The Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT), a qualifying paper in the preliminary exam for recruitment for Civil Services, has been a bone of contention ever since it was introduced in 2011 and with the reports that it may be done away with comes as a huge relief to the aspirants from the two Telugu States.
The recent reports that the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), in its vision document, has recommended to the government to change the existing format of the preliminary examination and remove Paper-II, popularly known as CSAT, has been welcomed by the aspirants as they would have more time to prepare for Paper-I.
Prelims consists of Paper-I and Paper-II. While Paper-I comprises 100 questions covering subjects like history, geography, social and economic development etc, Paper-II (CSAT) has 80 questions on aptitude consisting of basic numeracy, general mental ability and logical reasoning. An aspirant has to score minimum qualifying marks in Paper-II (33%) and only then the marks scored in Paper-I would be considered for short-listing them for the Mains. Besides the time factor, CSAT has been argued as disadvantageous to rural and vernacular-medium candidates, who spend more time on preparation unlike the urban and English-medium educated aspirants. “We lose out focussing more on it since it’s mandatory to pass the paper, though the marks are not considered for qualification,” says Venkataramana, an aspirant from Karimnagar.
Deepika Reddy, director of Shikara IAS Academy, too agrees that several students fail in CSAT despite their good performance in Paper-I. “This should go.” “The present move is a step in the right direction and the UPSC is expected to replace the CSAT paper with another paper on general studies,” reveals V. Gopala Krishna, director of Brain Tree. “Ideally, the number of questions in general studies should be increased to about 200 with questions on aptitude as well.”
Predictability factor
“In the present format of the prelims, the outcome is highly unpredictable. The questions are being set not to test students’ knowledge, but to reduce the predictability factor. There is no cause-and-effect relationship between the questions asked and the outcome in the prelims,” feels Mr. Gopala Krishna. A senior trainer, R.C. Reddy of R.C. Reddy IAS Study Circle, feels CSAT is a bit discriminatory favouring aspirants who have mathematical background as only the technical aptitude is tested. “Testing administrative aptitude should be the key since you are selecting administrators. Even if CSAT continues, its format should be changed to test the administrative capabilities of the aspirants,” he says.