CIVIL services are the backbone of a country in the context of delivering services to the people and executing plans and enforcing laws formulated by the legislature.

Thus, when the rate of social and economic problems rises letting the country bear monetary and budgetary losses, the intelligentsia of the given country tries to find faults with its ‘civil services’.

In Pakistan, recruitment to civil services calls for a candidate to go through a competitive examination, commonly called the Civil Superior Services (CSS).

Unfortunately, this examination lays greater part of its base on bookish knowledge and the capability of candidates to cram in order to succeed.

The letter ‘CSS exams: need for reform’ (May 8, 2012) mentioned some of flaws found in CSS examinations. The letter received an incredible reply from a senior post of Federal Public Service Commission, A. Saboor Nizamani, Director-General (E) FPSC on May 31, 2012.

To him, everything regarding the examination was perfect and it appeared that the officer did not believe in introducing reforms in the examination because he was satisfied with the procedure.

Interestingly, an analytical observation under the title ‘Civil service in decline’ (Aug 26, 2012), advanced by a visiting scholar at Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington D.C, supported my observations of this examination and refuted the defensive position taken by director-general (E) FPSC.

The CSS examination is more a test of rote-learning capacity of a candidate than his/her analytical approach towards a given situation, and so are the other examinations being conducted in Pakistan with the purpose of selecting civil servants.

Any candidate good at learning by heart facts and figures in the subject of Pakistan Studies gets higher marks. Similarly, any candidate who has memorised long definitions from books of well-known sociologists is likely to score more than a more analytical student than him in the same subject.

We should not forget that the FPSC defines the CSS as an analytical examination, which it fails to materialise in practice.

The ever-deteriorating social and economic conditions, bad governance and ever-increasing institutional corruption in Pakistan are three glaring examples of complete failure of the civil services and bureaucracy selected through the outdated CSS examinations for years.

Once again, I request the FPSC to thoroughly review its policy on CSS examinations and to introduce an examination system based on ‘analytical approach assessment’ on the patterns of examinations conducted in the UK and Japan with the purpose of selecting their civil servants.

SAHITO ZAHEER

Khairpur