UPSC Turns 100: How the Civil Services Exam Shaped India’s Middle Class

For a hundred years, one examination has quietly decided who gets to run the Indian state from behind the scenes. On Thursday, as the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) completed a century, Prime Minister Narendra Modi marked the milestone at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, releasing a commemorative coin, a stamp and a book on landmark judgements. The ceremony was about an institution. But the story of the exam is just as much about the households that have built their ambitions around it, and about how a civil services job became shorthand for a secure, respectable middle-class life.

From a colonial institution to a well respected organistaion which finds its place in the aspirations of the Indian middle class, the UPSC has gone through a long and illustrious history of service.

A Centenary At Bharat Mandapam

The PM took part in the culmination of year-long celebrations that began on October 1, 2025. He released a UPSC Centenary Commemorative Coin, a commemorative stamp and a book titled ‘100 Landmark Judgements – Shaping the Policies of UPSC and Public Service Commissions in India’, according to the Prime Minister’s Office. The programme was part of a two-day event held on September 30 and October 1, attended by chairmen and members of State Public Service Commissions, senior officers of the Government of India and academicians.

In his address, Modi said generations, governments, technology and syllabi had changed over the 100 years, but public trust in the institution had not, according to All India Radio. He also called for bringing into public services young people drawn to public service rather than public office. Recalling the exam’s history, he referred to Subhas Chandra Bose’s attempt at the civil services examination in 1920 and credited Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel with giving independent India its “steel frame”, IANS reported.

From Colonial Gatekeeper To Constitutional Body

The roots of the organisation lie in the colonial state’s slow, grudging Indianisation of its own bureaucracy. The Indian Civil Service examination was first held on Indian soil in 1922, at Allahabad. The Lee Commission of 1924 recommended a statutory Public Service Commission, and the first one was set up on October 1, 1926, with Sir Ross Barker as chairman. At the time it was an advisory body whose chairman and members were appointed by the Secretary of State in London, according to the Press Information Bureau.

The barriers to entry were high. The PIB notes that the maximum age for the colonial-era examination was progressively reduced from 23 to 19, leaving Indian candidates little time to prepare. The commission became the Federal Public Service Commission in 1937, and on January 26, 1950 it was reborn as the UPSC, a constitutional body under Articles 315 to 323.

How The Exam Opened Up

The modern exam took shape in 1979, when the Kothari Committee’s recommendations introduced the three-stage format of Preliminary, Main and Interview. Later reform committees added the Essay paper and, following the Hota Commission, the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT). Alongside, the use of Indian languages and the reservation framework widened who could realistically compete.

The PIB’s centenary data shows how much the profile of the service has changed:

3 women were part of the 83 recommended candidates in 1952, against 299 of 958 in 2025. Whereas 9 Scheduled Caste candidates were recommended in 1955, against 158 in 2025. While examination centers grew from 8 in 1950 to 86 in 2026.

Why The Middle Class Made It Its Own

A UPSC post offers what salaried, first-generation graduate families prize most: job security, social standing and a pension-backed life, with real public authority attached. For a family in a small town, one successful candidate can change its standing in a single result day.

The geography reflects this. Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar and Old Rajinder Nagar, described by Newslaundry as middle-class colonies of post-Partition Punjabi migrants, became the capital’s UPSC hubs. Mukherjee Nagar is where most Hindi-medium centres are based, while Old Rajinder Nagar is home mostly to English-medium ones, a split that mirrors the language divide within the middle class itself. Since the pandemic, online coaching has taken the syllabus to small towns at lower fees, ThePrint has reported, widening the funnel further.

But the numbers behind the aspirations of the middle class are bleak. According to the 2025 results, announced by the UPSC on March 6, 2026, roughly one in a thousand applicants made the final list. The odds are the reason the exam is both a national obsession and a cautionary tale: for every successful candidate there are hundreds who spent months or years preparing and returned to a different life.

The Cost Of The Aspiration

Coaching listings put fees at some of the larger Delhi institutes in the range of ₹1.5 lakh to ₹2 lakh, before rent, food and years without income. The human toll has sometimes been stark. In 2024, three aspirants died in a flooded basement of a coaching building in Old Rajinder Nagar, a tragedy that exposed how many centres operated from unsafe premises. Aspirants themselves are blunt about the trade-offs. “Money and mental health, we compromise both for this exam,” Sagar Chauhan, an aspirant living in Old Rajinder Nagar, told ThePrint.

What The Future Holds

Speaking at the centenary event, PM Modi framed the next phase of UPSC as one of continuous reform. He urged the Commission to keep reforming its examination and recruitment processes, saying examination bodies must adapt to the country's changing needs and follow the principle of "time certainty."

He said even a delay of a few months can create difficulties for candidates, adding that, in his words, "An examination should not be considered just an event." He also asked whether recruitment processes followed by different public service commissions could be standardised wherever appropriate, alongside wider use of technology to ease the burden on candidates.

On capacity building, he suggested that UPSC and the State Public Service Commissions use the iGOT platform under Mission Karmayogi. UPSC Chairman Ajay Kumar set out the Commission's own direction through three guiding principles: Trust, Transparency and Technology, while another speaker at the Manthan sessions argued that reforms should empower the grassroots machinery, since most of the administrative machinery sits below Group A level.