India’s civil servant exam | Hacker News Reader

India’s civil servant exam

thestar.com

61 pointskareemm47 comments

This exam is possibly one of the most difficult in the world. You need an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of history, geography, economics and everything in between and the ability to marshal all those facts to answer a question like :

"The internet is a manifestation of Max Weber's iron cage of rationality. Discuss"

In just 10-15 minutes.

Here's a question paper : http://www.upsc.gov.in/questionpaper/2013/CSM%202013/GS%20I....

And

http://www.upsc.gov.in/questionpaper/2013/CSM%202013/GS%20I....

And this is just one of the subjects. You have papers on English, an Indian language and also a paper on your subject of specialization and more ..

Some people question the merits of choosing civil servants based on such an exam but getting through a pretty impressive feat. I'd compare it to being a polymath Jeopardy champion or something. I'm pretty sure Indian Civil Servants are among the sharpest in the world.

In terms of effectiveness however , our bureaucracy is amongst the worst. Quite the paradox.

I don't think it's much of a paradox that people who excel at memorization and taking tests (and choose to pursue such a demanding test and work on it for years) are not that good at doing actual meaningful work afterwards.

I'd venture that a lot of effective, hard-working, achieving people would simply not spend so much time and energy on such a test. Given the amount of memorization involved, it probably discriminates for people with a faith and trust in the established system, more like ineffective bureaucrats than reformers.

As someone with quite some civil servants (IAS (admin), IFS (foreign), and IPS (police)) in close circles (mostly acquaintances and alumni) I would beg to differ, not much, but would differ nonetheless.

It's not that much about sharpness as much it's about rot learning. As a matter of fact civil services is one of those important Indian institutions that has retained the idea of rot learning as a measure of one's ability in all rounds of life. So the bureaucracy being worst is not at all a paradox. It's a result of a failed method of recruitment coupled with other institutional and social handicaps like systematic corruption and general greed (in most cases barring rare exceptions) as the solve motive of these candidates.

Go to Delhi's Mukherji Nagar area (centred around Batra Cinema) and you'll see thousands of youth (some already past their youth) toiling the midnight oil mugging volumes with no interest in any of those subjects whatsoever and many of these midnight oil toilers would be declared "crème de la crème" of our country around the middle of every year and with that result would come a lifetime of power, its abuse, and other largesses in life that mere mortals of this large country can't even dream of. Actually some of those luxuries would be unattainable to even the moneybags of India.

If you go to them as an interviewer from a newspaper (either before or after their success/failure) you'll get all the grandiose ideas they have for the mother nation and why they are going towards this path of being a civil servant "sacrificing" their lives. On the other hand if you are a friend or family, you'll hear on dinner tables, during smoke breaks "Aah, I should have taken IRS (revenue) and not waited for IPS/IAS last year; there's enough money right there" and right then maybe the father intercepts, "that's what I was saying. Look at Sharma Ji, he recently bought 3 flats in <insert a posh locality in India>". Needless to say Sharma Ji is an IRS officer. You get the drift.

As a side note, I would like to add that I have seen honest ones "turn" just for survival. I am not giving them any brawny points for at least trying before corrupting, but I can't blame them either seeing the precedences[1].

[1] http://www.siliconindia.com/news/general/7-Civil-Servants-Wh... "indian civil servants killed" gets a lot more results on google.

Some minor corrections.

rote learning. (rot learning sounds like a subject in Necromancy Studies). Likewise 'brownie points', not 'brawny points'. 'sole motive' not 'solve motive'.

Would you believe me if I told you I typed that on mobile and that I actually have to blame auto-correct :/

So, they spend all that time cramming for the exam, and presumably pass it and enter the civil service. Is there any requirement for follow-on and continuing education? Because I can see that if someone does all that learning, but then just stops, that could be a problem.

Short answer - no. They go to a training institute which is indeed a fine place but mostly in the sense of its colonial glamour and hangover. And that's it.

Some of them, who are later selected for joint secretary roles for the central Govt, go back for another short training.

The point is, the training is more of a tradition. No, I am sure they are taught and trained there but it's done because it's been done every year. So, the answer is still - no.

They are put through a rigorous program at the National academy of administration before entering service. Considered to be an extremely fine institution.

What about 15 years later? Things in the world have changed. Are they required to stay current with the changes, or do they continue to work using old information?

As I've said earlier - it's an "enter one, you are set for life" job. After the interview, which is the last stage in selection, you are set. Even the training is not somewhere people are rejected.

It took me 30 seconds of reading Wikipedia and now I am able to do it.

But, are the people in the exam allowed to use the internet?

This is an interesting question (and somewhat meta, given the question itself) about test taking today. What is the point of remembering all that knowledge if you can look it up and understand it quickly?

Nobody told them what Albert Einstein (very rightly) said:

> “Never memorize something that you can look up.”

(http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/24194-never-memorize-somethi...)

