At the end of 2023, there is an outrageous news in India.
In Bihar, Kumar, a 23-year-old teacher, was "kidnapped" on his way home from work and was tied to a car by a group of strong men and transported to a village.
When Kumar got out of the car, he found that the kidnappers had arranged the wedding to marry the daughter of one of the kidnappers. Kumar cried and refused, and eventually married at gunpoint and vowed not to divorce before he was freed.
Kumar later called the police, who investigated Kumar's "old man's family".
It turned out that in order to find a backer for his family, the old man hired several gang members to kidnap the young talent Kumar.
The other party insisted that the marriage between the two had become a fact, but Kumar did not approve of the forced marriage, and finally separated from his "wife" with the help of his family and severed contact.
Kumar's experience may seem bizarre to the country, but it is very common in India.
Every year, there are thousands of cases of "kidnapping of grooms" across India, and most of the victims are young men who have just passed the Indian exam.
In the eyes of ordinary Indians, a man in public office is the pillar of the family for a lifetime, so even if the overlord is hard-handed, he must be recruited as a son-in-law.
In India, the chain of disdain for marriage is low among farmers and the unemployed, followed by some self-employed and odd workers. Further up are the employees of large companies, or doctors, engineers, civil servants, and when they reach this class, they begin to be robbed.
And above these groups, there is a group of India's most shining and unattainable people among the dragon and phoenix - the national civil servant. If you are admitted to the national civil service, no matter what your background, the threshold of your family will be broken by those who speak matchmakers.
India's state civil service system is inherited from the "British Empire civil service", and these thousands of people were formerly known as "senior civil servants". They are state administrators independent of party politics, free from any system interference, and have great privileges.
In order to serve this golden job, more than 1 million young people in India take the national examination every year, and its acceptance rate has long been less than 1 in 1,000, and the cruelty of elimination is amazing.
So how strict is the national examination in India? Can this system really change lives? Does the corruption and inefficiency of the Indian government have anything to do with the national examination?
[a]
Indian Kaogong: The second reincarnation of the flat-headed people
On the Internet, the East Asian region is called the "East Asian Monster Room", and some people call it the "East Asian Involution Room". Because the three countries of East Asia, China, Japan, and South Korea are all famous for involution.
From childhood to adulthood, no matter what the exam, it is a single-plank bridge, even if you graduate from college, there are still graduate school entrance examinations, public entrance examinations, and housing loans and car loans crush people.
In fact, not only in East Asia, but also in many countries, the civil service examination is the first choice for young people, such as our southwest neighbor, India, the world's most populous country, and the national civil service examination is also hell level.
India's civil service system is complex and divided into two types: local states and central.
India's local examinations are mediocre, while the central national civil service examination, that is, the "Indian national examination", is world-famous, and its difficulty, volume, and darkness are far beyond those of ordinary countries, and even more powerful than the three countries in East Asia.
For example, you can realize that the number of people in our country's 2023 national examination is nearly 2.3 million, and nearly 40,000 people will be enrolled, and more than 50 people will be able to take one. India's national examination has more than 1.3 million students, only less than 1,000 people are enrolled, and the acceptance rate is less than 1,200.
Today, India is the world's fifth-largest economic power, not far behind Germany. But in terms of per capita, India's per capita GDP is just over $3,300, which is not ranked in the world, and it ranks last along with black African countries.
The gap between the rich and the poor, between urban and rural areas, and between castes in India is a perennial problem. India's lower castes, rural populations, and urban poor have very little access to education and medical resources.
In India, 300 million people are illiterate, 200 million are between starvation and semi-starvation, and in the first decade of the 21st century, more than 300,000 Indian farmers committed suicide due to poverty.
In the high-rise buildings of Mumbai, elite Brahmins, who speak pure English, earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and live the same way as in Europe and the United States, while in the slums a few hundred meters away, barefoot children do not go to school, pick up garbage for food, and are generally malnourished.
This social phenomenon, a class solidification that is unheard of in the modern world, is enough to disgrace India's vaunted democracy.
Therefore, the Indian government needs a kind of "ladder to heaven" to open up the lowest and most top layers of society, give hope to the people in an absolutely equal way, and also silence foreigners.
This path is the open public service examination, that is, the examination preparation and public examination.
The more realistic reason is that India's poverty rate is more than 50%, nearly 800 million people are below the poverty line, 300 million people are extremely poor, and the average local income is more than 13,000 rupees, equivalent to more than 1,100 yuan.
