The government has been called on to form a comprehensive policy on certain statistical issues related to entrance and recruitment exams by Rajeeva Laxman Karandikar, Chairman of the National Statistical Commission (NSC), who argued on Sunday that different agencies conducting their own exams have their own methods that can lead to dissatisfaction among candidates and legal proceedings.
Speaking at the 19th Statistics Day organised by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), Karandikar said statistical issues such as negative marking and normalisation of marks in examinations that are being conducted online and see lakhs of candidates should be addressed “appropriately”.
“The fact that when such a large number (of candidates) appear (for exams), we don’t have computer systems which simultaneously 27 lakh candidates can write,” Karandikar said, referring to an earlier recruitment exam held by the railways. “So we have parallel exams, or exams in phases, different question papers. Then the question comes: how do we compare them? This is a strictly statistical question.”
“Somehow, each agency goes on its own way to define the policy: there is a question of negative marking, normalisation. And each agency declares its own formula which is different. That leads to dissatisfaction, especially from the candidates that don’t make it, some of them making it to the court system,” the NSC Chairman added.
In 2019, Karandikar was part of an expert committee constituted by the Supreme Court to suggest ways to deal with fraud in online examinations. The committee – led by retired Supreme Court justice GS Singhvi – was formed after the alleged leak of the Staff Selection Commission’s Combined Graduate Level 2017 question papers, which led to massive protests. On Sunday, Karandikar said the expert committee had written a report just before COVID “and perhaps that report is lying somewhere”.
“The point is that normalisation and negative marking, both are statistical questions. And perhaps – which body in government, I don’t know, because there are multiple stakeholders – comprehensive effort should be made to create one group which gives thought to all this, brings in all the stakeholders, and comes out with one policy,” Karandikar added.
‘Precision policymaking’
Moderating a panel discussion at the Statistics Day event – held to commemorate the birth anniversary of famed statistician PC Mahalanobis – Shamika Ravi, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, said India was moving into an era of “precision policymaking”.
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According to Ravi, given the size of the country, indicators such as the infant mortality rate and even the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) don’t mean much at an all-India level, although such measures are needed for comparisons.
“But the reality is, policymaking largely depends on highly localised estimates, which is the effort we are now doing. We are moving towards district-level estimates because a lot of policymaking requires local, unbiased, as precise or as close to the truth – that’s what an unbiased estimate is… We are moving into the realm of what is called precision policymaking. And precision policymaking, then and therefore, requires data which is representative at the local level, whatever local we define. We have now moved beyond aspirational districts to aspirational blocks,” Ravi said.
Also speaking at the same event, MoSPI Secretary Saurabh Garg said it was essential the statistics ministry produces data which is “machine readable” given the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning and follows basic standards and norms so that data can be more effectively used for decision making. Towards this, the ministry is looking at data and statistics at a much broader level, Garg said, with a focus on ensuring that the data produced by different departments and ministries within the government – or administrative data – is focused and usable.
