Stretching over a period of 730 days : Success made sweeter
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: September 28, 2012 -

The success must have been all that sweeter. And why not ?

To the 138 candidates who have been declared successful in the Manipur Civil Services Combined Competitive (Main) Examination, 2010, their dues came rather belatedly. Year 2010.

The key word here is the year. Two years is a long time, by any standard.

In the period that the candidates filled up their forms, appeared for the preliminary examination, sat for the main examination, faced the interview board and then waited for the results, so many things would have happened over the 730 days.

A period stretching over two years sitting atop or buried under an examination and truly one can imagine the state of anxiety, uncertainty and nervousness and this is why the news of success must have sounded all that sweeter to the 138 candidates who ultimately made the cut.

What must have made things worse were the audible whispers doing the round, compounded by the fact that the Manipur Public Service Commission came in for a lot of flak over the ‘copy and paste’ question and the reproduction of a replica set of question paper from an earlier examination.

Certainly not a good idea of conducting an examination to recruit, perhaps the best brain, in the State. Also certainly not a way to deal with students who had burnt the proverbial midnight oil in preparation for the examination.

If at all there is a lesson to be learnt here, it is that the MPSC should pull up their socks and take up steps to ensure that young students or candidates are not made to undergo the type of mental trauma and ordeal that this batch had to face.

Congratulatory notes still keep coming in to the offices of the State dailies, once again underlining the point that on the shoulders of these young women and men, rest the aspirations and hopes of not only their family members but also the society at large.

The true essence of the congratulatory notes should not be lost on any of them. In a few years from now, all the 138 successful candidates would have gone on to occupy important positions in the Government.

In dispensing with their duties, the ordeal of having to wait for over two years for the examination to go to its logical conclusion, the whispers that did the round and only added to their discomfiture, the atmosphere that was so created that majority of the candidates could not put total trust on their performance only to crack the examination, the heart burns etc should weigh on their minds and direct their conduct.

In other words, it is only right that the young inductees, who would soon go on to become officers, should try and make the passage of the younger generation smoother than the path that they were forced to go through. This would be a fitting tribute to the hard work that they had to put in to walk the corridors of power.

A fresh journey awaits the young women and men and it would be refreshing to see this batch give a new dimension and understanding to career growth and planning. Amen.