The average income is 1,100 yuan, which means that a large part of the population has a monthly income of several hundred yuan.
No matter how poor they were before, exams can change lives, giving desperate poor people a glimmer of hope.
As long as a person serves the country's job, whether he is a teacher or a low-level civil servant, his guaranteed income is five or six times that of this, and he is generally not unemployed, and there is a stable promotion mechanism.
Whether you are a teacher, a firefighter, or a government employee, you can get a relatively stable job, a decent salary, and the respect of those around you.
[two]
Indian National Exam: The hardest hellish exam in history
Whether you are a Litah or a Brahmin, whether you are a Hindu, a Sikh, or a Muslim, as long as you have a certain degree or professional skills certificate, and you have no criminal record, you can take the exam.
The road looks wide and wide, and millions of people take the teacher exams, police exams, fire exams, state civil service exams, and special vocational skills exams every year.
The acceptance rate and treatment of these exams also vary, and there are differences in the economic level of each state's policies.
Every year, UPSC selects hundreds of people to join the federal civil service, divided into four major systems: government, police, foreign affairs, and forestry.
In total, there are more than 7,000 people in this group of federal civil servants, who directly or indirectly manage more than 10 million government workers across India.
If we compare them to each other, we can regard these more than 7,000 people as "officials", and most of the people who do things below them are "officials".
Although India's UPSC system was created after India's independence, the roots of this system have a history of hundreds of years, and can be traced back to the "East India Company Civil Service" in the 18th century.
At that time, the East India Company controlled the whole of South Asia and made huge profits from grain, cotton, tea, and opium every year, but at the same time, the corruption problem within the company was very serious, and the administrative efficiency was very low, which made the East India Company's top management very distressed.
Therefore, they took the lead in proposing to replace the children of the nobility and officers with professional bureaucrats, and to elect officials by equal professional examinations and ability tests.
To this end, the East India Company established a specialized school for government training to train professional officials, and then admitted them on the basis of a complex examination, a system that is also said to have been influenced by the East Asian imperial examination system.
From the time of the East India Company, the government provided the best conditions for senior civil servants, or civil servants of the state.
For centuries, a team of senior civil servants who were directly accountable to the highest authorities were the backbone of India, and their professionalism, loyalty, and integrity made modern Indian colonies so great.
After India's independence, it inherited a complete civil service system, and for a country that implements a federal republic, the civil service system has been tested by history and is most suitable for India's "bulk" national conditions.
Because India itself has an aristocracy, that is, a high caste, and if high-ranking cadres are not selected by harsh examinations, then the country will be monopolized by a few people and become feudal.
In addition to the professional knowledge of diplomacy, government affairs, police, and science, the content of the Indian national examination also covers a wide range of humanities and social sciences, including history, philosophy, geography, ethnicity, and religion.
In addition, the exam also requires English speaking and writing skills, and a large number of oral expressions must be done.
The Indian national examination is registered in the spring of each year, and the positions and numbers recruited are announced in February, and the number of applicants is counted. All young people between the ages of 21 and 31 with a government-recognized university degree are eligible to apply.
The first round of exams, the pre-exams, which are held in June every year, consists of hundreds of questions on 20 sheets of paper, all of which are multiple-choice questions.
Some people may think that the multiple-choice questions are very simple, and the answers can be obtained. However, the multiple-choice questions in the Indian national examination are unimaginably difficult, various subjects are mixed together, and the order of the questions is completely illogical:
The first question asks about the literary characteristics and cultural achievements of the Dravidian people of ancient India, the second is the yield of government bonds of the Indian government, and the next question is the degree of rock weathering in the faults of the western coast of India......
History, biology, geography, and politics are mixed together, and after a hundred questions, the confidence of ordinary people has been destroyed.
This is followed by a second exam, which measures logic, reasoning, and English proficiency, also with multiple-choice questions. After the two exams, 900,000 of the 1 million candidates will be eliminated, and the remaining talents will enter the next level of "official exams".
The second round of exams is 10 times more difficult than the first round, and candidates have to take 9 exams, 4 general exams, 2 professional course exams, 2 language exams, and 1 professional thesis.
The main body of these exams is current politics, starting from the current political and economic environment in India, with the international situation, ethnic contradictions, and economic difficulties, so that candidates can "give advice" to the government.
