UPSC exam row: Ex-bureaucrats slam govt's move on English

NEW DELHI: Top former bureaucrats and prominent social scientists have come out strongly against the government's decision to exclude the marks earned in English from gradation or merit in the civil services preliminary tests. They told TOI that both aptitude tests and functional proficiency in English, part of Civil Services Aptitude Tests (CSAT) Paper II, are much-required to assess a potentially competent civil servant. One of the country's most respected bureaucrats, former cabinet secretary Naresh Chandra, said that a Class I officer is expected to know the English language. "The CSAT English comprehension questions are simple and can be solved by anyone who has passed his Class X English paper with a second or third division. By choosing to appear for the Civil Services, a candidate is aspiring for public service. And the knowledge of English, which is the main medium of official communication in north-eastern states like Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya, is possibly more important than proficiency in most other regional languages," he said. Chandra, who was also India's ambassador to the US, said, "The government has failed to reason with the agitating students and speak the truth: that English comprehension contributes to an effective public service. Instead of diluting the proficiency levels for English, the government could have come up with the idea of providing free English coaching to civil services applicants to help raise their comprehension skills." "If we are looking for civil servants who are able to think, analyze and make crucial decisions of administration and policy, the aptitude test helps in finding out the efficiency of an individual. CSAT measures intelligence and awareness; important attributes for any capable IAS officer," says sociologist Dipankar Gupta. "As for English, the test should not be about cultural acquisition. It shouldn't about the complexities of Milton's poetry or Shakespeare's play. It should be about finding out technical proficiency with the language for occupational purposes. An IAS officer must have the ability to use the language effectively for communication. English today is just another Indian language. More people are conversant with the language than we care to find out," says Gupta. In the wake of protests by civil service aspirants over the last fortnight, and their political support mainly from parties of the Hindi-speaking states, the government said on Monday that the marks for questions relating to English comprehension in Paper II of the prelims examination will not be graded. However, the CSAT would stay. The government didn't care to explain the rationale for having the English component at all if it wouldn't affect gradation or merit. Former Union home secretary G K Pillai said political considerations seem to have led the government to focus on the row over English component, rather than the students' key grievance that the analytical and numeracy skill questions put engineering and science students at an unfair advantage. "The upcoming state elections in Bihar may have been on the government's mind," he pointed out, as he batted for testing a candidate's analytical and numeracy skills. "A civil servant cannot be afraid of numbers. He has to take decisions, for example the height of dam or location of a bridge, based on numbers," argued Pillai. A former DoPT officer stressed that CSAT Paper II syllabus was designed after much thought and application of mind by the S K Khanna committee. "The idea was to create a level playing field for candidates, irrespective of their linguistic background or stream, by testing their aptitude and analytical skills. This made CSAT II paper language-neutral, as all students could take the exam in English, aided by a Hindi translation of all questions but those relating to English comprehension," the officer argued. Protestors have used statistics to show how the percentage of Hindi-medium students has dropped drastically since CSAT was introduced in 2011. But a closer examination of the data reveals a different story. Statistics indicate that Hindi-medium students fared poorly even in 2010, the year before CSAT was introduced. The data also shows that after a dramatic fall in 2011, Hindi-medium students put up a far better show in 2012. While in 2011 only 1,700 of them cleared prelims, the figure rose to 1,976 in 2012. Civil services exam watchers have explained this as a reflection of Hindi-medium students getting a hang of the changed format in 2012. Naresh Chandra also pointed out that the government appears to have clipped the UPSC's autonomy. He said, "By not letting the UPSC, (which favoured status quo) have the final word, the government has diluted its authority. The UPSC is a constitutional body, not a subordinate office of the DoPT." D Shyam Babu, senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research, said that without knowledge of English, all-India services wouldn't make any sense and to be effective, officers must be conversant in the local language as well as English. "Instead of striving to bring all sections on par in terms of merit, we are now trying to bring down merit to the lowest common denominator. Exceptions, the so-called relaxation of requirements, are perfectly understandable in a social milieu like ours. A social group, or candidates from rural areas, deserve some special treatment. But the demand to scrap aptitude tests amounts to declaring that governance does not need any aptitude," he said. "If English comprehension is not used either as a screening or as one of the subjects to be used for gradation, why bother asking candidates to take it? On the other hand, if English comprehension remains a screening test, one must cross the hurdle however low the bar may be," Shyam Babu said. Sociologist Yogendra Singh agrees with that view. "The decision to scrap English comprehension in Paper II of the prelims examination from gradation is driven by politics. We all know that every decision by a government is not weighed in consonance with principles of governance," he said. Former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami, however, felt making English comprehension component irrelevant to gradation could be of help to those who did their schooling in the vernacular medium. "Instead, English proficiency skills may be taught post-selection followed by a mandatory test," he argued. However, Dipankar Gupta pointed out that one must be clear about the foundational principle behind the civil services examination. "We must ask ourselves: what kind of civil servants do we want? Do we want the best of them or we want a system where different sections of society are given voice and space?" he said. (TOI)