--disclaimer: I am an Indian student FUBAR'd by Indian academics

No, they do not allow any reference material.

> Some people question the merits of choosing civil servants based on such an exam but getting through a pretty impressive feat.

Well, in Brazil, many people do nothing but study for years for a chance at getting a government job. The competition is fierce. Not sure how to compare with the exams in India, but the issue here is the sheer number of well-qualified candidates.

So, many of the brightest minds are getting wasted. Instead of opening businesses, they end up doing hardly any work at one of the government agencies.

I'm pretty sure Indian Civil Servants are among the sharpest in the world.

In terms of effectiveness however , our bureaucracy is amongst the worst. Quite the paradox.

What if it's a devious scheme to cripple India? Take the best and the brightest minds the society has to offer and shackle them with a soul-crushing bureaucracy.

The exam paper is interesting to look at, but whether it is actually a difficult exam to pass depends far more on the stringency of the marking scheme and how much the average entrant actually knows. If half the people taking the exam don't know who Weber was and you can pick up 3-4 marks on the question for making generic comments about the internet and rationality, that question suddenly looks a lot less challenging, especially when it's only 2-5% of the paper.

I'm not well qualified to comment on the Indian-themed questions, but most of the world affairs questions don't appear especially difficult to write a vague statement that picks up some marks even with general ignorance of the subject matter, and I'd suspect that most people with a decent interest in world politics and current affairs (and a good education) could get middling scores on those questions.

If anything, I'd be more concerned about losing marks from not sharing the same view as the examiner on "Africa was chopped into States artificially created by European expansion." Analyse and "Male membership needs to be encouraged in order to make women's organization free from gender bias" Comment. (especially if being marked by a bureaucrat rather than an academic) rather than the inherent difficulty of the subject matter.

What matters much more for the actual difficulty is whether it's intended on selecting the top .5% or just screening out the bottom 50%. And perhaps also whether some of the more controversial political questions are marked based primarily on knowledge, nuance, or adherence to the viewpoint of the examiner.

I know enough of the art of bullshittery to recommend a general strategy.

If you don't know to respond to a question that does not have an objectively correct answer, first transform it into a question that you can answer, then answer that question instead.

For an example of how this works, just watch any political debate or interview with a politician. In any venue where the questions are not known in advance, the speaker prepares a limited set of possible responses, then weasels from the actual question to the closest possible prepared response before rattling off whatever that may be.

So rather than memorizing key ideas from all famous philosophers, you learn about 3 things about just Nietzsche, then preface your show-off response with a sidestep and a hand-waving shuffle from Weber to Nietzsche.

It's a lot easier to do when the questions are bullshit in the first place. And on a civil service exam, I'm pretty sure I'd also intentionally add a slightly wrong "duck" somewhere in my answers, so the examiner can feel intellectually superior to me while marking me down for it. The impression you want to convey is "this person is smarter than the other applicants, but not as smart as I am."

I think it's more like a parody of general learning, and reminiscent of what the UK's Oxbridge entrance papers used to be like (but aren't so much now) - with the difference that the Oxbridge exams were looking for evidence of curiosity and broad intellectual exposure, and not so much fishing for specifics.

200 words is enough to show you've heard of the topic and produce some superficial content related to it. I suppose you get extra points for being able to write persuasively and with authority. But it's nowhere near enough to demonstrate deep or original insight, never mind creative problem solving - all of which would be far more useful for an effective civil service.

Broad but shallow knowledge doesn't equate to sharpness. Insight equates to sharpness, and I'm not convinced these papers are a good way to select for it.

The USA abandoned the Civil Service Exam in the 70s and it's mostly since that time the popular understanding has developed that government agencies are invariably slow, wasteful, and ineffectual.

Are you fallaciously implying post hoc, ergo propter hoc?

I can think of a lot of possible causes for that public perception that are more plausible, and have nothing to do with the ability of applicants to perform well on a written examination.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that the raw statistical analysis of such a test from the U.S. in 1975 would show a lot of intrinsic racial, gender, political, and age biases.

Beyond that, many government jobs in the U.S. still have a qualifying exam. Even elementary school janitors have to take them. I have actually taken that particular test. (Long story.) The questions cover such subjects as how to properly employ a push broom, identifying cleaning chemicals, and what to do when a kid pukes in the hallway.

So what happens is that your exam score establishes a baseline ranking. Then your preference points are added for race, gender, ethnicity, disability, veteranosity, and any additional job-relevant questions like years of experience or typing speed. So if you're a white, non-veteran, able-bodied, Anglo male with no prior experience that scores 100% on the exam, you may be only #37 on the ordered-strictly-by-government-regulations interview list. The hiring agency would have to reject 36 other applicants and show good cause for doing so before even calling you.

Greater familiarity with that process bred a whole lot of contempt. Let's just say that I shudder to think of what government might have been like now had the federal government doubled down on exams in the 70s instead of abandoning them.

