Editor,
I write this not as an expert, not as an academic, and certainly not as someone who has anything against the Meghalaya Public Service Commission. I write this as an aspirant who is tired. Tired after months of preparation. Tired after countless sleepless nights. Tired after reading the Constitution, economics, history, geography, environment and governance over and over again. Tired after solving years of PYQs, revising the same books for the fifth or sixth time, making notes, making mistakes, correcting them and starting all over again.
We did all of this because we believed that the Meghalaya Civil Service Examination would test something more than our memory. We believed it would test whether we could think. And then came the MCS Preliminary Examination 2026. Walking out of that examination hall, I could not help but ask myself: What exactly were we being tested for? The Meghalaya Civil Service — or Kaun Banega Crorepati?
It is frustrating. Truly frustrating. Not because the paper was difficult. Aspirants do not fear difficult papers. We prepare precisely for difficult examinations. What hurts is spending years developing conceptual understanding and analytical ability, only to find that a significant portion of the paper rewards the ability to remember isolated facts, names, dates, terms and one-line information.
You study the Constitution because you want to understand how institutions work — and you are asked to recall an Article. You study economics because you want to understand how an economy functions — and you are asked to recall a statistic or a fact. You study the environment and science because you want to understand systems and processes — and you encounter questions where knowing the obscure term is more important than understanding the underlying concept. And suddenly you begin to wonder: Was I preparing the wrong way? Perhaps I should have spent less time trying to understand and more time memorising. Perhaps I should have solved thousands more MCQs. Perhaps I should have memorised another hundred facts before entering that examination hall. That is the part that breaks the heart.
Because serious aspirants do not prepare for civil services simply to clear an MCQ examination. We prepare because we want to become officers capable of understanding problems, analysing situations, interpreting laws, balancing competing interests and making decisions. We read beyond the syllabus. We follow public policy. We discuss governance. We try to understand why things happen rather than merely remembering that they happened. And yet, when the examination places overwhelming emphasis on factual recall, the message seems to be: Don’t understand it. Just remember it.
What makes this particularly disappointing is that the MCS 2023 Preliminary Examination showed that another approach was possible. The 2023 paper, whatever its imperfections, demanded more thought. It made candidates read statements carefully, distinguish between them, eliminate options and apply concepts. That felt like a civil-service examination. So why the regression? Why move backwards?
An examination need not be easy to be fair. It need not be predictable. It can—and should—challenge us. But there is a fundamental difference between challenging a candidate’s intellect and challenging the candidate’s memory bank. And yes, there is one
part of the 2026 paper that deserves genuine appreciation: the Meghalaya-specific questions.
That was a welcome change. A person aspiring to serve Meghalaya should know Meghalaya — its history, geography, culture, institutions, movements and contemporary developments. More of that is welcome. But surely the examination can test Meghalaya knowledge and analytical ability at the same time. Because the Meghalaya Civil Service does not need walking encyclopaedias. It needs thinking administrators. Administrators who can walk into an unfamiliar situation and ask:
What is the problem? What does the law say? What are the competing interests? What evidence do I have? What are my options? What are the consequences of each decision? What is the fairest and most legally sound course of action?
That is the kind of thinking that civil-service preparation is supposed to cultivate. And that is why this year’s paper left many serious aspirants feeling so disheartened. We are not asking for questions that give us an easy ride. We are asking to be tested for what we have spent years preparing to become. The MCS is the premier civil service examination of Meghalaya.
The standard of its question paper should reflect the standard expected of the officers it seeks to select.
Aspirants will accept failure. We will accept difficult questions. We will accept having studied the wrong topic. We will accept that someone else was better prepared. What is difficult to accept is feeling that the years spent learning to understand were less valuable than the hours spent memorising.
That is a painful message to send to a generation of aspirants.
The MCS examination should not ask merely: “How much do you remember?” It should also ask: “How well can you think?”
The 2023 paper seemed to understand that. I only hope the MPSC remembers it.
A Disheartened Civil Service Aspirant
