Summary
He is the third among the successful candidates from Bengal with a rank of 294, after Chaitanya Khemani, ranked 158, and Ishan Sinha, ranked 234
It has proved to be fourth time lucky for Rishabh Singh. The 26-year-old resident Uniworld City has cracked the Civil Services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). He is the third among the successful candidates from Bengal with a rank of 294, after Chaitanya Khemani, ranked 158, and Ishan Sinha, ranked 234.
“It’s a decent rank. I think I will get Indian Revenue Service,” said Rishabh.
This was his fourth attempt. Before this, he has cleared the preliminary stage of the examination twice but could not make it past the mains. “This time I cleared both the mains and the interview,” he says.
Rishabh’s family shifted from Delhi to Bengal in 2004 after his father took up an Indian Forest Service job and opted for the West Bengal cadre. So focused was he on becoming an engineer that he appeared for his Plus II exam from the National Institute of Open Schooling, bypassing enrolment in a school for Class XI and XII. “I was preparing for the IIT entrance, so I chose not to do regular schooling,” he says.
He ended up getting a B.Tech in mining engineering from the Indian Institute of Mining in Dhanbad. “I got a job offer through campus placement in 2018 but did not take it up. Mining was not my calling. I realised that in the final semester itself.”
Since then, he has been preparing to qualify for the civil services. But mining engineering is not offered as one of the optional subjects, unlike core engineering subjects like civil, mechanical and electrical. So he opted for anthropology, on which he has had to sit for two papers of 250 marks each, other than the four general studies papers, the essay paper and the two papers on languages. “My shortlist had sociology, political science and anthropology. These have comparatively shorter syllabi. To me, anthropology seemed he most interesting,” said Rishabh.
But he sounds a warning to aspirants. “People can score high marks by choosing other subjects also. One should not ignore one’s own interest in the subject or lack of it as one has to study the subject in depth,” he says.
He still remembers the two topics he chose out of the eight options in the essay paper — ‘a ship in harbour is safe but that is not what it is for’ and ‘the time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining’. “There is no chance of preparing in advance for the essays. They give googly type of topics,” he laughs.
By way of preparation, for one year, he had studied in coaching classes in Delhi. Then the pandemic struck. So he came back to New Town, where he stays with his mother. “I was preparing from home, doing online classes of various coaching institutes for the prelims and the mains. For the interview round, I trained at the Satyendranath Tagore Civil Services Study Centre in Salt Lake, among other places.”
The foundation course for the civil services will start on July 29 in Mussoorie. But Rishabh has his heart set on a fifth attempt. “General category students can take the exam six times. My dream is to join the IAS (Indian Administrative Service). So I want to see if I can improve my rank,” he says.
He has already given the preliminary examination for 2023 on May 28. “I will get to know in about 10 days if I have qualified for the Mains. If I do, I will skip the Mussoorie training as the Mains exam will start from September 15. The rules allow a candidate taking the exam one more time to skip the training, and on failing to secure a better rank, go for the training the next year also claiming the rank of the year before.”
But in this sweltering heat, training in Mussoorie would have been an alluring option, if he could go for it right away, he admits with a smile.
Last updated on 09 Jun 2023
