Here are extracts from the online transcript of the report at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125441557:
REEVES: Getting a job on India's railways is much harder than you'd think. The other day, I met some young Indians trying to become ticket collectors. They first have to pass what are known as the railway exams, so they've gone back to school. ... They come here every day, to a stark and grubby classroom in a private tuition center tucked in a back alley in New Delhi. The students scribble away in their dog-eared notebooks as the teacher poses one of those brain teasers dreaded by everyone except math geeks.
Having established that thousands of desperate people apply for every ticket collector position -- "because of the job security and the perks" -- Reeves moves on to some of the questions that are asked in the Railway Recruitment Board's tests for ticket collectors:
REEVES: What's the deepest place on Earth - the Caspian, Aegean, Dead Sea or Black Sea? What's the capital of Turkey? And who won the Australian Open Women's Singles Tennis title in 2002?
Now, you can also buy books in India that contain sample papers for the railway exams, and I've got one here. This is for a ticket collector's job. Question 67: What's laughing gas made of?
Several listeners commenting on the NPR web site were convinced that all this was an April Fools joke; one smart aleck took the reference to laughing gas as a sly hint from Reeves.
Unfortunately, Reeves is not kidding. Just google "railway recruitment board ticket collectors test questions" and you will see that an entire industry has sprung up surrounding these tests. For example, this site has the laughing gas question. This one has the Australian Open question.
I found other humdingers: Minus 40 degree centigrade is equal to _____ degree Fahrenheit; What is the value of XC (Roman Number)? Geostationary orbit is at a height of ___? Which of the following is the highest plateau in the world?
And the questions on Indian history made my head spin, even though I can claim -- with unimpeachable justification -- to have had a non-substandard Indian college education.
(At the risk of being slightly off point, I felt that the language skills of the question setters -- or, possibly the online tutors -- left something to be desired:
Which of the following gases is filled in a balloon? (1) Helium (2) Hydrogen (3) Bromine (4) Oxygen
Focus on the image eye is adjusted through ____ (1) Retina (2) Iris (3) Comea (4) Lens
Maximum oil can be extracted from _____ (1) Sunflower (2) Groundnut (3) Mustard (4) Cardamom
Nose starts bleeding when one climbs up mountain due to ____ (1) low pressure (2) high pressure (3) height (4) None of these
Africa occupies which part of the earth? (A) 1/3rd (B) 2/3rd (C) 4/5th (D) 1/5th. etc.)
Readers will immediately see that these questions have little or nothing in them to test a person's ability to be a ticket collector. But that by itself is not an argument against asking these kinds of questions. Labor economists understand that a job applicant's ability to answer an apparently irrelevant question may signal his or her innate ability, when there is no direct test for that ability.
But, honestly, not even an indulgent interpretation of this signaling theory can explain why applicants for an Indian Railways ticket collector's job are being asked these questions. The true reason is that these jobs pay -- in wages, benefits, and job security -- far more than what economists call the equilibrium wage or the free-market wage.
The equilibrium wage is that wage -- loosely interpreted to include the monetary value of non-wage benefits and job security -- at which the number of job applicants is equal to the number of job vacancies: i.e., supply equals demand. When the wage exceeds the equilibrium level, supply exceeds demand: too many applicants chase too few jobs. In such a situation, you need a quasi-legitimate way of bestowing a tiny number of jobs upon the hordes of applicants. And that's what explains all those questions about geostationary orbits, the Roman numbering system, the Australian Open, etc.
Announcing a set of minimal qualifications and holding a lottery would have been more honest and more efficient -- because fewer resources would have been wasted on test prep and the industry that has developed around it. But appearances matter: a lottery just wouldn't look right.
But even if Indian Railways had recruited ticket collectors through lottery, another question would remain: Why are these jobs so damn attractive in the first place? Why couldn't the wages and benefits be reduced to a level closer to the equilibrium or free-market wage? There would still have been at least as many qualified applicants as vacancies, and the Indian taxpayer would have saved some money. Why must job security be as high as it apparently is? Is every ticket collector in Indian Railways a model employee, a freaking saint? Why can't the Indian taxpayer receive true assurance that his or her money will not end up paying the salaries of lousy or venal public employees, that all such creeps will be fired?
The answer has to do with the immense power of the public employees' unions. They can bring India to a halt at any time by arranging crippling strikes throughout the country. The Indian public sector is TBTA: too big to be held accountable. This is why public sector pay and job security levels are stratospheric, relative to private sector levels. This is why there are thousands of applicants for each ticket collector's job. This is why the ticket collectors' test asks who was the British viceroy when the Indian Legislative Councils Act of 1909 was enacted (Lord Minto, apparently, if you must know).
The public sector employees' unions are an absolute blight on India. Indian taxpayers suffer, because their money is wasted. The Indian poor suffer too, because the multitude of government development schemes, even when well intentioned, are implemented with utter disregard for the needs of the people. This happens because the public employees responsible for plan implementation simply aren't accountable. Teachers get paid, but they don't show up to teach. And they can't be fired. The unions have made sure of that.
Check out Fire and Fumes Can't Drive Indians From Hellish Village by Geeta Anand, The Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2010, for an illustrative report. The residents of Bokapahari in Jharkhand state live in a hellish environment. The government spent millions of dollars building apartments to relocate them. But now that the apartments are ready, the Bokapahari are refusing to relocate! The public employees in charge of this development scheme never bothered to talk to the Bokapahari people. They simply went ahead and built the apartments, assuming that the Bokapahari would relocate!
Now, do you think the geniuses in charge of this colossal bungle will be held accountable? Do you think they will be fired? If you do, there is a bridge in Jharkhand that I would like to sell you.
