As the name itself suggests, the book, A Portrait of the IAS as a Young Man, by 2018-batch IAS officer of West Bengal cadre, Mr. Naveen Kumar Chandra, is a collection of short essays which contains stories about his life as a young IAS officer who entered the service without any prior experiences; the struggles he faced in new places, and the things he learned on the job.
In an exclusive conversation with Indian Masterminds, Mr. Naveen Kumar Chandra, who is currently posted as SDM in Murshidabad district of West Bengal, shared details about his book.
PORTRAIT OF THE IAS
A Portrait of the IAS as a Young Man is a collection of eight short essays on real-life experiences from the life of IAS officer Naveen Kumar Chandra himself. In the book, he has written about his training days, first day of posting, first field visit, and his first raid on sand mafia. Apart from this, the book also contains many anecdotes and unique experiences of the officer.
“I tried to cover them all, so that the aspirants who are preparing can have the knowledge about what all things they have to do once they crack this prestigious examination. At times people forget what they are in the service for. I have covered that angle as well, so that the purpose for which you prepared should not get lost,” Mr. Chandra shared.
The book is not only for UPSC aspirants but for general readers as well. Readers can understand and get to know about how things are on the other side of the table – what sort of issues officers face and how they deal with those situations.
“This is a challenge, which people in general don’t know and take it for granted. They don’t understand the other side of the story – that even the smallest of errors can cause a lot of pain to the public and to the officer as well,” Mr. Chandra said.
Mostly the book is about the young officer who just entered the service and don’t have any experience, and thus relies on his guts and instincts most of the time. Other officers can connect themselves to the book because most of them are similarly posted in places where they are completely unfamiliar with the local culture and language, and everything is new to them. Hence, it’s a professional as well as a personal struggle for them.
“I belong to UP and my cadre is West Bengal, so when I was posted here, I didn’t know the language, the culture was new, and, obviously, the work was involved high responsibilities. Though in academy, we get to regional language, still, one cannot learn it so soon,” Mr. Chandra said.
YOU TOO CAN CRACK UPSC CSE
Mr. Chandra had earlier come out with his first book, You Too can Crack UPSC CSE. The book was released in January this year and has done quite well. It was a bestseller and was on the number 1 spot for quite some time. “The book is about the UPSC preparation for aspirants who are beginning their UPSC journey and don’t have any background of this exam. It is available both in English and Hindi, and on kindle as well,” Mr. Chandra informed.
A WRITER AND A PAINTER
While sharing about his writing journey, Mr. Chandra said that he has always been into writing. He started writing since his college days and even writes his own blogs. He said that it’s been 8-9 years now that he has been writing on different things like short essay, poems, on artists, and much more.
Besides being a writer, he is a painter as well. But, he had quit writing and painting during his UPSC preparation, as according to him, one does not have enough time to indulge their hobbies simultaneously.
“But I continued reading books. I still continuously write and post blogs. The inspiration was always there as I always had the zeal of writing something or the other. This is definitely not my last book, I will write further as I want to get better. Perhaps, eventually, write a better book which many more people will be able to read and appreciate,” Mr. Chandra said.
For him, reading and writing is a passion and he loves to experiment a lot with his creative side. His knowledge of graphic designing on various software helps him further on this pursuit.
“I try to learn as much as I can. I’m always keen to learn new courses. I try to tell people that if you cannot learn many things, then, just continue to learn things that you are currently working on. Never stop learning,” he said.
TIME MANAGEMENT
He juggles with so many things at the same time quite deftly. Finding time is not a problem for him as he is not into watching movies or TV series. The first thing that he does in the morning is to open his phone, but not to scroll social media! Instead, he opens his kindle app and reads few chapters of the book he is currently on, and then only gets up from bed. “I read books even while travelling for meetings or to the office. It totally depends on where you are spending your time,” he said.
Link to buy his book, A portrait of the IAS as a young man:
