WorthvieW

The government of India has decided to replace the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination with the Civil Service Aptitude Test (CSAT), which will test candi­dates for their aptitude and ana­lytical abilities rather than their ability to learn by rote.

Nearly 1.7 lakh candidates take the objective type prelim­inary examination the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) conducts every May for screening candidates.

The CSAT is expected to come into effect from Civil Services Examination 2011.” Prithviraj Chavan, minister of state, personnel ministry, told Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

For candidates who clear t lie preliminary round, there is the main round. The UPSC will push for changes in the Civil Service (Mains) Examination depending on the response to the new format.

The preliminary exam has two papers — the first is gen­eral studies and is common for all; candidates can choose the second paper from a list of about two dozen subjects. The general studies paper may be tweaked, but it is the second paper that will undergo the big change.

UPSC chairman Professor D.P. Agrawal has constituted a committee to work out the details of the papers, the offi­cial said. “The panel will make its recommendations by April-end. Then the UPSC will dis­cuss it with the government and finalize the content.

Watch out for it guys. Prepare and plan from now on , for the next year ! All the best !!!!!

And for those who are appearing this time, get ready to take it off this time itself, else get ready to change gears !!!

Hope those who are preparing /appearing this time are ready with their plan and going well with their preparation.

If anyone has any issues, we can have an open discussion. Please speak out.

And ya, since this is about the prelims exam , i would like to give two links which will be very useful for the prep :

http://gktoday.in

http://indiancurrentaffairs.blogspot.com

WorthvieW

Snippets from One of the most glaringly frank articles in the recent times by Magsasay Awardee Journalist P Sainath. (columnist in The Hindu).

“Issues today have to be dressed up in ways certified by the corporate media. They have to be justified not by their importance to the public but by their acceptability to the media, their owners and sponsors”

Every issue is now reduced to a fight between individuals, heroic, villainous or just fun figures. So the complex issues behind the shunning of Pakistani cricketers by the Indian Premier League are reduced to a fight between Shah Rukh Khan and Bal Thackeray. (As one television channel began its programme: “Shah Rukh stands tall. His message to the nation …”). The agonies of Bundelkhand are not about hunger and distress in our Tiger Economy. They are just a stand-off between Rahul Gandhi and Mayawati. The issues of language and migrations in Maharashtra are merely a battle between Rahul Gandhi and Uddhav Thackeray. And the coverage is all about who blinked first, who lost face.

The devastating rise in food prices (let’s skip the boring factors) and the mess in agriculture are a face-off between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. The pathetic squabble within the Samajwadi Party is virtually a television serial. A blow-by-blow account of Amar Singh’s valiant bid to retain his honour against Mulayam Singh’s yahoos. (Indeed, some Hindi channels have begun using the language of theatre to report it — Act II, Scene II. And there was one programme which Mr. Amar Singh ended humming verses from his favourite film song). The Bt brinjal story had mostly only one villain — Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. He had no visible adversary unless you pose the humble Brinjal as the hero. But that won’t work for television. The other, more sinister heroes in this media story preferred to function from behind the scenes, plying newspapers and channels with faked data and false information. Hell hath no fury like a powerful corporate scorned, as the Minister is learning.

Leave aside escaping a recession, India Shining is back. The cover story of a leading weekly gushes over the fantastic ‘rural resurgence’ that is, in fact, saving all of us. Farmers are doing just great. Drip, micro-sprinkler, and other micro irrigation, the stories in it suggest, played a major role in this hidden-from-the-human-eye revival. And the proliferation of such stories across the media spectrum reflects, in part, the strenuous media efforts of a major Maharashtra-based company. A corporate group that spends a fortune on propaganda and whose interests in this line of irrigation are pushed by some of the most powerful members of the Union Cabinet.

The main ‘rural resurgence’ story hit the stands the same day the National Crime Records Bureau officially brought the 2008 data for farm suicides on to its website. The 16,196 suicides that year brought the tally of farmers’ suicides since 1997 to 199,132. That’s the largest single, sustained wave of such suicides ever recorded in history — anywhere. Guess nobody told them about the resurgence. Farmers in 2008 did know of that year’s loan waiver, but it didn’t stop large numbers of them from taking their lives.

