Many times we encounter few points regarding the HOLY COMPETITIVE EXAMS in India by the people around us that,
THIS IS THE 'HARDEST' EXAM IN THE WORLD

The word HARDNESS/TOUGHNESS clicks into the minds of every engineer as they do a lot of TOUGHNESS TESTS during their engineering

Brinell Hardness test, Vicker's Hardness test and what not. But what is uncommon between the results of these tests and what you hear from the people is the objectivity.
The HARDNESS/TOUGHNESS claimed by them regarding the competitive exams isn't having a parameter to measure it.

What may be HARD for me, EASY for you and vice versa, so logically we can say that it is a subjective term.
Now my concern is, if you talk about the ACCEPTANCE RATIO, which is making an exam tough, so a country which is having the 2nd largest population pool in the world,

acceptance ratio of any exam, be it a clerk exam or be it UPSC, will be fairly low.
Secondly, people start believing that because of this infinitesimally low acceptance ratio, we get the best of the TALENT POOL, I am curious here, REALLY ?
Let's talk about any exam conducted by

UPSC, be it CSE, ESE, CMS, EPFO etc, the main motive of the officers is to do FINANCIAL and MAN MANAGEMENT, now tell me if any of the exam gives us a clear picture of a candidate's man/finance management skills ?
The answer is NO.
In fact in the "HARDEST EXAM" of the world,

Doctors and Engineers are forced to study the humanities subject and humanities students protest when they're subjected to give aptitude test.
And every graduate in the country is asked to give a common entrance exam to get into services of varying nature, which is decided on

the basis of rank you got by writing essays in 3 hours.
This exam when started by the Britishers, it was logical to ask about India, as the Englishmen who were to serve in India, were expected to know about India, secondly in the case of any dispute, no internet was there.

But in the contemporary times, where we all are concerned about digitalising the things, the topmost exam (as per the people), is yet to be digitalised and I don't think it's gonna be in the next 50 years too.
Similar is the case with IIT JEE/NEET and other exams. If someone

wants to become a surgeon, then what's the need of him understanding the complex concepts of Newtonian physics, which is outdated ages ago ?
and if someone wants to become an Aeronautical engineer, what he/she will do with the information related to ANTIPYRETICS and ANALGESICS ?

The only thing which these exams did good is it gave respect to humanities subject, which you ignore during school.
But if you have interest in them, you will anyhow read them, isn't it?
When you read any subject just for the sake of clearing an exam, you literally kill the very

spirit of that subject.

I want to conclude the things by saying, it's not the BEST FIT, it's the RIGHT FIT which is the need of time. There can't be a common exam to decide who is going to become an IRS, IFS, IPS or IAS, else even after other 70 years, we will be still a

developing country.
And next time onwards, before saying anyone about the HARDNESS/TOUGHNESS of any exam, either mention the UNIT of HARDNESS, or don't use this phrase,
else you are no better than the radical religious fanatics who baselessly fight on religious matters.