The news of the Post Graduate - Common Entrance Test (PG-CET) being suspended by the State Government is shocking. The subsequent announcement of  the Vice Chancellor of Bangalore University that he would shortly notify the admission processes to all affiliated colleges, took me back to the year 1988. A 21-year-old graduate stood like a supplicant outside the arrogant doors of a college principal and the Head of the Department of Chemistry in Bangalore University’s most prestigious science college.
She was trying to gain admission into the sole merit seat of a master’s degree programme, as against 14 others reserved for various categories. Besides being a subject scholarship holder, and winner of national awards and honours, she had to wait upon the charity of the university and college authorities until they deigned to admit her despite her eligibility.
Need for transparency
Things will not be very different 10 years later if the university and Government insist on their plan to revive their own “admission procedures” instead of an honourable and transparent entrance examination. If a CET is conducted for all post graduate courses where only the deserving candidates will come through, how can these two authorities wield their power, influence and clout?
How can they distribute their favours and confer their largesse if things are made transparent? How can they drive a meritorious student against a wall and out of the country too if proper norms are followed in admission processes? How can teachers who get themselves “elected” to decision making bodies like legislatures, hold students to ransom if everything is straightforward and honest? The very fact that the State has succumbed to political pressures in this matter exposes the duplicity of it all.
The specious argument advanced by the government now is that entrance tests to PG courses would be detrimental to rural students. Then, why did the same government earlier announce an entrance test, sell 6000 application forms and instruct the Bangalore and Mysore universities to conduct the same tests for 30,000 students in 11 centres?
Did they have no concern for rural students then? So, was this sudden volte face a politically motivated decision that has no bearing whatsoever on any cause other than its own? Even the University Grants Commission (UGC) has decreed that admission to post graduate education should be linked to talent and aptitude only. 
When resources are scarce for post graduate education, it is only proper that admission to such courses be reserved for those who qualify the most. In one of its policy papers, the UGC  has actually spelt out norms for admission to higher education, as adopting a policy of selective admissions to full time institutions of higher education at graduate and post graduate level on the basis of merit with reservation for the weaker sections as per norms. The constitutional norm is 22 per cent and not 99 per cent.
Post graduate education, especially in Science, is a stage when both teachers and students are actively involved in the creation of new knowledge through research inputs. This is the knowledge that the latter will convey to their students at under graduate levels.
Political stunt
Have the powers who control these decisions in this State given a thought to all these issues? Even their concept of “upward mobility” of the “rural masses” as opposed to the “urban elite” is   flawed. They use these catch phrases just to gain cheap  popularity. For, in reality, the urban poor does not have the capacity for upward mobility as much as the rural rich. This is just one instance where economic status and natural talent do not go hand in hand.
Admission to all stages of higher education, including graduate, post graduate and professional courses should be based on merit. And, the only known and accepted method worldwide today, is through a common entrance test.