Candidates have to make subjective analyses such as "changes in the economic relations between Southeast Asia and India" and "the impact of the rise of the new energy industry on India", which can be imagined as difficult.
This round of exams is generally attended by 100,000 people, and about 2,000 people are finally admitted. These 2,000 people enter the final interview, and the examiner then examines their spoken English, expression skills, and personality traits, and finally brutally lays off more than 50% of them.
The rest is the ultimate winner.
[three]
A dull "winner's club"
India's national examination, the whole examination process before and after more than half a year, after the examination in February of the following year, the names of the people on the gold list will be published in the newspaper in their hometowns, all the dignitaries and dignitaries come to congratulate them, and the rich people who say their relatives line up in a long line.
After this hellish round of examinations, candidates will be intensively trained for one to two years before going to the central or local government.
Therefore, in the West, the reputation of India's national examination is much louder than that of East Asian countries.
Due to the great difference in treatment, good people on the Internet have studied this system, and finally found that this is the real modern version of the "imperial examination system", except for the content of the examination, it is almost exactly the same as the ancient imperial examination on the mainland.
No matter how difficult a path is, as long as there is enough gold content, there will definitely be no shortage of followers. On the road to the national examination in India, there are millions of people taking the exam every year, and the number of people preparing for the national examination in India as a whole is two to three million.
In big cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata, there are many cram schools dedicated to the national examination.
Candidates who have the ability to challenge the national examination are often low-level civil servants, employees of large companies, and doctors, who are good at studying and taking exams, but they also have to enroll in classes for tutoring.
The fee for the Indian national examination cram school is more than 100,000 rupees a year, and classes are held almost all year round, so students need to study on a full-time basis, and rely on their own savings or family support for food, clothing, housing and transportation.
Before entering the examination room for the first time, candidates generally study for more than a year, and almost no one can take the exam at one time, and there are many people who have completed five or six exams.
For candidates with average family conditions, cram school review for five or six years costs hundreds of thousands of rupees, plus food and rent, and even family expenses, and the family will have to empty their family funds for a few years of public examination.
Since the national examination is a choice to gamble on the fate of the whole family, if you don't pass the exam in the end, it will be a heavy blow to the whole family.
Therefore, every year when the list is released, some people set off fireworks, and there are always candidates who commit suicide, and the Indian media often use this to make an article and criticize the cruelty of the Indian cultural system.
The top 60 in the Indian national examination can get special training, and can work directly in a place, often as the leader in the county, just like the imperial examination in ancient China, after being on the list, they will be sent to the local area as a county commander to test the waters.
At first glance, this kind of carefully selected people are good enough to lead the locality, but in fact they are still inexperienced and do not know much about the local situation.
They are more like "messengers" sent by the central government to supervise government operations, and it is the grassroots civil servants and external employees who really do the work.
And once the public examination is ashore, for the Indian state civil servants, the work is secondary, and their main job is to enjoy life.
India's national civil servants often drive special cars, police officers open the way, chiefs of various departments pick up and drop, and local celebrities line up to meet each other, which makes these young people who have just crossed the single-plank bridge and joined the "winners' club" out of balance.
However, corruption in the Indian government is well known, and corruption in civil servants is regarded as a "privilege", which seems to be a matter of course.
In 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the civil service should be overhauled to make this group hardworking and incorruptible.
But although Modi is tough and resolute, this action is actually retained at the level of slogans. Because the civil service is so united, they can stand up to the government, and it is difficult for the Modi government to confront it.
In the end, Modi could only propose a performance appraisal system once every 15 years, which anyone with a discerning eye knows is still fooling the people.
To this day, the quantification of the work results of Indian civil servants and the supervision of corruption are still a big problem, because the team is small, and they have an internal sequence of years of merit, as long as they work for as many years, they can become high-level officials, which leads to many civil servants not doing their jobs properly.
Modi's failure to push through a sweeping reform of the civil service has become an important weapon for his political opponents to attack him.
However, with the increasing number of candidates in recent years, the number of candidates has exceeded 1.3 million, and the number is still increasing, and the Indian government is also considering expanding the ranks and diverting candidates.
Perhaps in the near future, the terrifying Indian national exam will also be more humane and down-to-earth.
Literature / Shogakuno
Resources:
1. "India's Civil Service Examination Becomes the World's Most Difficult", Ma Huan
2. "The World's Hardest Civil Service Exam", Wu Shunmian