Why Not Decolonise UPSC Civil Services?
The contemporary currents touching the gates of the inviolable Dolpur House, the official space of the UPSC warrants a critical analysis from the prism of post-colonial nationalism and democratisation of the institutions having colonial lineage
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The multi-dimensional postcolonial remnants, in the post-colonial epistemology, trace the configuration of critical colonial current in the disguise of procedural democracy with imperial past laterally with theory bashing of ‘white gaze’, to trace the colonial hangover that continually irrupts into the subconscious violence of state on the conscious soul of democratic society. This perceived state offence led to the renewed determinations of domination, what Felipe Fernandez-Armesto called ‘Pandemic [of] Offensivitis’, responding to the genuine need as suggested by Arif Dirlik in his ‘The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism’, to overcome the crisis of understanding the deep-seated ingrained colonial construct. One such colonial construct impeding the constitutionalism and notion of a ‘socialist’ state as introduced by the constitution’s forty-second amendment Act-1976 in the holy preamble of the constitution to evidently delineate the welfare-oriented constitutional command, is the ‘touch-me-not’ approach of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), having constitutional mandate spanning from Articles 315-323.
The current autonomous constitutional body is the procedural cum ideological successor of ‘The Civil Services Commission’ constituted in 1854 in London based on Macaulay’s Report of the Select Committee of British Parliament. The competitive examinations for Indian Civil Services were started in 1855 in London, with the minimum and maximum age criteria of 18 years and 23 years respectively. The syllabus constituting European Classics and patterns favouring colonial nepotism were meticulously designed to make it forbidden for native Indians to enter into the services. Yet in 1864 Shri Satyendra Nath Tagore became the first Indian to succeed in the elite Imperial but prejudiced services. The political exigencies after the First World War culminated into apparent reforms of Montagu-Chelmsford. The British government yielded to the nationalist demand of simultaneous examinations to be also held in India after setting up of Federal Public Service Commission for conducting examinations, first in Allahabad and later in Delhi from 1922 onwards. The entry into colonial Imperial police services and Imperial Forest Services was thrown open to Indians only after 1920.
Section 96 (C) of the Government of India Act of 1919 proposed a Public Service Commission which shall “discharge, in regards to recruitment and control of the Public services in India, such functions as may be assigned thereto by the rules made by the Secretary of State in Council”. It was after the strong recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Superior Civil Services in India (Lee Commission) to implement the recommendations of Section 96 (C) of the Government of India Act of 1919 that on October 1, 1926, for the first time, Public Service Commission was set up in India with Sir Ross Barker as the first Chairman. On April 1, 1937, with the implementation of the federal provision of the Government of India Act of 1935, the Public Service Commission became the Federal Public Service Commission which came to be known as the Union Public Service Commission on January 26, 1950, with the inauguration of the Constitution of Independent India, absorbing the Chairman and its Members under Clause (1) of Article 378 of the Constitution.
The contemporary currents touching the gates of the inviolable Dolpur House, the official space of the UPSC warrants a critical analysis from the prism of post-colonial nationalism and democratisation of the institutions having colonial lineage. The premature resignation of UPSC Chairman Manoj Soni on July 20, 2024, five years before his term ends, citing his ‘personal reasons’ and the controversy engulfing former probationary IAS officer Puja Khedkar, seemingly two disjoint events happening in contemporary days, had opened the pandora box for those who utilize their fundamental right of having constructive criticisms. Afterall in democracy, no institution or position is so sacrosanct to avoid itself from public scrutiny and accountability. The premier constitutional institution is mandated with the selection of the ‘steel frame of India’, on whose excellence depends the democratic governance and implementations of all the policies of the Union and state governments to fulfil the democratic aspirations and necessities of the common masses. The red-tapism despite the digital revolution, corruption of bureaucrats notwithstanding stringent laws against corruption, opaqueness despite having the Right to Information (RTI), sinking of efficiency disdaining to have all the possible perks and privileges to the officers, elitism and arrogant attitude of superiority of officers despite the government focusing on the bottom-up community-led governance, raises the question on the selection procedures.
The consistent apathy of the successive regimes towards the plight of the aspirants is hideously pointed towards Vilfredo Pareto’s ‘Circulation of Elites’ where power is being circulated between the Governing Elites and Non-governing elites at the expanses of the majority who always remained under subjugation of rulers. Notwithstanding the constitutional procedural provisions of affirmative policies of reservation for deprived sections in the selection process, the ground realities hoax the principles of substantive justice, where the maximum lot of aspirants coming from the sub-ordinary socio-economic realities are made to suffer under the double burden of aspirations and the nexus of crony capitalism and corrupt governance. The régime push for ‘Lateral Entry’ in higher bureaucracy deprived of any constitutional provision of affirmative action is a farce on the constitution and its spirits, rightly opposed unanimously by the leaders coming from the Dalit and tribal communities, among others. The innovative provision of ‘lateral entry’ for infusing ‘fresh talent as well as augment the availability of manpower’ as per the official version, is however a question mark on the credibility of UPSC as custodian of the merit system and its procedure of recruitment failing to deliver the required numbers of efficient officers.
