The plight of a patriot
ON the issue of the CSS examinations, I would like to contribute my experience. I am 26 years of age and have spent almost all my life with the sole aim of becoming a career diplomat.
Pursuing this goal I did a bachelor’s degree in international relations after which I proceeded to the UK in order to do a master’s degree in diplomacy.
Despite having a couple of very good job offers from NGOs in Europe, I rushed home and took the elusive CSS examinations in May 2006. The experience was ‘unique’ (for lack of a better word).
Unlike any other examination I have ever appeared for, the environment was one of desperation and confusion and the task at hand seemed insurmountable.
It felt like one was making a desperate attempt at survival during a violent storm.
From my experience of these examinations, I can assuredly say that one can never be completely prepared for them.
Can anyone be prepared for a question paper that is full of mistakes and where some questions do not even make sense?
An examination where the questions that should be a part of one paper appear in another? Where the criterion is not what you write but how much you write and how colourful it is that you write?
Despite this, I felt confident that even if I were not able to ace the CSS examinations, I would not have difficulty passing them at least.
To my utter surprise and shock, I received a letter saying that I had failed the CSS examinations! My first reaction was that of disbelief which turned into laughter.
After all, I had barely passed the international relations examination also, a subject that I am gold medallist in. Any thoughts of reappearing at the examination soon passed. It was not that I had begun to doubt myself, but I had lost all confidence in the FPSC.
Academic qualifications hold absolutely no weight in the FPSC recruitment procedure. Instead, candidates are ‘judged’ by some fickle criterion.
If the CSS examinations are supposedly of such high criteria, then our country’s civil service should be top-notch which, we are all well aware, is very far from reality.
This then leads me to wonder, on what basis are the CSS examinations marked and, more importantly, who marks them? What is the qualification of the markers and how fair is it?
That aside, the CSS examinations and selection procedure are severely flawed to begin with. These examinations in no way judge the aptitude of candidates for the department they are applying for.
This is why there is no single department in our government where most, if not all, employees have pertinent aptitude and/or qualifications.
This is a chronic problem since it results in severe inefficiency and misappropriation of resources, which is why the public service recruitment procedure needs total overhauling and revamping.
So it turns out that I am bright enough to secure first-class first position at Karachi University and be awarded a distinction by the university in the UK for my master’s degree.
I am good enough to be hired by a leading Pakistani media organisation and offered a traineeship by the European Commission.
But it saddens me to the core of my existence that despite all the hard work I have put in towards it, I am not good enough to serve my own country.
STILL A PATRIOT
Karachi