Intelligence Bureau of India acting dumb!

I recently gave an exam for the post of ACIO in the Intelligence Bureau of India. Questions were of course those of the likes of if you have 10 apples and 20 oranges, what's the height of the apple tree! There are 100 questions and 60 minutes to answer them. You get exactly 36 seconds for each question! It's mostly meant for those who have byhearted a lot of questions and answers and those who know certain shortcuts to calculate math questions. I never went for any sort of coaching or even prepared for the exam. In fact, I would go on and say that I had 0% hope of even clearing it. I just wanted to see how many came to write these exams and wanted to experience the feeling of being in an exam hall after so many years! I was only able to answer 45/100 questions.

However, it is not about these questions or its difficulty I want to talk about, but something else I faced during this ordeal of an exam!

When I got the hall ticket, I read the instructions they had provided. It was written as the first point that,

"1. The candidates may ensure that all 3 pages of this admit card (preferably in colour) have been downloaded/printed and are advised to carry it to the to the allocated Test Centre on the Date and Time mentioned above."

I have copied the exact text from the hall ticket as it is including grammatical mistakes.

 

I did exactly as how I was told just like all other candidates who came for the exam. To my surprise, there was a huge bin kept outside the exam center to throw all these extra pages from the hall ticket. Excluding the hall ticket itself, there were 3 additional pages with instructions. Everyone had to throw these 3 pages in the bin. I could see that the bin was already full. I was annoyed and feeling disappointed to even write the exam. Imagine, how many candidates might have appeared for this exam throughout India? It was conducted in a span of 3 days with 3 shifts. I can only imagine the number of candidates who might have appeared for this exam. 

In this time of the world, where every organization is trying to reduce the carbon footprint and waste, where the community is shifting towards more eco-friendly solutions, where usage of paper is being reduced day by day, the Intelligence Bureau of India single-handedly managed to create an enormous amount of waste in a matter of 3 days.

I do not know since when they had been doing this, but I wanted to put this to an end for once and for all. So, I decided to write an email to the Intelligence Bureau of India. Please find below the email I wrote!

Hi,

I don't know whether this is the correct channel to complain. Do let me know if it's not. I was a candidate for the ACIO first level exam conducted on 20-02-2020. In the hall ticket, it was mentioned in instructions as the first point that

"The candidates may ensure that all 3 pages of this admit card (preferably in colour) have been downloaded/printed and are advised to carry it to the allocated Test Centre on the Date and Time mentioned above."

I duly followed this like most other candidates who came for the exam did. To my surprise, there was a huge bin kept outside the exam center with a pile of papers to which all 3 pages other than the admit were thrown into. I was disappointed and outraged to see that! It's 2021, and the whole world is trying to reduce waste and use of paper. It is in these times, an exam conducted by the Intelligence Bureau and the Ministry of Home Affairs does something so dumb and meaningless. I lost my desire to write the exam after I saw that. What's the point in learning all these synthetic questions testing our abilities like reasoning and logic while what is done in the real world by the authorities is downright dumb!

Imagine how many students might have appeared for this exam throughout India and how much waste you managed to create in 3 days! Totally disappointing and not so intelligent for some organization that is supposed to be intelligent!

And this is the reply I got.

Hi,
Greetings from Recruitment Helpdesk,
Dear Candidate,
We would inform you that, Exam has been over now.
Regards,
Recruitment Helpdesk

 And, how dumb is that? Enlighten me!

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) is India's domestic intelligence, internal security and counter-intelligence agency. It is reputed to be the oldest such organization in the world.

This is what the intelligence bureau is supposed to be. Not someone, who tries to find the most intelligent candidates by conducting an exam where they fail to show even the basic intelligence of not asking people to do something that's useless and illogical!

I have filed an RTI to get the actual number of candidates who appeared for the exam in order to get an approximate scale on the tonnage of waste they managed to create.

*Update*

They replied to my RTI. It seems like they can choose not to disclose those details since there is an exclusion for IB in RTI. For every 10 lakh candidates who appeared for the exam, they managed to create approximately 15000 KG paper waste and 1500L of ink! 

I hope this makes its way to the concerned and actions will be taken so as not to repeat it again.

Thanks for reading.