Last few weeks has seen lot of debate over the CSAT (Civil Services Aptitude Test) and the demands are being raised from completely scrapping the paper to make it a qualifying one. The limelight has been hogged by the language issue, the debates are now reduced to English Versus Regional Languages (Hindi being one of the).Although it is good for the country that the status of the regional languages is being discussed at the highest level But here let us put light on the various angles to this CSAT issue.
CSAT paper contains approximately ;
30% Mental Aptitude questions;
30% comprehension questions (both in English and Hindi) ;
9 questions are from English comprehension (exclusively), to be answered by all and there is no translation provided for that;
and at last there are some questions based on decision making.
Apart from the pathetic translation of the paper (certainly a major issue) ,there are other focal areas also, like when a English medium student has already solved higher level comprehension passage in the paper, what is the rationale of asking him/her to solve 9 question of English¬ comprehension (of 10th level). These questions which are piece of cake for English medium student, offer challenge to Regional Language medium students. Here the whole question of equality is thrown out of window. Where there is cut throat competition, these 9 questions (around 22 marks) certainly extinguishes the chances of regional medium candidates of clearing the exam. Here the question in not that of competence to solve very basic English comprehension but that of EQUITY.
Second thing is that when UPSC is anyhow testing the language skills of the candidate in English as well as Regional Language in the Mains compulsory paper what was the need to introduce it in the preliminary examination. Isn’t the compulsory language paper (subjective in nature) is better way of evaluating the skills of the candidates?
Further regarding the decision making questions, I feel most of the students would be going for the same choice. No sane person would mark, say the choice that he/she would pay bribe to get the work done or would conduct himself as per the wishes of the local politician. These questions I feel are redundant.
Further regarding the decision making questions, I feel most of the students would be going for the same choice. No sane person would mark, say the choice that he/she would pay bribe to get the work done or would conduct himself as per the wishes of the local politician. These questions I feel are redundant.
Now lets come to the mental ability portion, it should be remembered that certain mental ability questions were an intrinsic part of General Studies(previous pattern) paper, now they have been taken out from the GS paper and put into a separate paper by the name of CSAT (as if equating Civil services aptitude with mental and language aptitude) and their weightage has been increased enormously so much so that a person howsoever brilliant he may be in other areas but if he has not performed well in the mental aptitude than his chances of clearing the paper are bleak, as UPSC itself has declared that the cutoff of CSAT is 35% i.e. around 87 marks while it is only 30 marks for GS paper. It is beyond comprehension that why the paper which should be basis for entering into the services is accorded such a low cutoff. It should be further emphasized that it is very easy for certain class of people (read MBAs, Engineers, people preparing for bank PO etc)to score in excess of 95% in CSAT and just by being below average in GS paper, they are able qualify for the Mains examination. Further, it should also be noted that howsoever brilliant a candidate may be in GS paper, scoring (70-80)% in this paper is considered as an outstanding achievement and very few people are able to breach that. This leads to the conclusion that the CSAT paper gives certain advantageous edge to urban and technical students while no such thing is available to other lot.
Although certain level of mental aptitude is necessary in civil servants (which former pattern of Preliminary examination duly checked) but is it of that much importance that it should veto a candidates’ selection. Aren’t there other qualities which needs to be checked like empathy, sensitiveness, equity, secularism, pressure handling etc? And the CSAT paper was meant to test these qualities only (hence the name Civil Services Aptitude) but it has been reduced to mental aptitude and comprehension.
There are no quick fix solutions to this but what UPSC can do for the time being is that they can make CSAT a qualifying paper (cut off can even be 35 % as it is currently) and let candidates fight it out in the GS paper. It will ensure that candidate possesses certain aptitude skills but his selection for the Mains would be on the basis of the comprehensive knowledge tested through GS paper.
On a lighter note, Judiciary must be thanked that it has forced UPSC to declare the preliminary marks and the cutoff for each paper otherwise these issues would have never cropped up.
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