Before Civil Service Exam (CSE) 2016 results were announced, Md Manzar Hussain Anjum never entertained any thought of sitting for the UPSC exam. He was at that point working for a consultancy firm in Mumbai and his friend had just cleared the UPSC Prelims. It was this friend, who was also his roommate, who motivated Manzar to take the first step on the UPSC journey.
Nobody thought, not even Manzar, that one day he will be among the selected aspirants who are taken to the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) for training. However, life is unpredictable and springs an occasional surprise on us. And this happened with Manzar, too. He cracked CSE and got selected to IAS. However, it was not an easy journey but a long innings in clearing UPSC and becoming the only IAS from his town, Uttar Dinajpur in West Bengal.
Manzar belongs to Chhowsia bustee, Islampur, which is infamously known for its poor literacy rate. Apart from becoming the first IAS officer from his town, Manzar was the first from the Islampur subdivision to get admission to Kanpur IIT. He studied from the Scholar in Islampur till his ICSE after which he got admission to Aligarh Muslim University to pursue Plus Two. His life witnessed a sea change after that as Manzar’s father left this world in 2012 due to severe kidney problems.
Manzar remained steady and, as a passionate young man, he had a vision of doing something good for society. The learnings he got from his parents and family had made him the man he is today and played an important role in his UPSC journey and consequent success.
QUITTING JOB AND CHOOSING UPSC
After completing schooling, Manzar pursued Civil Engineering by taking admission to the prestigious IIT Kanpur. He completed a BT-MT Dual degree from the university and landed a job in a consultancy firm working in a programmer analyst role in Mumbai.
In the meantime, the CSE 2016 prelims result was announced and Manzar’s friend made it through the first stage of UPSC. Manzar’s friend who was also his roommate (currently an IA&AS officer) motivated him and wanted him to appear for the exam. Finally, after a lot of thought process, Manzar finally quit his job and moved to Delhi for preparing for the UPSC.
PICKING OPTIONAL
Preparing for this first time, Manzar wanted to explore what optional subject would suit him well. Coming from a civil engineering background, he thought of picking CE but the problem was that technical subjects do not have any overlap with other GS or Essay papers in the examination. Therefore, after consulting many aspirants and selected candidates, he chose Geography as his option mainly because the study material is not updated regularly and is ready-made. Apart from this, the syllabus had a lot of overlap with all GS papers and was technical and easy to understand.
BECOMING IAS IN FOURTH ATTEMPT
Manzar failed in the Prelims of 2017 and 2018 due to mismanagement of GS preparation. He shifted from Patel Nagar to Hamdard Study Circle (HSC) in October 2018. He found a better crowd there and like-minded people who were in different stages of UPSC, some selected, some appeared in interviews, some written mains, and some absolutely new in preparation.
He divided his syllabus into eight parts and gave many mock tests for the preliminary exams. His main focus was clearing the prelims exam after failing for two consecutive years. He joined the VisionIAS mains test series and started preparing for it. A few of the tests, in the beginning, were horrible as he could barely answer all the questions and also took a lot of time. Gradually, he practiced and increased the number of questions while reducing the time to answer them.
Finally, with all this hard work and dedication, he managed to clear all the stages of the exam and bagged AIR 125 in CSE 2020 exam. He is now presently posted as Assistant Collector, Purulia, West Bengal.
