LESSONS TO LEARN

Lessons To Be Learnt (Reliance / Sify)

1 → Content created by ISCE / CBSE Boards – maybe Reliance & Sify managed to get it free! Content has time-bound but great interest to students & their parents. Content (% marks) literally predicts future / admission. Both, Reliance / Sify spent nothing on content-creation!

2 → What does RIL / Sify get out of this service?

→ Possibly a larger no. of subscribers. You have to be an I-way “member”, or to log into Sify.com; you have to give Sify some demographic data about yourself viz: Name / Address / email / Age / Sex etc. I suppose Reliance also asks for similar info about you, when you buy their cell-phone / become a subscriber – so, both get valuable info about you in exchange for providing online results. These info (especially email IDs) will give them “right” to send you emails in future to promote their other products / services. Since you have given your email ID, voluntarily (without carefully reading “terms” in very small fonts), you have agreed to receive from them, email messages in future! This is not spam!

→ Both may even earn some money from delivering this content. Reliance may bill you, prepaid or postpaid. In case of Sify, their I-way cybercafe franchisee, would certainly charge something to the surfer to log in. So Sify will get its “commission” – even on “printing-out mark sheets” service. There is no “free lunch”!

3 → Both have huge, underutilized broadband network. With students / parents logging in; their installed capacity utilization rises. This will tremendously boost brand-awareness among subscribers / parents etc.

→ Convenience

Students / parents do not have to crowd the college corridors. They can safely plan their vacation from Kerala to Kashmir & get the result delivered to them, wherever they happen to be! You are no more tied / tethered to your hometown / college! On first day, college notice boards only inform you whether you have “passed” or “failed” (by your seat no. being absent), and if you have passed, then in which class (first class / second class etc). I don’t know if these things have changed now. For getting detailed “subject-wise mark sheet” you had to pay up some “charge” & come back after a few days! With help of digital technology (telecom / internet), Reliance & Sify have telescoped the entire process to “one-stop-shopping”! From any convenient location, a group of friends can download & compare their results, instantaneously – and celebrate! By making available “subject-wise mark-sheets” on-the-spot, both Reliance & Sify have made it possible for students to apply for admissions to a large no. of colleges, much earlier than before.

From these tiny news-items, we can learn a lot. We can see the “strategies” employed by Reliance / Sify.

Conduct exams & evaluate students.

“Delivering” of results, is not their job! — nor do they have any real competence in this area — the Boards are ill-equipped to undertake “delivery” and all that. Reliance / Sify are the ULTIMATE delivery-channels! So, if the BOARDS were to agree to “co-operate / collaborate” with Reliance / Sify, this (delivery) “weakness” of the BOARDS can be overcome overnight! And, in many cases, for years together, BOARDS have been making available these “results” to reputed Newspapers, one day in advance. But newspapers had a limited reach. So, the BOARDS are not breaking any rules, by giving the results in advance to Reliance / Sify — who represent the NEW / LATEST ELECTRONIC MEDIA.

Whereas, no newspaper could print, subject-wise, detailed marksheets of lakhs of students, for the sake of “instant availability” — (even if this was legally permitted, which, I don’t think is), this is a very simple thing, for a database server, belonging to Reliance / Sify. So why should BOARDS, burden themselves with printing of lakhs of marksheets (a very costly & time consuming affair) AND further undertake to “distribute” these to thousands of college-principals (under fear of “leakage”!) A huge logistics problem. Just entrust the database to US & sit back & relax.

Here, there are lessons to be learnt!