Success Story of Gunjan Singh (AIR 16) - The IITian Who Left Her Thriving Career to Serve the Country
From the heart of Uttar Pradesh, this is the story of the Gunjan Singh from the city of Kanpur. Born to an Assistant Engineer father serving at Jal Nigam and a Teacher mother at Government Girls Intercollege, Gunjan has been brought up in a household incredibly encouraging of academics. A brilliant student through her 10th and 12th boards, Gunjan has a B. Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IIT-R). She had a dream job in the Software Engineering field. However, her heart was set elsewhere.
NSS IIT Roorkee Congratulating Gunjan
Choosing Civil Services
Gunjan had been aware of the Civil Services from a young age. In fact, her older brother actively encouraged her to be one. Sadly, he passed away. But Gunjan never stopped thinking about it. However, as is the societal norm, she pursued a more generalised and science-oriented education, ending in her getting an engineering degree from one of the top institutes in the country. But it was in this same institute that she was reintroduced to why she wanted to get into the services in the first place.
Gunjan joined the National Service Scheme or NSS while in college. As a part of this nationwide organisation, she went to different villages in order to volunteer and serve. That is when she realised her true calling. Along with some of her service colleagues, Gunjan formed a group known as the ‘Bharat Bandhan’. They adopted the small village of Bhangeri. Trying to work in this village, they soon realised the kind of difficulties villagers faced. Whenever, despite many hurdles, their group would achieve a task, no matter how small in the larger scheme of things, the satisfaction they would feel was unparalleled. This is where she finally, objectively, decided on joining the Civil Services.
The Path to Success
The path to success is laced with failures, or so goes the proverb. Having been a bright student through both her 10th and 12th boards, and having aced one of the toughest exams in the country to get into IIT Roorkee, Gunjan had never really been humbled by failure. However, once she started her UPSC journey, she realised the impact of failure and the need to not give up and persevere. Acquiring AIR-16 rank in the UPSC Civil Services examination did not happen overnight for Gunjan. 2019 was her 3rd attempt at it.
Gunjan tried pursuing UPSC while in her job back in 2015. After a year, she finally decided to quit, move to Delhi, and pursue UPSC full-time. This was because she felt her preparation wasn’t going as well as it should have. She enrolled into coaching center in Delhi for both her General Preparation and her preparation for Geography optional. She first appeared for Civil Services examination in 2017. Unfortunately, she couldn’t clear the preliminary stage. Despite this, what kept her going was the love and support from her wonderful family.
Gunjan with her parents.
So instead of giving up, she decided to learn from her mistakes. She realised that in the past year, she had updated her knowledge considerably. She had gone through all static sources multiple times. But what she lacked was in her test preparation. An example she uses is that during her preliminary exam, whenever she could not come up with an answer after reading the question, she would skip it altogether without even looking at the options. However, in her second year of preparation, she realised the importance of option elimination and how it can make or break one’s attempt. She cracked prelims in her 2018 attempt. But 2017 had broken her confidence and she had not started her mains preparation till the prelims were dealt with.
Having realised that she only had a sources handful of months to complete her upsc mains preparation, instead of rereading the source material, Gunjan decided to buy a few test series from reputed coaching institutes and used their model answers to prepare her notes. She sailed through mains, appeared for her interviews, but sadly, missed out on being selected for the services by a mere 11-12 marks. But she refused to give up still.
Flying high from her last attempt, Gunjan now used her scorecard from 2018 to analyse her strengths and weaknesses. She gave more emphasis on the papers where she had scored lower such as essays and ethics. She concentrated on scoring even better on her optionals. She practiced answer writing enough so that she did not repeat the mistakes from her last two attempts. And when the 2019 results were out, Gunjan Singh has achieved an all India rank of 16 in UPSC Civil Services Examination. What an achievement!
A civil servant has to face a lot of hardships in the service. The UPSC examination is designed to test an aspirant’s grit. Not giving up after a failure is half the battle won.
(Success Story)The Journey of Arushi Mishra (AIR 229) Cracking Every Exam in The Path to UPSC
Settling down for a penny less than what you think you deserve isn’t something Arushi Mishra believes in. In her quest to ace the Civil Services, Arushi has successfully secured rank 16 in Uttar Pradesh PSC Exam in 2017, as well as an all India rank of 2 in India Forest Service(IFoS) in 2019. But she never stopped. She never settled down for either achievement. She kept on pursuing her UPSC goals. In fact, she used each success as fuel to power her through to her ultimate goal.
The Journey :
Hailing from Raebareli, Arushi has done her complete schooling in this small town of Uttar Pradesh. Thereon, having prepared well for her IIT-JEE, she got admission in IIT Roorkee. After completing her graduation, she immediately wanted to start preparing for her Civil Services dreams. Arushi says that although her ultimate goal was acing UPSC Civil Services, she always had other examinations along her journey to ensure she had more than one option open. She strongly suggests all aspirants keep their options open as well.
Arushi’s first UPSC attempt was in 2015. However, she does not consider it to be a serious attempt. At that point, she was just testing the waters. Result is a process, not a product – Arushi says. So, through 5 years, she put in her heart and soul to cracking this exam. And on the way picked up similar results.
At each stage, despite coming up on top of lakhs of aspirants, whether it was in UPPSC of IfoS, Arushi never thought of letting go of her UPSC dreams. And yes, those were some very respectable services as well, and she would have been equally proud to join the ranks, but her heart was set on UPSC. And she had to keep working hard till she hit the end goal.
Bettering Yourself One Step at a Time :
Arushi urges aspirants to learn from her mistakes. 2019 was the first time she cracked UPSC CSE Mains and went through to interviews. Due to her prior experience in acing both UPPSC and IfoS interviews, she was confident that she was doing justice to her talents in the UPSC interview as well. She was never worried about that. Her main worry remained her mains exams.
Arushi had long cultivated the art of answer writing. She used to collect stories from her day to day life, as well as news articles she read every day, to use as case studies in her answers. She strongly believed that it is those little personal touches that help an answer stand out than using examples from textbooks that are just so common among all aspirants. She is also a great supporter of online education and has used online answer writing programs to assess her skills. She mentions how writing an answer and just noting the marks aren’t good enough. Until and unless one reads and analyzes the reviews, and uses those reviews to better their skills, they will not improve.
Despite the effort, the UPSC mains examination was proving to be an impossible hurdle for Arushi. It is at this point where she started reading UPSC topper’s answers. And Arushi says, this made all the difference and catapulted her writing skills so that she could finally break through to the interview stage, and finally to the final merit list. She says one may think they are writing a decent answer, but it is only when they compare their answers to the best, that they learn where they are truly lacking. There is a lot to learn from people who have scaled this mountain before, and it is unwise not to use the vast resources at hand to do so.
Message to IAS Aspirants :
Arushi Mishra UPSC Topper's Strategy & Interview
Sincerity and the perseverance of a positive attitude are what helps an aspirant succeed in UPSC. A sincere aspirant will always have the backing of their friends and family. Hard work shows and garners respect. An exam such as UPSC is a long-term game, and the highs and lows of preparation will get to you. Only by understanding that you cannot be at your best at every step of the way, accepting that it is okay to fail, and still trying to stay happy with your overall life and not just the career you have chosen, can one achieve the right attitude to bell this cat. Arushi’s 5-year long journey is a prime example of what sincerity, combined with the right attitude can achieve.
(Success Story)Aashima Goyal's Strategy Towards Cracking UPSC (AIR 65)
Aashima Goyal is yet another Engineer turned civil servant as the youth increasingly try and find their calling in the services that allow them to contribute more directly to society. Hailing from a humble middle-class family from Faridabad, Aashima has done her engineering in Biotechnology from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
Craving work that allows her to contribute more directly to society, Aashima has volunteered with many NGOs in her college years. It was during her final year in IIT Delhi, that she witnessed many of her seniors securing top ranks in UPSC Civil Services Examsand got interested in the services.
Finding Her Footing :
During her first attempt at UPSC, Aashima was still working. It was difficult to find time to study during the weekdays and she could barely manage more than four hours each day. On the weekends, she gave it her best. However, she admits that the time restrain and the work pressure got to her and Aashima was unable to crack the preliminary stages in her very first UPSC attempt and missed the mark by a substantial 15 marks.
It was after this setback that she decided to pursue her UPSC preparations full-time with full support from her family. She joined classroom tuition and started her preparation at full throttle. Devoting at least 10 hours a day, Aashima breezed through her second attempt, securing a prestigious all India rank of 65.
Aashima Goyal, AIR 65, UPSC CSE 2019
Aashima’s Strategy :
Aashima says regularity is key. It might happen that one day you may not feel like studying your optional. Instead of wasting the day, shift focus to a General Studies subject instead. Maintaining momentum and not stopping is the only way to keep up a steady pace while preparing for UPSC.
Aashima is also a firm believer in positive feedback. Experiences of smaller successes help people keep working hard towards their ultimate goal. For this, Aashima broke down her long goal of cracking UPSC into smaller, time-bound goals. As she successfully completed each of her short-term goals, Aashima’s confidence soared and she could keep fighting for her ultimate Civil Services aim. Test scores are also an excellent way to boost one’s confidence and Aashima suggests aspirants start taking up mock tests from the very beginning of their preparation.
UPSC Prelims vs Mains :
Aashima, like so many successful Civil Service toppers, does not believe in separate preparations for preliminary and mains exams. UPSC Civil Services examination is a marathon. Both Prelims and Mains are part of the same track. Integrated studying is the only way to achieve success in this examination. After all, the prelims exam is just a qualifier, it is the mains examination that will fetch one their rank. Aashima herself gave her prelims 90 days of preparation time right before the Preliminary Exam date. Even then, she took out 15 days of her schedule to finish off her optional. She believed that she would not be able to secure good ranks without her optional scores being on top and she took the risk, which later paid off.
Smart Studying :
The first thing Aashima did when she started her preparation was to make short notes on each topic in the syllabus. After that, she delved into recommended textbooks and started completing the upsc syllabus at depth. She believes one must be acquainted with each topic mentioned in the syllabus for them to have an upper hand in the examination. Towards that end, Aashima also joined a mains mock test series. She started off with small sectional tests where she would write 10 answers in 90 minutes, get an analysis of her answer writing skills, and then improve herself based on the feedback.
Aashima insists that the 3 months between prelims and mains is not the time to start answer writing. Rather, those 3 months should completely be dedicated to revising. Answer writing should be a year-long exercise. The same goes for the Essay paper. It is a 250 marks paper and should be treated with the same importance as the rest of the GS papers. One should aim to write at least 10 full essays before they sit for their mains paper. Going through previous years essays is also key.
Message to Aspirants :
Do not forget - revision is key. Whether it is General Studies static portion or current affairs, multiple revisions and a whole lot of answer writing is the only way to succeed in UPSC. And have faith in yourself and dream big. Nobody can stop you from reaching your goals but yourself.
NGT raps up environment ministry for not strengthening monitoring mechanisms
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Friday rapped the Environment Ministry for failing to strengthen the monitoring mechanisms pertaining to the compliance of conditions mentioned in clearances granted for various projects. Stating that the lack of effective enforcement reflected the Centre’s “insensitivity” to the issue, the green panel directed the Ministry to take appropriate steps.
Taking note of an affidavit furnished by the Ministry, a Bench headed by NGT chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel said, “This only shows insensitivity to the vital constitutional obligation despite repeated directions. Repeated plea of merely having such proposals without effective enforcement on the ground can hardly be held to be satisfactory.”
Following submissions made by the Ministry, that “meaningful steps” had been taken after the filing of the affidavit, the Bench said, “We cannot accept such a statement. If steps have been actually taken, we fail to understand why the same could not be produced at least during the hearing. We record our dissatisfaction at the attitude of the MoEF&CC on the subject.”
The observations came when the green panel was hearing a plea moved by Sandip Mittal seeking directions to devise effective monitoring mechanisms for compliance of conditions of environmental clearance.
MoHUA releases knowledge pack on ARHC
Union Housing Minister Hardeep Singh Puri released Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC) Knowledge Pack on Friday. This includes MoUs to be signed with States and Union Territories to provide ease of living to urban migrants in the country.
The Union Cabinet had approved ARHC as a sub scheme under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) earlier this month to provide housing facility to migrant workers and urban poor.
The Affordable Housing Complex scheme will be implemented through two models in the country.
Under the first model existing Government funded vacant houses will be converted into ARHCs through Public Private Partnership or by public agencies for a period of 25 years. Under the second model ARHCs will be constructed, operated and maintained by Public or Private Entities on their own available vacant land for a period of 25 years.
Government has said that continued cooperation towards successful implementation of ARHC Scheme will not only benefit urban migrants and poor but will also accelerate entrepreneurship and investment in rental housing market giving boost to the economy.
Finance commission submits report on agricultural exports
The High Level Group (HLEG) on Agricultural Exports set up by the Fifteenth Finance Commission has submitted its report to the Commission on Friday.
The HLEG was set up to recommend measurable performance incentives for states to encourage agricultural exports and to promote crops to enable high import substitution. After intensive research and consultations from stakeholders and the private sector, the HLEG has made its recommendations.
The recommendations include demand driven approach and focus on 22 crop value chains. The group has also suggested creation of state led export plan with participation from all stakeholders.
The group has recommended that private sector players should play an anchor role in driving outcomes and execution of the agricultural export plan.
The group has stated that the additional exports generated after implementation of the recommendations is likely to create an estimated 7 to 10 million jobs in the country. It said that it will also lead to higher farm productivity and farmer income.
Centre’s fiscal deficit reaches 83% of budgeted target in first 3 months of fiscal
The Centre’s fiscal deficit for the first three months of fiscal 2020-21 was ₹6.62 lakh crore, which is 83% of the budgeted target for the year, official data show.
Economists said given the government’s additional borrowing plans, both to meet stimulus spending and bridge the revenue shortfall as a result of the pandemic, the fiscal deficit may end up as high as 8% of GDP, far exceeding the budget’s goal of 3.5%.
The Union government has received ₹1.53 lakh crore (in terms of tax, non-tax revenue and loan recoveries) from April to June. This is less than 7% of budget estimates for the full year.
The Centre’s total expenditure for the quarter was ₹8.15 crore, almost 27% of budget estimates for the year, according to the report published by the Controller General of Accounts on Friday.
“The 83% figure is not surprising because it is using a denominator that has already been exceeded,” said D.K. Srivastava, chief economist with Ernst and Young, and a member of the advisory council to the 15th Finance Commission.
D.K. Pant, chief economist at India Ratings,estimated a fiscal deficit of 7.6%, while MadanSabnavis, chief economist of CARE Ratings, said it could go as high as 8% of GDP.
“When economic activity has been stopped because of the pandemic and lockdown, government revenues are also going to come down,” said Dr.Sabnavis. “We have been noting the positive trade surplus, but when imports are down, customs revenue is also lower. And consumers have also cut down on discretionary spending,” he added.
ISA amends framework agreement to enlarge membership
In a major development and push to Prime Minister NarendraModi’s vision of achieving universalization of membership of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), the requisite number of member countries have given the go-ahead.
After ratification to the amendment of the ISA framework, all the Member States of the United Nations will now be able to join the International Solar Alliance, including those countries which are beyond the Tropics.
The International Solar Alliance was launched jointly by Prime Minister Modi and the President of France during COP21 in Paris. The alliance aims to contribute to the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement through rapid and massive deployment of solar energy.
It also brings together countries to provide a collective response to the main common obstacles to the massive deployment of solar energy in terms of technology, finance and capacity.
ADB to support powerplants in Bangladesh with Indian entrepreneurs
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has signed a dollar 200 million financing deal with the Reliance Bangladesh LNG and Power Limited (RBLPL) to build and operate a 718 megawatt combined-cycle gas-fired power plant in Bangladesh. Announcing the deal in a press release on Friday, the ADB said that the project will ease ongoing energy shortages and drive further private sector investments in the country’s power sector.
A combined-cycle power plant is a relatively more efficient way of producing electricity. It uses both a gas and a steam turbine together to produce up to 50 percent more electricity from the same fuel than a traditional simple-cycle plant.
The financing deal has two components of dollar 100 million each. While ADB will provide dollar 100 million, it will also administer the other part worth dollar 100 million from the Leading Asia’s Private Infrastructure Fund (LEAP).
LEAP was set up in 2016 with a dollar 1.5 billion capital commitment for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The plant is proposed to be located on land allotted by Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB), in Meghnaghat, Narayanganj District near Dhaka.
The power plant will reduce dependence of Bangladesh on electricity imports. It will also reduce the share of environmentally harmful and expensive fuels like coal and oil in the energy mix of the country.
