Written by Ramanand Nand and Arjun
While Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 12th Fail is breaking new records, its central theme is an old topic resonating deeply in Indian society. Perhaps unintentionally, it adeptly distorts the realities of the civil services recruitment process. These distorted realities have engendered a problematic mindset within Indian society, extending even into the bureaucracy. It is helpful to understand the realities accurately as individuals, institutions, and society. Moreover, an accurate understanding of the issue is essential for discourse on reforming the existing bureaucratic recruitment processes.
With nearly 1.5 million aspirants vying for roughly 1,000 seats, it’s helpful to realise that the Indian civil services examination process is a rejection process – and not a selection process. This reality doesn’t always align with popular culture’s heroic narratives of valour, discipline, persistence, and hard work. The success stories, as also depicted in 12th Fail, are mere bright spots in an otherwise blank canvas. Society must communicate and acknowledge this real picture. Failure to do so and acknowledge the reality has instilled a mindset with several problematic traits.
Firstly, it creates inspiring success stories of role models who conquered a high-stakes exam. These narratives completely dismiss the nature of the current recruitment process, advancing the false perception that success in the civil services examination process is a simple linear function of one’s hard work and ability. However, nothing can be further from the truth. It is an unpredictable process, often likened to gambling. To navigate an exam where success is an all-or-nothing affair, acknowledging this is essential for aspirants, their families, and society at large.
Secondly, the inability to step away from the exam launches a vicious cycle of attempts and re-attempts. Like Manoj’s experience, many aspirants begin to believe that selection is right around the corner. This cycle prompts aspirants and their families to endure significant financial, temporal, and mental sacrifices. However, as statistics show, this optimism is often unfounded.
Finally, this mindset has misrepresented the motivation of many aspirants. Most aspirants come from oppressed socio-economic backgrounds (recall the “stereotypical aspirant from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh”) where the delivery of public services remains inadequate. For them, apart from the tangible monetary benefits, public service is an opportunity to become a citizen with access to quality public services. Consequently, bureaucracy becomes a conduit for upward mobility in a society that is still working to provide equity and inclusive development, rather than an immediate catalyst for societal change.
A similar trajectory is seen in Manoj’s case. His pursuit of joining the government payroll began with the simple need for a stable monthly income to support his family. It was only after encountering misconduct by public servants that his aspirations aimed higher. In a society where inequality runs rampant, acknowledging that the path to bureaucracy is often the path to a better tomorrow for many is also the initial acknowledgement of the shortcomings within our governance systems.
While society’s obsession with the UPSC exams has been discussed extensively, less attention has been paid in public discourse to the bureaucracy’s obsession with UPSC. In the film, the evident disdain of interviewers towards Hindi-speaking candidates evokes colonial feelings. Further, the interviewers’ strong preference for “IIM and IIT toppers” is ironic. In a country rich in linguistic diversity but lacking high-quality educational institutions, favouring only English-proficient candidates with academic excellence is a narrow and flawed selection process. This parochial perspective has historically led to a bureaucratic monopoly on policy-making, stalling the promotion of an open-door policy-making process. Recently, this perspective surfaced in the bureaucratic resistance to lateral hires at senior levels.
In the past, in a still nascent independent India grappling with uncertainties, government jobs promised stability. Gradually, society granted bureaucrats a high pedestal. In several parts of the country even today, being a bureaucrat offers an escape from being just another ordinary and powerless citizen. This motivation and mindset compels millions of aspirants to undergo brutal recruitment processes which usually give false hope. With the brutality now ingrained, public discourse on reforming government recruitment processes is difficult.
Our governance system is still functioning on a 19th-century model, with no effort to reform the system to meet the challenges of today. While in other parts of the world, public service delivery is led through expertise and experience, we continue to run it through a straight-jacketed recruitment process. The intricacies of several policy domains, such as diplomacy, technology, trade, and education, cannot be met through a uniform set of skills as devised by the current UPSC model. Invariably, our current system promotes hierarchy within its ranks. Encouraging reform efforts, especially the inclusion of domain experts in the government under PM Modi, have occurred yet more is needed to be achieved.
While the civil services roles are integral for India’s effective governance, neither the roles nor their pursuit should be overly glorified to the extent that realities are distorted, perpetuating a problematic mindset. With its erratic nature, individuals continue to invest themselves and their families in the process in search of a better tomorrow. This should be a worrying trend for a developing country. However, until the surrounding realities are understood and appreciated in their truest sense, pieces of popular culture on India’s civil services exam ecosystem will continue to be misinterpreted.
Ramanand Nand is the director of the Center of Policy Research and Governance (CPRG), and Arjun is a research assistant at CPRG
