Respect your culture, society and language to learn about your country and equip yourself before aspiring for civil service jobs, UPSC chairman D P Agrawal exhorted the civil service aspirants who came for an interactive session here on Wednesday. Speaking at the session organised by the Kerala State Civil Service Academy here, Agrawal said these days the students, who have to be part of the universities, quit the universities for attending coaching centres.
“But the coaching centres turn them into machines for mugging up things. One should study a subject in its depth,” he said.
70 per cent of science and engineering graduates who aspire for civil services prefer humanities as an optional subject. In that case, one has to go beyond peripheral knowledge to score high.
“One has to study in-depth about his or her village, district, state and country before accumulating knowledge about the world. You should first be interested in knowing more about the society you live,” he said.
Stressing the need for developing respect for languages, especially for our own languages, he said that there was no truth in the propaganda that UPSC was against regional languages.
“There was a hue and cry about the Commission differentiating between languages. Maximum freedom is given to choose languages. Actually one who learns languages can be a better person,” the chairman, who was a former professor in IT at the IIT said..
“The Commission supports all languages in the 8th Schedule. We are committed to respecting languages. The conclusion that we are against a particular language is not true,” he said.
Agrawal also pointed out that irrespective of the language chosen for the main exam, there is an option to select any language for the interview. “There will be interpreters to translate. We take expert interpreters from Parliament. But one has to give clear answers. In case of interpreters making mistakes we will blacklist them,” he said.
Speaking about the newly introduced paper of Ethics, Agrawal admitted that the paper was a little tough. However, all the questions are about Indian ethos.“If you don’t know the country, the development scenario, you cannot mug up,” he said.
“Coming to the interview part, it is not the judgement of one’s expertise on a subject. However, if you don’t know or remember what you have studied a few years back, it cannot be taken lightly,” Agrawal said.
He also said UPSC’s reputation was very high and nobody could recommend anyone and if at all anyone recommends, it would be of no use.
In the interview, normally, questions are simple. One has to speak from the heart with all honesty. However, candidates have a tendency to speak lies about even hobbies which will not do them any good. “Be yourself. Face the exam and interview honestly. Only innate qualities will help you,” he advised the civil service aspirants.
Also he was very critical about aspirants who have the habit of reading only one newspaper.
“Read more newspapers, including regional language dailies, to get a more balanced approach towards issues and to get more informed,” he advised. Former Additional Chief Secretary Babu Paul, Former Secretary of Shipping K Mohandas and Civil Service Academy officials attended.