UPSC at 100: Challenges amid Changing Governance Landscape
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As the Union Public Service Commission marks a century, questions arise on whether its structure and processes are keeping pace with India’s rapidly evolving governance, technology, and societal needs.
By P SESH KUMAR
NEW DELHI, September 23, 2025 — Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) completes its centenary in 2026. As I wrote in my earlier post, it stands as one of the few institutions in India that still commands respect across regions, communities, and political divides. Its reputation rests on impartiality, transparency, and its ability to conduct one of the toughest examinations in the world—the Civil Services Examination.
Let me now attempt to discuss some of the ideas of possible reform in the functioning of UPSC with special reference to the All India Civil Services examination conducted every year.
Managing the All-India Scale
Every few years, proposals flood the reform bazaar: tweak the syllabus, junk rote-learning, test leadership, bring in AI platforms, even separate exams for IAS, IPS, and IFS. On paper, these look inspiring; in practice, many are riddled with contradictions or better addressed through training, refresher courses, and in-service secondment rather than redesigning the gateway exam. A centenary UPSC cannot afford gimmicks—it needs reforms that are both visionary and workable.
Redefining the Examination Pattern
Case-study driven prelims? It sounds modern, but imagine evaluating lakhs of OMR sheets filled with discursive responses. Logistically, it is a nightmare. Leadership skills, emotional intelligence, and innovation—while vital—are notoriously hard to test on paper. That is exactly why the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy (LBSNAA) exists: to mould raw recruits through foundation courses, simulations, and secondments. Leadership cannot be captured in a tick-box exam. It has to be cultivated in training halls, field postings, and crises.
Technology for Accessibility
Online exams? Feasible for small-scale tests, but risky for an exercise with such high stakes. Server crashes, connectivity gaps, and cybersecurity threats could easily trigger litigation. AI-driven preparatory material for rural candidates is noble, but who will build, fund, and regulate such platforms without accusations of bias? Expanding regional language content, however, is both essential and practical—UPSC must reflect India’s linguistic federalism more faithfully.
Diversity and Inclusiveness
Mentorship for under-represented aspirants is overdue. But affirmative representation should come through preparatory pipelines-scholarships, fellowships, and targeted coaching-not by tinkering with the exam itself. Once inside the system, diversity can be reinforced by refresher courses and mid-career training that help disadvantaged recruits catch up with peers. UPSC must remain a meritocratic sieve, not a social-engineering toolkit.
Generalists vs. Specialists
The dream of hybrid cadres is attractive but risks bureaucratic balkanisation. If we splinter the recruitment pool into domain-specific streams at entry, we risk losing the very versatility that allows civil servants to switch from district relief to foreign negotiations. Specialisation should come later, via secondment, deputation, and in-service fellowships in economics, health, or technology. UPSC’s role should remain to identify bright, adaptable minds-not half-trained technocrats.
Separate Exams for IAS, IPS, and IFS?
This is the most controversial suggestion. The argument goes: each service needs different skills, so why not separate entry gates? But leadership, integrity, and adaptability are not the monopoly of IAS. A young IPS officer leading riot control, or an IFS officer negotiating a climate treaty, needs leadership as much as a district magistrate.
It is also unfair to assume that leadership skills are the preserve of the IAS alone. Officers of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IAAS) and the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) shoulder responsibilities that test their vision and grit as much as any district magistrate.
An IAAS officer leading an audit team that uncovers multi-thousand crore irregularities must combine technical mastery with the courage to withstand political and bureaucratic pressure. Few services, other than IAAS need officers leading teams for prestigious international audits such as the United Nations, World Food Programme, International Atomic Energy Agency, Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and so on.
An IRS officer heading a large tax zone or handling sensitive enforcement cases requires not just knowledge of fiscal law, but the ability to lead large cadres, manage conflict, and take tough, sometimes unpopular decisions. Officers from these and other central services lead personnel in hundreds if not thousands and need to manage inter personal relationships just as any leader would do anywhere else.
To view them as mere “technical services” is to ignore the reality that financial governance and tax enforcement are as central to statecraft as district administration or policing. Leadership is, in truth, the common currency across all services.
The call for separate entry exams for IAS, IPS, and IFS may sound rational—each service does demand distinct expertise. But fragmenting the process would erode the shared ethos that has held India’s services together for a century.
Only thing that can perhaps be conceded is that pressure of working environment may require IAS and IPS officers to possess and display special courage, judgment, and the ability to lead under pressure.
But, to assume only IAS deserves a different exam risks making it an exclusive, elitist service, feeding the very “chip on the shoulder” culture of superiority that already attracts criticism.
A common exam keeps the playing field level and nurtures camaraderie across cadres from day one. Service-specific skills are best built through academy training, refresher courses, and field exposure. Fragmenting the gateway would only deepen divides, narrow talent, and weaken India’s steel frame.
Separate exams risk creating silos and feeding the already simmering but often unavoidable turf wars. The current common exam ensures shared foundations, with service-specific skills built in training academies. If differentiation is needed, it should be post-recruitment, not at the entry-level.
Ethics and Globalisation
Expanding the ethics paper to include real-world dilemmas is doable, but only if framed as scenario-based essays, not tokenistic add-ons. Administrators who will face dilemmas of migrant labour or climate negotiations must indeed “think globally, act locally.” Yet here again, the global exposure should be embedded in training and mid-career postings, not in loading the entry exam with impossible expectations.
Mental Health and Well-being
This is perhaps the most pressing need. An exam that stretches over a year crushes many aspirants psychologically. UPSC should invest in counselling partnerships and stress-awareness programmes—not to compromise standards, but to humanise the process. But ultimately, the mental health burden will reduce only if UPSC shortens its cycle—a point already highlighted by Parliamentary Committees.
Most of these reform proposals are noble in intent but clumsy in execution if thrust upon the entry exam. The real solution lies in a pipeline approach: let UPSC focus on identifying bright, adaptable generalists; let the academies shape leaders through foundation and refresher courses; let mid-career secondments and international fellowships build specialist and global capacities.
In short, let us not burden the exam with everything governance needs. Use training and service design as the real levers of reform. UPSC@100 must evolve, but with clarity: its task is to select, not to manufacture, India’s administrators alone but promote entry of future ready civil servants.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
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