Director of IIM Rohtak, Dheeraj Sharma has proposed to conduct CAT exam in regional languages. He has brought this issue to the notice of IIM Indore who will be the conducting authority of CAT 2020. He also proposed to make CAT an international exam and conduct it multiple times in a year.
Currently, CAT exam is only conducted in English. IIM Rohtak Director, Dheeraj Sharma suggested to create a ‘CAT corporation’ housed in one of the IIMs and chaired periodically by each Indian Institute of Management.
Dheeraj pointed out the need of CAT corporation and said, “It can not only allow the facility of taking the test in Indian languages but also in Persian, Sinhalese, Nepalese, Burmese, Arabic, and Thai. The corporation will have the potential of becoming an international organisation that offers tests multiple times a year. International institutions can use the score, at least in the neighborhood of India. This can probably attract international students to study management in India.”
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Professor Dheeraj Sharma of IIM Rohtak was the one who took up this issue of CAT by writing a letter to the Director of IIM Indore, Professor Himanshu Rai. Professor Dheeraj stated in his letter that promoting local languages is one of the aims of the new National Education Policy.
As such he believed that the IIMs should take the lead in this initiative by allowing students to take up the CAT exam in any language of their choice which is included in Schedule VII. He further encouraged Mr. Rai to bring up this issue to the notice of the committee that is responsible for the CAT exam.
Professor Sharma confirmed that he had written a letter about this topic when he was asked about it. He said that a lot of candidates are not proficient in English and the lack of proficiency in one particular language should not be a reason enough to deny the students an equal opportunity for higher admissions.
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He said that the promotion of local languages was also one of the focus areas of the national education policy and as such this issue should definitely be looked into. According to him, conducting the exam in only one language is paramount to denying equal opportunity to all candidates.
CAT exam is one of the most popular MBA exams in India with more than 2.5 lakhs applicants every year. Students from all over India apply for CAT and because of the language gap between different parts of the country many students are unable to do their best.
Professor Dheeraj raised this issue at a time when many other people are also voicing the same thoughts on this topic. Recently, Mr. Ramesh Pokhriyal, the education minister has also focused on the need to promote the need for local languages in various higher educations of India.
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