Civil servants in India barely voice or speak up as they find voicing risky. Scholar-administrators attribute this pervasive culture of yes-men to a misaligned incentive structure. They argue that Indian public bureaucracy turns energetic entrants into fatalist cogs-in-the-wheel by disincentivizing voice at workplace.
While misaligned incentive structure explains why civil servants mute themselves at workplace, it does not explain why candidates yet to become civil servants mute themselves. This paper analyses 201 mock-interviews simulating the Personality Test, the final stage in clearing the union civil services examination. These interviews show how retired and serving civil servants groom candidates on their looks, posture, demeanour and speech and how aspirants yield to them, thereby muting themselves even before they make it!
What explains this acquiescence? In other words, what are they risking if they spoke their mind? A higher civil services opportunity in India not only offers a secure job in a country with high rates of informal employment and unemployment but also prestige in a society with fewer prospects of status mobility. It provides an identity, a greater say within family, social standing among kin, influence among peers, and a hope of making a difference to the country but more importantly, to one’s place in it - and each of these mean different things to different candidates.
As millions aspire to don a Bandhgala (the formal dress code for men in civil services, which colloquially means tight-lipped in Hindi), this paper captures their hopes of making it, the risks of not making it and the consequences for voice.
