One More Time!

UPSC CSP - 2012 results are out and yet again I am through. Prelims is the only exam I have been performing well consistently since my first attempt. It is not like Mains where your luck and fate matters more than your merit. So even before I gave the exam, I knew that I would pass this easily, unless God wants to fuck me badly and prove that anything can happen if he wants. Moreover prelims is only the first and easiest hurdle to cross, most difficult being Mains. So there is nothing like feeling elated.

Some are saying 12876 have qualified, and some 13000 plus. I am too slothful to count. But what is special about this results is the day UPSC declared them. Today is Saturday and never ever UPSC released Civils results on Saturday. Everyone was cocksure that results wont be out today. That was till this afternoon. Someone called me in the afternoon and asked me whether I have qualified. I told him that results are not out yet. Then he informed me what UPSC is upto. UPSC has proved to the world once again that it is unpredictible and that nothing is sacrosanct.

Bye for today.

RTI: Making it more citizen friendly

Now a days I have been filing many RTI applications with different organisations and it has been not a good experience at all so far.

Some organisations don't disclose any information citing different provisions of RTI Act even after CIC, SC, different HCs have given orders and judgments to disclose the information asked for. That shows how much respect they give to judiciary, laws. Some times they give very ambiguous answers which frustrates the applicants.

Some organisations dont accept Indian Postal Orders. If you have sent them an application with IPOs, they reply to you asking you to resend the application with DDs, or pay orders of Rs 10, or ask you to affix court fee stamps worth Rs 10. The irony is that they spend Rs 35 on sending the reply. Not just that. They spend time in typing the letter which they could have easily spent on typing the requisite info. Rules are given more importance than efficiency which is a trait of any typical sarkari organisation. And the time taken in sending this reply is nearly a month after they receive the application. Time taken to deliver the posts and replies by the postal department is more than 8 days in total. Result is delay.

There are many deficiencies in the working of RTI and there are solutions suggested by civil society, 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission. But they didn't suggest one change which I am going discuss here which is about the mode of payment and mode of sending the application.

Sending a postal mail to someone is anachronistic in the age of internet, e-mails. If RTI Act is amended to allow e-mail as one form of filing application, it will reduce the delays, reduce the costs on sending the posts. It will improve the access to netizens who feel lazy in going to post office to file the application.

Implementing this doesn't require huge resoures. Only requisite is a secure payment gateway, which is already available, already being used by different government agencies like Railway department etc. Other things like creating an email id for every PIO, a tracking system of the applications etc are simple.

This electronic communication is only to be supplementary to the main form of communication i.e postal mail. I dont know why this mode is not mentioned in the RTI Act. This can definitely make RTI Act more citizen friendly.

Back Again!

It has been more than 2 months since I last posted on this blog. I didnt get through in CSE-2011 and the results were absolutely shocking to me. I didnt get through and on the top of it, few people I know got very good ranks which even they weren't expecting. I distinctly remember what happened on that day. After I opened the pdf file of results, I quickly searched for my name. I didnt find. Immediately I started scanning from the top. I found 4 names whom I know in the top 60. In short I received 5 shocks within 1 minute or so. :-) Thank God, I have a strong heart. :-))

More shocks were in store for me which came to the fore when the marks were declared. I got very less marks in subjects which I wrote well and in which I was cocksure of getting good marks. In the first few days after the results and the marks were out, I couldn't even sleep thinking about the disasters. It is not an hyperbole to say that not a minute passed by without thinking about what happened.

It took time to recover normality. Even though I have one more attempt in progress, now I have reconciled with the fact that I may never become a civil servant which is my passion. I have learnt it hard way that passion only makes you a sad person if unfulfilled. What is the use of hardwork when the result is zero? Everyone who knew me, including those top rankers used to expect that I would get a good rank. What is the use of their expectations or wishes? Afterall man proposes, god disposes.

The more I write in this post, the sadder I become. So stopping it here.