9 highlights
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no major country in the world today selects its diplomats, tax collectors, police officers, and railway officials based on one single common examination.
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In the year that followed, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs noted the need for domain experts in the Foreign Service, pointing out that diplomats are now required to serve on technical issues such as climate change and cyber security.
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The generalist exam actively weeds out candidates who might be better suited for one service over another. Take the Foreign Service, arguably the biggest victim of a generalist exam.
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It gets worse in the next stage of the process, the main exam, where international relations is an optional subject, effectively meaning that a candidate for the Foreign Service can potentially proceed without answering a single question on geopolitics until the interview.
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India’s common civil service exam comes from an era in which the requirements of policymaking were much less specialised and complex
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In 1855, British bureaucrat Sir Charles Trevelyan co-authored a seminal report that urged the British Parliament to unify the civil services and conduct one common generalist exam for recruitment across multiple departments and ministries. Consequently, a Civil Service Commission was established the same year, and an annual exam was conducted in London for recruitment into a host of diverse positions — including for the Indian Civil Service.
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Today, both Britain and America follow a decentralised structure of recruitment: each agency and department selects suitable candidates depending on its own specific requirements, albeit subject to a broad set of general guidelines. Departments even offer fellowships to meritorious high school students to facilitate their higher education in areas of public policy, and their entry thereafter into government.
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Critics of decentralisation would argue that India’s size and population do not allow for multiple tests; but then, take China -– the original inspiration for Britain’s common exam system. While China still conducts a common exam for all civil service aspirants as a screening test, recruitment is done separately by each department through its own set of specialised tests and interviews (and unlike the UPSC preliminary exam, as many as 25% of those who write the screening test often qualify for the specialised tests).
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This is not a problem without solutions; it is a problem without debate.