Plan B?

Some of my friends were quite eager to know what kind of questions one gets in the Civil Services-Main Exam (a.k.a. IAS exam) conducted by the UPSC. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Five papers. While the last two papers - English and any Indian language - were only qualifying in nature, the first three papers would matter a lot in deciding whether one got a chance to sit for the personality test in April 2009. Two papers of General studies (GS) and one Essay paper. As it gets boring to type as well to read the entire paper, I have given samples from the GS papers.

* "The emergence of new social classes in British India was the direct consequence of the establishment of new social economy, new state system, administrative machinery and Western education." Discuss. (150 words/15 marks)
* Golkonda Fort (20/2)
* Bring out the pros and cons of Special Economic Zones (150/15)
* Nor' westers (20/2)
* Discuss the major extra-constitutional factors influencing the federal polity in the country. (250/30)
* Discuss the composition and functions of the Union Public Service Commission. (150/15)
* Discuss the problems in achieving National Integration in India. (150/15)
* The conditions of urban poor are more deplorable than that of their rural counterparts." Give your views. (250/30)
* Lakshmi Mittal (20/2)

The above are from the GS - I paper. The GS papers are for 300 marks each, and one gets three hours for each paper. There is a two-hour break before one takes the GS - II paper.

* India and the New World Order (150 words/30 marks)
* India-Nigeria: Abuja Declaration (20/2)
* Indian diaspora and Bollywood (20/2)
* Access the performance of India in attracting Foreign Direct Investment(FDI). (250/30)
* NAMA (20/2)
* Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (150/15)
* INTERPOL (20/2)
* In what way "Medical Biotechnology" and "Bioengineering" are useful for technological development of India? (250/30)
* Spintronics (20/2)
* Sappan (20/2)
* Components of Robots (20/2)
* A question on representation of data by a suitable diagram.(like histogram, pie chart etc) (6 marks)
* The mean monthly income of a person is Rs.18190 and his mean monthly expenditure comes out to be Rs.17930. What is his average monthly saving? (2)

Essay paper. One gets to choose a topic from a basket of six topics. The essay paper is also for three hours. It carries 200 marks. No specific word limit.

* Is an egalitarian society possible by educating the masses?
* Discipline means success, anarchy means ruins.
* Urbanisation and its hazards.

Four more papers are remaining. Two each for the two optional subjects that one gets to choose from a range that stretches from Russian literature to Zoology.

Well, let me be frank and tell you what I felt during the Exam. I sincerely hope that the UPSC reduces the age limit for the candidates (without affecting the number of attmepts one gets. this can be done by shortening the cycle time of the Exam) I thought I was very old to sit and take this Exam, which anyone above 21 years can take. But at the Exam centre I felt I'm quite young! I genuinely feel hundreds of candidates are wasting the wonderful phase of their lives by mechanically appearing in the Exam, year after year, for many years. Some of my friends have spent more than five years in this Exam, without any result. It saddens me.

While I agree that dreams need perseverance, what hurts me is the fact that many candidates do not have a Plan B. So suddenly one fine morning, after exhausting all the attempts over the years, one realises one does not have a place to go. One is not equipped to find a decent job; an alternative career. My sincere wish is that the Civil Service aspirants while chasing their dreams, should also work on their fallback options - without mindlessly escalating their commitment year after year.

If-else

I had CP-I and CP-II during my initial years of engineering. CP = Computer Programming. We were taught C and UNIX. One of the special features of my college was that the students had the option of attending the classes of any lecturer (instructor), of their own choice. This was possible as the same course was taught by many lecturers. Based on one's convenience and need one was free to attend anyone. Convenience, because the different lectures handled the classes during different hours. Some of them in the mornings, some in the second half. Generally, most of us avoided the post-lunch classes - for the obvious reason.

This method of teaching was like a free market. It boosted the competition among the instructors; jacked up the quality of the lectures; gave consumer (us) choices. I guess around six instructors handled CP-I. The most famous one was a lady instructor. She was brilliant; her overflowing classroom stood testimony to the fact. Students used to reserve seats for her class well in advance. Even the carpet area was crammed. In fact, left with no choice a few even sat outside the classroom to just hear her! That was the price the market (students) paid for quality. I was like a venture capitalist. I attended a new comer's lecture. There were some three other students in his class. We felt privileged. Sometimes, lonely as well!

