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UPSC exam row: Centre says English marks should not be included

Why is it backward ? there are many countries out there that stick to their native languages .. If you are going to send a diplomat to China you have to know Chinese , or if your going to Germany you have to know German knowing English in these countries will be rather useless .. So its not really as much as a big issue as its being propagated .

Those countries have only one language.. Do not compare it to India which have diverse culture and language..Let me ask you something if you are going to China and you need some one to translate what you are saying to Chinese, isnt it easier to find a translator who knows Chinese and English rather than one who knows your regional language and Chinese??

If it is not a big issue then why is the need of removing English mate?

what is the problem with current setup?

Some idiots think using English means we have slave mentality!!
 
Retarded move.How will those people who use english compete in UPSC then?

You can write in English as well , only now people who only know regional languages will be able to provide a competition
 
In my home state Kerala i see many people who are extremely good at maths and science but they unfortunately fail to get a decent govt. job or pass IAS because they are weak in English . Its lost Talent

So using Hindi is going to save that??

@Star Wars mate, the interview was conducted in Hindi or English language. How can some one from South India excel in an interview which will be conducted in Hindi..
 
In my home state Kerala i see many people who are extremely good at maths and science but they unfortunately fail to get a decent govt. job or pass IAS because they are weak in English . Its lost Talent
hey,,everybody else has same odds....so not enough

Some idiots think using English means we have slave mentality!!
i dont understand,,how they plan to learn more,,,,,as u climb the educational ladder almost everything can be found in english,,,,desi languages,,umm not so much
 
i dont understand,,how they plan to learn more,,,,,as u climb the educational ladder almost everything can be found in english,,,,desi languages,,umm not so much

These guys are giving a stick to regional politicians which will make good use of it. Already Tamil parties started protesting.. These kind of stupid moves will create chaos..
 
These students want to have the cake and eat it too. Soon they'll ask for doing away with the UPSC and all competitive/entrance exams altogether because they're in English!!

Great! So we'll then have a million IAS babus entering South Block every year! Add another million entering IIMs and IITs every year too!

Fancy way of providing employment, what? I love it! :yahoo:
 
Those countries have only one language.. Do not compare it to India which have diverse culture and language..Let me ask you something if you are going to China and you need some one to translate what you are saying to Chinese, isnt it easier to find a translator who knows Chinese and English rather than one who knows your regional language and Chinese??

If it is not a big issue then why is the need of removing English mate?
Straw man argument . What the point in knowing English if you are going to work in a place like Russia ? Are you going to have 24 hours translator ? .Where is it removing English ? The point is only those people with the know how of the language will be able to go there . I know people working in Embassy . Besides you are also assuming those who pass the IAS will only know regional languages , and also assuming those who know regional languages will all end up in Embassies somewhere . If you are going to China to work and don't know Chinese then you should not go there , same with any other country .So the problem that you described wont ever happen .

Some idiots think using English means we have slave mentality!!

And some Idiots think using regional languages makes you backward . If you do not know about the problem its best to keep your mouth shut . Many people do not know English and they feel that they are being discriminated against as they have to learn English to write the Exams and they are not allowed to write exams in their regional languages. I have personally seen a lot of talent lost because of these "English" paper Model . Its regional language and not Hindi alone.
 
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Nothing doing.How is someone knowing only refional languages i.e, tamil,malayalam etc going to benefit from this?This seems to benefit strictly hindi users.
IAS officers should know English or hindi at least,preferably english in my opinion.

@OrionHunter
I am assuming these people will not have as much opportunities as folks who know the English Language .Besides they will only recruit what they must.

So using Hindi is going to save that??
@Star Wars mate, the interview was conducted in Hindi or English language. How can some one from South India excel in an interview which will be conducted in Hindi..

Keralites will be allowed to write in Malayalam , as said in 2nd post , its regional language lobby and not Hindi alone ...
 
