Lecturers Association. Reddy had sounded an alarm, months ago, about Globarena's inefficiency.
The government appointed a committee to look into the matter. Shockingly, it was found that the contract between Globarena Technologies and the board had remained unsigned and the technical errors in grading papers were the fault of both parties, who could not finish the work on time. But the government did not initiate any serious action against Globarena or higher officials. Education minister G. Jagadish Reddy could not be reached to comment on the issue.
The Globarena management refused to take all the blame. "Three types of technical issues were found by us on the day of results and we rectified them immediately," said its CEO, V.S.N. Raju. "We are also working internally to find out what went wrong and action will be taken. It is wrong to say that there was corruption as this is a small order and at the end of three years we will hand over the software developed by us to the board."
The government has decided to revalue, free of cost, the papers in which 3.28 lakh students failed. Choosing Globarena once again to carry out the task, it appointed another private company to oversee the process.
But suicides continued to take place. In the SC colony of Pedhakankal village in Vikarabad district, half-a-dozen family members sat in a room, mourning S. Jyothi, a farmer's daugther, who had set herself ablaze a week after the results were declared. She failed in civics by a few marks. "We had consoled her and given her money to apply for revaluation," said her father, Anjaiah. "I am very sure that she died because of the government’s mistake."
