Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Reaching AICTE helpdesk- It is a pie in the sky!

Dr. Kapil Sibal wants to make his presence felt. He appears to be seriously engaged in revamping the higher education system, and as part of it, he has set out to streamline the AICTE approval process. Accordingly, he has made it mandatory for every institution to upload their details on AICTE website.

But alas! The website is not at all accessible and is hardly open to feed the details into. Realizing the reality, AICTE has extended the time of uploading from 28-2-10 to 15-3-10. Now the accessibility is a little better. But problems that are staring in the face are those related to payments and helpdesk services.

1. Payments are not acknowledged although about 15 are completed after payment; payments are supposed to be acknowledged within 3 or 4 days, but they are not. It is difficult to know when they will be acknowledged. That apart, the worst inconvenience that every institution faces is that further details cannot be uploaded until the first payment is acknowledged. AICTE is sitting on the payments like a dog in the manger. To get some reply, one can call the helpdesk.

2. But helpdesk is the worst ever disorganized system known to mankind. None of the four numbers they have given are reachable; they are either engaged or don’t answer till doom! It is the height of disorganization. Quite strangely, one number they gave is an invalid number.

That is the level of service that Ministry of Higher Education/ Government Of India is prepared to give to their stakeholders!