THE well-being of a nation depends on how well it channelises the potential of its youth. Unfortunately, the case in our society is different; CSS examination forms a case in point.

I have a few suggestions to make. The exam should be made uniform. There should be an initial screening of candidates patterned on the GRE exam.

Optional subjects should be done away with while compulsory subjects, like the general paper on linguistics, history, geography and philosophy, should be increased. There is a lot of injustice in the marking of optional papers. Where merit rules, the role of luck is minimised.

Candidates who pass the exam but remain unassigned must be given a chance. The age limit should be relaxed to at least 32 years while the attempt restriction needs to be relaxed to five times so that we may have better and committed officers.

All major exams of the world like USMLE, etc., place no restrictions, especially if a person has scored well in certain subjects one year but could not do well in those same subjects the next year. All successful but unallocated candidates must be given another chance so that some distinction could be made between passing and failing ones.

Dr ALTAF SALYANA
Lahore