2025-08-02
46 分钟The Economist Would you buy a lottery ticket if your odds of winning were 1800 to 1?
Would you apply for a job where your chances of success were the same?
30 million Indians are making that bet right now.
The prize?
A job on India's railways.
The railways are one of the world's biggest commercial employers with more than a million people on the books and and for would be new joiners.
To even get those long odds of success means taking a series of tests that are remarkable.
They only happen every few years and they are not about railway signage and safety.
They're about, well, they're just about everything else you can imagine.
Try these.
Explain America's policy on Huawei,
who propounded the homeopathic principle like cures like as per November 2020,
how many countries have membership in the World Trade Organization?
Learn all that stuff, pass this test and maybe, just maybe, an entry level job awaits.
I'm Jason Palmer and this is the Weekend Intelligence.
This week we're in Bihar, India's second largest state,
with journalist Dipanjan Sinha and it's exam season.
He's been looking into the whole economy behind preparing for these tests and why a civil service gig drives people to go to such lengths.
Its 3pm and Neeraj Kumar's on his way to take an exam for a job as an assistant train driver.
It's packed at Patna Station with no space on the benches.