The Civil Services Exam

In the preliminary exam of the Civil Services Examination on May 28, 2023, 14,624 candidates qualified for the next stage. In the final result, the Union Public Service Commission recommended 1,016 candidates for appointment.

Coaching websites estimate that about 13 lakh people applied that year. This figure is an estimate and not an official count.

Kota Factory

Kota Factory, a web series by The Viral Fever, appeared in 2019. It follows students in Kota, Rajasthan, who prepare for the entrance exam of the Indian Institutes of Technology.

“Students come to Kota by the tens of thousands,” The Caravan wrote. ThePrint counted around 2.5 lakh aspirants in the city in 2023.

12th Fail

12th Fail, written, produced and directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, was released in theaters on October 27, 2023. It is based on a 2019 nonfiction book by Anurag Pathak.

The film tells the story of Manoj Kumar Sharma, “who overcame extreme poverty to become an Indian Police Service officer.” Officers of the Indian Police Service are recruited through the civil services exam.

A Hundred Percent

On October 10, 2020, Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi published its first cut-off list for undergraduate admission. Three honors courses required 100 percent: Political Science, Economics and Psychology. Scroll reported that no Delhi University college had done this since 2015.

In 2021 several colleges, among them SRCC and Hindu College, set cut-offs of 100 percent in their first lists. The cut-off is the lowest score in the school-leaving exam that a college accepts for a course.

Order of Merit

Under the IAS (Regulation of Seniority) Rules, 1987, every officer of the Indian Administrative Service is assigned a year of allotment. For an officer recruited directly through the competitive exam, it is the year after the exam.

Under rule 4, “direct recruit officers shall be ranked inter-se in the order of merit,” as fixed under the probation rules of 1954.

The Vocabulary of Rank

Topper. “A student who gets the highest results in the class,” in the definition of the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, which marks the word as Indian English.

IITian. A graduate of one of the Indian Institutes of Technology. Wiktionary marks the word as Indian usage.

AIR. All India Rank. When the civil services results came out in 2024, Careers360 reported that “Aditya Srivastava secures AIR 1.”

The Senior Most Judge

The Memorandum of Procedure sets out how judges of the Supreme Court are appointed. On the Chief Justice of India, it says: “Appointment to the office of the Chief Justice of India should be of the senior most Judge of the Supreme Court considered fit to hold the office.”

Ten, Twenty, Thirty

In an office memorandum of May 19, 2009, the Department of Personnel and Training introduced the Modified Assured Career Progression Scheme for central government employees. It grants “three financial upgradations under the MACPS at intervals of 10, 20 and 30 years of continuous regular service.”

Hair Whitened in the Sun

Baal dhoop mein safed karna. To whiten one’s hair in the sun. The Rekhta dictionary defines it in Hindi as budhape tak anubhavheen rehna, to stay inexperienced into old age. In English it gives “be ignorant in spite of age.”

Rekhta notes that the phrase is mostly used in a negative sense.

understand-culture
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.