The most sought after service remains Civil Services as the number of candidates taking the exam is the indicator. But the students taking exams in Hindi or other regional languages are lagging behind both in the rankings and the overall number of selections is bothering everyone. The results of the Union Public Service Commission 2018 (UPSC) exam which was declared last week makes this fact quite evident. The reasons attributed to the poor results are:
- Due to lack of availability of good study material and coaching institutes
- Preparing paper patterns in these languages is a difficulty.
- The evaluator’s lack of proficiency in these languages is also one of the reasons
Among the first few who took the exam in Hindi is Aditya Kumar Jha whose rank was 339. Jagadish Kumar, a 564th rank holder in 2018, who took the test in Hindi, says that there are many challenges for the students who give the exam in a regional language. The question papers are made keeping English newspapers in mind. The papers in regional/local languages are short of good editorial content.
The teachers who coach students at IAS coaching centres are of opinion that books in regional languages are mostly translated from English and due to which the context, as well as meaning, is lost in the process. Asim Khan who gave the UPSC 2018 exam in Urdu who couldn’t reach the interview stage says that due to low-quality test series provided by the coaching institutes for the students taking the exam in regional languages keeps the morale of such students low since the beginning.
The teachers, who correct the papers, don’t have a good command of regional languages also impacts the success rate of such students is the opinion of experts.