My Childhood Dream Lives On

After an excruciating wait of nearly 20 days for the CSM-2012 results, yesterday we were redeemed. Inefficient UPSC took nearly 3 weeks more than the usual time to declare the results. Last few days were terrible for me as this is my last attempt, if I fail in CSM, my childhood dream dies then and there, and if I pass, it lives on giving me a chance to fight on another day. By God's grace and my family's wishes and prayers, I got the interview call. :-) Happy but not that happy as this is only semifinals that I have won.

I didnt count the number of selected candidates but I heard that some 2674 candidates are called for the interview and there are some 1091 vacancies. When full list of the names of the selected candidates, their optionals, their mothertongue, their centre of examination etc comes out, we can have a clear picture about which optionals suffered, which optionals are upscaled, which states excelled, etc. But preliminary estimates suggest that Public Administration, Psychology suffered, and Sociology, science subjects excelled. Some who have connections with the examiners who evaluated the answersheets are even saying that marks in public administration are so low that very few crossed 100 in paper-1 (raw marks) and that UPSC sought an exaplanation from these examiners for awarding so low marks. If the marks are not upscaled then I am sure we are going to suffer and our hopes of becoming IAS will be just pipe dreams.

And as always, there are people who gave interviews multiple times but still couldnt get through this time. I always held that this exam is a lottery because of different reasons and it is luck and fate which matters more than merit. It is proved once again. One of my friends who gave interview last time and who deserves to get selected, failed to make it. It came as a shocker to me. Another one of my friends who gave mains 3 times couldnt get through in this last attempt. It is heart rending and gut wrenching to think about them. It could have been me in their place today. Moreover there is no guarantee that I can get a rank finally inspite of my best efforts. Where does that leave me? God, this is so unfair and unjust.

Congratulations to all those who made it and best of luck for interviews.

History Optional in Civil Service Exam

IMO optionals in CSE are going to stay for atleast one more year (2013) before the Centre approves the new CSM pattern. So what I am going to write here wont be obsolete for atleast one more year.

History optional should be chosen only if one is deeply interested in it. It is a vast subject unlike public administration or sociology or literature or philosophy. Unless one is inquisitive about the subject it becomes tedious to read. People tend to choose optionals like PA or socio or literature etc, even if they dont have any positive interest in them, as they have less voluminous syllabus, as they are easy to score, as they are easy to understand, as study material and coaching are easily available etc. History differs from them on the first two points. So history is normally taken by people who do BA or MA in history or those who are really fascinated by the subject.

So, what to read for history optional from the exam point of view then?
Unfortunately there is no one book which is comprehensive enough, which has everything we need to study. There are many books to read and one has to take the help of internet too. But I will try to present the absolute minimum number of books you have to read which are indispensable. A beginner should first read +1, +2 NCERT books. After that proceed to read the following books.

1. Ignou BA (not MA material) for ancient, medieval, modern Indian history. Most important source of all. There are only very few topics in these booklets which you dont have to study. Otherwise you have to read most of them. It is lucidly written.
2. Gazetteer of India Volume-2 for ancient and medieval Indian history. You need to be discreet enough to leave some topics and subtopics through out the book particularly in political history part as these are not necessary for the exam but very interesting. This book is a good source for the art, architecture, S&T, social life, different sources of history. It is full of facts, there is a risk that some may lose interest in reading history. :-)
3. Medieval India by Satishchandra (both parts). Lucidly written book although biased.
4. Spectrum's A brief history of Modern India. This is a book which is normally studied for GS History. But this is enough for optional history too. It is well written abridged version of Grover and Bipanchandra put together.
5. Jain&Mathur for world history. I observed that some people have a low opinion about this book. But I found it be good from the exam point of view. Buy it.
6. Modern World History by Lowe. A very well written book.
7. Spectrum's Historical Atlas of India. This is not enough. You have to do much more than reading this one. I will write a separate post on how to prepare for map question which carries 60 marks.