The tragic demise of three UPSC aspirants under the basement of a private coaching centre in the gloomy evening of July 27, 2024, which illegally has been converted into a basement library, at the Old Rajender Nagar (ORN) often popularly described as the focal hub of UPSC coaching, confirm the systematic plan of an established system to deny every possible entry to the peripheral youth, into the steel frame of India, unless they stake their life and family income at the danger living in sub-human rooms which are no less pathic then the torture chambers of Hitler, in and around the Karol Bagh area of central Delhi. Days ago, another UPSC aspirant due to write his CSE-Mains examination of 2024 was electrocuted in the Patel Nagar area of Delhi, due to faulty wiring. During the summer of June 2023, a fire broke out at a private coaching centre in Mukherjee Nagar, located less than 4 km from the Delhi University North Campus, another hub of UPSC coaching preferred by Hindi medium students, hurting around 61 students, taking practically no lessons from the tragedy of Surat’s 2019, Sarthana coaching fire incident killing 20 students.
The exponential growth of the population with rinsing aspiration post LPG reforms of the globalization era coupled with the ‘Digital Revolution’ and restricted avenues of private employment have earmarked the intensification of attraction towards government employment as the secure and sustainable way to balance the personal livelihood and instinct of social service, with All India Services being the prime destination. The digital age has thrown open the hitherto elite space of IAS and IPS to the millions of youths in the remotest part of the country, with access to online resources and social media advertisements. The hard-fought entry of marginalized sections into the bureaucratic circles of power positions had challenged the hegemony of prevailing hereditary elites, disturbing the existing power structure and inviting rasping frictions on one hand, and on the other hand, it has provided new avenues of exponential profit-making to the businessmen in coaching industries and local residentials of the newly found coaching hubs who certainly discovered their fortune by the excessive inflow of millions of youth knocking at their doors for rental accommodations. The private houses were superficially renewed into coaching institutes, the cupboards with no ventilation have been converted into rental rooms, and the underground storerooms have been converted into basement libraries and classrooms. The new structures of shining-glass coaching buildings flouting rules, PGs (Paying guests been turned into Paining guests), restaurants, and shopping centres have been created on the old ruins of already overburdened and failing infrastructures, to extract the last penny from the aspirants without any concern for their safety or sustainability, by transgressing all the rubrics of guidelines and violations of norms, as students claimed ‘rent like England and amenities like Somalia’ is not conceivable without the active involvement and shareholding of systematic corruptions.
If anyone wishes to face the inhuman face of capitalism, as propounded by Karl Marx, to extract profit by exploiting every recourse possible by counting young dreams of India’s soul as the number of beds that can be anyhow accommodated in the smallest possible area, one should visit the purported coaching hubs across the India, where the demographic dividend of India is perishing in precariously daunting suffocating sub-human spaces, with all the mental pressures and emotional challenges intact, where the jubilant local landowner’s turned real-estate brokers and coaching coterie unconstrained executing the 4th Gandhian Sin of ‘Commerce without Morality’. Post July 27, 2024, the folk of UPSC-CSE aspirants with no local political representatives or societal patronage, mostly belonging to the states outside of Delhi, are protesting on the roads and marching with candles and banners on the roads of Patel Nagar to Karol Bagh, where they are supposed to devote their time and energy on preparation, is daunting reminder of the pathetic state of youth struggling to get minimum necessities in the welfare-oriented federal political structure even after paying non-reasonably higher amounts, with no state government had made any meaningful arrangements for their youth coming to Delhi, apart from the abject failures of local governance and apathy of central administration.
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The cry for UPSC reforms has led successive governments to establish various commissions to look into the matter of pattern and scheme of examinations. The recommendations of most of the UPSC reform commission coincide with the bureaucratic narrative of lowering the age and number of prescribed attempts in the eligibility criteria of the candidates. Their official recommendations along with the frequently approaching comments of the government representatives, are akin to the colonial mindset to have only elites among the elite administrative positions, thus finding no ground of sympathy between the youth of the nation. The lower rate of actual learning capacities is cited by the 18th Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) titled ‘Beyond Basics’ by NGO Pratham, according to which 25% of youth cannot read a class Ⅱ level text fluently in their regional language and over 50% struggle with division problems of 3 digits with 1 digit, despite having the high enrolment ratio of 86.8% in the age group of 14-18 years. The World Inequality Lab report titled ‘Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922-2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj’ mentioned that “by 2022-23, top 1% income and wealth share (22.6% and 40.1%) are at their highest historical levels and top 1% income share is among the very highest in the world”. The continued demand for reservation by the politically influential caste groups such as Maratha in Maharashtra, Patidars in Gujarat and Jat’s in Haryana and Gujjars in Rajasthan, Kapus in Andhra among others, with demand for a caste census points invariably towards the shrinking space of egalitarianism and egalitarian social and economic order. The 103rd constitutional amendment Act-1019 providing 10% reservation to the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and the new ‘White-Mughal’ sponsored narrative of reducing the number of attempts and age for UPSC CSE exams turns antagonistic to any logical gauge of rationality, except the colonial reverberation of excluding the masses from entering into the closed-ended space of decision-making.
