MP Govt's fatal attraction for TCS

Millions of job-seekers, students and common citizens suffer due to MP Govt's fatal attraction for TCS

NK SINGH

Madhya Pradesh Government’s ambitious effort to recruit 9,235 Patwaris through a transparent, online entrance test seems to has gone haywire.The first phase of Patwari entrance exam, conducted by MP Professional Examination Board, was engulfed by chaos and mismanagement caused by technical glitches. Server failure and software malfunction led to one-third of 26,887 candidates not being able to write their papers.

Fearing the worst – PEB is rechristened name of the ill-famous Vyapam – enraged candidates created a ruckus at many of the 85 exam centres spread over 16 towns in the State. They shouted slogans, pelted stones and stopped road traffic, necessitating police intervention. PEB has asked Tata Consultancy Services, the service provider hired for online exam, to arrange for fresh test for remaining aspirants.

More than 10.20 lakh people have applied for the vacancies. The Government has collected about Rs 50 crore from aspirants as exam fee. TCS subsidiary MP Online hasearned Rs11 crore from candidates by just processing their applications! Although one needs a simple graduation degree for Patwaris’ post, among the applicants are 1.5 lakh engineering graduates, one lakh management graduates and about 50,000 post graduates. Some are PhD holders!

PEB has apparently failed to learn from past mistakes. It has conducted 55 online tests since 2015, but few have been free of “technical glitches”. Only a few months ago, conducting recruitment for police constables, for which more than 9 lakh people had applied, similar technical glitches had surfaced. Only 6.78 lakh of the applicants could write their exams. A staggering 54,000 candidates had appeared for re-examinations conducted for the post.

PEB has simply outsourced the entire process to TCS, from filling up forms to conductingtests to managing exam centres. And it is not the first time that TCS failed the government. On the contrary, there are several past cases of its inefficiency for which the government received the flak.

Last year, during counselling for admissions to private medical and dental college via NEET (National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test) there were scandalous stories of servers crashing, students’ names disappearing from website, last minute changes in software and candidates receiving SMS for admission after deadline. The mismanagement led to law and order problem at Bhopal, with protest marches and gherao of police station.MP Online was managing the servers and software for medical admissions.

I have always marvelled at MP Government’s fascination for Tata Consultancy Services. Madhya Pradesh seems to be obsessed with TCS when it comes to IT solutions. TCS has been running a joint venture company with MP Government for over a decade now–MP Online Ltd. That probably provides a fig leaf of legitimacy by conferring a semi official status on the company.  MP Online, for all practical purposes, is run by Tata group with TCS controlling its 89 percent shares.

The service does not come for free. MP Government pays it money for services. Citizens are required to pay it money every time they visit the portal for some work with the government. Kiosks that provide its services have to pay a fee to MP Online for accessing its services.MP Online’s 28,000 kiosks earned it a registration fee of Rs 5.43 crore last year. It charges, on an average, five percent of transaction conducted through its websites.

One of the few exceptions that the company makes is for IAS Officers Association. It’s members can use MP Online services without paying any fee. No such magnanimity for jobless employment seekers and poor students.

MP Online enjoys a monopoly in government services. The monopoly has been generating huge profit for the Tatas over the past decade. With a share capital is just Rs one crore, last year it generated a revenue of Rs 92.94 crore and booked a profit of Rs 30.98 crore.

But profit is not the problem. The problem is that TCS cuts corners once too often, short changing customers. Anyone who has ever used MP Online, sweating over even the simplest of tasks, knows that its service is pathetic. It’s badly designed, amateurish site moves at the speed of a snail and it can easily claim a prize for user-unfriendly approach. It must be the only portal in the world whose English language version dishes out information in Hindi to users. Apparently TCS does not believe in spending money on improving its services.

Elsewhere, our IT professionals handle with an aplomb more than 13 lakh students appearing in JEE. And here is MP Online that could not handle even 10,000 medical college aspirants. We live in an age of technology. During a recent sale, Amazon India executed 38 orders per second. Flipkart’s servers and software, sold five lakh products within one hour. And TCS servers crash or software fail with just 6 lakh aspirants. And that happens even as we pay through our nose for their deficient services.

Powers That Be, my column in DB Post of December 18, 2017

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