(Published in The News Minute on 04.08.2014)
After long days of protests by
civil service aspirants the government today has come out with its solution.
The Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Shri Jitendra Singh announced
in the Parliament today that the marks for the English section in the civil service
preliminary examination will not be included for gradation or merit.
Though the demands by the
protesting civil service aspirants were more than one, the government has, for
the moment, attended to just one, and the most sensitive – that related to the
language. The protests were largely focussed on the first of the three levels
of the civil service examination – the General Studies Preliminary examination,
commonly known as the CSAT. The concerns were that the questions based on quantitative
aptitude, logical reasoning, etc. were favouring those candidates who had graduated
in Science than humanities; the English language questions were of high level
and that the Hindi translation of the questions that are asked in English were
improper. The protests itself, in my view, were unjustified (Read - http://www.thenewsminute.com/news_sections/870).
Shri Yogendra
Yadav, a former member of the Universities Grants Commission and now the Chief
Spokesperson of the AAP, who is also a sympathiser of the protests, had in his
article in the Indian Express (http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/and-the-winner-is-english/99/)
opined that the language question laid ‘at the heart of the current controversy’
and stated that the students ‘have not raised objections’ to the qualifying paper
in English in the Main examination of the civil service. He said that the
agitation is ‘not against English but against the dominance of English’ in the examination
and that hence the demand for a better translation was ‘not a small detail.’
Instead of
introducing a better way for translation, the government has jumped over the
issue altogether. The proposed solution is just a balm; it does not cure the
disease. It has now taken the energy out of the questions based on language. If
those questions are not considered for grading, they remain a mere time waste.
Why should one even bother to attend those eight to ten questions? Instead, why
doesn’t the government ask the UPSC to just remove these questions?
The government had
to make this hasty decision only because the protesting aspirants had intensified
their struggle – they attempted to torch a police post, they blocked rail
tracks, (yes, they are IAS/IPS aspirants of tomorrow) they protested in front
of the Home Minister’s bungalow.
What if they still protest? Remember, only one
of their demands has been met. What if they intensify their protests demanding that
the questions based on quantitative aptitude, logical reasoning, etc., too, not
be calculated for grading? Will this government make exclude those questions from
gradation or merit?
The government has
erred woefully. The Arvind Verma committee that had been set up to review the
pattern of the civil service examination had suggested no changes be made to
the current pattern. The committee’s recommendation has been thrown into the
winds. On the other hand, the government has not managed to come out with a
sound strategy for the conduct of the exam on its own. Such demands to lower
the difficulty level of a competitive examination should never have arisen. The
protests were unjustified; the solution that has been put forth is
preposterous. A simple and effective
solution would have been to announce that the translation of questions shall be
done in a proper manner. The government so as to further pacify the protestors
have given another sop. It has announced that it will grant one more attempt to
the aspirants who appeared in the 2011 examination. The protesting aspirants themselves
are not satisfied with the solution. Nor have political parties that backed
them.
The moral of the
episode is that if a 1,000 of 4,00,000 aspirants of any examination, a paltry
0.25 percentage, protest demanding a change, however unjustified it be, the
government would succumb. A very bad precedent has been set. Aspirants of all
competitive examinations have been provided with a handle to seek all kinds of
demands in future. Also the government in power has reduced the status of a
highly respected constitutional body, the Union Public Service Commission that
conducts the civil service examination.
