Reviewing the Selection Process for India's Steel Frame

(A Committee chaired by Shri B. S. Baswan has been constituted by the Union Public Service Commission on 12th August, 2015 in order to examine various issues related to the Civil Services Examination, with respect to the eligibility, scheme and pattern of the examination. The Committee is expected to submit its report this month - i.e. August 2016.

The Committee has conducted a wide range of consultations, as a part of which it had sought answers to questionnaires. I am reproducing below the inputs I provided for one such questionnaire for Training Academies, most of which I am told, have been included in the response by the Training Academy for Indian Information Service. Hope you find this useful!)

General

1) Are the candidates from some disciplinary areas better suited to the needs of your Service(s)? Please specify the disciplinary areas.

The Indian Information Service (IIS) is a service that stands at the intersection of technology, communication and governance, all three of which are evolving and changing at a very fast pace. This, coupled with the need to innovate and to take upon ever-larger responsibilities and challenges of an administrative nature, may give some advantage to those candidates with backgrounds in technology, management and/or communication/journalism/Public Relations. However, the need for constant innovation mandates a much larger emphasis on the aptitude, inclination and commitment of the candidate, rather than on his/her disciplinary area. Further, given the role of knowledge as well as ignorance in innovation, especially in communication, there is a need to maintain diversity of disciplinary areas amongst members of the service. What is more important than the particular disciplinary area is the standard of excellence upheld by the candidates in their respective areas. 

2) Please indicate two issues, which in your opinion are crucial for improving the present selection system.

• A serious lacuna in the present selection system is that all stages of the selection process evaluate only individual performance, while one of the foremost qualities a civil servant requires is the ability to work together, to inspire and take people along. To this end, some processes that evaluate the affinity of the candidate to work in a group needs to be incorporated into the selection process. 
• As elaborated in the answer to Question no. 12, candidates should not be allowed to appear in the Exam again upon entering service. If a candidate is desirous of appearing again, he/she should either forfeit his/her selection to the allotted service (before joining) or resign from the current service before applying for the exam (as applicable). This is necessary in order to ensure stability in services and to promote focus, better camaraderie and professional excellence.
• The number of possible attempts may be reduced to two for General Candidates and correspondingly for other categories.
• A very serious drawback in the present selection system is that it is very much at the mercy of chance. Due to various systemic reasons and a combination of correct facts and incorrect perceptions, it is observed from empirical evidence that the majority of the candidates getting into IIS accord it a relatively low preference in the list of services into which recruitment happens through the Civil Services Exam. This, coupled with the option to appear in the exam while being in service, leads to a situation where not only is the inclination to join the service low but also that in quite a few cases, the motivation level continues to be below the desired level even after joining service.
• The criteria for confirmation in service upon successful completion of Probation need to be made much more stringent, in order to ensure more committed performance by candidates during their Probation period.

Existing scheme

3) Is the existing scheme and pattern of CSE able to fulfill the objective of selecting suitable officers for civil services?

No, the existing scheme falls short in some crucial areas that are the backbone of a modern professional 21^st century civil service. The current scheme fails in its ability to identify and accord due merit to the following qualities in the selection process.

• Integrity
• Commitment to professional excellence
• Ability to work together, to collaborate, to build great teams and robust systems
• Ability to question respectfully, think, innovate and bring in change
• A steadfast desire to change the world, to make a difference

4) Do the candidates selected possess the necessary aptitude and skills for undertaking the probationary training programme?

By and large, yes. However, they often do not have the necessary motivation to excel in the training programme, due in large part to the generalized selection process into the service, and to the continuing attempts by most officer trainees to enter into services they prefer more, which in turn has a negative effect on even the committed and motivated trainees.

5) Have the changes that have been made in the scheme and pattern since CSE 2011 resulted in an improvement in the quality of selected candidates?

The available evidence in this regard, especially based on a rather small data set, is deemed to be insufficient in order to establish any causal connection between the change in scheme and pattern of CSE and the quality of selected candidates. 

6) Is the perception that the existing scheme of CSE is favourable to ‘urban’ candidates valid? Is there any bias in favour of candidates from particular disciplines?

Yes, the perception is valid.

No, the recent change stipulating that the CSAT will only be of qualifying nature with a 33% cutoff score, eliminates any conceivable bias to anyone in the Preliminary examination. Further, it is felt that the other two stages of the exam do not have any bias as well in this regard.

Subject coverage

7)  Should English language proficiency be tested in CSP?

No. However, the training programme on induction into the service should include training in both written and spoken communication in English. The trainee should be confirmed in service, only upon his/her acquisition of a satisfactory level of proficiency in the language, which needs to be tested adequately.

8)Is it necessary to continue with the English and Indian language qualifying papers in CSM?

