In India, passing the dozen civil service tests and interviews confers great prestige and social mobility. Besides bureaucratic power, it significantly increases eligibility in India’s marriage market. Recently, a man fraudulently posing as a civil servant demanded a dowry of Rs 40 million ($52,500), while a real civil servant almost fatally hit his wife because he felt her dowry didn’t do justice to his “rank and stature.”Hopeful families put up all their earnings and assets and take loans so their child can get a chance at India’s golden ticket: becoming a powerful bureaucrat in the world’s largest democracy.
Inside the basement of a coaching centre in Rajendra Nagar, New Delhi.
The recent rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in India also appears to have seeped through the exam itself. VICE World News reviewed a mock interview of Muslim candidate Junaid Ahmad. While he went on to secure the third rank in the 2018 exams, almost all the questions he was asked sprung from his Muslim identity: his views on Egypt’s Muslim brotherhood, whether India is becoming intolerant towards minorities, fatal police encounters, and the Arab spring.“The Muslim community in India is lagging in all the socioeconomic parameters, and the same is reflected in the civil services exam results.”
In Delhi’s Rajendra Nagar, street vendors sell snacks and study materials.
A job posting in Delhi promising $120 dollars for sex work services. Many civil services' exams candidates remain unemployed for years.
Akhil Kang, a Ph.D. candidate from the anthropology department of Cornell University, said that even getting to the personality interview stage of the civil services exam is a big deal for many Dalit candidates.“I had to literally build a new life for myself, and I couldn’t even get jobs right away. There would be days where I literally didn’t know how I was going to survive the next day.”
Damanjeet Kaur lost her husband in a car accident within a week of their wedding. After that, the civil services exam became the only way she could escape the patriarchal, limiting life of her village. She dreams of becoming a politician one day, via the bureaucracy.
For Shyam Meera Singh, a non-English speaking candidate from north India, the civil services exam tested everything from his finances, to his will to live.
Many candidates enroll at libraries where booth-like desks provide distraction-free space for studies for all-nighters.
Alleys in Delhi are filled with stalls selling books for civil services candidates.