“Why do you desire the Civil Service?” asks an aging bureaucrat.
“I want to serve my country,” replies Ali, an aspirant.
Both men smile at each other. The interviewer has been in the same place as the interviewee; both said they wanted to serve the nation, both are lying, and both know that they are lying.
Humans desire power more than anything else, and the State is a human magnified. In China, the Party is above all; in America, it is an oligarchy; in Scandinavian states, it is the people. That is what they both studied.
But the interviewer and the interviewee both know that Pakistan is neither an Islamic state nor a democratic state, it is a “post-colonial state.” The white men who spoke English left and were replaced by brown men who speak English. Now, the brown men compete amongst themselves to obtain that power. In post-colonial Pakistan, CSS, PMS, ISSB, and other exams are the only path to social mobility for the vast majority.
If they wanted to serve their nation, they would not all have PAS or PSP as their top choices. Their salaries are low and the job is burdensome, but the power and leverage one attains is intoxicating.
It is not the fault of the interviewer or the interviewee. If he does not have a Land Cruiser by the third year of his service, their mothers and wives will start bickering about how they are not supporting the family.
Both the interviewer and the interviewee know this. So, what do they do? A delicate game of words starts, in which the interviewee tries his very best to present himself as the conforming cog the state desires, and the interviewer tries his very best to break the other person down.
Essentially, it becomes a conversation between liars, lying on their way to attaining power so that their families might value them and society might accept them—so they can be married to someone, perhaps not of their own liking, but of their family's and society's choosing.
They talk about the same economic crisis, political havoc, or global turmoil that has plagued Pakistan, knowing well that they cannot change it. And neither do they want to. If they try, the politicians above will remove them, so they look toward the top bureaucrats in the civil and military domains who understand the system and its never-ending nature.
So, both the interviewer and interviewee lie. They talk, smile, and discuss. Yet, the underlying subliminal meaning remains the same.
An interview is a conversation between two liars.