Security personnel stand guard near a UPSC exam coaching centre after three civil services aspirants died when the basement of the coaching centre was flooded by rainwater. File
| Photo Credit: PTI
Two lamentable tales unfolded in India recently. Both of them, about young aspirants, made telling headlines and made one sad, even angry. The first story from Maharashtra brought a cloud over the stellar reputation of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), which has selected government officers based on merit for over seven decades without any major controversies. The second story from Delhi laid bare the struggles of thousands in India in trying to achieve single-minded success in being able to crawl through an aspirational miasma. The civil services is the major seductive trap, which can be detoxified by some readjustment of public policy and popular perspective.
The underbelly
The attraction for the civil services is historical; the obsession seen in recent times unprecedented. About five decades ago, when we were students, preparing for the civil services was considered a national pastime driven by the dignity and security of a government job and by the dearth of employment opportunities. Economic liberalisation changed it all by opening up job options in the market. The government too reduced intake for its services in its zeal to downsize. However, as this was not accompanied by the shedding of government functions and reduction in the authorised strength of the service cadres, a huge deficit was created in due course. With the revision in government salaries recommended by the Sixth Pay Commission implemented in 2008, when there was an economic downturn and the private sector was benching or retrenching its staff, the government re-emerged as a preferred employer.
The national pastime of yore has assumed epidemic dimensions. Its underbelly was recently exposed first when a trainee officer in Maharashtra was found to have faked her identity and documents and then by the terrible and entirely avoidable deaths of three aspirants in Delhi.
Questions have rightly been asked about the acts of omission and commission that led to both these incidents. While the first incident relates to the psyche of an individual, who was gaming the system to qualify to be termed the ‘cream of society’, the other relates to the collective psyche of a society enmeshed in chasing stereotypical aspirations. An entire industry capitalises on this pursuit even though it is aware that the rate of success is small.
One such aspirant has been sending me mails for the last seven years, sharing his repeated failures. I could not succeed in persuading him to change course despite his qualifying for the now-discredited National Eligibility Test. Such is the allure of the civil services, and the Indian Administrative Service has come to represent that fatal attraction. I once interacted with 28 aspirants who had qualified for the interview. Only one of them was appearing for the interview for the first time; the others were taking their fifth or sixth chance.
The catastrophe of the drowning of the three aspirants has raised a clamour for regulating the coaching institutions and for stricter enforcement of urban regulations. The irony is that the demand is being made of the same bureaucracy whose ineptitude is responsible for this calamity. The entry of the floodwater mixed with overflowing sewer into the basement is not the only calamity; nor is the arrest of the SUV driver accused of being the main culprit the only farcical response of the system. The rot is deeper.
Some suggestions
First, the upper age limit for candidates needs to be reduced. After the Kothari Commission’s recommendations and subsequent changes, and with age relaxation for various special categories, a candidate can be nearly 34-35 years old at the time of entry into service. Given that the lower age limit for eligibility is 21, the upper age limit should be reduced to 25 with a relaxation of two years for all special categories. The number of attempts may be restricted to three, with an additional attempt allowed to the special categories.
The wide age band and the many attempts allowed has created an enormous market for the notorious coaching industry to thrive on. Millions of aspirants join these centres every year. The success rate is so small that it is difficult to calculate. An analysis must be done to show how many candidates keep repeating their efforts and eventually give up after exhausting their chances. Why should our public policies promote a race in which so much energy and resources are spent? The only beneficiary of this insane pursuit is the mushrooming coaching industry, propagated by those who have occupied respectable positions of authority while in government.
Those who qualify after such a long and arduous struggle are bound to feel a sense of unrealistic attainment in qualifying for the exam. But when they are so overwhelmed by their repeated attempts and hard-earned success, how much fire is left in their belly to excel while in service? For some, it would be the time to enjoy the fruits of their labour and luck rather than toil to discharge the responsibility that follows their entry into public service.
It is equally important to disabuse the younger generation of the notion that government service is the only way of serving the nation. Being a good teacher, an ethical accountant, a conscientious chemist, and an honest contractor are also ways of serving society and contributing towards nation-building. All honest hard work goes into building a nation. Public service neither has the monopoly nor does it provide any extraordinary opportunity to serve the nation.
Ashok Lavasa is a retired IAS officer and former Election Commissioner
