The Day of the Government Exam…

Corporate MNC cherry pick candidates and put them in a tournament where being above average would not take you to the next level; you have to be exemplary. And if you learn early (which most people do) that you can never make it to the top you quit the tournament or keep swarming in the bottomless pit. But  if  you can somehow reach the top 5% of the Pyramid you receive 70% of the revenue. This business model is followed by everyone who runs an organisation from the Tata's to Taliban and from McDonalds to Maoists. It's human nature to take part in a tournament where the incentives are visible and high. The lifestyle of the top 5% not only attracts swarming freshers (who constitute 95% of the organization)  but it also keeps their moral high with dreams of someday making it to the top regardless of the modest incentive they  receive. 

So you would agree with me why there is a trend for government service where you can supposedly make good money while still being at the bottom.

Recruitment exams for Government Services in India is a serious and egalitarian business, with more number of evangelicals employed to prepare the students and publish books than the actual number of students being successful in such exams. It doesn’t matter whether you are prepared to take such an exam or not. Nor even does it matter which side of the economical scale you were born. You ought to take it if you don’t want to seriously rattle the bearings of your consciousness. If nothing else, repeatedly appearing for such exams would prevent your subconscious trajectory from falling in a downward spiral of indigence. Before the Narashima Rao Government would go to the IMF in 1993-94 and before the all powerful IMF could appoint ‘their man’ Manmohan Singh as the Finance Minister of India, The economic downturn in India had cast a deeper impact on the psyche of the generation, which the statisticians failed to record and is responsible for their parochial views on economic matters. Such huge number of students taking a test where the success rate is anything but normal, for a protracted period of time, can be attributed to the economic downturn and the macabre and dubious nature of private enterprises in independent India. 

Corporate MNC cherry pick candidates and put them in a tournament where being above average would not take you to the next level; you have to be exemplary. And if you learn early (which most people do) that you can never make it to the top you quit the tournament or keep swarming in the bottomless pit. But  if  you can somehow reach the top 5% of the Pyramid you receive 70% of the revenue. 

Now I would put down my experience of a certain IBPS exam that could open the portals of Probationary Officer in any of the 19 public sector banks. In one of those Sundays in late autumn, with enough stoicism to appear ‘just out of hospital’ but nonetheless, least a girl sees me in this condition, I managed to walk with a swagger expected from a self respecting 26 year old, who just earned a lakh of rupees, but that doesn’t count for your parents who have endured the depression of the 70’s to late 90’s, long enough to develop enduring suspicion ‘private awpishhh e chakri..Not good!!’

At 7 am - With a sullen look on my face I put on a garb of crisp ironed white shirt and trousers (not t-shirt and jeans that I usually do) to appear tranquil amidst the conundrum and to look impregnable for the Strong exam I had to suffer in the coming hours.

At 8am – I take the morning train to the city while still being in such a state of delirium that didn’t even care to take the empty window seat, which I usually fight for during better times.

At 9.05 am - sweating and flustered for being late I finally reach the derelict British era High School, in a nondescript part of the town (ie Howrah) which is famous for vegetable and fish markets on the open roads. I shuffle my way through the thousands and thousands and thousands of parents who had gathered outside the gate. For a moment I did loose my mind. Was this a govt exam for adults or was there an admission for nursery classes going on!! Burly truculent parents guffawed loudly and looked disparagingly at lesser mortals. Well you could tell from this that they were from the higher side of the economical scale. You could identify their ‘bachaaaaas’ in the room by their articulate clothing, taciturn way of speaking, shoes and watches from the high streets, precarious look in their eyes when they talk to you (if you are from the other side). The parents from the other side of the divide also came, but you had to look hard to notice them. Their ‘bachas’ were benign, with a servile look on their eye, and a munificent behavior. Though I quite liked the other side, they lacked the killer street fighter instincts most required for success.

At 1 pm - 4 hours since the exam began and half an hour still left to go home, a sense of ennui engulfs the room and grips me more as my mind has stopped working after the little food I had taken had vanished deep in my stomach. Nor was the room in which I was sitting any good place to seat, with small benches unfit for the muscles we have added since we left school, and a smell that emanated from a mix of water dust and urine that flowed from the unclean toilets next door. Moreover there were only two averagely pretty girls in the room for our shenanigans of exchanging glances during this self chosen protracted punishment in this self afflicted purgatory.

At 1.30 - finally this is over and I abdicate my position from the tiny nursery bench, my leg was jammed and it took all my remaining strength to untangle it from the shackles and walk towards the door. Joy and freedom filled my thought subdued only by the feeling of acute hunger. Not that I did too good, I could only answer 160 correctly from 250 questions. In spite of the exasperating experiences, at this precise moment an inner voice wanting to do better did strike me. This was surely my epiphanic moment of self realization. I hope it lasts till my next such ‘Govt’ exam.