Civil Services Exam- Are inefficient getting in through the reservation route?
Let us take some cut off marks for Civil services examination 2020.
Now careful analysis of the above shows that at the Civil services ( Final ) level, what average students have achieved is as follows
General — 944 marks
EWS — 894 marks
OBC- 907 marks
SC — 875 marks
ST — 876 marks
Even if we compare the above marks, the gap between the General merit and OBC students is just 37 marks. While the difference between General and SC is just 68 marks. Now the key factor deciding the final selection is the interview stage and it has already been proved in various research works that there is a general bias in the UPSC to give EWS/OBC/SC/ST students lower marks.
The following article given below has some analysis on this
In the above article, the author did some outstanding statistical analysis and saw whether the written and interview marks are correlated
So he found that there is a linkage in EWS/SC/ST candidates.
So what this graph states..
In case a general merit students gets a higher marks in Written exams, probability that he gets a higher marks in Interview is more.
While in SC/ST/EWS students, higher the marks that a students get in written exams, the probability that he/she will get a lower marks in interview is very high. The correlation was strong in EWS/SC/ST, while in case of OBC it was existing, but was not predominant.
Now with a 57 marks difference between General and SC/ST students, the real game in UPSC is in the interview stage. Now since many students who scored higher in written tend to get lower in interview and the downward direction is also very high, the 57 marks difference does not really reflect on the overall competency/efficiency level of various officers selected through the open competition route.
Government should consider introducing policies to allow second interview by an independent panel in case the correlation is significantly higher between written and interview marks. What this also indicates is that SC/ST/OBCs students are equally competent as their counterparts of General Merit
