Merit’s Mask: How India’s Civil Service Sidelines Social Justice

Merit’s Mask: How India’s Civil Service Sidelines Social Justice

The UPSC stands at a perilous crossroads as backlogs, lateral entry and interview bias threaten its founding promise of equal opportunity.

Every summer, India’s media hails the toppers of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) Civil Services Examination with near-religious fervour. This year was no different. Names, photographs and caste affiliations of high-ranking candidates from marginalised communities were circulated with pride, as if the triumph of a few could mask the quiet erosion of systemic safeguards meant for many. But behind the confetti lies a grimmer story of backlogged reservations, stealthy lateral entries and an interview system that rewards polish over potential. India’s civil services, far from being the great leveller envisioned in the Constitution, are becoming a fortress of privilege.

Central to this problem is the crumbling edifice of reservations for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Although the Constitution mandates quotas of 15 percentage, 7.5 percentage and 27 percentage for SCs, STs, and OBCs respectively in government employment, actual representation is slipping. The reasons are not accidental; they are structural, bureaucratic and increasingly political.

Consider first the vanishing opportunities. According to scholars Christophe Jaffrelot and Kalaiyarasan, the number of candidates shortlisted by UPSC dropped from 1,236 in 2014 to just 759 in 2018 (a fall of nearly 40 percent). This decline came at a time when central government vacancies rose, from 550,000 in 2006 to 750,000 in 2014. There are no reliable figures since, but the absence of data is itself telling. Even as the number of posts grows, reserved posts remain unfilled. The number of central government employees declined from 32.7 lakh in 2003 to 26.3 lakh in 2012. The number of SC employees dropped 16 percent despite the rising share of their mandated representation.

The root of this attrition lies partly in what is absent - recruitment - but also in what has been added: lateral entry. Marketed as a way to infuse technocratic expertise into sclerotic bureaucracy, the scheme has instead become a backdoor that circumvents reservation entirely. In 2019, 89 individuals were shortlisted for 10 Joint Secretary-level posts, none of them subject to reservation. By 2024, the government expanded the programme to 45 key positions - 10 Joint Secretaries and 35 Directors or Deputy Secretaries. Not only does the government refuse to collect caste-based data on these hires, but a significant majority - 35 of 63 lateral entrants to date - have come from the private sector, where the composition overwhelmingly favours upper castes.

This dilution of affirmative action is most evident at the top. As per data compiled by IRS officer and author Nethra Pal, SC, ST, and OBC officers comprise just 4.39 percentage of Secretaries in the central government. STs and OBCs have zero representation at this level. General category officers make up a staggering 95.5 percentage. Even at the Director level, where the mandated quota adds up to 49.5 percentage, actual representation remains in the low teens. Of the 928 officers above this level, only 120 (or 13 percent) are SC or ST, far short of the 208 mandated under policy.

This sharp decline in representation as one climbs the bureaucratic ladder raises uncomfortable questions. One answer may lie in the deeply flawed selection process itself, particularly the interview or Personality Test conducted by UPSC. According to Pal’s decade-long study of 10,678 candidates between 2007 and 2017, the average marks gap between General and reserved category candidates was minimal, roughly two to five percent overall. In written tests, the gap narrows further, with SC and ST candidates scoring almost on par with their General counterparts. Yet during interviews, these same candidates are systematically marked down.

This pattern is more than anecdotal. In the top 100 SC candidates studied, only one scored more than 200 out of 300 marks in the Personality Test, despite strong performance in the written exam. Allegations of caste-based discrimination have emerged repeatedly. In 2021, Delhi’s Social Welfare Minister Rajendra Pal Gautam wrote to the UPSC Chairman urging anonymised interviews, citing complaints from SC/ST candidates. He suggested randomly mixing candidates instead of grouping them by reservation status. The UPSC has yet to act.

In 2023, the All-India OBC Students Association pointed to systemic evasion of quotas, especially through the now-routine practice of declaring reserved candidates ‘not found suitable’ to justify not filling vacancies.

The Indian state appears to be increasingly relying on informal mechanisms - lateral entry, opaque interviews and selective appointments - to tilt the scales back in favour of entrenched elites.

This is not a call to abandon merit but to reimagine it. If merit is defined solely by the social capital of English fluency, urbane manners or elite education - often concentrated in the upper castes - then the system is not neutral; it is rigged. True meritocracy in a deeply unequal society demands recognising and correcting for structural disadvantages, not reinforcing them.

India needs a comprehensive law to clear reservation backlogs, a freeze on lateral appointments without proportional representation, and above all, transparency in interviews. Publish caste-wise interview scores. Anonymize identities. Restore faith in a system that is meant to serve all, not just the privileged few.

Otherwise, merit will remain a mask worn by those already ahead, while the rest keep running with their shoelaces tied.

(The writer has completed his Masters in Public Policy and Governance from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Views personal.)