> I also have a sneaking suspicion that the raw statistical analysis of such a test from the U.S. in 1975 would show a lot of intrinsic racial, gender, political, and age biases.

Of course. Public institutions in America are a total joke now because they're riddled with patronage posts and affirmative action hires. Any test that actually works is going to be "racist" and "sexist."

Did you hear about how some police departments reject applicants that score too well on their entrance exams? This practice was not only tested in court, but upheld by the 2nd Circuit. You can literally be too smart to get hired as a cop.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/sto...

And we at HN think that the hiring process for software professionals is broken. Imagine if you would be rejected from further consideration if you answered the brainteaser question correctly.

On similar lines is the Joint Entrance Exam (or JEE), the entrance test for admission into the Indian Institutes of Technology (and a toned-down version for admission into less selective institutes).

This year over 13 lakhs, or 1.3 million students appeared for the exam.

Being an applicant in the past year, I can state for a fact that the last pre-Uni year is one of the most stressful years for an Indian student aspiring to go into tech.

Sample JEE question paper: http://jeeadv.iitb.ac.in/sites/default/files/2013p1.pdf

http://jeeadv.iitb.ac.in/sites/default/files/2013p2.pdf

Source: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/jee-main-2015-n...

The author does not pose the most important question.

Do we need the brightest minds in India doing foreign affairs ? Or should they be entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers and politicians ?

With a population of more than a billion I think India has enough bright minds available for all of them.

Also, with India trying to increase its influence and assertiveness in global affairs having bright people in foreign affairs seems a good thing to happen.

> With a population of more than a billion I think India has enough bright minds available for all of them.

Nope, most people aren't educated fully.

India has a literacy rate of 90% as of 2015[1], so I think the point holds.

1. http://www.uis.unesco.org/DataCentre/Pages/country-profile.a...

There's a bit more to being well educated than basic literacy though, and it's only among the young that literacy almost reaches 90%

Your link also notes that there are 255 million illiterate people in India, which is around the total population of the world's fourth most populous country.

Googling India literacy rate finds a source which says 75%. Maybe my gut experience is wrong because I live in an urban city in India, but I would be pretty impressed by 90%.

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." --Oscar

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-24804...

Yes, or at least some of them. India, pop. 1.25 billion, has around nine hundred (900) diplomats total in its foreign service (that is, diplomats overseas and in the country combined), and it's in a bad neighborhood with two nuclear-armed neighbors who are either not particularly friendly (China) or downright hostile (Pakistan).

Compare with Singapore, pop. 5 million, which also has about 900 diplomats!

The American historian Joeseph Ellis has an interesting take on greatness. At the time of the American revolution, Virginia had about the same population as present day Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, yet it produced Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, and Marshall. This suggests that there are many many latent bright minds at the scale of contemporary populations. It also suggests that any shortage May be a resource allocation issue.

Definitely better than what the US is doing with its foreign policy towards the Indian subcontinet. The state department's south asian wing is full of ignorant and incompetent idiots.

Can you expand on this? I know Robin Raphel almost got packed off to jail...

One source: http://warontherocks.com/2015/06/how-pakistan-beguiles-the-a...

C Christine Fair is a Professor at Georgetown and at one time was offered the role of Asstt Secy for South Asia. It's a comedy that the lack of a dedicated South Asia cadre can have near disastrous consequences for US foreign policy.

Well, one I can point out is Nancy Powell (former US ambassador to India). She failed to assess the popularity of India's current prime minister on time, for instance. You can search for it on the net.

I don't understand this. I googled for a few things but only got some stories about her meeting Modi when he was in charge of Gujarat but nothing particularly interesting or related to what you said

Nancy Powell was known for her proximity with Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton on the other hand was very much against Modi getting to power.

See for reference: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/obama-quietly-reverses-h...

The brightest minds developing fart apps does seem like a waste.

> doing foreign affairs

This isn't about diplomats, it's all government jobs.

One hypothesis that I have to explain why India is doing reasonably well in terms of economic growth in spite of the pervasive corruption is that the civil services, full of really really smart and driven people, are getting things done, and done right, in spite of the incompetence and disinterest of politicians.

Or maybe I've been watching one too many episodes of "Yes Minister".

This makes getting funded by YC look relatively less daunting and positively straight to the point.

Isn't it an enormous task to correct all these tests? If there are actually 500k+ applicants that write a three hour test with up to 5k words, that would probably take a staggering amount of man hours.

The 500,000 initial applicants take a preliminary test that consists solely of multiple choice questions. [0] This year only 15,000 applicants passed on to the second round of testing. [1]

[0] http://www.webcitation.org/604rj8vNB

[1] https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/09/07/are-you-smart-...

ok, thanks.

I'm told that UPSC discriminates BC/SC/ST aspirants for 300 marks in Personal Interview; Govt must ban personal interviews in all its recruitment;

It's like the F2P/IAP dynamic but in real life - "here's an incredibly difficult grind to get where you want to go. Or, you can slip me a few bucks and make this all go away..."

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