To Be or Not To Be: The Civil Services Exam Question

The civil services exam is one of the most competitive and popular exams in the country. In 2023, nearly 13 lakh candidates took the Union Public Service Commission exam for 1,225 posts. In the year 2006,  I did the same; God being kind, I got selected in my first attempt in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). Since then, candidates have asked me if Civil Services is a great career choice and since I moved on to the private sector (in case you want to read why, see this article), I have been getting more such queries. 

Recently the Chief Economic Advisor Sanjeev Sanyal fuelled this debate when he termed this frenzy to give Civil Service Exams as a ‘poverty of aspirations’. He went on to say “If you must dream, surely you should dream to be Elon Musk or Mukesh Ambani. Why did you dream to be Joint Secretary?” It is normal to be confused when one is trying to make such an important career choice.

To begin with, I would say Civil Services is indeed a good career choice. Civil servants selected by UPSC can do some amazing work that few other career choices offer. There are various other advantages too like a stable career progression, diversity of work and lifelong respect in society. If you hear a clear voice in your heart that you should go for it, you are right. You also do not need to read this article beyond this point. This article is for those who are weighing pros and cons and I will present my perspective.

The first thing a candidate must try to understand is the motivation for taking this exam. Does one like public administration? Or does she want to work for the betterment of society? It is also fair to think that power in civil services is an attractive point. One of the most fundamental human urges is the urge to feel important and civil services provide it. 

We often have hidden biases in our subconscious. A student in a mofussil town may be impressed with the large DM/SP bungalow and their daily pictures in vernacular newspapers. In today’s age, one may also see footage of officers on social media and get awed by their million followers. I belong to a North Indian middle-class family and most of my relatives were in the service class. The highest they could dream of was a career in the IAS. Whenever a child was born, the wish was that she may become a collector one day. Expectations of our family and society get inside our subconscious.

But apart from the outside glamour, civil service jobs are more often than not a profession that requires hard work and dedication in pursuits that may appear mundane from outside. The exam notification for 2024 lists twenty-one services and most of the aspirants will not be able to name more than 4-5. Even in services like IAS/IPS, field postings that may be more glamorous consist of only ten per cent of service life. These glamorous roles come with the immense pressure of expectations and public scrutiny. 

 I ask aspiring candidates to consider their opportunity cost and the expected value of what they will derive when they get selected. It differs from candidate to candidate as the answer will not be the same for an IIT graduate vis a vis someone from a not so famed college. One should also consider that an average aspirant spends three to four years preparing for this exam and half the candidates spend more than this. While preparing for Civil services, I felt there is a prevalent disguised unemployment in many aspiring candidates. The tag of an ‘aspirant’ is much more valuable in our society rather than being labelled as someone looking for a job outside.

There is a selection bias in seeking advice and we hear only the successful candidates. Ask any successful candidate and they will say that hard work is mandatory. They will also tell you how you will succeed but what often remains unsaid is that you should have your share of luck too. I took the exam way back in 2006 and I am told gradually exam subjectivity has decreased but it is still more than it exists in other exams.

What happens to others who do not get selected? I have batchmates from IIT Kanpur who ended up wasting 7-8 years of their life and did not get selected. By the time they exhausted their attempts, few career choices were available. The civil services exam is a vicious cycle and by the time final results are out, prelims of the next attempt start. Due to the enormity of the syllabus, all candidates believe their successive attempts is going to be more fruitful and the cycle continues.

India is changing and there is a large number who wish to join civil service to change the country for betterment. It is but natural to feel frustrated at government systems that do not deliver even after 75 years of independence. Many of us feel like the angry young man image of Amitabh Bachchan and feel one person will change the world. A similar zeal is visible in the movie 12th Fail. I feel this is a great reason to join civil services, but one must also reason there are other ways to do this effectively. Politicians have much more say in the direction that societies take and bureaucracy is generally executing it.  I believe that poverty cannot be distributed only wealth can be and the generation of wealth is a great service to the nation. Entrepreneurs like Dhirubhai Ambani or startup founders who raised unicorns, also served this nation significantly.

It is a good shift that civil services are getting democratised with more representation from rural areas and a shift from elite families. As a devil’s advocate, we must try to understand why children of elites are not opting for it. We can even analyse the number of children of civil servants opting for it and a significant reduction would be observed. What has changed?

Societies respond to incentives and in today’s world, the delta has decreased between what civil services offer and the opportunities outside. In a bureaucracy, one scores over others in areas where the market is still not perfect. In everywhere else, anyone having reasonable wealth can claim equal services. Thirty years back it took years to get a landline telephone connection, buy a scooter/car or stay in a decent locality. Today, markets are improving and unless there is a situation like the Covid crisis, money acts as a better medium than connections in getting most services. Many perks in civil services are not established by rules but are customary and slowly they are being questioned. Some other strong incentives like a lifelong inflation-indexed pension have been done away with contributory pension investment. In the developed world, few countries can attract the best talent in public service and that shall happen on any country’s path to development.

Having said all this, my personal experience tells me that in initial years civil services scores better than the private sector. Salaries in the beginning in the private sector cannot match the creature comfort and importance that comes with most positions in bureaucracy but as years go by, the private sector catches up. If one can get selected for civil services, I believe they have the mettle to succeed anywhere else. 

In the end, do what your heart tells you to do. Try discounting the biases that silently creep in or the weight of aspirations of family and society. As I had said before, I say it again, civil services is a great career choice. Opt for it once you have considered everything. 

PS: The image is of my room in Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. Adarsh Singh , a dear friend/academy roommate asked to use it in my next LinkedIn article :)

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