Thought of the day

Happiness is state of mind.

Few days break

appeared for some mocks. Realised under preparation. So taking few days off to refresh my GS and current affair. Will start again soon.

The index list of "How to prepare series" articles

I always desired to compile my thoughts on various topics related to Civil Services Preparation. I compiled this list long back but somehow this got lost in the noise of other work. Now, time has come when I should start compiling my thoughts slowly but steadily. There are lot of memories. Initially I'll try to put scant immediate information without caring much for structure and other things. Once the material is collected then I would refine it.

One thing, I always wonder about Shashi Tharoor is "How did he write so many books?". He is such a busy person but still he write such bulky books. I wonder if they have large helping staff or people working under him. For writing so much, One should be reading as well in proportionate manner. Thus Tharoor is really commendable in this sense.

Anyway, I do not have much to write today. So just copy pasting the index of articles which I intend to write in next few days. Given that Interview is impending so I may miss the schedule but putting this index here would help me in reminding of the pending work.

Before all this one important article is also remaining i.e. on "Why Technology". I'll write that some time soon.


1. My experience of Civil Services
a. How to write a good answer?
i. Different model answers
b. Preparation tips for 1st/2nd/3rd/4th attempt guys
c. How to score good marks in Essay?
d. How to consolidate the information?
e. What are various memory techniques and how to catalogue information?
f. What are general tips on reading tactics/techniques?
g. What are the various ways to answer questions in subjects and General studies?
h. What are various sources which I should refer while preparing for General Studies?
i. How to prepare for CSAT?
j. How should I utilize my time immediately after the exam?
k. How to keep the momentum of study?
l. What is the ideal balance of fun-family-focus on civil?
m. What are various do’s and don’ts of group study?
n. How to prepare for Interview?
o. What should I do for hobby development?
p. Importance of Discussion in the preparation process?
q. How should one finish new reports/12th Five year plan/IYB/Survey/Budget
r. How to read Newspaper and pros and cons of notes making?
s. Frame of mind on the eve of prelims/mains/interview
t. Behavioral learning during the process and behavioral tips for preparation
u. Subject specific tips
v. Karma vs. Bhagya philosophy
w. Study table arrangements
x. Arrangement of books in the book rack
y. Role of technology
z. Cracking Civil Service with a Job in Hand
aa. Create objective while reading
bb. How to avoid negative answer in exam
cc. 5 point approach/stakeholder/critical point/summary/common sense technique
dd. How to start-end answer?
ee. Prelims vs. Mains orientation
ff. Newspaper Indexing
gg. 10 Common reforms
hh. Multi-dimensional perspective
ii. Quotation/Fact/12th plan/IYB
jj. Revision Rule
kk. How to read Magazines
ll. Indexing tricks
mm. Presentation-prelims/Main/Interview
nn. English Importance and Improvement
oo. Psyche of student – Illusion of Knowledge/Learning Outcome/Learning Strategy
pp. Consistency in newspaper Reading
qq. Rules of Group Discussion
rr. Importance of saying No in Civil Services
ss. Full day waste scenario: Phone calls/ No prior plan of the day/ No long sitting/ Not living in the present


2. Why should I prepare for civil services?
3. What is civil service all about?
4. Importance of failure in the civil services and how to convert it in success?
5. How is this book different from other books?
a. Examples
b. Pragmatic approach over theoretical concepts
c. Purely from experience and nothing text bookish
6. Additional
a. Quotes for essay
b. Mnemonics
c. Various chronology
d. Evolution
e. Important thinkers and their thoughts
f. Interesting facts/events to make the answer interesting
g. Anecdotes/Historical analogies
h. List of books and reference material which one should read/refer
i. Important statistics
j. List of conventions and landmark conferences


Two quotes before signing off...
"Branding is about 90% behavior and 10% communication"
"Logo of a company should be so simple that one could draw it in sand"


Good Night

Civil Services Mains Result

I had a bad dream last night. Woke up late in the morning. Went to psychology lab class.
Later in the evening, I decided to visit Lal Mandir to meet honourable Nangmati Mataji.
She is Jain Saint, very pious and loving in nature. She gave me her blessings.

In the night, we started playing cricket on terrace. Suddenly results came. Somehow my 6th sense got activated. I checked my mobile randomly, and saw upsc result on the system. It was wonderful. Within 5 seconds, I checked my result. Over the years, I have got conditioned to "no matches" search result of pdf files. I was glad that this time it was not so.

The excitement is very measured. Its more tilted to the side of caution. I am thankful to god for providing me this opportunity of interview this time. This is my last try so glad that i have opportunity of taking this one last winning shot at goalpost.

