TG Life
There are many aspects from which education can be viewed in India. For most of us, it is sacred; a way to build one’s core values; a guiding light in life. For some, it’s a necessity for a good career, and for others, it’s a business wherein money can be minted using dubious means. Ghostwriting has always been prevalent in Indian education, and with the growth of the Internet, it has certainly grown by leaps and bounds.
Recently, the issue of ghostwriters came to the forefront when a website named Shodhindia.com was exposed by some news agencies. The issue was not just that the website offered to write your MA projects, and PhD thesis. It had a proper rate card according to the degree of plagiarism done in the thesis. While a thesis with 35 percent plagiarised material was priced at Rs 35000, one with 15 percent plagiarised input stood at Rs55000. The said website has now disappeared, however, it has underlined how ghostwriting has now become an organised business.
That said, no one talks about the unorganised business in this area. Goa too has its share of ghostwriters, some of whom spoke to TG Life about the issue. What’s more, it is not just colleges and universities that face the issue, but schools too have been penetrated by ghostwriters.
“Yes, I have done a lot of projects and assignments for students and many of them were from class IX and X,” says Bina Naik (name changed) from Revora. “This was in the year 2005-6 when I was working as an employee at a cyber cafe, and many students approached me with requests to do their projects and assignments. I thought it would be a good opportunity to make some money on the side,” says Naik, who used to charge the students anywhere between Rs 100-500 for an assignment spanning 3-4 A4 pages. She now works as an administrative professional with a good company and has given up on the side business.
What’s more, teachers too are aware of such malpractices, but choose to do little about it.
“Ghostwriting is indeed rampant in our education system. We can make out if a project is ghostwritten by asking some simple questions,” says Aditi Kakatkar, a former lecturer at KJ Somaiya College of Engineering in Mumbai. “If you ask them questions like ‘why did you place this component at this place in the machine?’ they don’t know, or fumble at the answer,” says Kakatkar. “But even so, teachers generally do not fail such students, firstly because they don’t want to ruin the future of the kids, and secondly because they want to show higher results to boost the prestige of the institution,” says Kakatkar.
Tina Fernandes (name changed), a student from Panaji has the weird experience when it comes to ghostwriting. “I have seen many people get their projects ghostwritten and earn good marks. When such people get better grades despite sincere students working hard, it makes one wonder what is the use of being sincere and hardworking,” says Fernandes. However, she has also helped friends with their projects, and the fruits of this good work weren’t exactly sweet. “I once did a project of my friend, and I found that the professor had given that piece of work more marks than my own project. When I asked the teacher why am I getting less marks when I am more intelligent than that person, I was told that I stand at a different level, and as such was expected to perform better than this. I obviously could not point out that both the projects were mine,” the student recounts.
When it comes to plagiarism, there are a number of online tools and softwares to detect plagiarised material, but the same cannot be said about ghostwriting. While efforts will be on to check the people who do it for money, what about innocent students who do it just to help friends?
