Impartiality of the UPSC

The ‘efficient’ folks at UPSC take as much as a month to reveal the detailed marks of the written exams after declaring if one has qualified for the interview or not.( The whole exam process takes as much as 16 months!. There are comparable exams like CAT which is also taken by an equal number of students but the final results of the latter are out in under 5 months!!)

It is during this one month’s period that one’s thoughts go wild that stem from the disbelief of having not cleared the mains.

Not getting an interview call makes one immediately question the fairness and impartiality of UPSC and also the alignment of certain stars in the celestial space that might potentially have had a say in the disastrous outcome.

Did my papers reach a certain drunken professor?

Was my paper corrected immediately after s/he quarreled with her/his spouse?

Were my liberal views on the ‘dance bars’ question in the GS paper seen as lack of Indianess by the orthodox elderly professor who disapproves of all kinds of dances?

Were my mildly leftist views in the GS papers not taken too kindly by the capitalist gentleman/lady who evaluated it?

DS called to discuss and analyze his mains results and to reaffirm our faith in the impartiality and fairness of UPSC. He sounded upbeat and optimistic. Gone were the uncertain what ifs of the past month.

He had scored an astonishing 170/ 300 (56.67%) in paper I of Geography (Optional I) and a respectable 140/300 (46.67%) in paper I of Psychology (Optional II).

Why the superlative adjectives against the scores that borders around the halfway percentage mark? Those not in the know might wonder.

Here is why:

The UPSC Mains written exams for civil services is set for a total of 2000 marks divided as follows:

300 each for the Paper I and paper II of optional I adding up to 600 for optional I

300 each for the Paper I and paper II of optional II adding up to 600 for optional II

300 each for the Paper I and paper II of the mandatory General Studies paper adding up to 600 for GS

200 for Essay Writing in English.

A score in the neighborhood of 1050 takes things to the next level and gets one an Interview call. Clearly the key to an interview call is scoring a little over 52.5% in all of these papers individually.

And if one scores a whopping 55 %, one is talking about a higher rank and a service of one’s choice.

What is comforting in the situation is the knowledge that a score in optional I added up to 270/600 as 170/300 + 100/300 and not as 133/300 + 137/300. The former indicates that one is capable of breaching the 55% barrier and that with effort the 100 of paper II can be brought to the neighborhood of 150.

The later case is worrisome because, one is unsure of one’s writing skills and keeps wondering if one’s best written answers are at all capable of giving decent scores.

With his faith restored, DS has vowed to redouble his efforts.