IIT System reform : Too Soon Too Stupid

Being myself an alumni from one of the institutions of the IIT System ( counting only the "real" ones i.e. those with enough infrastructure and legislative competence to award genuine IIT degrees ) I feel I have every right to have a judgemental and biased opinion of the reform in the IIT system.
The reform can be seen as a combination of two reforms which by the sway of some wild figment of imagination of a top "babu" have been somehow knitted as one. The first part caters to having a common entrance examination and the latter is about having a "significant" weightage of board examination marks. Hence it would not be too unwise to discuss them separately.

Common entrance Examination
The first part is definately much less controversial and acceptable for the simple reason the it won't really make a difference.The structure of Indian society is such that such reforms would just act as cogs to perpetuate what currently exists in the society. Class differences are greatly entrenched in the Indian society, and the coaching industry is a by product of the same. The rich feel no need for an appropriate schooling and find it an easier option to pay extra in the coaching than take pains to ensure proper schooling through say the parent teacher committees. The new examination would probably serve to integrate the various coaching institutes across examinations and probably change their pedagogy according to the reformed pattern. Though it can be acceptable that it would slightly reduce their role and indispensability  but to call it "reform" would be an overstatement. One advantage would definately be that poor students would have to spend less on the forms but I doubt if its the right way to tackle it, subsidization of forms would hvae been a better way.

Another advantage highlighted is that it would reduce the stress of the students as they would not have to take multiple examinations. This is probably the most ridiculous argument I have heard since ages. In computer science we often have this principle that a single point of failure always makes the situation more precarious while a distributed system is always prefered. In the new arrangement consider the fact that what if due to some reason which could be as external as say a medical emergency a stuent fails to perform on the day of the sacred examination. In the earlier case he had other options say AIEEE, but now it would mean just waiting for another year. This is a clear case of a single point of failure.

Weightage of Board Marks

This is the more ridiculous of the two proposals.  The idea is to make schooling relevant by including their contribution in  the selection procedure of the entrance examination. This would nothing but perpetuate the Class XII coaching industry hence probably this is not the best way to rejuvenate our moribund educational apparatus. Furthur this would also tend to increase corruption in the state boards, which is already rampant in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Then comes the issue of comparison across the boards. It is said that Indian Statistical Institute would devise a scaling formula for the same. Those of us who have been through the UPSC process are aware that how "ineffective" the scaling process is evident in fact that each year there are optionals that "win" and those that do not. Hence this would be  clearly a compromise with the quality of the student intake. Hence such a reform would make sense only when absolute transparency and accurate comparison can be ensured across state boards, hence this refom even though it achieves little is not feasible. If brought without fixing the other factors this might end up as a serious jolf to the credibility of the IITs.

I realize that this post is very negative and overcritical  but I guess that its the first step towards any rectification.