Remain Vigilant Against Ever-New Tricks to Elitise UPSC and Discriminate against Common Students!

On 18 Nov 2014, following reports of DoPT ‘s move to reduce age/attempt limits for UPSC, there was a massive public outcry. The govt clearly found it too hot to handle, more so with several elections round the corner. The govt made a hasty retreat at least for the time being.

The DoPT in a statement today (19 Nov) has clarified that it doesn’t intend to reduce the age and attempt limit for UPSC aspirants. It has further said that the decision to reduce the age and attempt limit of UPSC aspirants was taken in a Cabinet meeting in December 2013. But due to the decision taken in February 2014 to increase the attempts for UPSC aspirants the previous decision stand invalid and as of now the previous rules regarding age and attempt limits for UPSC aspirants will be followed.

Passing the Buck Does Not Hide the Govt.’s Intentions:

The Govt. is now saying that it was a decision taken by the UPA Govt. and the present Govt. has nothing to do with it. This is nothing short of an attempt by the Modi Govt. to wash its hands off this decision after it was met with huge outpour of protest from students and youth across the country when this information became public. The Modi Govt. needs to answer many serious questions regarding this.

If this was indeed a decision of the previous govt. and the present govt. had nothing to do with it then why was the Action Taken Report still present in the website of the DoPT? When our PM is touting himself as an efficient and hi-tech administrator – exhibiting ‘speed, scale and skill’, why didn’t the DoPT, a department which comes directly under the PMO, take it off its website? When the claimed hallmark of the functioning of the present Govt. is the ‘micromanaging’ every activity of different ministries and departments, only naivety would make us believe that a major policy of this magnitude would have slipped the radar of the PM.

Restructuring the Bureaucracy: from ‘Public’ Service Commission to ‘Privileged’ Service Commission :

UPSC has become a favourite target of the spate of ‘reforms’ that were being introduced by the UPA and are being continued by the NDA. These ‘reforms’ are less about ‘streamlining’ rules and procedure and more about changing the potential composition of the bureaucracy both in terms of social classes and intellectual training/orientation.

Look at the nature of ‘reforms’: For example, the introduction of the discriminatory CSAT and the removal of several classical and foreign languages including Arabic and Persian from the list of subjects were a clear move to tilt the balance of examination and selection against the students from humanities and social sciences and privileging those with training in ‘professional’ and ‘technical’ subjects. It has been well established by data that post-CSAT, there is a drastic fall in the number of successful candidates from rural, non-English and humanities background in the UPSC.

The icing on the cake was the move to reduce the age/attempt limits. Needless to say age/attempt reduction would have only benefitted those from already privileged background and with strong social capital. The fact that 26 years and 3 attempts were set as the limit for general category candidates imply that students aspiring for UPSC must immediately enrol themselves for CSAT-style modular coaching after graduation and give up post-graduation learning. The agenda is simple: Our potential bureaucrats must not learn too much, must not think too much, certainly not anything that can instil critical thinking or social sensitivity, they must be bulldozed into technical/ modular training so as to remain pliant, obedient and non-critical ‘technocrats’ ready to comply. And also that, bureaucracy must remain restricted to the already privileged section.

It is high time that we recognise the underlying agenda behind these ‘reforms,’ which are being fired one after another by the successive governments. The governments across the board and political spectrum are being turned into pliant agencies of the global and local big corporates. So not just the character and content of higher education are being ‘restructured,’ the entire criteria and composition of critical employment avenues pertaining to governance are being overhauled. They need to ‘restructure’ the very composition of the bureaucracy in a manner so that it is eroded of any semblance of criticality and social sensitivity and are ideologically pliant to work as the technocratic arms of corporate lobby.

We must remain vigilant. The united outburst of protest and anger of students and youth across the country has clearly forced the Govt. to hurriedly come out with a statement of ‘clarification,’ but it is must also be noted that nowhere in the circular does the DoPT unequivocally reject the recommendations to lower the age limit and reduce the number of attempts in the UPSC exams. The govt is unlikely to rest for long despite an election-time tactical ‘retreat.’ Students and youth across the country must be vigilant and keep an alert eye on the Govt. against every attempt to implement elitist, anti-people, anti-student policies.