The first step to Civil Services

Here is a piece of advice from the tenth rank holder in the latest batch of successful Civil Services candidates on how to go about selecting the subjects for the preliminary and main examinations. "Do not play around with subjects that have been called scoring, or easy to get through."

IAS probationers with the Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee.

The steel frame of the Raj still remains one of the much-sought after career options in our country. You may attribute this to a colonial hangover or the licence raj mindset. But the fact remains that becoming an IAS or IPS officer or an IFS diplomat has few equals even today, in terms of job satisfaction, career profile or position in society.

The UPSC examination

The gateway to these and a host of other Civil Services careers is the Civil Services Examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission of India (UPSC), undoubtedly one of the toughest examinations in the world.

The key to cracking this examination lies in two areas -- one, understanding the raison d'etre of the examination and two, leveraging your strengths.

Any discerning candidate for this examination would do well to pay attention to these two points.

Examination-based selections of bureaucrats or State officers had been first started for the Chinese mandarins. But it was the East India Company that defined the reason for this format of the examination.

Lord Macaulay, in charge of initiating this process, reasoned that any person who had

proved his merit in a few selected subjects would have enough acumen to be trained in the processes of administration and the ability to handle all the diverse and difficult situations that would arise in the course of administering his district.

It is precisely this rationale that reflects in the UPSC's current format of the examination and should be at the back of the candidates' mind when they set about selecting their optional subjects.

The UPSC has included, in spite of all the hue and cry, a very comprehensive list of subjects, including obscure ones and professional subjects, to be chosen as optional papers, that covers almost all the graduation subjects available in India.

Thus it is expected that students of all streams of graduation can become civil servants provided they prove their calibre in their graduation subjects.

Therein lies a caveat. The current format of the examination is such that it requires the student to clear a preliminary stage with one optional and the main examination with two optionals.

Choosing the subject

Many students cannot easily read up by themselves a second new subject for the mains. For a rare few, their graduation subjects are not included in the list.

Added to this are numerous myths and wrong beliefs based on perceived statistical trends, of "scoring optionals".

What can be said at best of these scoring optionals is that they are merely subjects for which coaching materials are easily available.

Keeping these in mind, discerning students would do well to choose their graduation subject for the preliminaries, and any of the listed optionals that they are comfortable with as a second optional for the mains.

Do not play around with subjects that have been termed scoring, or easy to get through. They are not, and the UPSC is certainly not biased towards any one subject.

The format

Choose subjects in which you are strong. And this is where my second point about leveraging your strengths becomes important. But before I elaborate on that, I would like to outline the format of the first part of the examination.

Stage one is the preliminaries, no doubt the biggest hurdle of the lot, held on the third Sunday of May every year, notification for which comes out in the preceding December. The preliminaries are in the multiple-choice format and consist of two papers.

The forenoon session is set apart for the selected optionals, which will be different for different candidates, with fewer questions and more weightage in marks.

The afternoon session is a common paper on General Studies, with a few more questions, but lesser weightage in marks.

This is where leveraging your strengths comes to play. From the time you fill your forms in December till the examination in May, you should apportion your study time in proportion to the marks weightage, with time set apart for General Studies not exceeding 3 or 4 weeks.

Remember, your strength is or should be your optional, usually your subject of graduation. Scoring very well in your optional paper is a must because it can offset any under-performance in your General Studies paper, and also because it will pay off in your mains.

For those students who doubt their ability in General Studies, it must be said that though the preparation for the preliminaries need start only by January, the preparation for becoming a civil servant starts much before that. Acquiring proficiency in areas of General Studies should become your hobby at least one year prior to your examination year.

The "hobby" mode of preparing will make General Studies your strength, and not merely another subject. You will find the results rewarding. This is another instance of leveraging your strengths. Realising the rationale of the examination and building on your strengths, clearing the preliminaries thus becomes an achievable dream.

Let not the name preliminaries mislead anyone, for it is probably the toughest stage in the Civil Services examination. Barely 5,000-odd candidates, from among the lakhs who write the preliminaries, are invited to appear for the mains. Maximum elimination occurs here. So, beware, plan and prepare well.

ARINDAM BHATTACHARYYA

The first step to Civil Services