The fable of two frogs summed up the lesson being delivered at the Satyendranath Tagore Civil Services Study Centre in FC Block where the year’s successful candidates were being introduced to the current batch of civil service aspirants.
Seven candidates from among the centre’s students have made it to the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) list of 2023, the highest rank being 297. The topper from the state is Darjeeling girl Jayshree Pradhan who has got the rank 52.
“Two frogs fell in the milk. One gave up after a while and drowned. The other kept swimming and as the milk thickened into kheer it clambered to safety,” said Anushka Sarkar, one of the seven who has secured a rank of 426. She was highlighting the need for perseverance to achieve success in civil services entrance. Sarkar had missed qualifying for the preliminary round by two marks in 2022. “I had thought the world had come to an end,” said the geography graduate from Lady Brabourne College, who is considering taking the examination again.
Centre chairman Surajit Kar Purkayastha, a retired IPS officer, congratulated the successful candidates, four of whom attended the event at the Administrative Training Institute on April 18. “This is one of the toughest examinations in the world. So whatever be the rank one secures, it is an achievement. There is no need to run to Delhi to prepare for UPSC entrance. If there is fire in your belly you can crack it from Bengal itself,” he assured the aspirants.
The centre, run by the state government, has tied up with Khan Study Group and Shankar IAS Academy, renowned tutorial institutes headquartered in Delhi and Chennai respectively.
Bratati Dutta, ranked 346, is working as a food safety officer in South 24-Parganas and had to take extraordinary leave without pay to prepare for the entrance. “This is my second attempt and first serious attempt,” she said. She shared with the gathering how she did not join any coaching centre in the first year, wanting to build her foundation first. “Qualifying for the centre was itself a big achievement for me in the second year.” Since she was not confident about success in civil services, she focused equally on her Masters course in agriculture, in which she topped her batch. “I have not gone home for four months till the exams,” said the Ashoknagar girl.
Paramita Malakar, who secured the rank of 812, has been her family’s sole bread earner since the age of 21. “I had graduated with physics in 2012 and worked for seven years for Tata Consultancy Services. At the age of 28, when most people are close to exhausting their chances, I started thinking of taking a chance with UPSC.” She had started losing confidence when from 2018 to 2023, she could not qualify for the preliminary round. “Then I started appearing for every competitive exam. When I started clearing most of them, my confidence returned and I could clear the first round on my fifth attempt. Though I missed the final selection by four marks after the interview round, I could finally make the cut this time,” said the sub-divisional information and culture officer who plans to take the entrance test again in the hope of a higher rank.
Quoting a civil service success from an earlier batch, Paramita said what mattered most was not the time spent with books but what one did when one was away from books. “Mayuri (Mukherjee, a former student of the centre who came 159 in 2020) had told me even when she was not studying she would think how she would answer an imaginary question set to her.”
Madhyamgram girl Rimita Saha, ranked 566, had gone to Delhi to prepare for civil services entrance but could not succeed despite appearing from there. A gold medallist in both BTech and MTech, the engineer came back to her home state and prepared for the next attempt, identifying multiple choice questions in the preliminaries as her weak point. “This is a competition you have with yourself, not with others,” said the girl, who is expected to get IAS because of her caste reservation status.
Jyotirmoy Pal Chaudhuri, an 89-year-old BC Block resident who ran an IAS coaching institute successfully for 15 years before joining the government centre as an academic consultant, reminded the candidates that civil service was a service. “Your job is to serve, not rule. The Victorian mentality must not corrupt you.”
Kar Purkayastha highlighted the changes in the course. “Earlier, there was a bias towards the English medium. But the government now wants officers from all backgrounds, so the new course has no such language bias.” He also pointed out that the West Bengal Civil Service entrance syllabus had been made similar to UPSC. “This will go a long way in helping those aspiring for a career in the civil services.”