Parrikar questions 75 percent attendance rule for exams

Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar Sunday said that he will take up with the Goa University (GU) officialsthe issue of 75 percent compulsory attendance to qualify for appearing in examinations.

Parrikar, who was speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industries' (CII) 'Knowledge Connect' project, said current systems in India did not encourage people to take healthy risks.

"I will take up the issue with GU also. The GU rules say if you don't have 75 percent attendance, you cannot appear for exams. Why do we have exams? Is the exam conducted for attendance or for knowledge? Then why 75 (percent). I would not have passed IIT because my attendance was only 50 percent," Parrikar said.

However, he told students, who were also attending the function, not to blindly imbibe his argument. Parrikar said he was the only student from his hostel who had opted for metallurgy and this was the reason behind his low attendance at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mumbai.

If lecture schedule was forgotten once and there was no one with whom he could cross-check, the chief minister explained.

Parrikar said he did the next best thing - hit a library for four hours every night to make up for his missed classes and gain knowledge.

"The library was my teacher...Reading helped me get good marks. Maybe if I would have been in class, I would have suffered from tunnel vision," Parrikar said.

Parrikar said the education system existing in India has strangulated professional killer instinct and illustrated this using a banking sector example.

"If a loan appraisal officer (in foreign banks) has a 100 percent recovery rate or if its over 92 percent, he is considered as a bad appraisal officer for purpose of loans. The reasoning is that he does not take risks...But if a nationalised bank (officer) has a 92 percent rate, he will have to face CBI for (the remaining) 8 percent. We kill killer instinct because of many of such mechanisms," Parrikar said.