It is rightly said that hard work has little or no boundaries when it comes to achieving one’s dreams. When a person has a fixed goal in mind, then excuses take a backseat as hard work takes precedence over everything else. Such a person finds solution to every problem to reach their goal.
Pooja Sahu, a girl from a small village in Chhattisgarh, faced issues during her UPSC preparation due to the remote location of her village. However, she never complained about it, instead focused on preparing for the examination and chasing her dreams. She even found a solution to tackle the problem of poor internet connectivity by climbing onto the roof of her house every day to get better signal.
In this way, she cleared the UPSC exam in her third attempt by securing the All India Rank 199 and made her village and the whole district proud. Today, Indian Masterminds presents the inspiring story of this village girl who overcame many difficulties with a steely resolve to reach her goal anyhow.
INSPIRATION FOR UPSC
Pooja belongs to a small village in the Dhamtari district of Chhattisgarh, and her parents are both teachers. She studied in a Hindi medium school till eighth grade after which she switched to an English medium school in Dhamtari. She choose the Biomedical stream and pursued engineering at NIT Raipur.
In an interview to media, she had said, “The inspiration for becoming an IAS officer came very early since I got inspired by former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, who was the first woman to join the officer ranks of the Indian Police Service in 1972. My mother used to inspire me by giving her reference. Gradually, studying and seeing other bureaucrats and the things society needs from them inspired me to appear for this exam.”
She also shared an anecdote from her childhood, when she saw a beggar eating food from the garbage. She was shaken by the incident and wanted to stop the beggar. However, as she approached to stop her, she got scared and ran away. That incident made her realise the value of food which children often waste. Since then, she thought that as a normal citizen, she can help few such people but by becoming a civil servant, she can help many of them.
POOR INTERNET SERVICE AT HOME
After completing four years of graduation, Pooja went to Delhi to get an idea of the UPSC preparation. After getting to know what she came for, in a month’s time, she went back to her village to focus on self-studying for the exam.
Her village was situated at a remote location in Chhattisgarh. Therefore, there were some issues that came along the way. Despite having internet service in the village, she faced problems in getting a good network at home. It was so bad that she had to go to her roof to use the internet.
Pooja said, “At times, I would get annoyed by such poor services we were getting. However, I would calm down and focus on my preparation.”
CLEARING UPSC
Pooja appeared for CSE for the first time in the year 2019 and failed to clear even the preliminary stage. Moving on, she studied for another year but got a similar result like the first time. It was disappointing for her to fail in both attempts in the first stage itself after giving two full years to the exam, but she did not lose hope.
Pursuing her goal, she stuck to a dedicated routine and appeared for the exam again in 2021. This time, she managed to clear all the stages to finally get her name in the final list of 685 candidates who cleared the UPSC exam.
Her first preference is the IAS, but she is happy to serve in whatever service that is allotted to her by the UPSC.