Over the years my patience, character were tested by upsc. May god give me strength to tide over this final barrier. This phase is also equally difficult. Let us hope for the best and do our best. Amen

Entrepreneurship

I attended NITK alumni meet event "Elevator". Listening to Shashank N.D. of Practo, Ajit Pai from Delhivery and Sandesh C. from Chai-Point was very insightful.
The panel discussion was moving on opposite poles. Sandesh and Shashank had contrary advises to share. Shashank has good words of wisdom from his experience of building Practo. My thoughts were more aligned with ideas of Shashank.

He explained "entrepreneurship is like process of self purification". The ups and downs are true test of individual belief in what they are doing and process itself acts as touchstone of character. Many time one has to swallow his ego. Every day is faced with new set of challenges.
For him, the zeal of entrepreneurship came from the problem on which he was working. It was not money or fame or comfort. Instead the idea was to make life of people better. He derived his motivation from the problem itself thus he is able to build such a large organization in short span of time.

The most important thing in building a company is to "get the team right". If your internals are right then investors, money and other things will fall in place automatically.
His passion was infectious. For him, having a plan B means your plan A is dead. This was opposite to the idea of Sandesh from Chai-Point who considered that some basic floor is necessary and having plan B gives more confidence, risk taking ability and peace of mind to the person. Person understands worst case scenario and knows where to start again in the event of failure.

Shashank explained that joining a start up is like working on a accelerated MBA program. So its better to join a start up than pursue MBA. Other speakers also believed that MBA does not really matter. There is no right time for starting your own venture. Best time is to do it now. He mentioned "regret minimalisation framework" i.e. in life we should try to minimize our regrets. If there is something we wish to do, then do it now so that we won't accumulate regret of not doing it.

A company can create value by promoting its money generating power or through showcasing its vision. According to him, both are good but value or attraction created through vision is much more than monetary aspect. So his views were against the conventional wisdom that entrepreneurship is about money. Rightly so. For me as well, Entrepreneurship is about being enterprising, building something, creating something and taking self-motivated initiatives. I do not see entrepreneurship as money motive.

He talked about concept of VUPIM in dealing with dilemmas and taking quick decisions. V stands for vision, U for users, P for practoian (employees of his company), I for investors and M for me. This helps me in keeping the right focus and conduct the business in ethical manner. For him, If every one says your idea is good then probably your idea is not good. If 99% of the people laugh on your idea then you should go with that idea, picking your co-founder and employees from 1% who believe in you. Anyway, all the big changes and revolution in the world originates from small group settings. Hats off to him. keep going dude.

Other guys also chipped in with their words of wisdom. Sandesh talked about importance of grand vision and constantly working towards that. Ajit Pai from Delhivery said "difference between idea and business is execution. A successful execution is function of time and focus you put in that idea".

I have a habit of asking senior people about wisdom of their life. So I met two guys during dinner. I asked them to share their experience. One fellow told me "Life is Hard. Enjoy it." Other person was quite cryptic. He mentioned the inevitability of organizational politics as his learning. I could not decipher much but just kept smiling.

We had good fun talk with a fellow from Booth School. A 1988 batch guy was lean built but very humble and modest. He was quite amiable and discussed good memories and traditions of NITK. I feel NITK is class apart from all the other schools of India in terms of overall extra curricular and co-curricular activities. Though we have not marketted ourselves well but 3 names in top 30 under 30 on forbes magazine is testimony to this. A college with private beach, party politics, pan India look, extensive club culture and very enlightened crowd is rare in the world.

The booth fellow (Himashu Sahu) was a hardcore capitalist. He explained me typical money oriented consumer behaviour. I tend to disagree with him and we had good laughing moments together. Some other fellows were Santanu Bishwas, Pankaj Agrawal, RajKamal, Jaswinder and Harpreet. I pitched my idea of "connect" to all these people. All of them were excited and happy about it. Pankaj Sir were looking forward to communication over idea of Connect, so this is due on me.

People explained power of network and i realised the same. In last few years, I have built good network of civil services aspirants but unfortunately all my tech connections are lost. Some times i feel disappointed about this. But it is just matter of few months. I am sure, I'll pick up in no time.

Day was very happening otherwise as well. But not in the mood to write about other events of the day. Tomorrow again a very hectic day.
Good Night.

Transport conundrum

For five mins, I was thinking whether I should write a long blog today or not. It was already late in the night and I had a tiring day. But then quality can not be compromised for long so I decided that something substantive should come out.