Apart from the above books which are absolutely essential, take the help of internet particularly Wikipedia wherever necessary. There are certain other books which some people suggest but which are NOT necessary in my opinion. They are -

1. AL Basham's the wonder that was India - very nice book. Read it if you have spare time.
2. Romila Thapar's Ancient India - well written from Marxist perspective, biased. No need to read. One may hate Romila but none can disagree that she is good writer. :-)
3. DN Jha's book on ancient India - lucid but very biased. Useless to read.
4. Medieval India by JL Mehta (all 3 volumes) - good books but no need to read.
5. Bipan Chandra's two books : Struggle for Independence, India after Independence - very biased and useless books written by a Congress chamcha. Resist indoctrination. Dont forget to perform shuddhikaran on yourself to clean the polluted mind after reading these books. :-)
6. Modern Indian History by Sumit Sarkar -No need to read.
7. Grover's Modern India - Modern Indian history between 18th century and 1905 is given at length in this book. But history after that is rushed through. This is voluminous, full of details. Good book Buy this.
8. Modern Europe to 1870 by CJH Hayes - very nice book. Read it in spare time. If I am not wrong there is another book written by Hayes for history after 1870. I dont have that book.
9. Ensemble's History Atlas - no need.

There are many NBT books on History which makes your knowledge comprehensive like India by Al Biruni, Medieval India by Irfan Habib, Coins, Temples of South India, Temples of North India, a book on Aryans by Romila, Asokan inscriptions, Shivaji, Bhagat Singh, Partition, philosophy of bomb, Tagore and Nehru, etc etc. These books are of very low prices and if history intrigues you then read them in spare time (Not from the exam point of view but just for fun).

One may be wondering, "But what about the coaching material, like Baliyan?" I haven't even seen any coaching material for history but generally speaking coaching material is useless, shallow, unorganised, incomprehensive, written in poor language. So my suggestion would be not to buy any coaching material.

So these are the books to be read. But beginners may be wondering where to start. My suggestion would be to start with old NCERT books for +1, +2. Read them twice as if you are reading a good non-fiction non-acdemic book. Then proceed to read IGNOU material. After that you will figure a way by yourself.

And remember that studying history doesnt mean cramming all the facts. It is more about understanding the perspectives and ideologies, looking through the motives behind actions, understanding the causes behind the social, economic, political, cultural, religious, technological changes (change and continuity!). Dont blindly believe what the author is saying. Indian Marxist historians and Congress chamcha historians are good at twisting the facts into deceptively convincing and false narratives. Try to build your own arguments based on facts against what the author is saying.

Ignominy of Defeat

Before the beginning of the ongoing test series with England, our cricket superstars dubbed the series as the revenge series for the lashing we got in England last summer. And the Indian cricket fans like me believed them blindly, thinking that we are really going to avenge the drubbing. Alas, we became bakras again! :-(  The last thing we expected is to lose the series in a humiliating way which is what is going to happen most probably (still the 4th test remains).

Vainglorious English commentators, English cricket fans, haters of Indian cricket like Paki pigs are ripping apart Indian team on television and internet forums respectively for our loss and if our cricket stars are not thick-skinned, they would be feeling like being naked on a busy Indian street. But I guess our stars are used to getting this kind of torrent of criticism and they know the best way out - shrugging off just like pigs shaking off the mud. Next best way is to plan a series with Zimbabwe (not Bangladesh as it is a better team than India) in India and give a lifeline to the forlorn heavyweights in the team.

Much of the flak is directed against Sachin, Gambhir, Sehwag in the batting lineup which is as usual and Dhoni escaped with light criticism which is also as usual. Whatever is the criticism of Dhoni, it is not about his batting but about the captaincy and the possibility of losing it after the latest humiliating flagellation. If his test batting statistics are looked into then one conspicuous fact emerges. He stopped performing well from the middle of 2010. From then on, save 3 or 4 innings on the whipping boys of test cricket -West Indies and New Zealand, he is a failure. A few times he made half centuries on England etc after ugly slogging and when the defeat is a foregone conclusion.

