Bengal puts up dismal IAS show again

KOLKATA: Year 2001: two. Year 2002: none. 2003: two again.
West Bengal, which contributed anything between 40 and 50 officers in the civil services in the 1960s, just cannot get its act together. With Priyanka Ingty and Subhanjan Das being the only two successful candidates from West Bengal in 2003 in the elite services that take in around 430 every year, senior bureaucrats have begun asking whether the single-digit numbers depict failure or lack of will.
“We should look at the number of candidates appearing from the state every year to draw a definite conclusion that our boys and girls are really not being able to crack the exam,� state IT secretary G D Gautama said.
Chief electoral officer Basudeb Bandyopadhay agreed. He felt that the brightest brains were opting for careers in management and other sectors that were not that popular three or four decades back.
Although UPSC does not keep any record of the total number of candidates every year, the various coaching centres scattered all over the city have at least 50-100 candidates appearing for the preliminary round every year.
Though those run by Presidency College and Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management are more well-known, only two candidates from the former cleared the prelims.
“There will be no one from this state in the top echelons of the bureaucracy if this trend continues for a couple of years,� Presidency training centre director Amal Mukhopadhyay felt.
Serving bureaucrats feel an immediate review is necessary.
“We need to find out the reasons for the lack of interest,� Gautama said. Transport secretary Sumantra Chowdhury agreed. Senior IAS officers should sit down and chalk out a blueprint to turn the tide, he said.