Meghalaya’s inability to produce a single IAS/IPS Officer from among the tribal candidates after 2013 has been a matter of consternation leading to discussions in the print and electronic media. Reasons for the abysmal performance of those who do sit for the exams has to be carefully analysed. There is no doubt at all that critical thinking which is an important criterion for getting through the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination is sorely missing in our schools, colleges and universities. The classroom teaches one-dimensional thinking because of the high pupil to teacher ratio. Individual attention to students who show a spark and if mentored individually can reach for the stars, is not possible in a class of 40-45 students. The UPSC exams are said to be the toughest examination in the world. Hence if aspirants from Meghalaya are to clear this examination they would have to be above average students who can hold a conversation and interest the interviewer. This can only happen if communication and public speaking skills are taught at school which hardly happens because most teachers themselves suffer from poor communication skills.
The fact that IAS/IPS officers from the Assam-Meghalaya cadre can hardly spare their time to mentor the young aspirants who attend their coaching at the Meghalaya Administrative Training Institute (MATI) is also a vacuum that needs to be filled. Education today is not what it was some two decades ago when the best brains entered the teaching profession and private institutions in Shillong appointed qualified teachers who displayed exceptional teaching skills and were from other states. These schools do not have a reservation policy, hence only the best are appointed. Government schools, colleges and universities are perhaps the least qualified to produce someone with a sharp mind to crack the civil services because teachers are appointed on the basis of the State Reservation Policy which means lowering the expected standards.
Tribal students moreover don’t have the study culture prevailing in the rest of the country where aspirants study for 12-14 hours daily during the preparation period. They read a range of books and are well informed about the current affairs in the state, the country and the world. These aspirants meet up for group discussions and learn from one another. This is because there is an eco-system for learning beyond the classroom and a curiosity to learn through discussions. In Meghalaya, beyond Shillong the quality of education in schools/colleges leaves much to be desired. When students from such institutions enter the national competition they are ill-prepared for the kind of rigour that the examination demands of them. The UPSC is brutally competitive and requires a strong grounding in history, polity, economics, writing skills, and analytical reasoning from the early schooling period. Intelligence alone is not enough but a systematic study routine is imperative. In Meghalaya the UPSC exams leading to a career in the civil services is hardly discussed at the middle and high school level when that is the time to prepare students for this important competition. It’s high time for Meghalaya to have some state of the art coaching centres besides the Government run one so that there is a high degree of professionalism instilled at an early age.
