Ramesh Pandita
With the grilling and subsequent arrest of the former Delhi Law Minister, Mr. Jatinder Singh Tomar by the Delhi Police in connection with the possession of fake and fabricated degrees, obtained through fraudulent means and the various other similar suspicions raised in the past over the true qualifications of several well know public figures, has once again set the tone to debate the prevailing menace in the society on this account. Anyhow, following the public outcry over the issue, the whole drama unfolded ended on a better note, firstly by making Tomar to leave the public office by submitting resignation and secondly by arresting the former minister to dig deeper into the case and tighten the noose around those involved with such fraudulent and unlawful activities.
The fact of the matter is, the revelations made about the possession of fake documents by the former Delhi law minister do not actually took the nation by surprise, perhaps for the fact, that a sizeable portion of Indian masses not just possess the fake degrees, but also manage their living on the basis of such fabricated documents. Undoubtedly, the country’s private sector is the largest employer of such fraudulent degree holders, for the fact, that as long as these employees are productive for these organizations, their management is least bothered about the genuineness of the educational background of their employees. But, the bigger question is, the practice of having fabricated documents is endemically present in the Indian social setup and putting hands on few or chosen ones is not going to serve any real good purpose and the need is to look and plug the loopholes by putting in place such a mechanism, which if not totally, but should prove effective to a greater degree in overhauling the system.
Under the prevailing conditions, to ascertain the authenticity of all such documents, which hold importance in our lives to such an extent that without a documentary evidence not just the identity, but the existence of an individual is challenged. Thereon, if nothing seems to be working on the scheme of things, it’s high time to say goodbye to conventional ways & means of documentation handling and welcome the contemporary methods, and there cannot be anything better than exploiting the offings of Information Technology (IT) to its optimum. IT has already become an integral part of our life and an IT savvy person can imagine the importance of ICT applications in the present day world in our lives and how perhaps the recourse of life will come to a standstill in absence of IT. Application of Information Technology in archiving information in digital form, apart from proving handy in handling & managing the information will also ensure the flow of information in more transparent & acceptable manner, a minimum prerequisite to do away with the practice of fake documents.
The digital archiving has become the order of the day and of late, IT professionals have gained better mastery over the subject, with the result, as on data one can easily store and share data of any capacity by hosting the same on their respective websites through their web servers. There is hardly any department, institution or organization in the world of whatever size & nature, which doesn’t maintain a website of its own and host a range of documents on their respective websites for wider & easy access of the general masses.
It is a known fact, that almost all the Government, public sector, or even autonomous organizations, upon engaging human resource in their respective organizations or institutions undertake the screening of their documents, to ascertain the genuineness and the authenticity of their academic qualifications. In the due course of time, this exercise of screening the documents is repeated by the employer by cross checking the credentials of their employees with those institutions who supposedly have issued them the documents and rightly so, for this being the only way whereby authenticity of the issued document can be ascertained. This whole exercise of verification and counter verification of documents is so lengthy & cumbersome that it almost runs parallel during the entire service period of an employee and one never knows the replies sought on this account from the other organization are itself genuine or not. The simple argument for questioning the authenticity of any such exercise is, that if a person can manage a fabricated document from a certain quarter, why can’t that person influence the screening of his documents, fabricate the replies about the authenticity of his documents, or even may corrupt his own people in the system by making them employ dilly-dally tactics or misrepresent facts. With the result, we mostly end up with wasting time, resources, manpower and there on the laborious process involved, given the absence of any other better mechanism in place.
Contrary to above, had there been a fully grown mechanism of digital archiving in place, most of the aforementioned issues, foremostly, would have been non-existent, thereon could have easily been addressed. Accordingly, there would have been no need for the Delhi police team engaged with the investigation of Tomar’s case to rush from pillar to post to ascertain the authenticity of documents Tomar possesses and could have otherwise easily settled the scores while sitting in their offices. Besides, by archiving information and making it public, falling under public domain will help a great deal in overcoming the ever increasing burden of information sought by the people on various accounts under RTI on such matters. These digital archives shall itself turn as deep graves in laying to rest all such fabricated documents managed through fraudulent means. By exploiting the digital information archiving mechanism, people in general and institutions in particular apart from saving time, resources & energy, will be able to avoid lengthy, cumbersome & the laborious process involved in ascertaining the authenticity of documents.
Questioning the authenticity of documents pertaining to the educational qualification of an individual is simply one single, but the important aspect to show concerns for. During the most part of our life, we remain entangled in a range of documentation activities, which we are required to produce with all genuineness and legality at each step we take to meet our ends. Be they about the possession of a valid driving license to the ownership of a vehicle or licenses to run a roadside kiosk or a multi-billion industry and many more.
Accordingly, archiving of revenue records and making them freely accessible to the public will give a huge respite to the people interested in purchasing properties, especially land and investing in real estate. People will easily come to know about the true ownership and the legality involved with the properties they are interested in and shall also help in keeping at bay the land mafia. Also, the instances of existence of ghost employees in the Govt. Departments across different States of the country, including J & K has already come to the fore and to do away with all such ghost employees, govt., and its agencies can make public, profile of its true employees.
Since, the present discourse lasts around the fake documents which people easily manage to get through fraudulent means, mostly either from the state or central board of school education or even, for that matter from institutions of higher learning, be they colleges or universities, which mostly enjoy all sorts of autonomy in their functioning. The governing bodies of these institutions should make it mandatory and binding on all such educational institutions to host the data (both retro & current) of their students along with complete status of each enrolled individual in a chronological order on their institutional websites. This way, people not only will be able to access the required information at their own, but will also be in a position to ascertain the authenticity of document and the reliability of the information. This way people will be benefitted to a great deal not only in this particular instance, but also in other matters as well.
(The author is Assistant Librarian, BGSB University, Rajouri, J&K)
Follow our WhatsApp channel