Almost a year ago, Indian Railways started the process of inducting staff, in what was to be the largest online exam. Given the number of people taking the exams and previous cases of question paper leaks and instances of cheating, Railways was extra cautious in scrutinising examinees, while simultaneously ensuring that it gave equal opportunities to all who wanted to write the exams. As the largest exam neared completion, BusinessLine spoke to Sachidanand Agrawal, Member-Staff, Indian Railways, for his take on the experience. Excerpts:

Since the exams were held over several months, what were the biggest challenges?

The biggest challenge so far has been of dealing with imposters. People with similar body mass index, wearing the same shirt as in the submitted photo, posed as the candidate. In the first few days, we nabbed the touts and impersonators, handed them over to the police and also filed FIRs. That has dissuaded the students from approaching touts. People came with their hands taped with bandages, refusing to give thumb impressions for the exams.

Initially the exam locations were visible online, but became unavailable later. Why?

This was because we wanted only authorised people to access the exam centres. Making the exam centres public could enable touts to tempt candidates with promises of making the questions available in advance, or solving papers for them.

Also, to prevent applicants creating their own arrangements around the centres, they were allocated exam centres in non-resident cities. This excluded women and those with special abilities. Moreover, even the candidates were informed about exam centres just a week before the date.

How did you resolve pain points faced by students during the exam?

For the first time, Railways put in place an “objection tracker” system. Each student was shared the answer of each objective type question — after the exam. They could compare their answers and raise objections if any, and get back to the Railways.

Students did use it. In fact, for objections regarding two questions, the Railways found merit and took corrective action — this was for the first lot of technical exams.

One question was regarding an incorrect translation for students who attempted the exam in Telugu. In another instance, there was a mix-up in the serial order of answers of questions.

For the incorrect translation, we gave marks to those who attempted it. For the other mistake, we cancelled that one question, decided the percentage of marks for students from remaining queries, and marked students accordingly.

Then, there was another case — in one centre in Maharashtra — where questions appeared in Marathi when the students clicked on Telugu. They were given the choice of writing the exam at a later date, or choosing to write the exam by referring to English. The students preferred to take the exam by understanding English language.

How many people took the exams?

From the total people that applied, almost 61 per cent people took the exams, which is the highest ever.

There were two phases of exams till December 2018 end. The first phase was for assistant loco pilots and technical assistants. They will be selected over multiple tests.

The second phase, for which 1.9 crore people applied,was originally to be held over 30-35 days with three shifts each day.

Keeping in mind complaints raised in the first phase that the exam centres were in far-off places, we took two steps in the second phase that started mid-September. We increased the number of centres and also dropped the maximum distance one had to travel by half — from 1,500 km to 700 km. The step halved the time and money spent by students to make it to the centres, but increased the number of days on which exams were held — from 30-35 days to 51 days. Also, before we published results for the Level-1 exam, the objections of 1.58 lakh candidates were considered through objection tracker mechanism.

There was some confusion after the exams of people getting over 100 marks. What was that about?

They are not the actual marks that a candidate gets from 100. This was the normalised mark, a technique used to average out the difficulty levels of questions when exams are held in several shifts. This has been adopted earlier during several exams, including Indian Railways and Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), and candidates get ‘normalised marks’ over 100.

What will these hirings mean for Indian Railways, three years down the line?

These hirings will basically mean that Railway works at least will not suffer due to shortage of staff. Also, the Railway network is expanding – through doubling, electrification, new routes. At least when these works are complete, there will be no shortage of staff (referring to the hiring process that has started now to take care of vacancies that will arise due to retirement in the next two years).

comment COMMENT NOW