Last year, Indians made a movie about Kaogong.
The movie "Failure in the 12th Grade" is based on a true story and shows the actual record of an Indian man's public examination.
He dreamed of becoming an Indian federal policeman, so he tried his best to take the exam, but the ratio of applicants for this exam was one in a thousand of terrifying.
In order to stand out from a thousand people, the actor must go through three links of the preliminary examination and the second interview, the first stage eliminates 98% of the candidates, and the second stage eliminates 80%, and only a few hundred people are finally qualified to enter the interview.
In the three-stage exam, there are all kinds of strange questions, which almost require candidates to know astronomy and geography; There are also grey spaces for the rich to manipulate, allowing them to easily occupy quotas.
Source: "Failure in Grade 12".
Although the movie gives a happy ending, it is clear that the life that belongs to the majority of Indians is not so full of twists and turns.
After all,"A rich person can easily step over 12 years of ordinary people's efforts with just a box full of rupees. ”
Relying on the public examination, I dream of becoming a master.
How hard is it to take the exam in India?
Just look at a set of data:
In 2021, about 970,000 people applied to participate in India's public service for 712 vacant positions. In 2022, more than 1.13 million Indian candidates registered for the public examination, and in the end, only 933 successfully landed, and the acceptance rate was even less than 1 in 1,000.
In addition, as shown in the movie, the Indian public examination is not a contest to determine the winner or loser by examination, but a long-front, multi-link competition.
In India, there are three levels of exams, the preliminary examination (prelims exam), the main examination (main exam), and the interview (interview), each of which means the elimination of a large number of people. The entire process takes place throughout the year, with more than 30 hours of answering questions.
The preliminary examination consists of two objective exams, covering history, geography, ecology, biology, art, culture, mathematics, analytical ability, logic, statistics, English and other fields.
The main exam is more complex and consists of 9 subjects covering professional knowledge, Indian history and culture, international relations, public governance, economic management, science and technology, moral and cultural cultivation, etc., as well as an Indian language qualification exam. In addition, candidates are also required to have strong analytical skills and logical thinking, and be able to analyze and compare current national policies.
Examination Institutions in India
The entire process lasts one year, with applications in February of the first year and admission results in April or May of the following year.
In this tug-of-war with an extremely long timeline, Indians who decide to take the exam are often under tremendous pressure and have to work frantically to do so.
In India, there are a large number of public examination training institutions, and you can see billboards everywhere. Thousands of young Indians take mock exams or attend classes here every day, and many spend years preparing for them. In order to be able to attend better cram schools, some families even sell their houses to enroll their children.
Examination Institutions in India
But even then, their chances of going ashore were slim.
The aforementioned horrific reports are more than superficial, but deeper causes are India's huge unemployment rate and the huge gap between rich and poor.
In 2020, during the pandemic, India's unemployment rate soared to 2352%, about 11.4 billion people are unemployed. According to the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy, a think tank, as of December 2022, 40 per cent of the country's population under the age of 25 was in India, but a whopping 45 percent of this huge group was included8% are unemployed.
In other words, almost half of India's young people are in a state of nowhere to do.
The job market is narrow, the upward channel is closed, and young people who have nowhere to go can only plunge headlong into the wave of public examinations.
For them, being admitted to the civil service is the only way to change their fate.
Source: "Failure in Grade 12".
Civil servants are paid well above average, and in addition to their basic salary, they are entitled to a wide range of benefits, including free medical care, transportation allowances, housing allowances, food allowances, communication subsidies or subsidies for difficult areas.
In addition, Indian civil servants can also have official residences, buses, etc., which are in line with their rank, and senior civil servants are even equipped with cooks, drivers, nannies and other service personnel. They also enjoy a wide range of holidays, which are counted as long as half a year of paid leave.
That is to say, once you cross the dragon gate of "Kaogong", what is paved in front of you is the broad road.
India** also knows that this is an opportunity to change the fate of the lower castes, so the lower castes have six chances to take the exam before the age of thirty-five, two more than the other castes.
Source: "Failure in Grade 12".
Although it is still difficult, it is already a relatively fair "shortcut".
Indians, rolled up all over the world.
In China, when they went abroad, Indians began to "teach code farmers to work" in Silicon Valley again.
In Silicon Valley, the phenomenon of "The Indian CEO Phenomeno" has been circulating all year round. In other words, many of the CEOs of big IT companies are occupied by Indians, including Google, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, IBM, Nokia, Twitter, etc.
* They are also active.
Globally, there are seven countries where eight prime ministers, prime ministers or prime ministers are of Indian origin, including even the British prime minister and Singapore**.
The British Prime Minister is of Indian origin
And this also has a long historical origin.
On the one hand, India was colonized by the British for 190 years, and both the language system and the education system were fully inherited from the Western model. Therefore, Indians are highly close to the West in terms of language and culture, and are good at using Western thinking patterns to think about problems and express themselves, so they can occupy a higher position in Silicon Valley, where elites are gathered.
