2010-batch IRAS officer Asthananda Pathak, who battled all kinds of difficulties to become a civil servant, has been providing guidance to hundreds of UPSC aspirants for 6-7 years now. He is currently posted as Deputy Financial Advisor in Modern Post Factory in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh.
Interacting with Indian Masterminds, Pathak revealed why he chose to guide UPSC aspirants, and why CSE is not as difficult as it it made out to be.
BACKGROUND
Born and brought up in a small village of Deoria district of Uttar Pradesh, IRAS officer Asthananda Pathak completed his schooling from there. Till class 6,, he didn’t go to school and studied from home. “Throughout my academic life, I didn’t have the basic availability of electricity in my village and I used to study with the help of a lantern,” Mr. Pathak said.
After completing his schooling, he did his B.SC in Biology from a college in Kushinagar, 14 kms from his village. Mr. Pathak said that he used to ride his bicycle to cover that 14 kms every day to reach the college. After this, he did B.Ed. and M.Ed and cleared UGC NET and worked as an Assistant Professor in Advance Lectureship in University of Gorakhpur.
PREPARING FOR UPSC
Mr. Pathak said that he belongs to a village where people don’t even know what civil services is. Even if any SHO or any officer gets posted in the village, people call them ‘hakim’, which according to them means a senior officer.
“When I was preparing for UPSC, I could not make them understand what I was preparing for. Even if I tried, they used to make fun of me and pass sarcastic comments,” he said.
However, he remained steadfast on his target to get into civil services. “So I started preparing for UPSC examination and went to Delhi. My main motto of going to Delhi was to understand what is the standard and level of the examination,” he said.
During his first attempt Mr. Pathak qualified Prelims but couldn’t make to the Mains list. In the second attempt, he went till the interview round but, unfortunately, couldn’t clear it. Finally in his third attempt, Mr. Pathak cleared the exam and joined IRAS (Indian Railway Account Service).
GUIDING UPSC ASPIRANTS
After clearing the UPSC examination, Mr. Pathak thought that if a Hindi medium candidate like him, without the advantage of a civil services background and higher studies in top colleges and universities, can clear this prestigious exam, then why not others.
“There are hundreds of such candidates who are willing to prepare for UPSC but they don’t even think about it as they are from similar background like me. They lack motivation, facilities and guidance. That’s when I thought that if I can boost them up, provide them some guidance, and can motivate them, then they can qualify, too. So after completing my training, I started teaching the aspirants with whatever facilities I had,” Mr. Pathak told Indian Masterminds.
In the beginning, the officer guided the students through the coaching centres with a condition of not advertising those centres. After the Covid lockdown, he started providing guidance to the aspirants through live sessions on online platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.
“In the beginning, I was just doing this as a passion but after 2-3 years, candidates started coming to me to thank me, after many of them cleared the examination. This was such a boost up for me! That my guidance is creating a big difference,” he said.
He started with a motto to tell the aspirants that this exam is not as difficult as it is made out to be by some coaching centres. But, now, it has become a moral responsibility for him to continue guiding the aspirants till the time he can. “Receiving such good results is now more satisfying to me than my job,” he stated.
BASIC REQUIREMENTS OF THE EXAM
He shared some basic requirements of the exams which, according to him, will help the aspirants to clear the exam easily. Firstly, the aspirants should go through the gazette notification of this exam through which they can clear their doubts. Secondly, the aspirant should have the skill to minimize the syllabus and study from limited and sufficient material.
Thirdly, the stages of this exam are Prelims, Mains and Interview serially, but, he says, the aspirants should start from the opposite side. “The preparation of interview should get included in your lifestyle. It is seen that there are many aspirants who clear the Mains but then they start panicking during the interview round.” After this, they should prepare themselves for Mains and then Prelims.
There are many myths related to the UPSC exams, one such myth is of focusing mostly on answer writing. Mr. Pathak said, “Aspirants should firstly be crystal clear about the concepts and then focus on answer writing. If your concepts are clear, then you can write the answers in a clear, short and crisp manner.”
In conclusion, he said, “Every beginning of the examination starts from thinking. If you think that you can achieve it, then you will definitely achieve it.”
