UPSC row: Is BJP student wing batting for coaching institutes

Now that the government has decided not to include the marks of the English comprehension paper for merit or gradation in the Civil Services Aptitude Test, it might be a good time to ask just how many UPSC aspirants would actually have a serious problem with Std 10-level English in a test comprising mainly multiple choice questions.

Given that even schools where the medium of instruction is a regional language actually teach English till Class 10, this will likely be a tiny percentage of UPSC aspirants, led by what former UPSC member and ex defence secretary Vijay Singh has now called the "goons lobby".

According to a report in The Economic Times, Singh, who was a member of the UPSC when CSAT was introduced in 2011, believes it is the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad lobby that has caused the government to buckle and take the "absolutely retrograde" decision to exclude the Std 10-level English comprehension marks from the gradation process.
Representational image. Ibnlive

A screen grab of protests in Delhi. Courtesy Ibnlive

The ABVP, the students' wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party, has been at the forefront of protests against CSAT.

Singh pointed out that about half the UPSC aspirants who clear the exam are engineers and doctors. "Medicine and engineering are taught across the country only in English," said Singh.

The ABVP, in fact, has been demanding that the 2011 CSAT be scrapped altogether and exhaustively modified -- there is a possibility that only excluding the English comprehension marks may not put an end to the agitation.

The ABVP and the me-too National Students Union of India (NSUI), the Congress party's students' union, have both demanded that CSAT be scrapped. On Monday evening, following the government's announcement of a quick-fix, the protestors refused to budge, insisting that their demands be accepted in full, ie, a complete rollback of CSAT.

The country's civil services examination is conducted by the Union Public Service Commission in three stages -- preliminary (CSAT), main, and interview.

The ET report quoted the former UPSC member as saying the coaching institutes are a big lobby that must be looked at carefully in the context of the rising protests against CSAT. In fact, CSAT was introduced to encourage intelligent aspirants as opposed to the products of coaching institutes whose material was simply not up to the mark, Singh said.

"We must remember that the coaching institutes are a big and strong lobby in UP and Bihar," Singh is reported to have said.

CSAT comprises two compulsory papers of 200 marks each (CSAT I and CSAT II). CSAT II includes questions on comprehension, interpersonal skills, logical reasoning, general mental ability and the English language comprehension skills of Class 10 level. The English language comprehension skills component counts for just 20 marks.

In a recent television interview on the subject, Manipal Global Education chairman TV Mohandas Pai told CNN-IBN that probably the total number of aggrieved students is about 1,500, all "linked to some political party or the other".

In Pai's opinion, "If they cannot speak basic English we do not need them as administrative officers. These are minimum qualifications. A person may be a first class MA in Kannada language but what language will he speak in Uttar Pradesh? We are talking about the top 500 people in the country. If they do not have the knowledge of basic English, how could they aspire to lead the country?"

The ET report also points out that the UPSC had already studied the language issue carefully. "Former Chairperson of Centre of Indian Languages at JNU, Purushottam Agrawal, who was then a UPSC member, was extensively consulted," Singh said. "Even then, we did anticipate a problem but a considered decision was taken. But the government now has succumbed to the goons lobby."

The BJP has multiple reasons to consider very carefully the role of the ABVP in the UPSC row. For one, the party was unable to rein in its ABVP men and restrain then from leading loud protests on the streets of Delhi. Two, if the students' union speaks on behalf of coaching institutes, it would be a case of politicising what is really a commercial concern. And three, the fact that there is a compulsory English paper in the mains has been cleverly ignored by the protestors on the streets.