In the press conference yesterday, Dhoni talked about the leadership quality of leading the side when in crisis and taking up responsibility and not thinking of running away. Rather deceptive words for the undiscerning. I dont know why this responsibilty didnt come to his mind when he came to bat in first innings of 3rd test only to play a careless shot of the first ball he faced almost into the hands of fatboy Samit Patel in midwicket. If only Samit was more athletic, Dhoni would have not made a fifty. His captaincy was something which I never liked. I always held that he was lucky to get a team with players at peaks of their careers. Now that the players are not at their best Dhoni is cut down to size. He doesnt deserve a place in the test team. A bowler like Ashwin is a better batsman with better technique than Dhoni. I just hope India loses the 4th test and he loses his place.

For someone who has seen Sachin playing in his glory days, the sight of Sachin looking bewildered at some ordinary ball from a commonplace bowler like Monty or Swann or some insignificant Kiwi bowler is a letdown. Sachin is almost 40 now, he played international cricket for almost 24 years and he has achieved whatever is achievable. His reflexes are not going to improve anymore and he is getting bowled most of the times. Except a few hardcore fanboys who are in denial mode, everyone wants him to vacate the place for an youngster but he is not listening. It no more amuses anyone when Sachin says he is enjoying playing cricket just as much as he did some 23 years ago. It actually leaves us sulking. He is gradually becoming a butt of jokes which is pitiful. I dont know what is stopping him but I guess it is the advertising contracts.

One important thing which begs for attention in Indian team is the famed spin bowling. After the retirement of Kumble our spin department continues to look precariously weak with inefficient spinners like Harbhajan, Ashwin, Amit Mishra, Piyush Chawla, Rahul Sharma. etc. Ojha is not as penetrating as Harbhajan once used to be, leave alone Kumble. Ashwin can only do well when the opposition is Windies or Kiwis on spinning tracks. Our batsmen too are very susceptible on not just fast spinning tracks like that of Mumbai but ordinary spinning tracks like that of Eden. Dhoni has become a butt of jokes after Mumbai debacle for his stubborn demand for rank turners which backfired badly. A classic case of hunter becoming the hunted.

With this series, the halo of invincibility at home that India has been wearing since long is shattered for good. I hope this loss sets in motion the requisite amends. Our imbecile selectors should show some spine in dropping the white elephants which are past expiry date.

IAS Coaching Centers : New players in the field

Every month new coaching centers spring up in Delhi. It is common for those who fail to make it to come to Rajendra Nagar or Mukherjee Nagar and start a coaching center. It is also common for many coaching centers to wind up when they fail to make money to pay the rent for the office and classroom. This too happens every month.

But what is not common is predatory coaching centres which are already established in other areas like IIT JEE etc, with deep pockets (very deep indeed), which are run like corporate companies making foray into the IAS coaching business. This is a dangerous development.

I am talking about Sri Chaitanya and Narayana institutions which have made the life of students and parents hell in AP, which have made education a very costly proposition to the common man of AP. Now their evil eyes have fallen on Civil Services Exam, and mark my words, they are going wipe out everyone in the field within 10-12 years and establish monopoly if the things continue as they are. As of now these two started a joint venture in Rajendra Nagar to make joint efforts towards wiping out others and fleecing the students. This came as a surprise to me as they are fierce competitors in other areas.

If you have noticed, now a days children in AP start studying from the point of view of IIT JEE from class 6 or 7 itself. You may have noticed numerous schools going by the name of 'IIT Concept Schools'. 10-12 years back it was not like this. This trend has put tremendous pressure on the children and harmed their alround growth and thinking process. If you are from AP, you may know this. All this is because of the unscrupulous organisations like Sri Chaitanya and Narayana.

