Much Ado About Aptitude

8/11/2019 Much Ado About Aptitude

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COMMENTARY

august 16, 2014 vol xl IX no 33 EPW Economic & PoliticalWeekly10

Much Ado about Aptitude

Maruthi P Tangirala

Views are personal.

Maruthi P Tangirala (tangirala_mp@yahoo.

com) is a civil servant who was associated withthe committee that reviewed the structure of

the civil services preliminary examination.

The recent spate of changes in the

civil services examination are a

response to the changing needs of

public administration occasioned

by paradigmatic shifts in the

nature of governance. To critique

them under pain of disruption

is to burden the examination

process with expectations that are

way beyond its remit. Reasoned

review of examination reform

cannot be replaced by agitation

on the streets.

The visible and vociferous CSAT

(Civil Service Aptitude Test) pro-

tests witnessed recently are not

surprising. What should cause concern,

however, is the inability of the discourse

surrounding the reform efforts to tran-

scend the binaries of English and Hindi,

Hindi and other bhashas, sciences and

humanities, rural and urban, or, for that

matter, poor and rich so as to address

the core issue of whether the changes

made meet their limited objectives. The

sound and fury accompanying the argu-

ments on all sides do little to throw light

on important aspects of the controversy,

leave alone to resolve the articulated

grievances. The changes no doubt go to

the root of political economy, but to cri-

tique them on this ground, and call for

their rollback, is to confuse cause with

effect; to challenge the effectof the shift

in the perception of the role of the state

without recognising the widespreadacceptance of the prevailing governance

paradigm that causes indeed, that

mandates the reorientation of the

bureaucracy is to do injustice to both the

role of the Union Public Service Com-

mission (UPSC) and the function of the

civil services examination (CSE) that is,

after all, only a recruitment test intended

to identify crack men of the kingdom

(Compton 1968: 267) who can subserve

the sovereigns agenda.

The CSEremained largely unchanged

since 1979 till the pattern of the prelimi-

nary stage was modified in the 2011 edi-

tion, with the optional subject paper being

replaced by a common paper (loosely

referred to as the aptitude test) covering

comprehension, interpersonal and com-

munication skills, logical reasoning and

analytical ability, decision-making and

problem-solving, general mental ability,

basic numeracy, data interpretation, and

English language comprehension (thelast three areas at Class Xlevel). The pre-

existing syllabus of the first, common,

general studies paper too was changed

to include areas such as panchayati raj,

public policy, rights issues, sustainable

development, ecology, biodiversity, and

climate change. Given the huge (and

growing) number of candidates, the pre-liminary examination is essentially a

screening test intended to allow a

more manageable number to take the

main stage;1as such, it is also conducted

in the objective-type format unlike the

main examination that is of the con-

ventional (essay) type. The change in

the structure and syllabus of the main

examination (effected from CSE 2013)

was also attended by considerable con-

troversy (Tangirala 2014).

Uneven Pre-existing Pattern

There is not enough recognition that the

change in the preliminary examination

pattern was occasioned, among others,

by the felt need to bring some order to

the uneven nature of the pre-existing

pattern. Till 2010, the preliminary exami-

nation consisted of two papers, set both

in English and Hindi: paper I (carrying

150 marks) on general studies and paper II

(300 marks) on a subject to be opted bythe candidate from 23 on offer.2 The

disparate nature of the subjects and the

proliferation of many subject areas since

the list was first drawn up for the 1979

edition3 were the source of much dis-

satisfaction within the UPSC as well as

among sections of the candidates. The

Kothari Committee report (the basis of

the new CSEpattern) acknowledged that

there can be no clear cut criteria for de-

termining optional subjects for the Civil

Services Examination, and assumed

that a candidate would offer as one of

the optional subjects, the subject which

he may have studied for the honours or

masters degree (UPSC1976: paragraphs

3.29-3.30). The assumption was belied in

practice, and an overwhelming majority

of the candidates started to opt for a few

subjects such as Indian history, geography,

public administration, political science,

and sociology irrespective of whether

they had formally studied the subject.Apart from the question mark over the

utility of retesting candidates in their


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COMMENTARY

Economic & PoliticalWeekly EPW august 16, 2014 vol xlIX no 33 11

own field of study, this tactical choice of

optional subjects was one of the reasons

motivating the 2011 changes, as were

apprehensions regarding the scaling

procedure adopted to equalise marks

across subjects (note that the then paper II

had twice the weight of paper I), the per-

ception that the trivial nature of some ofthe questions tended to encourage cram-

ming and rote learning, and the sheer lo-

gistical complexity of preparing ques-

tion papers of a uniformly high standard

in 23 subjects year after year. At the same

time, given the steep increase in the dis-

ciplinary areas on offer at the under-

graduate level, it was neither possible

to include all available subjects in the

examination scheme nor feasible to

mandate that candidates choose only a

subject they had studied at university.

This is not to say that the new pattern

is an ideal solution; indeed, that cannot

be said of any testing procedure, whether

as tests for job aptitudes or for academic

credentials. The sensitivities attached to

CSE, including the need for sending up a

balanced cohort of candidates to each

succeeding stage till the number needed

to staff senior bureaucratic positions in

our diverse and democratic country is

identified, however, tend to magnify theshortcomings of the second-best solution

that was finally adopted in 2011. A quick

before-and-after comparison of the lan-

guage medium chosen by the candidates

who qualified for the main examination

stage (Table 1) is perhaps a good enough

proxy of the first effects of the changes

made. The reasons for the articulated

dissatisfaction seem to flow from the

steep reduction in candidates opting totackle the main examination stage in

an Indian language. If the number of

Table 1: Indian Languages as Medium ofResponse in the Main ExaminationYear/Period A H IL % H % IL

1979 6,815 800 898 11.7 13.2

1980 8,366 983 1,095 11.7 13.11981-90 92,693 13,293 15,277 14.3 16.5

1991-2000 84,129 22,335 24,686 26.6 29.3

2001-10 75,611 31,079 33,278 41.1 44.0

2011 11,230 1,700 1,914 15.1 17.0

2012 12,176 1,916 2,215 16.2 18.2

A-total appeared candidates; H-with Hindi as medium;

IL-with any Indian language (including Hindi) as medium;

% H- per cent using Hindi to total appeared; % IL- per cent

Indian languages to total appeared.

