MP govt’s ITES offers doubtful destinies

Barely had the ink dried on
newspapers lauding the effort of the home-grow Information Technology Enabled
Services (ITES) training center by Center for Research and Industrial Staff
Performance (CRISP), than the local press is now going to town about how the
ITES students have been ‘taken for a ride’ by the training centre on their
once-lauded placements with large international corporations like General
Electric Capital Services.

Reports in a local daily
mentioned that when 14 students from the first batch heard that their ITES
course Director was talking big to KS Sharma, Chief Secretary, MP about how his
students had got placed in multinational organizations, most of them were taken
aback. For, none of them had actually been employed anywhere.

And after having shelled out a
whopping Rs 16,000 for a two-month course, this claim must have rung more than
just clichéd especially since a similar fee structure in a good private
computer education centre would have given them a better chance of finding
meaningful employment, at the very least.

The training centre has been set
up by government of MP for CRISP with an investment of over Rs 2 crore to
provide a comprehensive platform for training students for providing an
opportunity to avail best of training. Interestingly, on May 1, 2000, Chief
Secretary had distributed certificates to 14 students comprising the first batch
of students from this centre.

Dr RS Choubey, Director, ITES
however is reported to have said that he has been misquoted by the media about
his ‘claim’. He says that he had never claimed that his students have been
placed in any organization. On the contrary, he says, he had only expressed the
confidence that they will get a job with these companies.

But another allegation that has
cropped up on the heels of the first one is that the Director had given an
impression to the students that the course would be run in collaboration with GE
Capital Services Ltd and after completion of their course students shall be
absorbed by the company. It is now being said that GE actually has nothing to do
with ITES course. To boot, the fee already at a high of Rs 16,000 has now been
jacked up to Rs 20,000.  

While the actual facts still
remain a little foggy as of now, what cannot be denied is that similar
institutes in Bhopal are running these courses by charging a fee ranging from Rs
70,000 to Rs 20,000 per student.

And while the pedagogical
facilities at this centre are enough to accommodate 60 students, why only 14
students had taken admission? As of now, the much-touted ITES courseware has
taken on the hue of simply a round robin tournament by which every item in a
list is compared to every other item, the final ranking emerging from a simple
tally of the number of wins!

(CNS)