A large number of Indian-origin CEOs have taken over Silicon Valley
On the other hand, there is also a culture of "huddle" among Indians.
Immigrants of Indian descent have built strong community networks in areas such as Silicon Valley in the United States. From Indian societies to Hindu organizations, to Indian alumni associations, NGO associations, etc., various Indian social groups are independent and intertwined, forming a huge network of contacts.
The ability to provide job opportunities and even financial support for overseas migrants brings them together in a complex and intimately united way.
There is a saying that when an Indian rises to a high position in a company, a group of Indians follow.
In addition to these, the most important and fundamental thing is that Indians have a heart to go outward.
India is one of the largest sending countries of immigrants. More than 70% of H-1B visas (Alien Work Authorization) issued in the United States are issued to Indian software engineers. There are also 4.71 million immigrants from India, or 14%。
Most of India's elites who are active in Silicon Valley and around the world today have undergraduate degrees from top Indian universities and graduate degrees from well-known universities in the United States.
In 2021, Stripe President Collison tweeted about CEOs of Indian origin.
It's great to see Indians have achieved phenomenal success in the tech world, while also reminding us that U.S. immigration policy offers them opportunities. ”
Tesla's founder and CEO Elon Musk also responded: "The United States has benefited greatly from Indian talent. ”
Indian immigrants are the most educated group of immigrants in the United States, and most of them are India's high-caste ethnic groups, with a privileged background and a top-notch education from an early age.
In other words, behind their elite passes, families are helping them.
For many middle-class families in India, studying in science and engineering schools and living and developing in the United States and even overseas is the most ideal life template.
Using the family as a springboard to go overseas and become a new elite class has also become a common way for the Indian middle class to make the leap.
It's still rolling, but it's not the same track as the domestic examiners.
Slums and millionaires.
The examination has become the mainstream of the times, and "running" has become the only choice for the middle and upper classes, which can be seen from the gap between the rich and the poor in India.
As we all know, India has a long history of caste system. Every person is given a hierarchy from birth, and these ranks, in turn, largely determine one's career and marriage.
Although the modern Indian constitution has prohibited caste discrimination and advocated equality, these caste ideas are still deeply rooted in the hearts of the public, leaving India in a long-term fixed social distribution, and it is difficult for low-caste groups to enter the army and police force, and even if they do, it is difficult to become the first class.
Under this deformed structure, India is almost the country with the largest gap between rich and poor in the world, with wealth in the hands of a tiny few, and the richest 1% in the hands of the country405% wealth.
In Mumbai, India, slums are separated from wealthy areas by a wall.
It is one of the largest slums in the world, where families of several generations and more than a dozen people gather in sheds, medical resources are scarce, educational resources are backward, and most of them make a living on part-time or temporary jobs.
Slums and wealthy areas are separated by a wall
During the pandemic, they lost their jobs and their lives**.
Someone expressed despair:"I think we're going to starve to death, not to die of the coronavirus. ”
After the pandemic, their lives have not changed for the better.
According to TradingEconomicsIndia's unemployment rate stands at 6 in January 2024, according to com78% and a labor force participation rate of 493%。
That's why Indians are getting caught up in the exam wave anyway.
However, even though the upward path for India's poor is already so narrow, there are still rich people who will get a piece of the pie.
Under the fierce competition to the point of almost deformed examination system, the Indian examination has derived the fixed industry of "cheating ** party", with long headphones in slippers, micro ** hidden in T-shirts, nail art receivers and so on.
In addition, there is the difficult issue of corruption in public examinations.
According to relevant reports, a national-level exam question can be sold for up to 600,000 rupees (about 50,000 yuan). There are also **bribes** tampering with results. Since 2018, at least 12 major recruitment exams in India have been cancelled due to leaked test questions, triggering a mass up** among the population.
India's railway sector has seen a lot of recruitment, and a large number of candidates have taken to the streets**
In the movie "Failure in the 12th Grade", it is mentioned: "A rich person can easily cross the 12 years of hard work of ordinary people with just a box full of rupees." ”
Source: "Three Fools Make a Mess in Bollywood".
Even for the middle-class elite who have read books, leaving India is a better option.
India's high crime rate and corruption, combined with a chaotic industrial structure and widespread low income, have forced them to look out.
In the long run, the gap between the rich and the poor has been further widened, and more and more people are unable to find their place in this society. You can only break out, or escape.
Back to the "Failure of the 12th Grade", at the end of the movie, the male protagonist raises his arms in indignation against cheating and the phenomenon of the rich occupying high positions:
If I can't be the sun that illuminates the earth, then I'll be the streetlight that illuminates my neighborhood. ”
It sounds beautiful, but no matter how bright the street lights in the neighborhood are, they can easily be shadowed by the tall buildings next door.
In the movie, there are millionaires who come out of the slums, but in reality, there is only a high wall separating the slums from the billionaires.