The document criticizes the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) for its poor recruitment practices of civil servants in India. It argues that the UPSC lacks expertise in human resource management and administrative law. Interview panels are often incompetent and biased towards certain candidates. Appointments take too long, sometimes years. The document proposes abolishing the UPSC and replacing the civil service exam with a customized exam administered by organizations like Pearson over 2-3 months. It also suggests recruiting 50% of civil servants from campuses and the rest through the new exam. The Department of Personnel and Training could handle recruitment functions instead of the UPSC. The document concludes the UPSC should be abolished given its mediocre recruitment standards and

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The Rot in India’s Union Public Service Commission in
the Recruitment of Covenanted Civil Servants
Shantanu Basu
On May 20, 2016 on Facebook, Surajit Dasgupta of Swarajyamag (online right-wing
magazine), wrote a devastating piece on India’s Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)
and the quality of civil servants recruited by it but not warranting the pay and perks they
receive. I now recall a post that someone had shared on FB about two months back in which
the original author, claiming to be a civil service aspirant who had faced the UPSC interview,
reproduced ad verbatim the contents of his interview. Needless to add, the UPSC Member
that chaired that particular panel emerged not far better than a Don Quixote-Sancho Panza
combine. The third event is an interview, currently in progress on CNBC 18 with Arun
Jaitley where the Minister advocated campus recruitment for PSBs.
Now when you put the three issues I enumerated above together, there is the strongest case to
forthwith abolish the blight called the UPSC from the civil service landscape. Chairpersons
and Members of the UPSC, like their junior staffers, seldom, if at all, have the foggiest idea
of HRM, least of all administrative law, even norms of natural justice. The method of their
‘recruitment’ also is equally dubious. The UPSC takes years to decide on disciplinary cases
referred to them for their advice. Even then, a large number of their advices acted upon by
Ministries land the latter in severe trouble with courts with most victimized civil servants
being reinstated, even with exemplary fines imposed upon their Ministries, also defamation
cases succeeding in lower courts.
Nearly all appointments, even from among serving civil servants take several months, even
years; many applicants even superannuate in the interregnum. The jocular Efficiency Bar,
while it remained, tested the UPSC’s efficiency more than that of the employee who would
patiently wait for his Rs. 20 annual increment until he retired. Thereafter he would receive his
arrears of pay, a pair of shoes later, and without any penal interest thereon, maybe even
bribing his administrative officer to prepare the arrears bill.
‘Experts/Advisers’ empaneled by the UPSC to assist in interviews are mostly recipients of
post-retirement patronage while most serving officers on such boards see it entirely as a good
way to get away from work plus a generous honorarium that is seldom disclosed to the
income tax collectors. In any case, these ‘experts’ are just a spare part since the Member
UPSC in the Chair invariably pushes his/her own candidate(s). For the senior management of
the UPSC, just below the Members, the UPSC is a professional punishment pit, much like the
CVC, but nonetheless, a comfortable professional full salary-part time pastime.
The civil services recruitment is the first reason for the UPSC to be abolished. For one, who
is the UPSC to sit in judgement on Indian university academic degrees and examine
candidates as if they were recruiting university teachers or doctoral candidates, rather than
civil servants? A cursory look at the giant civil services’ exam syllabi and the quality of
evaluators (mostly again govt. officers and university teachers, that too many retired, for a
pittance) brings out the ludicrousness of the entire recruitment. What is the relevance of this
Paper in-II in History in the CS Exam 2015 at

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http://upsc.gov.in/…/2015/CS_MAIN…/HISTORY-II/HISTORY_II.pdf. Why not abolish
the UPSC CS exam and replace with a 4-hour customized GRE-type exam and flush the viva
voce down the commode and finish the recruitment process within 2-3 months? I am sure
Pearson Education or the GRE agency, if commissioned on a conscious single-tender basis,
would be able to prepare case study-based examinations, different for each candidate,
generated automatically and administered in their centers.
Next, the UPSC is nowhere near the US MSPB
(http://www.mspb.gov/About/jurisdiction.htm) that is professionally staffed and derives its
authority from the Civil Service Reform Act. Incidentally, the MSPB decides disciplinary
cases and appeals lie only to the US Federal Court of Appeals. Here we have the UPSC that
is neither professionally staffed nor has the statutory backing of an Act, save for the
Constitution (Art. 315) – reminiscent of an Ambassador car of the sixties that needed a
handle to run the crankshaft to fire the engine without any assurance of success! Why
maintain UPSC’s huge state and establishment (headed by a Chairperson and ten Members,
all enjoying the rank and perks of a Secretary to GOI) in one of Lutyen’s Delhi most sought
after locations, i.e. Shahjahan Road?
Finally, why not have 50% recruitment from campuses and the balance via the GRE-type
exam suggested above? There is the gargantuan DoPT (reporting to the PM) that can
discharge the all recruitment functions, a large part of which it already does, maybe with an
appellate tribunal in lieu of the UPSC. So why have the UPSC any longer?
Last, but not the least, when CPSUs demand minimum of 60% marks for an Asst. Law
Officer plus at least two years’ work experience and a CLAT (LLM) score with the upper age
limit for general candidates fixed at 32 years (+5 years for reserved categories) with far less
onerous nature of duties, why must the GOI persist with rank mediocrity while recruiting into
the nation’s elite civil services with far more onerous responsibilities of state? Is that why in
2016, the topper scored 52% and the last person an abominable 34%, almost the same as in
2015? In three decades, the aggregates at either end have collapsed by about 20%. Does the
UPSC have any reason to be in business? And all this when I have not even touched the tip of
the UPSC’s iceberg!
The author is a senior public policy analyst and commentator