Few selection frameworks in India possess the charisma of the Civil Services Examination. For decades, it has been the gateway to power, prestige, and “the opportunity to serve.” Yet what was once a demanding test of intellect and judgement has become an exercise in memorisation and rehearsed answers.
Year on year, the country is losing the opportunity to select civil servants who show quick comprehension, can analyse complex problems logically, communicate effectively in speech and writing, and are imbued with a zeal for public service.
Training cannot create qualities that never existed. If the bureaucracy is to guide the nation toward the goal of Viksit Bharat by 2047, the CSE must find capabilities — not memory.
The 1960s: A different world
When I joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in the mid-1960s, the selection process placed emphasis on the optional subjects, the essay paper, and the personality test. Candidates were expected to construct arguments and defend positions — whether through three-hour essays on a single subject or extended answers in the optional papers. Preparation for the examination was a solitary pursuit. Coaching institutes were rare. Most aspirants relied on self-study, libraries, and handwritten notes. The process rewarded wide reading, clarity of thought, and originality. Not memory.
The rigour was unmistakable. For the Indian Police Service (IPS), two optional papers at the BA-level were needed; Central Civil Services candidates faced three; the IAS and the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) demanded two MA-level papers in addition to three graduate-level optional papers. It was because the demands of the IAS are distinct, even dissimilar to other services, particularly in the state governments where officers spend more than two–thirds of their careers, that additional testing — both written and interview — had been prescribed for decades — until demands for “equalisation” of the services were acceded to, without going into the original rationale.
The old system held unflinchingly until 1979, when the Kothari Commission introduced the Preliminary examination as a stringent filter to reduce the lakhs of annual applicants to around 20,000 who became eligible to sit for the Mains. Of these, only about 1,200 are finally selected by the UPSC after the interview stage, each year. The filtering was an excellent idea and has served its purpose. But alongside it, the Commission also did a disservice to a rigorous selection process by recommending the abolition of the two additional papers prescribed for the IAS and IFS, although the requirements of these services were and continue to be completely different. In the name of creating “a level-playing field”, the UPSC and the government committed its first blunder. But in 2011 and 2013, came two more blunders.
Dilution by design
In 2011, the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) was added to the Prelims. But instead of being a rigorous psychometric assessment as used in defence services or corporate recruitment, it has become a mere qualifying test — incapable of finding the very traits the civil services should eschew.
But what has truly ruined the system are the sweeping modifications made in 2013, which brought down the number of optional subjects from two to one and increased the number of general studies papers from two to four. This pattern rewards memorisation across several fields, but does not test depth, reasoning, or the ability to construct and defend arguments. Each paper demands 20 short answers in three hours — barely seven minutes per question — testing the candidate’s capacity for regurgitation of memorised answers. Hundreds of coaching centres stepped in to drill aspirants in reproducing “model answers”, aimed at “impressing the examiner.”
The process of dilution also converted the three-hour essay paper, once a test of sustained reasoning, into two short 1,000-word essays, which are insufficient for the candidate to take a position and defend it through conviction, argument, and persuasion — critical markers of a candidate’s certitude.
Also read: The UPSC beyond IAS, IPS, IFS
Enter artificial intelligence
Looking back, in 1966, when I joined the IAS and for several years thereafter, books and notes were the only means to gain knowledge. But once the internet became widely available, reading, absorbing, recalling, and reproducing became debatable. Even so, the examination did not change.
In 2025, with the extensive use of artificial intelligence, this sort of examination is indefensible. AI can now provide unlimited information on every subject possible — chronology of events, historical sequences, policy comparisons over time, case studies, quotations, even structured drafts — in seconds. When information recall is now the easiest thing in the world, why does India need to incentivise memorisation?
The CSE measures precisely what computers and AI do best, while neglecting what only human beings can do: thinking holistically and showing discernment, judgement, prudence, moral courage, and societal sensitivity.