Whether it’s the Suresh Tendulkar committee, the BPL Expert Group, or earlier the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised sector, Or a U.N. study which reports that 34 million more Indians remained poor or joined their ranks in 2008 and 2009, because of the ‘slowdown.’ That is, 34 million more than would have met that fate prior to the 2008 crisis. It matters little if Census data show us that 8 million cultivators quit agriculture between just 1991 and 2001. (That is, on average, well over 2,000 a day, every day for 10 years.) Or that the 2011 Census just months from now will show us how many more have fled agriculture since then, un-seduced by the rural resurgence. Never mind the facts. One giant private irrigation company stands to make its already huge fortune bigger. Good for growth.

The ABC of Indian media roughly translates as Advertising, Bollywood and Corporate power. Some years ago, the ‘C’ would have been cricket, but that great sport is fast becoming a small cog in the large wheel of corporate profit. (In the IPL, the ABC of media converge, even merge.) And, of course, everything but everything, has to be bollywoodised. To now earn attention, issues have to be dressed up only in ways certified by the corporate media. They have to be justified not by their importance to the public but by their acceptability to the media, their owners and sponsors. The more entrenched that ABC gets, the greater the danger to the language of democracy the media so proudly claim to champion.

The Western Electric company was giving its workers practically everything – the latest pension plans, sick and other benefits, recreational programmes, but still things were not going well. Somebody thought, office lighting had to something to do! The company engaged some research people to study the effect of lighting on production. The researchers selected two groups of operators. The first group was kept working under the old amount of light and the second group was given more light. With more light, output increased as expected. But surprisingly, the output of group first also went up! Group second was given less light to work while the output still went up and so did the other groups. Finally, they put two workers in a room without any light at all, working by sense of touch completely in the dark. Despite this handicap the workers kept up the increased output.

This was a puzzle!!!

Research workers experimented further, they isolated a study group of give women workers. For a year and a half, they checked the girl’s production under different conditions (its just work production! n nothing else ). The gilrs were given two five minutes’ rest periods, output went up. Two ten minutes’ rest periods, output went up still. Then 15 min and the girls were served a hot snack, the output was up again. The girls were let off half an hour earlier, still the output soared higher.  It remained on that high level when their weekly hours were cut from 48 to 40. As a test, the scientists restored the original conditions. The girls went back to time work, no rest periods no hot snack and 48 hrs a week, the result: output hit all time high.

A skilled statistician spent several years trying to relate variations in output with variations in physical circumstances of the five operators. The attempt to relate changes in physical conditions to variations in output resulted in not a single correlation of enough statistical significance to be recognized by any competent statistician as having any meaning. The investigators were forced to the conclusion that human situations are likely to be complex. The girls who were being experimented upon were not stones and they were unaware of the fact that they were being experimented upon. The attitude of the subject to the experiment is an important factor in determining the response to situation. The result led to the inevitable conclusion that whether or not a person is going to give his services whole heartedly to the group depends in good part on the way he feels about his job, his fellow-co workers and supervisors.

A new line of approach was therefore adopted. A few experimenters went in to the shops to talk to the workers and to get to know them. It was discovered that a person can talk about what is uppermost in the mind. Even the complaints were listened to carefully. Quite a few of the complaints were investigated and set right, but several times the experimenters did absolutely nothing about the object of the complaint, but, after the interview, curiously enough, the complaint disappered. They found that some people did not really want anything done about difficulties of which they are complaining.

