Tamilnadu & Civil Services Exams

Results of the 2011 Civil Services examinations are out and 910 out of 2.4 lakhs have been selected for the IAS, IPS and other services.Yes there were 2,43,003 candidates out of which 11,984 cleared the preliminary exams, 2417 candidates were selected for the personality test  out of which 910 have finally made the grade.

Every year when these results are declared, it will send warm, sweet and sour thoughts within me as I too had tried my hand at this sometime in 1982 and went upto the Main exams. I am among the many unsuccessful candidates, whom one of my acquaintances described as a 'wounded soldier'. Very true. Whether you win or lose, after preparing for this, you will really feel like a soldier, realize what planning is, how focus helps, how not to be sucked by distractions and have all the scars on you which will surprisingly be sweet as you lick over the years. Preparations for this exam are like a penance. You have to live, breath, eat and live only with IAS thoughts.

Right from 1980s I have been hearing that it is totally North India oriented, it is biassed etc., and these were also cited as reasons for not churning out enough candidates from Tamilnadu. Setting these aside, the main reason in my opinion is that the IAS culture is more prevalent in North India; people were fed with IAS dreams early from their childhood like our Tamilnadu parents dream of their children getting into MBBS and Engineering. The CBSE syllabus also helps them a lot and most of the NCERT books used in North schools are basic requirements for IAS preparations.

In my opinion, candidates from Tamilnadu are not inferior to anyone and their knowledge, grasp and reproduction are in a way better than others. Only act that we need to tighten is to encourage and provide greater support to take these services. In fact, if you start planning for this exam from the school days, one can crack it ver very easily. If you are strong in two subjects, read the papers regularly and keep your eyes and ears open, half the battle is already won. Of late it is heartening to see that many Doctors, Engineers and technocrats from top institutions like IIT are choosing this ahead of their otherwise lucrative offerings in their own chosen areas of specialization. Also, IAS is one way to arrest the Brain Drain and retain the creamy best within India.

Instead of pointing fingers as to why Tamilnadu is unable to produce IAS officers, let us focus on how to increase our support to the aspirants.

Let us have more training institutions focused on competitive exams. Out television could play a major role in enhancing the general knowledge of the aspirants and could also wean them away from filmy craps under whose clutches the state refuse to free itself .The successful candidates from TN from previous years could also play a vital role in encouraging the aspirants and I am sure such a concerted effort would bring more successful IAS candidates from TN.

Last but not the least, as is evident from the competition statistics given earlier, not all who compete can be successful, however sincere their efforts are. Remember it is not an examination for a person to be declared Passed or Failed. It is a selection process by which candidates are ranked and as per the number of vacancies, people are inducted into the cadre. A person who is next to the last successful candidate could also be as good as others, but only the competition would have edged him out. But, the silver lining is that the sincere preparation for this exam also  helps one so well in developing  all round knowledge, personality and attitude that any other competitive exams would be much easier for the candidate and invariably he/she will land up in some job or the other. So, one has nothing to lose in preparing for this exam.

Some interesting tidbits I gathered from some tweets on the Civil services exam, 2011:

·         Women top Civil Service exams, IITian come third

·         Of the 910 finally selected, 715 are male and 195 female

·         A candidate ranking 287 has blamed RSS for such a performance!

·         50 from Tamilnadu and 10 from J & K Qualify for Civil Services this year

·         3 Muslims in Top 50