Untested qualities most needed
Three attitudes are critical for becoming effective civil servants which the CSE does not test with rigour. First, the willingness and mindset to translate political priorities into tenable action; second, regard for observing due process (to safeguard against favouritism in decision-making); and third, the courage to say “no” to pressure, money, or political expediency. Needed are the intelligence and acumen to weigh situations and apply the law with pragmatism and resourcefulness. These are qualities that no short-answer memory test can reveal, but only a specially designed psychometric test can.
The interview: Undervalued and vulnerable
The interview is the only stage that tests not knowledge but potential.Yet it carries only about 13.5 per cent weight. Raising the weight of the interview is essential because it is the only stage that can uncover judgement, integrity, oral communication, and temperament — qualities that no written test or coaching class can reveal.
While increasing the interview marks is overdue, stories of subjective bias point to the need for caution. The interview boards need to have clear rubrics to measure communication, reasoning, judgement, and personality. Not knowledge. Parroting rehearsed responses, when detected, must invite outright rejection.
Replace exam-cracking with reasoned judgement
Over the last decade, a striking pattern has emerged in the UPSC Civil Services Examination: two-thirds of those who make it through are engineers. A 2023 report of the Department-related Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice flagged this growing dominance of technical graduates. The design of the papers privileges traits that engineers are trained for—systematic preparation, rapid recall, and performing under severe time pressure. But this comes at a cost. By tilting the scales so heavily toward one academic stream, the exam is sidelining candidates from other disciplines whose perspectives are vital for good governance. What is being rewarded today are exam-cracking skills, not the breadth of intellectual diversity that a national civil service needs.
Also read: You’re wrong about UPSC aspirants. I just got Rank 150 and it’s not about money & power
The human and social cost of CSE preparation
Behind the grandeur of the CSE lies a harsh reality. Aspirants’ families exhaust their savings for coaching. Candidates delay optional careers and higher studies, even as society valorises them as “UPSC aspirants.” Rarely does anyone highlight the wasted years and the opportunity cost. Coaching institutes, not the UPSC, have become the real winners. Every coaching centre seems to praise UPSC’s questions as “brilliant.” That should provoke thinking. If coaching establishments uniformly hail the exam, is it because the CSE tests exactly what the coaching perfects — recall, regurgitation, and bulleted presentation — leaving originality, judgement, and communication skills under-tested?
If the UPSC and the successive governments truly cared about the fairness of the CSE, they would have by now factored in the prohibitive cost of coaching — running into several lakhs for classroom courses and well over a lakh even for online programmes — excluding board, lodging, and transport, making it unaffordable for most aspirants, but hugely lucrative as a business. Candidates lose their best years mugging up material which is not relevant to handling the human complexities of governance. This must stop.
The hard question for the UPSC and the Government is this: is it right to lock in a vast population of hopefuls in dead-end preparation for an examination which everyone knows 99% will fail? This is dishonesty, not egalitarianism.
The path forward is clear
Essays and optional papers must be restored more robustly to test depth and reasoning. Interviews must be given greater weight but conducted under rubrics that minimise bias. Psychometric profiling should be introduced as a qualifying filter for India’s civil services — much as it is already standard practice in defence recruitment, corporate hiring, and the selection of top civil servants in several countries.
Conclusion
The UPSC has lasted a hundred years. For the next century, it must stop testing what machines can do — and start testing what only human character can deliver. As we look to 2047, the civil services must be judged not on how well they reproduce information, but on how well they can lead citizens through crises, development, and daily governance. India’s civil services were once called the “steel frame.” But steel is forged in fire, not moulded in a coaching class. Dilution has made the exam easier to crack but harder to find the game-changers we lack.
Shailaja Chandra is a retired civil servant and former secretary in the health ministry. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)
Yes! We all know how the 1960s bureaucracy made India a “great nation” that we know today.
The UPSC was always a memory test. Whoever was better at rote learning, cracked it successfully. It is ideal for arts students – who are naturally good at rote learning.