“They just wanted an opportunity to talk about their troubles to a sympathetic listener. ”

This led to a further re-thinking on the subject. The notion of the economic man , man primarily motivated by economic interests was shaken. The conception of the worker was changed. The experiments indicated that the behavior of workers could not be understood apart from their feelings and sentiments. Secondly, it was found that sentiments were easily disguised. Thirdly, the manifestations of sentiments could not be understood as things in and by themselves, but only in terms of the total situation of person. (This doesn’t in any way be taken that i am not looking for a salary hike. Actually I’m desperate for it. Social situation isn’t it! )

Response to work, to a change depends on conditioning of the sentiments, the kind of human satisfaction he is deriving from his social participation with other workers and supervisors in the immediate work group of which he is a member and hence, the effect of the change on his customary interpersonal relations. The worker is not an isolated atomic individual. He is a member of a group. Within each of these groups, the individual has feelings and sentiments towards each other which bind them together in collaborative efforts. It was found that operating within this group were four basic sentiments: You should turn out too much work, if you are, you are a rate buster; you should not turn out too little work, if you are, you are a chiseller. You should not say anything to the supervisor which would react to the detriment of one of your associates. If you are,you are a squealer. You should not be too officious. If you are an inspector, you should not act like one. To be an accepted member of a group, a man has to act in accordance with these social standards.

The experiments further considered the possibility that differences in individual performances might be related to difference in abilities. They compared each workers’ relative rank in output with his relative rank in intelligence and dexterity as measured on certain tests. The results were interesting. The lowest producing in te room ranked first in intelligence and third in dexterity. The highest producing in the room was seventh in dexterity and lowest in intelligence. This did not seem to make sense.  The researchers thought there must be other factors which explained individual differences. They started studying the beliefs and creeds, their social codes and norms of behavior, the important social functions these groups perform , the history of these groups.

The important points these experiments summarized were: workers were not isolated and unrelated individuals. They are social animals and should be treated as such. It is further evident from the methods of handling them are still archaic. We must obtain a new understanding of human motivations and behavior in an organization. Each person is unique and brings to his job certain attitudes, benefits and ways of life as certain skills: technical, social and logical !

After seventy years of these experiments, the points still hold true. Perfectly true.

If you like this discussion, please let me know and I would discuss more on human work motivation and the impact of salary in my next post.

(Background information: Some studies were made in the Hawthorne plant, a manufacturing unit of the Western Electric Company at Chicago which itself was a part of the Bell telephone and Telegraph System with headquarters at Philadelphia, by a team from the Harward Business School under the leadership of Elton Mayo. The experiments were spread over a period of 16 yrs (19230-39) and are probably “the most famous consciously planned experiments in the history of social science to date.” )

Whatever or whoever might be the initiator and whatever might be his past records/impressions, this is definitely a ground breaking stand taken so far. Making Voting compulsory (and that too, for local body elections) is a step in the right direction and it is never late.

We support this motive, and would like to see the performance after it is implemented for the first time. Hopefully it shows some defining results, which can then force other state governments and even the central government to think on amending the constitution or the election commission orders!

The Gujarat Assembly on Saturday adopted an official Bill making voting compulsory in elections to all the local bodies in the State amidst opposition from the Congress which termed the move as “impractical and designed with political motives.”

Gujarat has emerged as the first State in the country to make voting compulsory in the local elections following the example, as Chief Minister Narendra Modi described, of 32 countries where the pattern of exercising the adult franchise showed a remarkable improvement from 45 per cent to over 90 per cent.

Talking to journalists after the adoption of the “Gujarat Local Authorities Laws (Amendment), 2009,” the Chief Minister described the measure to make voting compulsory in the local body elections as a “historic move to strengthen democracy” and taking it from “drawing room politics to the polling booth level.”

Regretting that the kind of solidarity the people showed in lighting the candles in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack was not demonstrated in the elections to choose their own rulers who would handle such situations, Mr. Modi said Gujarat had shown the way and hopefully other States and the country would follow suit. Claiming that the move would help eliminate some corrupt practices in the electoral process, he said, “politics and politicians would have to think beyond vote bank politics and ethnic groups and regional settings.”

He said the idea was not to “punish” the “defaulters” who fail to cast their votes without a valid reason, but to instill a sense of discipline. “Why should not people spare just half-an-hour as and when the elections are held to cast their votes?” he asked. It was intriguing that the candidates and parties with support of less than 25 per cent of the total voters ruled for years because a large majority of people did not participate in the voting and had no voice in selecting their rulers, he said.

Telangana and Andhra  OR Telangana and Andhra Pradesh ??