No. Proficiency in either English or any Indian language is sufficient in order to acquire competence in the other. Further, given that this is implicitly tested in the other papers, separate papers for English and Indian language are absolutely unnecessary.

9) Is it necessary to test candidates in an optional subject in CSM? If yes, should they be tested in a subject that they have studied at University? What should the number of optional subject papers?

Yes, it is necessary to test candidates in an optional subject in CSM. This enables us to gauge the ability of the candidate to acquire specialized knowledge in a given field, as opposed to a broad ‘general’ knowledge, and if tested well, is a measure of focus, depth and refined understanding.

No, they should be given the freedom to choose a subject of their choice. This ensures a more level playing field than otherwise; this is all the more important given that choice of subjects at University is more often than not an accident of nurture and culture, than a measured intelligent decision, reflective of the individual’s nature or inclination.

The present system – of two papers for the one optional subject candidates choose – may be continued, as testing of in-depth knowledge seems to necessitate two papers. 

10) Is there a need to (re)introduce additional papers for selection to the Indian Administrative Service/ Indian Foreign Service/ any other Service? If yes, what should be the content and weight of such additional papers?

Yes, there is a need to introduce some additional papers and processes.

Papers/evaluation processes/exercises may be introduced in order to test the affinity and ability of the candidate to work with others in a group setting.

Case study based evaluation method may be employed in either the Mains or the Personality Test. 

Eligibility and logistics

11) Should minimum percentage of marks at graduation be prescribed in the eligibility criteria

Yes, this could serve as a useful filter. However, the bar should be kept sufficiently low, so as to not prejudice candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds and from Universities which award low average marks.

12) Should candidates who have been selected at a previous CSE be allowed to write the Examination again, after joining a Service?

No. If a candidate wishes to appear again, he/she may do so, subject only to his/her forfeiting the selection into the service allotted to him/her.

At present, this rule is applicable to Indian Administrative Service and Indian Foreign Service. There is no conceivable reason why this should be applicable to only these and not to other services.

The opportunity to appear in the examination again, on joining a service, while potentially beneficial to individual candidates, has been found to be highly detrimental to the overall morale and quality of not only the induction trainings, but also the service conditions thereafter. The fact that most candidates utilize this option has been found to result in their reduced commitment and focus to the induction training in the service they are in. This has in some cases set in a vicious circle, leading to lesser motivation among colleagues as well as course instructors to aspire for high standards of excellence.

Further, this increases the attrition rate in many services, upsetting human resource planning, leading to huge spillover effects at higher levels as well and thereby leading to a resource shortage at multiple levels in the service. This is particularly true of IIS. The resulting under-capacity prejudicially affects both the scope and quality of what the service is able to deliver.

In light of the above, it is only fair and fitting that candidates are allowed to write the exam again, subject only to their forfeiting or resigning from the service they have been allotted.

13) Will the rigour of CSM be compromised if it is of objective type?

It may be recalled that while subjective papers allow for potentially more rigour in questioning, the effectiveness of such papers depends critically on the rigour employed in evaluating the answers. On the latter measure, objective papers are perfect.

In light of this, it is felt that it would be prudent, given the need for economy, efficiency, equity and fairness (both real and perceived), to switch to objective type question papers for at least some of the papers in CS (M).

Subjective questions could be retained in one or two papers, such as “General Essay” and optional papers, to give some room for expression of the unique personality, world-view and thinking process of the candidate.

14) What should be the periodicity of syllabus revision in CSE to ensure up-to-date competitive evaluation of merit?

To ensure competitive evaluation of merit, it is felt that the CSE syllabus should be revised at least once every two years.

15) What general measures can be taken to reduce the time-cycle of CSE, from the stage of notification of Examination to the declaration of final results? 

• The CS (P) is understood to be a screening test, not a selection test. Given this, it is not clear why a candidate who clears the Preliminary exam in one year is required to sit for the same again in another year. Rather, a candidate who clears CS (P) in a given year may be allowed to directly appear for the CS (M) exam in subsequent years (as per his/her eligibility otherwise), till a stipulated timeframe – say in two subsequent years. Though this has no effect on the time-cycle of CSE itself, it does have a huge effect on the time-cycle of CSE for the individual candidate
• The final results are based on the aggregate score obtained in CS (M) and Personality Test. Given this, the option of conducting Personality Test for all candidates appearing in CS (M) may be explored. The resultant need to conduct the Personality Test for a larger candidate pool may potentially be offset by the concurrent evaluation of CS (M) and conduct of Personality Tests; this could enable completion of Personality Tests by the time evaluation of CS (M) papers is done, thereby allowing us to declare the final results soon after. In order to cope up with the need to interview more candidates, the screening criteria in CS (P) could potentially be made more stringent, striking a prudent tradeoff between Type I and Type II errors.
• With reference to Question No. 13 above, the switch to objective type gives room for considerable reduction in time-cycle of CSE.

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