How I prepared for the Civils

There was a request from the editor to write something which can be useful to the Civil Services aspirants. That sent me back in memory lane to the days when I was preparing for the Civil Services almost all 40 years back and the experience may have limited relevance with the present circumstances. But for whatever it is worth, I thought of sharing my experiences when I was preparing for the Civils.

My preparation for the Civil Service was in a way Ekalavya preparation since by then I was already working in a job with the state government undertaking based at Nizamabad. By then one of my seniors, Ramudu was already taking coaching at the then started Rao's IAS Study Circle at Hyderabad.

Since I was in a regular post working, it was not possible for me to take coaching in a training institute and, hence, came to Hyderabad, bought the books prescribed by the Rao's institute with the help of my good friend Ramudu (who got into police service and worked along with me as DGP of AP state) and started preparing on my own.

Unlike the present system in those days, there used to be an exam for Central Civil Services with lower optionals, and if one wanted to appear for IAS and IFS, then one has to take higher optionals along with the above lower optionals.

Since that was my first attempt I decided to try only for the Central Civil Services by opting for the three lower optionals. Then the choice of the subjects came and that's where I found my interaction with my friend Ramudu taking coaching in Rao's to be helpful. My background was History, Economics and Politics in the bachelors degree and did my MA in Economics. The choice that was suggested in those days by Mr Rao for lower optionals was Sociology and British History.

I decided to have the third optional as Indian History and, accordingly, started my preparation while simultaneously working at Nizamabad. There were some standard books prescribed for each one of the subjects and since they are supposed to be lower optionals, the level of knowledge that was expected was also not of a very high order. A little advantage I had was that I had a reasonably good grounding in English language under my father.

In those days, English language was one of the compulsory subjects. I did have an idea of appearing for the Civil Services when in college and, accordingly, was alive to the general happenings around right from my college days and, to that extent, I was reasonably well prepared for General Knowledge subject without much of a preparation. Since that was my first attempt and my preparation was also not full-time; I was a little casual in preparation for the exam in terms of my preparation. But the limited reading material that I bought, as suggested by Rao’s IAS Study Circle, I did go through them quite thoroughly.

The exam went off well and my general preparation over a period of time really helped me with the two subjects of General Knowledge and General Essay. The compulsory paper of English in spite of my overconfidence earlier I found it to be a little difficult. Even with my limited reading of the subjects, though they were new to me – both Sociology and British History – I was able to do reasonably well.

Exam results came, and I was pleasantly surprised to know that I made it to the interview. As far as preparation for the Civics, it should start early in life and it’s not a preparation where acquiring the knowledge can happen instantly. I’ll be dealing with the preparation for the interview and how it went in my next article.