Editor,
I am writing to express my deep dissatisfaction and concern over the incompetence displayed by the organising committee of the recently held state-level inter-district quiz competition. This is regarding the Group B elimination round among 12 groups, conducted on 9 March at DK Conventional Hall as part of the inter-tribe festival organised by the All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union (AAPSU).
As an enthusiastic participant and supporter of such events, I was deeply disappointed by the lack of professionalism and poor management exhibited throughout every round of the competition.
The quiz competition, which was meant to celebrate knowledge, cultural diversity and intellectual growth, was marred by numerous failures. Key issue included:
- Lack of proper planning: The frequent delays and last-minute changes of group division, which was not the same as earlier notified letter. In fact, the earlier notification says tha the top 3 from the group would be selected for the final round, but it did not happen as notified. And they seemed to be preparing questions at the last minute, so we were inside the hall in silence for 10-15 minutes.
- Technical glitches: The quiz rounds were plagued by technical issues like poorly designed questions, searching for questions from Google, and clearing the answers based on Google sources, rather than going with specific books, like NCERT books. Hence, there were some confusion on the answers to the questions, so lots of flaw could be seen.
- Chance of bias and unfairness: No doubt the committee available at the spot seemed to be from the same region and were picking up questions from the laptop randomly. We can never expect to have fair question for all the groups. In fact, last ‘rapid fire round’ seemed biased against those who were behind the top 2 group, answering three questions in 10 seconds is never the way it’s done. As far as my input is concerend, if I am able to answer two question, then I won’t be reaching the last question. Then the group which was short of 20-30 marks behind the top 2 group doesn’t make any sense, even if they participate in this round. So some of us were trying to raise this issue, but the committee was not ready to welcome our input, while the rapid fire round is conducted to ensure that those behind in the earlier round can recover. Moreover, lots of judging on issues like double answering and question asked like main objective of Chandrayan, Aditya mission etc, were not up to the standard, whereas there are lots of objective on launching Chandrayan mission, from landing on the moon to exploration of the lunar surface. And then relying on Google baba to clarify their stand is never the sign of right person to organise such events. You should get ready question in advance and clarify on answer from reliable source from articles, books and any other notes of competent body.
Therefore, such incompetence from the organising committee is highly unacceptable, especially for a state level event that should serve as a model of excellence. It is disheartening to see an event with so much potential being undermined by poor management and lack of competence.
I would like to suggest to the AAPSU to endorse teams comprising professors from RGU, NERIST, NIT, etc, to conduct such events on the state level to ensure that fairness and intellectual growth is upheld. I hope this letter serves as a wakeup call to the organising committee.
Frustrated participant