INDIAN CIVIL SERVICES (ICS) – CAREER FOR FUTURE LEADERS OF INDIA

I recently met my friend, who had selected his career in Civil Services like me and the experiences he shared with me was thought-provoking and motivating for young aspirants of Indian Civil Services.

After my friend chose career in Indian Civil Services (ICS), many of his well-wishers criticised the career with several accusations. The allegations they place before him are: “The ICS, specially, Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is highly competitive and disturbing career. Where political interferences disturb your career prospects in the Civil Services,” “You won’t have peaceful time after you join IAS. You have to keep stake your family’s safety for your career,” “You have to synchronise your decisions will meaningless political decisions of uneducated leaders, where money-power, muscle-power and corruption are highly rooted. You should be a ‘Yes Man’ to their short-sighted decisions,” etc.

Though, the comments he received are from people who neither had a career in Civil Services nor could be considered as people with highly intellectual ability, their concern seem to driven, basically, from manipulated information gained through biased media, films, etc. Leaving aside their short sighted concern, he gave importance to his intellect and wisdom, and he gave answer to his critics which can be considered to have deep social concern and feeds moral strength to the aspiring civil service aspirant. My friend’s answer was impregnated in a small story as follows,

There was a forest-fire engulfing the complete area of a dense forest. All the animals in the forest were running away from the area to escape the fire. But, a small bird living in the forest alone was trying to douse the fire by collecting water from nearby stream through its small cone-like beak. And, it was doing it persistently and diligently. An elephant which was one of the animals running away from fire, looking at the silly action of the bird and criticised its action in humiliation. The bird replied magnanimously to the elephant with courage and maturity, "I knew my actions are silly and it will not succeed. Yet, it will show a way for my future generation to this burning problem."

The idea my friend tries to imply: The forest fire in the story implies problems the Indian Bureaucracy faces at present and we, the young citizens of India, as the small bird in the story, should be torch bearers and beacons to show a way to current flaring problem in our Indian society. This requires young leaders ready to sacrifice ourselves for the welfare of society. For this, we have to utilise our knowledge, character, creativity, initiative, etc, to develop into leaders to lead future generations towards bright future for our nation.

The implication of his answer is that we currently face a “Leadership Crisis” in Indian Governance. At present, there are millions of followers ready to follow a leader but we lack a single leader to lead them (leaving aside some great souls in other fields). In current India, there is an existence of “scarcity of leadership” like scarcity of water, proper air, food, etc. This scarcity can be resolved only through young people getting prepared at present to be future leaders of tomorrow. So, career in Civil Services is the one way towards enriching India with “Stalwart Leadership.”

OUR INITIATIVE STEP TOWARDS IAS VISION

How we are going to accomplish our Indian Administrative Service (IAS) vision? Where we should act to crack the most coveted services of India? The answer to this question will raise us above the simple, ignorant men. Below are answers to above questions:

Planning is an important aspect of initiation of training process. An intelligent “plan” is similar to creating a short-cut path towards a destination. Designing a plan requires complete understanding of resource availability – study materials, time, personal competence, examination schedule, etc., past achievements, and ability to forecast problems. An intelligent plan will be a guide map to our destination.

After conceiving a plan, we have “action” coming into picture. It is an act of travelling through our devised roadmap. When we travel (action), constantly we have to check the map (plan) to direct our movement towards proper direction. As we move along the route, “problems” intrude our efficiency of movement. Here, for tackling problems, we require enchanting character, high endurance, sheer hard work, commitment, unquenchable interest etc.

To perform perfect travel towards IAS destination, we need to concentrate selectively on three factors. The three factors are “Personal factor”, “Family factor”, and “Professional factor.” A perfect balance of the three factors helps us to attain the prefixed goal efficiently. From my perspective:

Personal factor: my character, my thoughts, my attitude, my competence, my knowledge etc.

Family factor: my family responsibilities, my family attitude, my family background etc.

Professional factor: my professional environment, my professional objectives, my professional capabilities etc.

But, personal factor requires special focus. Through, “Personal factor” we can bring about any change in family factor and professional factor. With reference to professional and family factors, we have less control. But, personal factor is completely under our control. As we know that, it is simple to propel us than to propel others to bring about change. Hence, to bring about favourable changes outside us, we should change favourably.

We end our motivation through a powerful quote: “Between every stimulus and response, we have every freedom to decide” – Victor Frankl

IAS PREPARATION – MY FIRST STEP

IAS preparation path will be a wide, enduring, enjoyable, and focussed learning with acquisition of myriad concepts varying between general sciences to Indian economy. IAS examinations are basically to test our Emotional Quotient (EQ) rather than our Intelligent Quotient (IQ). So, our character should have upper hand over our intelligence.

I have chosen Psychology and Public Administration as my two optional. I have selected Psychology based on my interest and Public Administration based on the availability of study materials. But, it teaches one thing with reference to IAS post – Public Administration teaches “what to do” aspect, while Psychology “how to get it done from others” aspect.

To initiate my action, I started my preparation with "Fundamentals of Psychology" from NCERT (National Council for Education, Research and Training) books. The books regarding Public Administration will be available within month of time and I will start my preparation of it side by side. The complete grasp of Psychology and Public Administration will be ending on May 2009. I intend to achieve it with efficient preparation period of 6-8 hours daily.

With guidance of my friends and relatives, even the highest peak of Indian Competitive examinations Mt. IAS seems to easily conquerable feat. These words linger in my mind as said by Tenzing Norgay, when he failed in his first attempt to conquer Mt. Everest: “As a mountain, you can’t develop. But, I am human capable of infinite development. I will develop and conquer you next time.” So, the examinations may be complex or tough, but, we human can develop any talents to deal with any complexities.