As many civil service aspirants are unable to join coaching centres because of their high fees, a former IAS officer has taken to tutoring such students free of charge in Patna, Bihar. Mr. Arun Kumar quit the prestigious IAS in 2018 to help young aspirants achieve their UPSC goals by providing them free coaching on the banks of the river Ganga.
Speaking to Indian Masterminds, the former IAS officer shared what motivated him to quit his job and start free coaching for UPSC aspirants at the Ganga ghat.
FREE COACHING AT GANGA GHAT
Ever since Mr. Kumar qualified for the UPSC Civil Services Examination in 1994, teaching and guiding students who aspire to become civil servant has been his passion. After he passed the examination, many from his own family and other relatives started getting selected for the service, which inspired him to teach aspirants.
In 2017, he and his wife Ritu Jaiswal, who is a social worker, started exploring the idea of helping the aspirants in some way. “Finally, after lots of discussion, I started teaching the aspirants to some extent in a mentorship program and developed some video classes as well. It was encouraging and satisfying as students started getting selected for the services,” Mr. Kumar said.
After quitting from the Indian Administrative Service, he developed the course content so that he could go online as well. However, he found out that online work was not giving dividends, as it was not working so well, though it required the same concept.
So, last year, when his wife told him that there are students who study on the banks of Ganga without any guidance, he visited the Ghat along with her and realised that they can start classes in the open air on the banks.
“Another important reason for starting this free coaching is that most civil servant aspirants fail to analyse news, from where most of the questions come during the examination. Also, as aspirants do not have a clear understanding of economics, they do not link news and economics, and that is why they fail miserably in their main examination.”
He further said that when he was teaching the students online, they were not showing good results, but when he started teaching them offline with the same content, he started seeing positive results. “That’s where I understood that online teaching can be supplementary, but it cannot be the main thing.”
His classes are from 5:30-8:30 am and around 400-500 students take part in them, and, at times, this number goes up to1000.
STUDENTS FEEDBACK
Mr. Kumar said that positive feedback is coming from the aspirants who are taking coaching from him. Most of the students tell him that as he was already there in the service, so he can identify the exam pattern of every year.
“Most of the students who reach Ganga ghat for the coaching has already been to coaching centres which charge a high fee. One of the students said that she is getting immensely benefitted from my coaching.”
Students who come to the coaching at the ghat include IITians, NITians, MBBS.
MESSAGE TO ASPIRANTS
Mr. Kumar said that consistency is the key to success. He advocates the WAR strategy, where W stands for writing, A stands for Association with all the topics in the syllabus, and R stands for Revision.
“If you write, associate and revise, then success is not that difficult, and you will give a good fight in the examination. Result is secondary, you must give a fight first,” he concluded.