Now they are trying to replicate this scheme of things in IAS coaching too. These people have started coaching for IAS for intermediate students (+1, +2). They are trying to lure gullible parents into enrolling their children in these courses saying that taking coaching from intermediate onwards helps them get through in to the services early. Program details are given here and here. TN Seshan who is upright and whom I and many like me look upto is the chief mentor of these programs. I dont know what lured him but definitely not money. There are some issues here.

It is important to remember that only 900 people get selected every year and the competition is fierce, fiercer, fiercest. What happens when the student doesnt perform well during intermediate or graduation because of the burden and focus on Civils? These coaching centers had this point in mind and to allay the fears of the students they said that they will take care of the issue of burden. It is easier said than done. It is extremely burdensome at that stage to manage even maths and sciences which are part of the syllabus, so leave aside general studies part. If you have your feet on two boats at that stage, you may not get admission into a good graduation college like IIT. At the age of 15-16 mind is not mature enough to understand the social or political issues. Trust me on this. And ideas and attitudes attained at that formative stage wont go easily.

During the graduation, focus should be completely on course subjects and not on the subjects of civil services. I did a grave mistake by neglecting my graduation subjects and studying random and general subjects only in pursuit of knowledge. Most of the time I used to read random pages in wikipedia on different subjects like history, polity, philosophy, religion, economics etc. This has increased my knowledge and understanding of social sciences tremendously but my graduation subjects(computer science) suffered a lot irreversibly. It is another matter that I had no interest in them but fact remains that I neglected them which I am repenting now. Now I cant go back to my core area incase I dont make it to the civil services.

One more issue is that preparing GS and some subjects like PubAd, Soc, etc from the exam point of view at imtermediate stage or graduation stage is useless. Reason is the 'dynamic' nature of the subjects. They change so much in a time of one year that people who excel in year may get very low marks in the next year itself. If you have observed question papers in the last 5 years, you can easily understand what I am saying. Only thing 'constant' with civil services exam is 'change'. So why waste time? Moreover UPSC is planning to eliminate the otptionals by 2014, so why study the optionals from now on?

Now what should the intermediate(11,12) students enrolled in the IAS coaching  in these institutes take up in graduation? Should they go for IITs or other engineering colleges or medical colleges? Or should they join any degree college in a BA course? These institutes havenot spoken with clarity on this one but the accent is on joining a BA course. Think and think. This will be a big blunder in case of undesired eventualities.

So, intermediate students (and their parents) who are thinking of enrolling in these institutes, please dont do that. Dont fall in the trap.

Relieved of the burden

Finally relieved of the burden that I have been carrying on my back for the last 5 years. My fourth and last mains is behind me now. From now on I can focus on something else for a change. Feeling a bit strange, afterall I spent 5 years reading for this exam and did nothing else. And suddenly all of that comes to an end and leaves behind a kind of vacuum. Once Adapa Karthik who topped in CS-2007 said that one may hate studying for so long hours everyday, but once attempts are finished one will miss that times badly. I am already feeling that.

So how were the question papers this time? Sciences and other less popular subjects are not finished yet, but most of the popular subjects save Psychology(which is today) are finished. There are quite a few surprises(in a negative sense) and heart breaks for the aspirants this time.

First of the surprises was the statistics part of the General Studies 2. It was tougher this time. I always did well in statistics in my last three attempts, used to leave only around 3-8 marks out of 30-36 marks. But this time I did extremely badly, I attempted only for 10 marks. The questions were different from what used to be asked since 1979. They were asked from different topics which we dont study, which coaching centers dont teach. More over the calculations were lengthy. One question which carried 3 marks required us to draw two ogives and find median! Quite ridiculous. Because of wrong time management as a result of my habit of giving importance to statistics, I had to leave questions worth 25 marks. Other than that I felt GS paper 2 was easy. I just hope other questions which I wrote well, better than last year will fetch me good marks. GS-1 was lot easier than last year. Others too felt the same. I just hope I score very well in that paper.

