Muslims Continue to Perform Poorly In Civil Services Exams

Only 21 Out Of 685 Candidates Cracked UPSC Exams In 2021 Main Points: 1. The performance of the Muslims this year is the worst in a decade. 2. The topper among the Muslim candidates ranked 109. 3. Only three women passed the exam among 21 Muslims. 4. The best performance by the Muslims was in 2016 and 2017 with 52 and 50 Muslim candidates respectively. 5. The poor performance is due to the economic and educational backwardness of Muslims in the country. ----- By New Age Islam Staff Writer 31 May 2022 The results of the Union Public Service Commission Exams 2021 have been published and with that the performance of the Muslims is also being analysed as usual. This year only 21 Muslim candidates out of 685 candidates have passed the exams. The percentage of successful Muslim candidates is a poor 3 per cent. This is very disappointing as the total Muslim population in India is 14.2 per cent according to the 2011 census. Worse their ranking is also very low. The topper among the Muslim candidates is a girl with 109 rank. Only three Muslim girls --- Areeb Noman, Shumaila Chaudhary and Muskan Dagar have cleared the Civil Services Exams whereas this year three non Muslm girls --- Shruti Sharma, Ankita Agarwal and Gamini Singla -- are the first, second and third ranking candidates respectively. If we look at the performance of the Muslim candidates in the last ten years, we see that their performance is very irregular. In 2009, their percentage was around 4 per cent with 31 candidates out of 791 candidates. In 2016 and 2017, 5 per cent Muslim candidates cleared UPSC exams. In 2014, only 38 Muslim candidates out of 1236 candidates passed the exams which was 3 per cent. The list of number of successful candidates since 2009 is given here. 2009 ------ 31 out of 791 2010 ------ 21 out of 875 2011 ------ 31 out of 920 2012 ------ 30 out of 998 2013 ------ 34 out of 1122 2014 ------ 38 out of 1236 2015 ------ 34 out of 1078 2016 ------ 52 out of 1099 2017 ------ 50 out of 1058 2018 ------ 27 out 759 2019 ------ 42 out of 829 2020 ------ 31 out of 767 2021 ------- 21 out of 685 Out of 685 candidates last year, 568 were men while 117 were women. Out of 117 women, 3 women secured top three position which speaks highly of the good performance of women in national level. However, the number of women in 2021 was less than in 2020 when it was 216. This might be because of the pandemic. The poor performance of Muslims in 2020 and 2021 may also be attributed to the pandemic. In 2019, the number of successful Muslim candidates was 42 which was around 4 per cent. The overall performance of the Muslims in Civil Services has remained poor and various reasons are attributed to it. The foremost reason is the poor economic and educational conditions of the Muslims which comes in the way of their success in civil services. Though, the Muslims are around 15 per cent of the total population of India, they are the least literate among all the religious communities of the communities. The literacy rate of the Muslims is the lowest with 68 per cent where the national average is 74 per cent. The highest literacy rate is among the Jains with 84 per cent. Only 17 per cent Muslims are matriculate. The percentage of graduate Muslims eligible for civil services may be even lower. According to a study conducted by S.M. I.A. Zaidi in 2006, the highest literacy rate of the Muslims is in Andaman and Nicobar with 89 per cent. Haryana and Bihar are the lowest with 40 and 42 per cent respectively. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana and West Bengal are the states where the Muslims are more backward than other religious communities. The backwardness of the Muslims of Bengal is surprising because there the communists ruled for 34 years with the full support of Muslims. The poor literacy of the Muslims is attributed to the poor economic and educational conditions of the Muslims. They are more backward than the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes according to the Sachar Committee report. It is obvious that the state and central governments did not work on the recommendations of the committee sincerely for their economic and educational upliftment. One reason for the poor performance of the Muslim candidates is the unavailability of coaching institutes for financially weak candidates. Though there are coaching institutes in Delhi and some other metropolitan cities, their number is very low and therefore they are out of reach of the Muslim candidates based in small towns. Those financially sound stay in Delhi to study in coaching centres. The coaching centres run by the government are not at par with private coaching centres that charge fees in lakhs. The low performance of the Muslim candidates in the last two years also reminds us of the propaganda of Civil Services Jihad or Bureaucracy jihad by a section of Islamophobic media in India in 2020 when 42 Muslims passed the UPSC exams. Though the success rate of the Muslims was only 4 per cent, the media, particularly Sudarshan TV had projected it as a bureaucracy jihad by the Muslims. It presented the theory that Muslims have hatched up a conspiracy to infiltrate the bureaucracy and that by entering into the bureaucracy, the Muslims will rule the country. However, the channel had not presented any statistics to support its theory. The percentage of the success of the Muslims is actually well below their population which reflects on the lack of commitment of the government to the educational upliftment of the Muslims and giving them proportionate representation in the assemblies, Parliament and in the bureaucracy. The low percentage of the successful Muslim candidates in the UPSC exams in two consecutive years calls for serious study of the reasons and factors behind it. URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-society/muslims-perform-civil-services-exams/d/127137 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism