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IAS Toppers Inspiring Stories Who's Getting Into The Civil Services? Less than 2 in 10 entrants were from a metro or a state capital in '04 More than 5 were born in a tehsil or district town in '04 One out of four are kids of fathers who have not studied beyond matriculatio n 4 in 10 were engineers, techies or medics New recruits are older. About 50% in '05 were over 25. 4 in 10 now sit for the exam in Hindi, but English-types still have the uppe r hand 12 of top 50 rank-holders in the latest (2006) civil services exam are OBCs 32.5 % of IAS officers inducted in the last five years are OBCs Despite reservation, only a tiny fraction of civil servants are first-genera tion learners More women are making it to the IAS Tamilians and UP-ites dominate the last three years' IAS intake *** Mai-Baaps Of Those Days wajahat Wajahat Habibullah IAS, 1968. Educated at Doon School, St Stephen’s. Retir ed as Secretary Ministry of Textiles, currently Central Information Commissioner . mani_shankar Mani Shankar Aiyar IFS, 1963. Educated at Doon School, St Stephen’s, Cambridge. Was Consul-General in Karachi. Joined politics. Now Panchayati Raj mi nister. natwar_singh Natwar Singh IFS, 1953. Educated at St Stephen’s, Cambridge. Served a s Ambassador to Pakistan. Resigned to join politics, became Minister of External Affairs. virendra_dayal Virendra Dayal IAS, 1958. Went to St Stephen’s, Oxford. Was Under secretary Genera l of UN. Now, Member, National Human Rights Commission.
cstable . *** Firecrackers were exploded this May, and a wedding band called to play when the news reached Sasaram, a district HQ town in Bihar, that Sanjay Kumar Singh had, after several failed attempts, cleared the civil services examination with a ran k of 42 that would take him to the mecca for all aspirants—the Indian Administrati ve Service (IAS). Sanjay reached there via the high seas. He switched from pre-engineering to the merchant navy to build up a bank balance, doing his BA by correspondence at the same time from the Indira Gandhi National Open University. Then, he gave up his $3,000 per month salary to join thousands of other youths who live in and around the IAS-coaching class ghetto of Mukherjee Nagar in North Delhi, in tiny, share d rooms amid stacks of books, guides, rigorous swotting timetables, old exam pap ers, and crumpled pages from The Hindu.
sanjay_kumar Sanjay Kumar Singh, 29 / 42nd rank, Civil Services Exam, 2006 Son of a munsif (court clerk) in Sasaram district in Bihar, he did his BA by cor respondence. Though he lived one km from the district collectorate, he never got within conversing distance of a district collector, but like all bright student s in Bihar, he was encouraged from childhood to join the IAS. He got in on his s eventh attempt. "Bihar has not seen the winds of change that swept through the country from the ’9 0s, so we have an older mindset. For us power and prestige still means sarkari n aukri, rather than the fat salaries of MNCs." Walking into Outlook's Delhi office a few weeks after he was selected—with a disti nct air, if not a swagger—Sanjay relives those heady moments when he was swiftly t ransformed from a small-town boy with uncertain prospects into a member of the m ai-baap sarkar that personifies power in his home state. The euphoria of family and friends, the sudden warmth of neighbours who had written him off after he fl unked, gushing calls from mere acquaintances and even strangers. The tears of hi s father, a clerk at the district court who had spent a lifetime in awe of three conjoined letters, I, A and S. And the attentions of bridegroom-seeking civil s ervants and local politicians belonging to his Rajput caste. They were the only ones disappointed. At 29, the new probationer was already married. Sanjay is the new face of the civil services. Agastya Sen, the metro-born protag onist of Upamanyu Chatterjee's 1988 novel, English, August, with 'St Stephen's C ollege' written all over him, who finds himself in a district town—a "dot in the h interland"—after joining the IAS, is even more of a rarity than he already was in the '80s and the '90s. The most recent data on the social profiles of the 400-od d who annually clear the civil services exam conducted by the Union Public Servi ce Commission (UPSC) to join the IAS, the Indian Foreign Service, the Indian Pol ice Service and other services, shows that the numbers of those born and schoole d in "dots in the hinterland" is rising steadily. The city-born and city-bred, a pparently chasing IIMs, MNCs, foreign universities and a plethora of new-economy options, are painting themselves out of the picture. "The easy availability of good jobs not requiring such hard work and preparation to get into, have turned people from relatively affluent backgrounds away from the IAS," says ex-IAS offi cer and National Advisory Council member N.C. Saxena. govind_jaiswal Govind Jaiswal, 22 /48th rank, Civil Services Exam, 2006 His father used to pull rickshaws, now he rents them out. He went to a governmen t school and a modest college in Varanasi, His family sold land to finance coach ing classes in Delhi. He got a dozen marriage proposals after the results, one f rom the family of a local liquor king, offering Rs 4 crore as dowry, but he turn ed them down. "I decided to try for the IAS because this is one government job where you don’t n eed money or approach to get in, and I had neither.... Earlier, the police used to harass my father, now they do ‘sir sir’." According to data, in 2004, less than two out of 10 entrants into the civil serv ices were born in metros and state capitals. Three out of 10 were born in villag es—and as many as half were born and schooled in district and tehsil towns. Compar e that with the '70s, when two out of three civil service recruits were from cit ies, and the '80s, when one out of four still was. "It is a sign of a healthy de mocracy, of expanding opportunities," says Rudhra Gangadharan, director of the L al Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), where new recrui ts are trained. "People who had no access to the civil services are coming in." But for a mix of reasons.
"I came in accidentally. My family has land, but my brother, who had failed seve nth class, decided to work on it. The land was not yielding much—so I decided to l ook at a government job, and found getting into civil services was possible. Opt ions like joining IIMs or MNCs or starting businesses are not available to lower -middle-class families, we don't know about them," admits Pandurang Pole, a youn g IAS officer from Maharashtra in the J&K cadre. Says V. Anbukkumar, another you ng IAS officer, whose father was a police constable, "In a village, authority me ans the collector. He is the face of the government. In the absence of many educ ated people around, the DM became my default role model." Of course, the bigger the role of government in a state, the greater the quest for government jobs. "B ihar has not seen the winds of change that swept through the rest of the country from the '90s, so we have an older mindset. We equate sarkari naukri with power and prestige," says Sanjay. anbukkumar V. Anbukkumar, 33 / IAS, Assistant Commissioner,Madhugiri, Karnataka Son of a retired police constable from the backward Vanniyar community, Anbukkum ar (in the dark suit) went to school in village Chinnapalli Kuppam, Tamil Nadu. His siblings still work on the family’s 4.5 acres of land. He travelled to Chennai for his BA and MA, and got into the IAS on his 7th attempt, but didn’t take any p rivate coaching. It was his father’s dream that he become a police officer, but An bukkumar wanted to join the IAS. "In our country, there are three people who are the most powerful—PM, CM and DM. I wanted to be a DM." About 30 per cent of civil service entrants are, like him and Anbukkumar, the ch ildren of government and semi-government employees. But, says ex-IAS officer Waj ahat Habibullah, who interacted with three recent batches of young civil servant s as LBSNAA's director from 2000 to 2003, that is less and less likely to mean c hildren of senior civil servants. "The children of IAS officers do not want thei r fathers' jobs," he says, a little ruefully. "But there is an influx of the chi ldren of those who worked in the lower ranks of government service—like head const ables, private secretaries and clerks—for whom the IAS was the ultimate." Also, cu riously, a continuing influx of technical people, like engineers and doctors. "T hese are often people who've grown up in a rural area or a district, gone to a m edical or engineering college, but after that, don't want to go abroad, where th e best-paid options are. They want to stay in India, look after their p
cstable . *** Firecrackers were exploded this May, and a wedding band called to play when the news reached Sasaram, a district HQ town in Bihar, that Sanjay Kumar Singh had, after several failed attempts, cleared the civil services examination with a ran k of 42 that would take him to the mecca for all aspirants—the Indian Administrati ve Service (IAS). Sanjay reached there via the high seas. He switched from pre-engineering to the merchant navy to build up a bank balance, doing his BA by correspondence at the same time from the Indira Gandhi National Open University. Then, he gave up his $3,000 per month salary to join thousands of other youths who live in and around the IAS-coaching class ghetto of Mukherjee Nagar in North Delhi, in tiny, share d rooms amid stacks of books, guides, rigorous swotting timetables, old exam pap ers, and crumpled pages from The Hindu.
sanjay_kumar Sanjay Kumar Singh, 29 / 42nd rank, Civil Services Exam, 2006 Son of a munsif (court clerk) in Sasaram district in Bihar, he did his BA by cor respondence. Though he lived one km from the district collectorate, he never got within conversing distance of a district collector, but like all bright student s in Bihar, he was encouraged from childhood to join the IAS. He got in on his s eventh attempt. "Bihar has not seen the winds of change that swept through the country from the ’9 0s, so we have an older mindset. For us power and prestige still means sarkari n aukri, rather than the fat salaries of MNCs." Walking into Outlook's Delhi office a few weeks after he was selected—with a disti nct air, if not a swagger—Sanjay relives those heady moments when he was swiftly t ransformed from a small-town boy with uncertain prospects into a member of the m ai-baap sarkar that personifies power in his home state. The euphoria of family and friends, the sudden warmth of neighbours who had written him off after he fl unked, gushing calls from mere acquaintances and even strangers. The tears of hi s father, a clerk at the district court who had spent a lifetime in awe of three conjoined letters, I, A and S. And the attentions of bridegroom-seeking civil s ervants and local politicians belonging to his Rajput caste. They were the only ones disappointed. At 29, the new probationer was already married. Sanjay is the new face of the civil services. Agastya Sen, the metro-born protag onist of Upamanyu Chatterjee's 1988 novel, English, August, with 'St Stephen's C ollege' written all over him, who finds himself in a district town—a "dot in the h interland"—after joining the IAS, is even more of a rarity than he already was in the '80s and the '90s. The most recent data on the social profiles of the 400-od d who annually clear the civil services exam conducted by the Union Public Servi ce Commission (UPSC) to join the IAS, the Indian Foreign Service, the Indian Pol ice Service and other services, shows that the numbers of those born and schoole d in "dots in the hinterland" is rising steadily. The city-born and city-bred, a pparently chasing IIMs, MNCs, foreign universities and a plethora of new-economy options, are painting themselves out of the picture. "The easy availability of good jobs not requiring such hard work and preparation to get into, have turned people from relatively affluent backgrounds away from the IAS," says ex-IAS offi cer and National Advisory Council member N.C. Saxena. govind_jaiswal Govind Jaiswal, 22 /48th rank, Civil Services Exam, 2006 His father used to pull rickshaws, now he rents them out. He went to a governmen t school and a modest college in Varanasi, His family sold land to finance coach ing classes in Delhi. He got a dozen marriage proposals after the results, one f rom the family of a local liquor king, offering Rs 4 crore as dowry, but he turn ed them down. "I decided to try for the IAS because this is one government job where you don’t n eed money or approach to get in, and I had neither.... Earlier, the police used to harass my father, now they do ‘sir sir’." According to data, in 2004, less than two out of 10 entrants into the civil serv ices were born in metros and state capitals. Three out of 10 were born in villag es—and as many as half were born and schooled in district and tehsil towns. Compar e that with the '70s, when two out of three civil service recruits were from cit ies, and the '80s, when one out of four still was. "It is a sign of a healthy de mocracy, of expanding opportunities," says Rudhra Gangadharan, director of the L al Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), where new recrui ts are trained. "People who had no access to the civil services are coming in." But for a mix of reasons.
"I came in accidentally. My family has land, but my brother, who had failed seve nth class, decided to work on it. The land was not yielding much—so I decided to l ook at a government job, and found getting into civil services was possible. Opt ions like joining IIMs or MNCs or starting businesses are not available to lower -middle-class families, we don't know about them," admits Pandurang Pole, a youn g IAS officer from Maharashtra in the J&K cadre. Says V. Anbukkumar, another you ng IAS officer, whose father was a police constable, "In a village, authority me ans the collector. He is the face of the government. In the absence of many educ ated people around, the DM became my default role model." Of course, the bigger the role of government in a state, the greater the quest for government jobs. "B ihar has not seen the winds of change that swept through the rest of the country from the '90s, so we have an older mindset. We equate sarkari naukri with power and prestige," says Sanjay. anbukkumar V. Anbukkumar, 33 / IAS, Assistant Commissioner,Madhugiri, Karnataka Son of a retired police constable from the backward Vanniyar community, Anbukkum ar (in the dark suit) went to school in village Chinnapalli Kuppam, Tamil Nadu. His siblings still work on the family’s 4.5 acres of land. He travelled to Chennai for his BA and MA, and got into the IAS on his 7th attempt, but didn’t take any p rivate coaching. It was his father’s dream that he become a police officer, but An bukkumar wanted to join the IAS. "In our country, there are three people who are the most powerful—PM, CM and DM. I wanted to be a DM." About 30 per cent of civil service entrants are, like him and Anbukkumar, the ch ildren of government and semi-government employees. But, says ex-IAS officer Waj ahat Habibullah, who interacted with three recent batches of young civil servant s as LBSNAA's director from 2000 to 2003, that is less and less likely to mean c hildren of senior civil servants. "The children of IAS officers do not want thei r fathers' jobs," he says, a little ruefully. "But there is an influx of the chi ldren of those who worked in the lower ranks of government service—like head const ables, private secretaries and clerks—for whom the IAS was the ultimate." Also, cu riously, a continuing influx of technical people, like engineers and doctors. "T hese are often people who've grown up in a rural area or a district, gone to a m edical or engineering college, but after that, don't want to go abroad, where th e best-paid options are. They want to stay in India, look after their p