The hottest news out there in cold winters…
All of us have some presuppositions on this definite issue. Every point of these presumptions might be correct, might be wrong too!

We need to know few facts before coming to a conclusion, let alone the politicians and KTR (I like KTR better than KCR only for the reason it sounds like NTR )

These are just facts and in now way decisive for a conclusion !!

Worth Andhra Pradesh :

Andhra Pradesh is a combination of two regions, Andhra (which is seperated from Madras Presidency at the time of Independence) and Telangana (which is the telugu speaking region of Nizam’s kingdom)

1. Under development cannot be the singular point for a new state.  If thats the case, there are many under developed regions (like vidarbha and etc) that can carve out. Its the historic base of telanagana movement that’s behind this outrage.

2. New state (or for that matter, small state) does not gaurantee development. Chattisgarh, Jharkand and Uttaranchal are the best examples. (Even Pak, Bangladesh and other parted countries can be shown as examples as they are having some problem or the other!)

3. There is no other conflict point for making a new state (like ethnic conflict, boundary problems, insurgency, cultural differences etc ) that can be the crieteria to be taken care while making a new state.

4. Telenaga region already has some special rules for it made. (example in employment, telangana people will be preferred etc )

5. All the telangana is politically included always in the state elections. People take part in the democratic process of the state enthusiastically. Never was any election boycotted.

Worth Telangana  (The Word Telangana or Telingana means land of telugus!!!!! )

1. The States Reorganization Commission (SRC) was not in favour of merging the Telangana region with the then Andhra state. The central government decided to ignore the SRC recommendations and established unified Andhra Pradesh on November 1, 1956. However, a “Gentlemen’s agreement” provided reassurances to the Telangana people as well to Andhra people in terms of power sharing as well as administrative domicile rules and distribution of expenses of various regions. This agreement is known as Gentlemen’s agreement of Andhra Pradesh (1956)

2. The Gentlemen’s agreement of Andhra Pradesh (1956) refers to a gentlemen’s agreement that was signed between Telangana and Andhra leaders before the formation of the state of Andhra Pradesh in 1956. The agreement provided safeguards with the purpose of preventing discrimination against Telangana by the government of Andhra Pradesh.[1] The alleged violations of this agreement are cited as one of the reasons for demands for separate statehood for Telangana. NONE OF THE AP GOVTS SO FAR HAS RESPECTED THIS AGREEMENT!!

2. They also agreed that if the CM is from andra region, there should be a deputy CM from telangana region..and vice versa. THIS TOO WAS NOT FOLLOWED EVEN FOR A SINGLE TIME !!!

3. No special regional area development funds/acts have been implemented in 40 yrs

4. AP GOVT has been totally ignoring telangana’s devlopment , its accords, its acts, its promises while exploiting and draining its wealth and natural resources.

Points on current news:

TRS lost the elections. So it lost the people’s mandate ! Does this mean they no longer want to have a seperate state OR does this mean they lost confidence in TRS in carving a new state ? !!

For those who are thinking that OU students did a sad thing, it seems its in their past connections !! In 1969 when the telanagana movement started, Student agitation for the continuation of the agreement began at Osmania University in Hyderabad and spread to other parts of the region and around 360 students gave their lives in the movement !!!!

Nevertheless all the points, a seperate state needs a new Administrative machinery, a new CM, new Cabinet, new Assembly, elections etc etc etc, even a most minimum estimate costs around 2000 crores initially; which if used for telanagana region can cover atleast three districts for another two years.. No one even asks for a new state !!!

After these controversial points, its better if I put my opinion also.
I would say, Telangaana people were promised development (like the promise to any other under developed region!) but it is not respected. So, it is good to give them another chance to wait for development, though, with far more powers and concentration.

1. Follow the Gentleman Agreement, if CM is from Andhra, have a deputy CM from telangana and vice versa. (This might even satisfy KCR?)

2. Else, make a Telangana Autonomous region, give it full control over the region, see if it can usher development within some 5/10 yr time frame, and if it succeeds, Telanagana is a new state; else It will continue as a Autonomous region. !!

Worth United Andhra Pradesh