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@OrionHunter @seiko @halupridol

Following protests by civil services aspirants who have been demanding the scrapping of Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) calling it discriminatory against Humanities students and those with Hindi background, the Centre Tuesday asked the UPSC to postpone the preliminary examination slated for August 24.

What is the controversy?

* At the heart of the matter is the change of pattern the UPSC introduced in the Civil Services Preliminary Exam starting 2011. Till 2010, the exam used to have two papers — one on general studies and one on an optional subject where aspirants could choose one of 23 listed subjects. This was changed from 2011 onwards, when the UPSC decided to replace the optional subject paper with a paper that tests the aspirants’ aptitude. The syllabus for this paper, protesting aspirants allege, is heavily tilted in favour of those from the Science or, more specifically, Engineering background and is discriminatory against students from Humanities, particularly those who have studied in Hindi-medium.

What is the syllabus for this second paper?
* The second paper in the preliminary exam comprises comprehension, interpersonal skills including communication skills, logical reasoning and analytical ability, decision making and problem solving, general mental ability, basic numeracy (numbers and their relations, orders of magnitude, etc — Class X level), data interpretation (charts, graphs, tables, data sufficiency, etc — Class X level) and English language comprehension skills (Class X level).

Why are the protesters calling this syllabus discriminatory?

* They feel it favours Science and \Engineering students. Questions related to mathematics, they feel, put students from Humanities at a disadvantage. They have also alleged that English language comprehension skills, which the second paper tests, is discriminatory against students from a Hindi-medium background. The protesters claim that since the changes were introduced in 2011, the number of Humanities students clearing the preliminary exam has fallen drastically, while the number of those with Science/Engineering background has shot up.

How is the government addressing the problem?

* The matter has been raised by several MPs in the ongoing Parliament session. On Tuesday, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said the government was urging the UPSC and the committee constituted to look into the matter to submit its report at the earliest. Singh also said UPSC should consider postponing the date of the exam. “We would write to the UPSC and the committee that has been constituted to submit this report to expedite the process, address their concerns judiciously and sympathetically and not let them (the aspirants) go with a feeling that they have been wronged on account of any bias towards any language… There should be no injustice regarding the language and the government does not support this,” the minister said.


And the winner is English | The Indian Express

Some years ago, a renowned Indian academic stunned me during a casual dinner conversation. I was talking to her about my writings in Hindi as well as English. Writing in Hindi was important for pedagogic reasons, she agreed. But she was shocked when I insisted that I write some of my articles originally in Hindi. “Languages like Hindi and Tamil are good for street conversation. But surely you cannot do conceptual thinking in these languages, the way you can in English and French,” she said.

That conversation has stayed with me, for it revealed in a flash something we all take for granted. She had said what our elites believe but do not say openly. Indian languages are believed to be inferior languages and those who express themselves principally in an Indian language are assumed to be inferior beings.

Like gender and race, inequality of language is so obvious and omnipresent that we take it for granted. We stop noticing the elephant in the room. Advertisements for English speaking courses, ever mushrooming English medium “public” schools, everyone at social conversations trying to impress one another with their limited English, parents speaking to their children in rudimentary English. We see and experience it every day. But we dare not name this linguistic apartheid.

The language question lies at the heart of the current controversy about the civil services examination of the UPSC. Much of the debate in the English media distracts our attention away from this core issue. The agitators themselves are much clearer, though they could have posed this issue more sharply.

The protest is not against an aptitude test per se, though some protesters seem to say so. All over the world, aptitude tests are a standard way of judging a candidate’s suitability for a job. You can dispute whether a particular aptitude test fits the bill, but not the very idea of an aptitude test. There can be a debate about the right mix of skills needed for being a civil servant. (My colleague, Manish Sisodia, thinks you need an “attitude test” — a test of social skills and emotional intelligence — for this job.) But it would be hard to dispute that certain basic analytical, linguistic and quantitative skills are a must.

