India’s Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) is concerned at the disproportionate number of candidates with engineering backgrounds selected for the Public Service through its annual examinations.
In a statement, the USPC said its efforts to increase the educational diversity of candidates had failed, with engineers comprising almost 60 per cent of successful candidates over the past two years.
Data accessed by journalists showed that of the 428 Public Servants of the 2020 batch who had gone to the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) in Mussoorie for training, 245, or 57.25 per cent, were engineers.
Eight others have engineering-plus-management backgrounds. There were only 84 in the batch from an arts background, accounting for just 19.6 per cent of the intake.
The number with arts degrees was even lower the previous year, just 16 per cent.
Director of the LBSNAA, Sanjeev Chopra said candidates with an engineering background had dominated in recent years.
“Sometimes, the numbers go marginally up or down, but there is no major change in the trend of engineers coming into the Civil Services,” Mr Chopra said.
The trend of Public Servants from engineering backgrounds has continued even as the UPSC has sought to ‘normalise’ the difference between those going for technical subjects like mathematics or physics and those taking up humanities like sociology or geography as optional subjects.
Since the scoring in the optional subject can vary widely, the UPSC, through a closely guarded formula, minimises the difference in scores.
A teacher at the Shri Chaitanya Indian Administrative Service Academy said that over the years the UPSC had been normalising the scores, trying to make sure candidates who chose humanities subjects were not put at a disadvantage, yet the number of engineers was still very high.
“Because they have to study way more for maths or physics, engineers themselves take up humanities as the optional subject,” the teacher said.
“So, just because the UPSC is trying to normalise scores doesn’t mean that the representation of liberal arts students will go up,” they said.
New Delhi, 25 October 2020
