The retreating winter morning of February 11, 2014, began unusually in Mukherjee Nagar, one of Delhi’s hubs for civil services aspirants. Some young and some not-so-young candidates boarded buses to 12, Tughlaq Lane. They had come to thank Rahul Gandhi for his intervention in securing two extra attempts at the Civil Services Examination and a relaxation in the upper age limit.
Rahul Gandhi had responded to scattered agitations centred on demands for extra attempts and age relaxation to “adjust” to changes in the examination pattern introduced by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), the constitutional body mandated to recruit India’s higher civil servants.
