Move to Inbox CSAT Controversy and Representation Politics: Ek Nazar We are going to discuss statistics related to this examination which have largely been ignored by the so-called experts. Most of the statistics which we have seen in media (Print or electronic) are either incorrect or incomplete. Let me put it at the outset that we are completely convinced that English-Hindi translation of the Reading Comprehension questions of the UPSC Prelims examination (2011, 2012 and 2013) has been as pathetic as it can be and it must have impacted the performance of Hindi medium students but how does that make one question the existece of CSAT itself??? Here, I am putting the different threads of the objections and before discussing the statistics related to them. All these statistics have been taken from either the Annual Reports of UPSC or the RTI replies from them. 1. Civil Services Examination (CSE) conducted by UPSC has become anti-Hindi medium students after the advent of CSAT in 2011. Even before the advent of CSAT the success rate of English medium students in this examination has been in the range of 253%-510% of that of Hindi medium students in the 8 years immediately preceding 2011. Please bear in mind that success rate of a candidate in this examination is defined as follows Number of students finally getting selected divided by number of students appearing in the Main examination multiplied by 100. Many people give the example of year 2009 when as many as 197 students from Hindi medium got selected finally, even that year the success rate of an English medium student was 253% of that of a Hindi medium student. The reasons for this divide are beyond the scope of this discussion but I would want to know if this divide exists in case of most of the other national level exams (JEE, Medical entrance, Defense Services, SSC Exams, Banking Exams, etc.). 2. CSE conducted by UPSC is against people who study Indian languages. In the Main examination 2011, of the top 10 optional papers (on the basis of their success rates), 8 of them were Indian languages!!! Urdu 9/22 (40.9%), rank 1 Santhali 1/3 (33.33%), rank 3 Malayalam 27/99 (27.3%), rank 4 Assamese, 1/4 (25%), rank 5 Kannada, 23/93 (24.7%). rank 6 Manipuri, 6/27 (22.2%) rank 8 Bengali 1/5 (20%), rank 9 Gujarati 11/65 (16.9%), rank 10. Even Hindi had a success rate of 13.1 % (53/406) at a big base, much above 8.9% (the overall success rate 999/11237). I must reiterate that the over all success rate this year was only 8.9%. Even if we ignore Santhali, Assamese and Bengali as they had very small bases what can be said about the remaining 5? Even in the examinations conducted in the years 2009 and 2010 most of the people with Indian languages as their optional fared extremely well in comparison with others. 3. UPSC is biased against the people from Humanities/Arts background and favours people from Engineering background in its CSE. There cannot be a lie bigger than this!!! In the Main exam 2011, 90.4% of the optional subjects opted by the recommended candidates were related to Humanities/Arts (page 113 of the 63rd Annual Report of UPSC) and only 0.9% were related to Engineering. In fact, 46% of the people in the final list were from Engineering background but it clearly means that most of these people had opted for subjects from Humanities/Arts in the exam. It is a fact that a major part of General Studies (History, Geography, Polity, Economics, ecology etc.) is from those subjects which should be more convenient to students from Humanities/Arts in comparison with students from Engineering background. And General Studies (GS) covers 50% (200/400) of the Preliminary examination and 57.14% (1000/1750) of the written part of the Main examination. Now, if students from Engineering and other backgrounds make a cross domain shift and master the subjects which others have studied for years, should they be punished for it? In the Main examination 2011, the optionals from Science, Engineering and management were among the worst subjects (as per their success rates). Mechanical Engineering 6.8% (7/103) Botany 6.7% (9/135) Management 5.6% (15/266) Electrical Engineering 5.3% (9/171) Statistics 5.3% (1/19) Civil Engineering 3.4% (2/59) Please bear in mind that the over all success rate this year was 8.9%. Should we conclude from here that students from these backgrounds are being discriminated against? Now, continuing with the 3rd heading (UPSC is biased against students from Humanities background and favours students from Engineering/management/Science backgrounds), I have these more points: a. Till Main examination 2012 in paper 2 of General Studies, there used to be questions worth 35-40 marks from statistics. Most of the students from Engineering/Management/Science backgrounds used to score heavily in it. If we keep low cutoffs of Main examination in mind, these marks used to be vital. In the new Main examination pattern, introduced in 2013, these questions were completely done away with. It was a big plus for students from Humanities/Arts background, I am yet to hear anyone talk about this. b. The Essay paper was introduced in the mid 90s to balance the examination in favour of the students from Humanities background. Now, the paper constitutes 14.28% of the written part of the Main exam. I would assume that the students from the Humanities/Arts background are more suited to this paper in comparison with their brethren from Engineering/Management/Science background. 