Wait a minute...I think I wanted to say something else in this post. Yeah..it was about choices. If there was something that we used in most of the programs it was the If-else loop. It comes quite handy in all programs. The syntax goes like this:

If (condition is met)
{do this}
else
{do this}

Right from the simple program needed to check whether a word is a palindrome or not to huge programs needed to hack passwords, one had to use the if-else loop. I wish real-life decision-making were so simple!

In real life the problem is not generally with "what to do" but it is with the "condition to be met". For example, on a Monday morning following an extended week end, if you are confused about which dress to wear the problem is not with the availability of choices, but with the "condition". For example, if (?) {khaki trousers, white full shirt} else {jet black formal trousers, sky blue full shirt}. Most of us have the choices, but "?" is the question mark! What is the condition to be met? Is it comfort/professional need/attitude/need to impress/something else? In this case, let us assume the "?" is to impress a team-mate. Based on this the if-else loop runs and we get to decide what to wear.

But the problem far from being over, as the answer to the "?" changes every morning. There are many other variables that go on to decide what comes in place of "?".

In fact we all have a separate program, whose output replaces "?" every morning. That program has many variables and a few more if-else loops! This coupled with an array of choices, especially for the ladies, creates a very complex multiple if-else loops whose output gets into the actual program, which again has multiple if-else loops that decides what one wears on a Monday morning! And just remember, after all this program was to decide which dress to wear!

What about the complexities involved in deciding, say a career or a spouse or a car? Mind-boggling! I do not dare to even attempt thinking of those programs in our heads that go into making such decisions! Added to the complexities is the fact that the output is highly subjective. What the programmer perceives as the correct result might invite insults from others. This typically happens when I see yellow Esteems with loud music! So, in many cases the outsider's perception about the quality of the output would also be getting into the if-else loop as a variable. But again, the weightage given to this variable varies from one to another. People with conformist mindset give this variable a very high weightage. On the other hand innovators and leaders might assign a default value, int wt=0. I say leaders because, though they might assign a good weightage to what others say they also a separate program to check up whether what is being said is sensible or not. For instance, there was a widespread dissent within the Congress party when Gandhi withdrew the Non Cooperation Movement abruptly after the Chauri Chaura incident. It was a highly unpopular decision during those times. But the leader, Gandhi, stood by that. That was because Gandhi had "filters" in his program. Those filters out rightly took the default value if others opinion swayed even a bit from his path of non-violence.

And that yellow Esteem was just to drive home the point; not to tell you that you could be a great leader if you have a car with a crazy colour!

But what decides whether one just follows or decides? I think education has a major role to play here. As someone had said Education is what is left once you have forgotten all the facts; education is not about asking students to memorise multiplication tables, the periodic table and the Clarke's tables! To put it simpler, the role of education is to shape one's personality. The teachers and parents are the ones who decide what type of person a kid turns into. Whether a kid becomes one more sheep in the herd or a pioneer depends on the kind of learning s/he is exposed to. Right from the nursery school days, importance is to be given to shaping a child's thinking. The child should be given more and more chances to take decisions; the child should also be made to know that it is okay to fail, as long as there is a learning from the bad decision. None can take 100% perfect decisions, all the 100 times.

Of course in shopping malls I have seen many tiny children instructing their parents where to go, what to buy, when to eat etc. The parents also oblige. I'm happy about it as long as it does not teach the kid how to be stubborn and win your way! It might be confusing, but yes - there has to be a delicate balance between being stubborn and being innovative; being a conformist and being an explorer. Who says parenting is an easy job?

But inside the classrooms, where the kids spend a major part of their lives, very little is done to kindle original thinking. In most of the schools the teachers' main goal is to keep the kids under "control". While I have a high regard for the teaching profession, I'm not okay with the system that makes a little kid memorise 16X16, but fails to make him/her ask "how?"; the system that helps little kids memorise the elements in a periodic table but fails to make them innovate; a system that wants you to follow others - not decide for yourself.

Bubbles