From MPSC to BOC in One Minute

The thambaal  among the thirak:
The MPSC building, North AOC, D.M. Road, Imphal
Image courtesy: The official website of the Manipur Public Service Commission

Take a look at these job advertisements listed below. The Manipur Public Service Commission (MPSC) had published the ads on its website. At first glance, we can see this service commission has been occupied with a plenty of work. All of these are from its 2015 archive and for 2016 there have already been three to four ads. Before we go further, here’s the list of a few summarised job announcements:

•    Posts: Section Officers (SO) Grade-I & II in various engineering department, Government of Manipur
•    Direct recruitment: Various posts of Assistant Engineer (AE) in in PWD, PHED, Power Dept, MID and IFCD, Government of Manipur
•    Direct recruitment: Various posts of Assistant Engineer (AE) in engineering departments, Government of Manipur
•    Direct recruitment: 82 posts of MCSCC (Prelim) Examination, 2015
•    Posts: AEs/Section Officers in different grades
•    Direct recruitment: Four posts of additional government advocates (HC) in the Law & Legislative Affairs, Government of Manipur
•    Direct recruitment: Two posts of MHS Grade-III (Dental Specialist-Oral Surgery/Paedodontics), Health Department, Manipur

Source: Official website of the MPSC, http://mpscmanipur.gov.in/

Who says there is a lack of job prospect in Manipur? But scratch a little and you can see the reality affected harshly as deep as the Earth’s inner core. For the sake of convenience we can ignore the engineers and dental specialists for these people are born to be conformists. Even the advocates can as well be excused because most of them will be busy fighting for domestic/family issues in the courts as if nothing is wrong with the laws of this military–democracy that we have been a subject of.

However, there are some areas where the MPSC cannot keep dealing with its monkey business. To put it roughly, education is a crucial determiner and believe it or not, in Manipur, it can make a huge difference. If we go by its track record, the MPSC should be razed to the ground but doing it randomly make us no different from this senseless public service commission. Truth be told, crushing down a government is not impossible and to get rid of one of its incompetent agencies will not be rocket science.

Again, putting engineers, dental specialists and advocates off the hook, the MPSC must not jeopardise the professionals and aspirants in areas like education. Simply referring to the professions mentioned in the above ads has missed one of the most envious jobs: the administrative job more popularly known as the Manipur Civil Service or MCS in short. Until now a hundred of crores rupees must have been spent by parents in covert ways to get their children into this occupation.

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And the Most Prestigious Award
Goes to the Manipur Public
Service Commission

Picture the condition of governance and administration in and around the town. The least said the better and it is no surprise when the very people, who are selecting these professionals, are waist deep in an open sewer in the supposedly public life in this region. Before we talk about those at the helm of affairs, what is more worrying is the blatant misuse of power in the appointment of lecturers and professors and the pathetic system of education. The most qualified people are snubbed while those who come with ‘benefits’ are arbitrarily selected even if these ‘beneficial’ individuals have the IQ of a chicken. Or as we can cite from the case of DM College, where eminent personalities from the entire Northeast would come for graduation at one point of time and now, the pathetic condition in terms of quality. And what else would explain the backward marches? 

On one side of the town, people are whining about the rotting educational quality while on the other, we can see the increasing numbers of posh buildings and luxury cars though surrounded by scum and garbage, and the children of the poorly rich folk uploading their pictures from the US and UK on Facebook and Twitter. It is not even a matter of envy when we have known the sources of their wealth. Indeed it has become an unbearable eyesore.   

To repeat, the rotting educational system is the main issue and the MPSC has been leaving no stone unturned to fuck this up further. Recently I have as well realised that a band of supercilious old men are working very hard to contaminate the already muddy waters of the hinterland—and I’m stating it with an awareness about the top decision makers of the MPSC. And if we talk about this commission directly, their tomfoolery is amazing to say the least. Going back to 2015, they regularised a number of assistant professors while flouting every rule in the book. The filth is not only in the regularisation process but it is glaring right from the beginning of job application through the examination and selection procedures.

Do the experienced professionals, especially those in the academics, have no clue of these crimes perpetrated by the MPSC? Nope, clearly not. Do the Manipur University and its honourable administrators and professors know about it? Again no, nope. Do the chairpersons and secretaries and under secretaries in the Department of Education (Schools) and the Department of University and Higher Education know about it? A big no; in fact, this last couple of group occupies a major chunk of the entire shitstorm. So apparently they have no clue at all.

I bet 99.99% of all these erudite and well-bred people will be more offended by words like ‘shitstorm’ and ‘fuck’ than the excruciating rot in the system flooded with scum.

The Council of Higher Secondary Education Manipur and the Board of Secondary Education Manipur belong to the team of the Engineers & Dental Specialists Co. When the police lock down a school the council and the board are busy—no idea where and how much busy they are but they ‘are’. Their apolitical nature is no match for their hopelessness. Similarly, when a rebel group or a student organisation locks down a school, they are still helpless as ever. It will be advisable if we stop referring to the upper echelons, such as the departments of education and university, to cover the asses of these council and board.

At least, in the name of humanity, a few of them—if not many, or, not all—should be coming forward with their ideas and knowledge that they have in abundance in these trying times, instead of acting like a group of baby dicks all the time. Is it OK as long as the private schools that they have established with their entrepreneurial mastery are doing well? What was the number of government schools that have a zero pass percentage this year?

On the top of this pile of shit, the MPSC has unintentionally made itself a prime target. It is also by virtue of its authority as a premier institution of the state, and as much as by its stupidity. Remember the case of copying examination questions entirely from a blog five years ago.

Yet, in an age when power and wealth are best snatched than earned, a simple criticism will signify next to nothing. The commission is hardly going to put its house in order anytime soon. When honesty, conscience and ethics have become prehistoric ‘artefacts’, you wouldn’t mind using a cliché: ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’. If it becomes too desperate, we might have no option but to destroy the present establishment but not before getting rid of these clients and patrons.

The existing system is going to breed more rebels and reactionaries. Very gladly the people in power are also playing a major role in breeding more and more criminals, albeit asexually in the same intensity of their blessed apolitical lives, and they will squeak, particularly through their ‘leikai’ clubs and ‘meira paibi’ groups, only when a few of these very criminals hurl grenades inside their fortresses or intimidate them to share the loot. I have a conviction that those relatively lesser mortals, such as the professors, section officers and their ilk, will also speak out only and only when their houses are on fire.

It is a given that the chairpersons, secretaries and members of the MPSC must be fed up with the culture of extortion; still life is good and thus let it go on. The extortionists are taking away just a meagre percentage of their loot. That’s the sense we can make out of their eerie silence.

To conclude, however, it’s not about the robbery, but the overall decadence that a thousand jobs cannot help build anew. Secondly, it’s about the education system, which has been reduced to such a condition that looks no different from the seedy BOC-Namthilok area of heroin and prostitution—situated a stone’s throw away from the building of the Manipur Public Service Commission.

PS:
In the most recent charade, the latest Prelims that was held on 15 May has been cancelled and rescheduled on 3 July. Reason: Two contradictory instructions were given to the candidates during the examination; one saying there will be negative marking for each wrong answer, and the other that there will be not. With the never-ending farcical cases of tampering marks, taking bribes, fucking up the examinations like an ass would do, what do you say about the MPSC officials? [Updated on 7 June 2016]