4. English is tested in the Main examination as a qualifying paper (one is supposed to score 75 out of 300 in it), then why to test it in the Prelims? First of all, if I extend this logic, GS is also tested (and how, 1000/1750, written part) in the Main examination so why to test that in the Prelims and hence there should not be any Prelims exam at all (as was the case till 1978). We need to understand that in the Prelims, one is asked questions only on Reading Comprehension from English and that too only 8-9 in number worth around 20 marks (only 5% of the total marks, 400, in Prelims). Moreover, these questions are objective in nature. I think the ability to do these questions is necessary but not sufficient. In the Main examination, one is tested on many other aspects of English, such as Precis writing, Vocabulary, Grammar etc. And, these questions are descriptive in nature and thus check ones ability to write in English too. I must mention here that the 8-9 questions in English which appear in the Preliminary examination are the easiest 8-9 questions for the candidates (even for Hindi medium students) and the proposal to withdraw them is as STUPID as it can get. Those people who cannot do those 8-9 questions should not be in Civil Services at all as most of the 23 services in Civil Services would require functional knowledge of English. There are 2 All India Services (out of a total of 3), IAS and IPS, for which candidates are selected through this exam, how can these people not know this much of English? For most of us, Mathematics and English constitute 40% (200/500) of the marks in Class 10 examination and it would be assumed that anyone who has cleared class 10 should have the knowledge of English and Mathematics required for CSAT. 5. UPSC is biased against the candidates who appear for these exams in Indian languages. We cannot conclude it. Though Hindi suffered a lot (may be because of poor translation) in 2011 (the number of Hindi medium students writing the main examination fell to 1700 in 2011 from 4194 in 2010), for Marathi the corresponding figures are 98 in 2010 and 91 in 2011 (hardly any impact). 6. After the advent of CSAT in 2011, less serious candidates are reaching the main examination and hence there has been a steady fall in the cutoffs for the interview. As far the falling cutoff marks are concerned, they might have happened for reasons other than CSAT. There was a fall of 62 marks in the cutoff for the interview for General category in 2011 over the same in 2011 (904 and 842), but then, what explains for the fall of 55 marks in cutoffs in the year 2009 over the year 2008 (899 and 954)? No CSAT was introduced in 2009!!! We must understand that UPSC has been changing the structure of the Main examination almost continuously in the last 6-7 years and that could be the reason for the fall in cutoffs. Further, there can be a fall in the cutoff, even if the examination does not change much. In fact, it appears that the advent of CSAT has been somewhat successful in stemming the non-serious candidates from reaching the Main exam as in Main 2010 as many as 1324 (10.6%) candidates out of a total of 12491 (who had qualified in the Prelims that year), either failed in one of the qualifying papers or did not appear in the exam. In 2011, the corresponding figure came down to 871 (a decrease of 453 over the previous year), 7.27% of a total of 11,894 candidates who had qualified in the Prelims that year. We need to look at the other Indian competitions as well to understand the status of aptitude testing. The officers who are selected by SSC through their CGL exam, have to clear an exam, almost 80% of which is based on Reasoning, Quantitative Aptitude and English, 150 out of 200 in tier 1 and 400 out of 400 in tier 2. Hundred marks are for the interviews. In selection process for the Defense Services (either through NDA or CDS), Aptitude Testing plays a vital role in the written part. Aptitude testing is done in exams like NET (National Eligibility Test, which is for the students from the Humanities/Arts background) also, conducted by UGC (this year onwards this exam will be conducted by CBSE). In this exam, one needs to attempt 50 of the given 60 questions in Part 1, which is Aptitude. For banking exams, Aptitude testing is a natural choice. CBSE has introduced PSA (Problem Solving Assessment) for students of classes 9 and 11. PSA is basically Aptitude Testing only. In fact, the initial findings of the CBSE about the performance in these tests have been very disappointing. The most baffling thing is that in a state ruled (???) by a party which is most vociferous against CSAT, more than 50% questions of their GS 2 (of the Preliminary examination of the state civil services exam) were from Maths, Reasoning and English. This test (UPPSC Prelims) was conducted in Uttar Pradesh on August 3 (during the thick of CSAT controversy). So, Samajwadi Party talking about removal of CSAT is like Pakistan talking about democracy!!! The scene is not different in case of Madhya Pradesh (a state ruled by BJP). There also, more than 50% of 2nd paper of the Preliminary exam is based on Mathematics, Reasoning and English. And, CSAT was introduced in Madhya Pradesh during the reign of BJP only. Even in UPSCs Civil Services Preliminary examination before 2011, there used to be some 15-20 questions of Mathematics and Reasoning as a standard part of the GS paper. And the difficulty level of those questions was much above the difficulty level of the questions which appear in CSAT now. BJP has 282 seats in the current Lok Sabha and a whopping 180 (63.88%) of these seats are from Hindi speaking states like Uttar Pradesh (71), Madhya Pradesh (27), Bihar (28), Jharkhand (12), Chhattisgarh (10), rajasthan (25), and Haryana (7). Is the ruling party indulging in some gimmick at cost of the nation?
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 16:35:04 +0000
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