Source: UPSC Annual Reports, Tangirala (2009).

serious candidates at the main exami-

nation stage is indeed a valid metric for

measuring the life chances of educated

youngsters, it is apparent that the ability

of Hindi and Indian language-speakers

to occupy prestigious positions in the

bureaucracy have more than halved after

the introduction of the new preliminaryexamination pattern, going by the reduc-

tion in the per cent using Indian languages

(predominantly Hindi) as the medium of

response in the succeeding main exami-

nation stage in 2012 and 2013 compared

to the average in the previous decade.

What does this say about the CSE itself

and about the larger issues of equity?

It is easy to find fault with the prelimi-

nary examination on the ground that it

now privileges city slickers and other

management types over the aspirants

from the mofussilareas who may not be

comfortable with its reinvention as an

aptitude test. However, the changes

themselves mirror the larger consensus

emanating proximately from new public

management to move towards a paradigm

of governance that privileges outputs

and outcomes over inputs and processes.4

It could be validly argued that the re-

invention of the public administrator as

manager is the only reasonable way for-ward to avoid a dysfunctional chasm

between the administration and its

political masters, in the full recognition

of the publicness of public administra-

tion that imposes a unique set of con-

straints for which the administrator has

to be adequately trained after coming

through the aptitude test and subse-

quent stages of the CSE. To excoriate the

preliminary stage for attempting tomake a beginning in that direction

stems from an ideological objection to

the decisive neo-liberal turn in the larger

political economy that has little to do

with more mundane matters such as

syllabus-setting and test design. To call

for scrapping the test that is into its third

edition barely days before hundreds of

thousands of candidates are slated to

appear after many months of preparation,

rather than seek a reasoned, time-bound

appraisal of its effects (and even perhaps

an expert review) can only indicate

impatience with the rule of law and

growing distrust of our institutional

capacity to mediate between contending

conceptions of public interest.

The UPSC, both by virtue of its status

as a constitutional body and by its per-

formance as a relatively non-controver-

sial recruitment agency, deserves better

than to be accused of a grand conspiracy

to disempower the rural Hindi-speakerof her right to equitable opportunity.5If

anything, the changes made recently

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COMMENTARY

august 16, 2014 vol xl IX no 33 EPW Economic & PoliticalWeekly12

perhaps more than meet the recruitment

objectives that have been enunciated by

various expert committees and bodies

such as the Alagh Committee (in 2001)

and the Second Administrative Reforms

Commission (in 2008), objectives that

have been arrived at after extensive con-

sultation and substantial cogitation.6

Easy Capitulation

It is equally a reflection of our easy

capitulation to the short term as much a

measure of the state of confusion that

pervades our public discourse that we

agitate on the streets afterthe event, and

never adequately debate the pros and cons

of proposed policy before it is adopted,

whether in the macroeconomic policy

realm or in the relatively minor matter of

adapting our recruitment methods to suit

the requirements of the new economy.

Notes

1 According to the Kothari Committee report(UPSC 1976),

a screening test is necessary to preventoverloading of the selection process by alarge number of indifferent candidates

which undermines seriously the efficiencyand reliability of the process itself. It is inthe interest of candidates, as also in thenational interest, that those who have littlechance of making the grade know about itat an early stage of the selection process.This would help them to use their time,energy and resources more gainfu lly in pre-paring for careers better suited to theirinterest and abilities (parag raph 3.2).

2 The 23 optional subjects were: agriculture,animal husbandry and veterinary science, bot-any, chemistry, civil engineering, commerce,economics, electrical engineering, geography,geology, Indian history, law, mathematics,mechanical engineering, medical science, philo-sophy, physics, political science, psychology,public administration, sociology, statistics,and zoology.

3 Medical science was added in 1993 as the 23rdoptional subject.

4 The Second Administrative Reforms Commis-sion (SARC) noted, for example, that the newparadigm seeks to establish a framework in

which it can be ascertained what quantifiableoutcomes have been achieved (GoI 2008: 62).

5 That UPSC chooses to remain reticent in theface of public criticism does not help its cause,of course.

6 The S K Khanna Committee, which recom-mended the changes, too conducted extensiveconsultations before ar riving at its recommen-dations.

References

Compton, J M (1968): Open Competition and theIndian Civil Service: 1854-1876, The English

Historical Review, Vol 83, No 327 (April),pp 265-84.

Government of India (GoI), Second AdministrativeReforms Commission, Tenth Report (2008):

Refurbi shing of Personnel Administ ration: Scal-ing New Heights.

Tangirala, Maruthi P (2009): Language Choiceand Life Chances: Evidence from the CivilServices Examination, Economic & PoliticalWeekly, Vol 44, No 39, pp 16-20.

(2014): Calibrating Civil Service ExaminationReform, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 49,No 1, pp 16-17.

Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) (1976):Report of the Committee on Recruitment Policyand Selection Methods Annual Reports.

Documents

Much Ado About Aptitude