In Essay, people mostly wrote on Public-Private-Partnership and Working women. There is not much difference between last year and this year in the difficulty levels. After a good 20-25 minutes of dilly dallying on the two, I decided to write on PPP. I wrote well and expect good marks too.

Then came the dreaded part, optionals. Public Administration is fucked severely this time. PA-1 was both lengthy and tough like hell. We had to write 5 sub-questions of 150 words in each of the questions 1 and 5 instead of the usual 3 each of 200 words. So 400 words extra. This came as a surprise for some of us and all the planning into time managment strategies before the exam have gone wasted. Till this time my handwriting was too good in GS, and excellent in Essay. But in PA-1 it was as bad as last year which can cost me dear. I just hope the evaluator reads what I wrote instead of going on face value.

The questions in PA-1were a lot tougher than what used to be asked till last year. I can say with conviction that this paper may be the toughest paper since PA was introduced in late 1980s as an optional. Believe me I am not exaggerating. I attempted all but I feel I wrote good to average answers only for 264 marks. Remaining 36 marks may fetch me not more than 5-7 marks I suppose. I expect average marks in this paper with out scaling. But I think normalisation will benefit us in this paper.

PA-2 is easier and I wrote well. More questions in 1 and 5 was not a surprise as we tasted that in the PA-1. So I manged well from the beginning itself with good pace. My handwriting for most part of the time was good save last 30 minutes or so. I expect good marks.

My other optional History had more surprises in store. I dont know what has bitten the question paper setter in the case of H-1. Boy, he has gone bonkers. Other wise why would he change the pattern of questions on MAP which is flawed and has loopholes. Earlier location names used to be given and we had to mark on the map given to us. But this time locations were already marked on the map and a hint (in only two words). We have to identify the location and write 40 words about eac (not the usual 20 words).

There are two flaws in this scheme. One, the locations were not marked correctly in 2 or 3 cases and they dont match with the hints given. For example, the hint for that site in AP which is located just east of Hyderabad is that it is an art center. We dont know whether he is talking about Nagarjunakonda or Hyderabad itself. But Nagarjunakonda is further south east of Hyderabad and not just east of Hyderabad. Another mistake may be that capital town in Bihar which is located around Gaya. Two, there are some locations on the map for which there are 2 or more candidates equally good. For example, for that prehistoric site in Kashmir, both Burzahom and Gufkral are equally good. And for that port near Mumbai, there are atleast 3 candidates - Sopara, Kalyana, Salsette.

One more change is 5 sub questions in 5th question (each of 150 words) instead of usual 3 of 200 words each. So 400 words extra including map question. There is one 12 marks question on Jaina paintings, Pothi format etc which is compulsory question. I read this topic a long time ago and I couldnt recall anything. Everyone whom I interacted with could not write anything on this. One more question on Acharyas' contribution to Bhakti movement was togher too. Thankfully I got it correct. Other questions were normal. I was disappointed that I couldnt perform to my satisfaction. I am expecting above average marks without scaling.

History-2 was better than H-1. In this too, there are 1 or 2 difficult questions like that one on interlocking management agencies (1.d). Thank God, it carried only 12 marks. My handwriting in H-1 was not good at all., just like last year. But in H-2 it was good enough for most of the time. On the whole, both H-1 and H-2 are very lengthy. I heard from many that they left atleast one 12 marks question in each paper. Overall I am satisfied with my performance in it. I am excpecting good marks in it without scaling.

From what I heard, Sociology paper was very easy. Most of the people wrote well. Even the Literature papers inlcuding Pali are easier it seems. Geography was difficult. This makes it necessary for scaling (normalisation) in all subjects as PA, History, Geography were difficult and Soc, Lit were easier. I hope better sense prevails among those who run UPSC and do this scaling. Otherwise there is no hope for me.

And I hope God doesnt cause me more heartbreaks. Let the worthy get selected, not those stupids who dont even deserve to qualify prelims, and not those perverts whose sole aim is to make my money by getting into the services.