Similarly, though there is something to the humanities versus science subjects dispute, this is not the heart of the matter. It is true that over the years, students with a background in engineering and management have come to do much better than others in the civil services examination. But then, medicine, engineering and management tend to draw a disproportionately bigger share of the talent pool of our school-leaving students. Science students may be more familiar with the format of the CSAT, but it is disingenuous to argue that tests of reasoning and quantitative skills are necessarily loaded in

Finally, this protest is neither for Hindi nor against English. The protesters have gone out of their way to clarify that they are not making a special case for Hindi. Their point applies to all the Indian languages, or “bhashas” as U.R. Ananthamurthy would have it. They have repeatedly stated that they are not against English. They have not raised objections to the qualifying paper in the Main examination that tests English language proficiency. The media, especially the English media, has simply not understood that someone could raise the language question without being either pro-Hindi or anti-English.

Thus, this agitation is not against English but against the dominance of English. It is against the presumption that the national talent resides within the tiny pool of English speakers. It is not for privileging Hindi but for providing a level playing field for all Indian languages vis-à-vis English. Behind this seemingly innocuous and overblown dispute about the CSAT paper lies a deeper challenge to the informal system of linguistic apartheid in our country.

The real problem with the civil services examination is the insidious manner in which it privileges English. A test of aptitude can and should test linguistic skills, not language proficiency as it currently does. The level of English expected, class X or higher, is besides the point. The relevant question is why linguistic ability is tested only through English and not any bhasha. This is why the complaint about the quality of translation in the CSAT question paper is not a small detail. It shows that this test is not designed to be language neutral. Model answer papers for general studies are available only in English and thus work against bhasha candidates. The interview process also works against those who are not fluent in English. The protesters are upset, and rightly so, about being treated as second-rate examinees. They are protesting against an unjust power equation written into the supposedly objective system of examination.


Empirical evidence bears out this suspicion. Over three decades, the proportion of bhasha students had gone up, opening the doors of this elite service for students from non-elite backgrounds. The new system introduced in 2011 reversed this trend. The proportion of non-English medium students in the Main examination plummeted from 44 per cent in 2008-10 (three year average) to just 18 per cent in 2011-12. Though the formal report for 2013 is not yet in, the situation has reportedly worsened. The proportion of Hindi medium students among the finally selected students is estimated to be just 3 per cent, down from 25 per cent in 2009.

The CSAT paper, and the civil services examination in general, is just the tip of the iceberg. The entire system of higher education that controls white collar jobs is loaded against bhasha medium students. More often than not, they need to switch overnight to the English medium to enter the best institutions in the country. Even if the institution formally permits one or more Indian language as the medium of examination,there are multiple informal barriers at each step: syllabi, prescribed books, classroom teaching, question papers and examiners are all biased in favour of English. Bhasha medium students are consigned to lower rung institutions or to the lower academic rung of the better institutions. They are made to swim against the current all the way. The agitation against the civil services examination is a protest against the entire system that is rigged against Indian languages.

This is why I celebrate and salute this agitation. If it can avoid distractions to focus on its core issue, refuse to be bought with sops like one additional chance for examination, and not fall prey to the machinations of the ruling party and its agents, it can perhaps mitigate the effects of our desi linguistic apartheid. This may well be our last chance.


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Read the whole thing and not just the parts i have highlighted .. The whole controversy are over the changes made in 2011 which is conveniently being ignored by English Media ..
 
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@OrionHunter @seiko @halupridol
Read the whole thing and not just the parts i have highlighted .. The whole controversy are over the changes made in 2011 which is conveniently being ignored by English Media ..
Firstly, why introduce the CSAT exam at all? It wasn't there till 2011. All went well for the past many decades. Why suddenly shake the barrel? Who's brainwave was this?

Secondly, why not scrap the CSAT completely and return to status quo that used to exist prior to 2011?

Or am I missing something here?
 
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