Continuing with the Internet juggernaut series, where a look is taken at day-to-day growth in usage & acceptance of the Net.
Some new websites that promise to be of great convenience to the public :
1. Voter registration
With the Maharashtra State Assembly elections fast approaching, the Mumbai City Collector’s Office has launched a website to assist first-time voters register themselves and for existing voters to make any change that they need to make in their voter information / constituency.
The site looks respectable, and a little more user-friendly than the Election Commission’s sites which have similar information. Let’s hope it lives up to the promise. One still needs to visit the local election office to submit the filled-in application forms, but this site has essential information and forms.
Why can’t such a site be replicated and / or standardized at the national level ? I am sure there will be other such sites for some of the other constituencies, each of varying quality.
The above site currently covers just Mumbai city and not Mumbai suburbs and Thane district, those areas are expected to be added shortly.
2. Online Counseling by IITs
The Indian Institutes of Technology have announced that from the coming 2010 session, all candidates admitted under the general quota (that’s the majority of those selected) can give online their choice of Program and Institute. This does away with a three decade and more old practise wherein all selected candidates had to go to one of the IITs for a face-to-face meeting with the admissions team and indicate therein their choice of Institute and branch of engineering.
I am one of those who went through this, my dad accompanied me from Bangalore to IIT Chennai for a non-descript 2 minute formality. This is now being done away with, thanks to the Net.
The IITs have also announced that the answer keys (results) of the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), 2010 will be put up online, soon after the exams are held. This will enable each of the candidates (there were about 350,000 aspirants last year) know where they stand.
3. CAT moves online
While in the case of the JEE for IITs only the counseling and answer keys are moving online, the other Big entrance exam viz. Common Admissions Test for entrance to the IIMs and other management institutes is itself moving online – lock, stock and barrel.
The dates for the first online have just been announced. The process kicks off on September 9th. The online exam itself is being held in 30 cities during a 10 day window beginning November 28th. And this information is all available at this new site.
A pretty neat looking site, btw.
4. CAT coaching too moves online, @ $1 a pop
With the CAT moving online, the MBA coaching industry is also gearing up to give their wards a feel of the same, with mock online exams. And one of them has announced a single online mock test as a stand-alone product at just Rs. 49 ($1 !), others offer bundled versions.
This is the coaching class industry’s ‘sachet avataar’, the industry has thus far been known to charge four & five figure sums only.
Enjoy !