The colonial ideological intent of the UPSC was reflected during the last changed syllabus and pattern of the CSE examination in 2013, without taking any representation or participation from the stake-holding aspirants in decision making, where it introduced the CSAT examination mostly favouring candidates of English medium and technical background. After the protest from the students, the CSAT has been made qualifying with generous one extra attempt to compensate for the loss, however, the allegations of this being against the candidates who belong to rural backgrounds persist profoundly in the air. The subjectivity surrounding the evaluation of the CSE-Mains papers, especially of Essay and Optional, remains a cause of constant debates and disconnect among the appearing students. The contestation about the CSE Prelim examination questions and their answer keys which was released only after the whole process of the yearly examination cycle was over, many times with a couple of deleted questions or contested answers, with no mechanism of grievance redressal or judicial scrutiny, where a difference of merge 0.1 mark can make or break the journey, obliterated the themes of sunlight [of transparency] is biggest disinfectant. This opaqueness is encashed and exploited by the ramshackle state of coaching centres mushrooming to garner maximum profit out of student’s vulnerability and their ambition to serve society.
Among arrays of various pertinent pending issues wanting the democratic consideration of the regime is the demand for a COVID-19 compensatory UPSC-CSE attempt as recommended by the 112th report of the Department Related Standing Committee (DRSC) on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice of Parliament of India. The para 4.16 of the report, recommended, to quote the report that “the committee thinks that COVID-19 has caused untold agony and insurmountable sufferings to many…Keeping in view the hardships faced by the student community during the first and second waves, the committee recommends the government to change its mind and sympathetically consider the demand of CSE aspirants and grant an extra attempt with corresponding age relaxation to All candidates”. The parliamentary committee of the democratically elected temple of democracy recommended that the government should have a ‘sympathetic’ attitude towards the aspirants, to compensate for the loss during the pandemic which has taken the toll of more than 5 lakh precious lives as per government records, contended by the World Health Organisation data of about 47 lakh excess deaths during COVID-19. The highest court of the land, in Abhishek Anand v. UOI, advised the regime to take a “Lenient View” towards the demand of the CSE aspirants to compensate for the loss of their genuine attempt. However, despite the fundamental right to have equality of opportunity, the command under article 46 of the constitution to promote the educational and economic interest of marginalised and disadvantaged communities, SCs/STs, and other weaker sections, recommendation of a parliamentary committee to have ‘sympathetic’ attitude and apex court advise of ‘Lenient view’, the government finds it is ‘not-feasible’ to grant a COVID-19 compensatory attempts to the demanding aspirants. The unexplained ‘non-feasibility’ clause of government violates the constitutional principles of cooperative federalism, where 18 state public service commissions have already extended the COVID-19 compensatory relief to the students. Why so much authoritative arrogance regarding the UPSC-CSE when all the politicians across the party lines are seen holding the constitution in their hands, vowing to protect and follow it and aspirants suffering in silence?
The questions are many, like why do all the major reforms and scheduled administrative actions wait for the tragedy like the ORN, to perform their routine duties? The answers to many of these questions lie in the true nationalization and democratisation of the Institutions and organisations having colonial characters. Every single life of a student is precious and if lost due to criminal negligence, is a national disaster adversely impacting the present and future of the nation. The strict possible legal actions against all the culprits of criminal corruption should be expedited to ensure general faith in the supremacy of law, along with democratically listening and addressing the demands of peacefully protesting aspirants at ORN. The envisioned resolution like shifting the coaching centres to some other location like Narela will only monopolise a few big coaching corporates, jeopardising the small new entrants, further endangering the democratisation and rationalisation of this leviathan capitalist mode of competition. There is an imperative need to look into and overhaul the whole of the private coaching industry by framing and implementing crystal-clear rules and guidelines for them, including provisions for humane and reasonable rental accommodations and living spaces. The government should once again look into the report of the parliamentary committee to give a one-time COVID-19 UPSC-CSE compensatory attempt under the spirit of democratic ethos and social justice. The need is to implement, in letter and spirit, one of the goals of Panch Pran as described by the Prime Minister from the rampant of Red Fort on the occasion of 76th Independence Day ‘to remove any traces of colonial mindset’. The stakeholder approach by giving appropriate participation to aspirants and students in formulating, implementing, and reforming policies concerning their future aspirations, shall be required to convert ‘no less than a gas chamber’ into a democratic civic space.
[The writer, Sumit Kumar Bharti, is Senior Research Fellow, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi. She can be reached via e-mail sumit030686@gmail.com.]
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