The following is not a commentary on the nature of the Indian Administrative Service, or other Indian civil services, as a career; nor on the quality or calibre of the individuals who currently serve or want to serve in these positions.
Instead, the following is a commentary, merely, on the nature of India’s Civil Services Exam and its conduct. Most such contemporary discussion is dismissed, if it is critical, as “sour grapes” (Khatte angoor, or to drop all decorative language: jealousy). That the critic would have probably tried their own hand, failed, and now has nothing better to do than criticise the exam.
These grounds for rejection of criticism, although untenable, are understandable: governmental employment is an emotional subject for a very large section of this country’s youth. How they view their future – and for a depressingly large proportion of them, how they will view their past – is hinged on performances in exams conducted by the government. Employment by the government has a huge role in how, unfortunate as it may be, our modern social hierarchy is defined. To suggest a move away from the status quo is, then, unimaginable for many, due to the societal sunk cost that is invested in it.
Any criticism, then, from anyone not invested in the outcome may be rightly criticised as lacking “skin in the game”: do I have anything to lose – or gain – if the current shape of things is to be changed?
To shield myself from all of the above, then, it is important to outline some context. It belongs to times that, although not that long ago, seem like they are from a separate lifetime.
My imagination of a career, for a large period of life, centred around the civil service in India. I was to take the first level of the three-stage selection exam in May 2020. A black swan came along in March 2020, and I felt like I had lost the only security I had against possibly underperforming in the exam: the ability to find a job relatively quickly.
After having spent a year preparing for an exam (from 2015-16, for entrance to India’s prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology) and failing, I had resolved to not do that ever again, simply because I realised that it would be utterly futile for me. Amidst much self-discovery through that year, this one has been, perhaps, the most accurate.
Therefore, focus temporarily shifted to finding a job. I found one that was extremely educational – it helped me meet individuals engaged in working for and with the government, and public digital goods. Fast forward a year and a half: I work at the at one of the world’s largest open-source projects for building website components, and spend most of my other time volunteering with some fantastic folks interested in contributing to digital public infrastructure in India.
The intention with sharing this context is to convey two things: while I have considerable experience engaging with the exam, I am not embittered by it. I have friends currently in multiple stages of taking the exam for whom I wish the best, and yet, I carry a strong desire for the examination to transform itself based simply off of objective observation.
While I have attempted to write a summary of my thoughts on this issue at multiple points in the past, I was brought to the brink this time by a combination of two factors that deserve mention: a visit to Washington D.C. and thus incidentally observing a bureaucracy very different from our British relic, and a recent YouTube video from civil servant turned educator, Dr. Vikas Divyakirti, on the subject of “lateral entry” into the Indian civil service.
While his two hour long talk may not be for everyone, the gist of it is him making a patient, yet sufficiently reserved, case for certain reforms in the Indian civil service. Looking at one of India’s most followed and admired teachers of the civil service examination taking that stance inspired me to add my hat into the ring.
If a one-line summary of the current examination process has to be provided, it is this: a body (the Union Public Service Commission) spends one year recruiting a pool of individuals who will be employed into a “cadre” (a state, or a group of states and union territories) to hold executive power in one (or more) administrative zones, and also be allowed to be “deputed” into senior policy-making positions for the central government at multiple points in their career, based on their willingness and the discretion of the state and central government which co-parent them.
To my mind, the first problem is simply in the time spent: the examination takes one year to simply attempt; in most cases, coupled with the time required to prepare, it is, at least, a two-year investment.
Swathes of people in this country are having to spend years out of jobs, writing essays and practising multiple-choice questions that ultimately have no bearing on the course of their lives, and for the state of their nation.
It is not anyone’s case that we adopt western culture blindly; but, the fact that we are, as a society, allowing a generation of twenty-somethings to waste multiple productive years of their life seems to me far inferior to the western tradition of financial independence being sought for right from one’s teenage years.
I have, as yet, been unable to find any justification not to reform this: without changing the nature of the exam at all, it can simply allowed to be more humane to the hordes who attempt it year after year by merely making the preliminary examination a requirement whose score may be valid for a set number of years.
This is not wishful thinking: only last year, the exact same reform was brought in for recruitment to India’s lower-level bureaucracy.
The second problem is in the centralisation: there is only one office of the Union Public Service Commission, in New Delhi. It is, as if, Amazon decided to task the HR department in its Seattle HQ with recruiting every software engineer that the organisation employs, all over the world.
Multiple satellite offices of the commission, with the authority to initiate recruitment via interviews – based on a valid preliminary score – at multiple times in the year should have been an extremely logical extension of the original process. Surely, something should seem off about candidates from the entire country having to come to New Delhi for an interview. Surely, someone should be able to see the signs of an artificial preservation of prestige.
The above process is exactly how the American Foreign Service recruits its employees; there may be multiple things wrong about the bureaucracy in D.C. which I am not sufficiently aware of, but a willingness to minimally inconvenience their own citizens is what, in my opinion, they get right.
In the Indian context, an objective examination is a favourable method of selection: it is an instrument of levelling the playing field. Excess focus on “merit” and subjective “applications” will tilt the already biased scales further in favour of those with access to financial and social privilege.
However, a system that treats employment as a “reward” granted to an individual who has had to make great sacrifice will create employees who will then – consciously or sub-consciously – seek revenge. If we can reduce the amount an individual has to sacrifice to be employed by the government, we can create a class of employees who are unconcerned with extracting from the system what they have lost while trying to get in, while simultaneously achieving a reduction in the colonial divinity attached to it in our society.
There are other aspects of the Indian bureaucracy which need reform (I find them being increasingly discussed in our public sphere – which is a good signal); but these two simple measures to improve recruitment, to my mind, have the ability to free our productive capacity from having to lock their lives into “five year plans” to find government employment.
Surviving Everyday Life 
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