I visited one of the highly regarded pilgrimage tourist destination of Jains, Tijara Ji for some familial purpose. The day was happening, I met Arun (My distant relative) after 13 long years. The worth mentioning part was the return journey. It took me 2:30 hours to cross some 30 km stretch connecting Gurgaon and Delhi. I was really sad to see the sorry state of traffic and transport affairs. Loads amount of fuel was being wasted due to slow speed of traffic. The air was filled with vehicular smoke. It was difficult for people like me who step out relatively infrequently to breath properly. I noticed nearly 300 small vehicles passed by the bus in which I was travelling. Nearly 70% of them had occupancy of 2 or less than two. Nearly 90% had their windows glasses up. I presume they would be using air conditioning.

I am perplexed that why people are not able to comprehend the social impact of their individual actions and social goods of their life style changes. The highway is wide enough to occupy at least 4 lanes of vehicles on each side but still the exponential growth in the traffic has made it ineffective. For the sake of flexibility of schedule, independence and show off People prefer private vehicle over public transport. Most of the executive class make their own environment conducive to health by switching on AC but they forget that cumulative impact of their individual practices worsens the overall atmosphere and directly impact the health and well being of people who prefer to use public transport or are forced to use public transport.

The slow speed of traffic kills productive working hours, burns extra fuel, vitiates the environment, impact health and well being leading to lung cancer, increase pollution and deteriorate the living standards. On the other hand, if some of us are able to make basic life style changes of using public transport once a week or car pooling or replacing cab culture with bus culture then a large part of problem could be solved. However, the shift to life style changes won't happen automatically. Rather Government needs to play a facilitating role.

Firstly, Government needs to spruce their public transport system. We can not advocate the alternative of public transport without having a robust system in place first. For this,Metro rail project should be expedited. The mechanism of rapid transit system needs to be developed such that Bus rail road water or any other mode of transport are integrated in seamless manner so as to make the user experience of travel cheap and convenient. We can replicate Ahemedabad model of Bus rapid transit system. The system has failed in Indore but that is no basis of why it won't work in Gurgaon. Just imagine, what could happen to a person who fall ill in such traffic situation? There was no way to deal with such emergency so that person can come out of the traffic.
Secondly, A regulatory and enforceable framework is necessary for making life livable in such situation. The traffic rules related to lanes should be enforced strictly. The regulatory implementation is also necessary. On basis of such regulatory decisions, We can increase or decrease the number of coaches in Metro rail or increase number of buses or other public transport on roads.
Thirdly, A greater emphasis should be placed on traffic profiling and consequent planning of traffic and road development. India is in the stage of expansion. The land is limited, population and vehicle are increasing exponentially thus we need to use technology in provide real time information on traffic and regulating it accordingly. Electronic toll booth could be one example of effective use of technology in this regard. Further scientific innovations like low altitude flying cars or Chinese Bus cum rail service could be useful to us. We need some policy research on the appropriate length of traffic signal or traffic directions on particular roads.
Fourthly, In Indian context, no solution of road traffic management could be solved by entirely government or technological intervention. We can not borrow western prescription and blindly paste them in Indian context. Indian social milieu is way different from the western individualistic culture oriented developed country. To deal with such situation, we need to think of Indian solution to Indian problems. One part of any Indian problem is associated with lifestyle changes. For example, incentivise car pooling or promoting MNC's to use buses instead of cabs for providing conveyance to employees. Different companies or offices can have different opening or closing timings so that peaks of traffic could be moderated. Once a month Work from home culture or Video conferencing to facilitate work from remote location could be pursued. The approach of limiting number of cars per family or mandatory car pooling or auctioning car number plates or restricting the entry of even number/odd number car on to roads on certain days may seem to go against democracy but in public interest, these are viable and much needed options that should be seriously enforced.

There is lot more to write but will write some other time. I should also try to shape my blogs as newspaper articles, so that I can send it to editors. But anyway, enough for now.

We also had a very good discussion on whether Gita should be taught in schools or not. Will write on that later. Running short of time. Daily. Bad

Good night

Waiting for the Result

Today was not very happening. There was speculation since morning that result could be declared today. Usually every year, MY friends pass me some crucial information before the result declarations. So most of the friends in JITO put high faith in my source of information.

However, today the credibility stands eroded. Finally UPSC did not declare result even today. Apart from that not much happened on my end. It was just a routine day except one pitfall that I slept in the afternoon again and could not read newspaper.

I need to seriously think about newspaper thing. Instead of wasting time on masala TOI news, I should read relevant news from paper or online.
So today, I should take this pledge that I would be reading newspaper come what may. Notes making or no notes is irrelevant. Fast or slow is immaterial but I would dedicate at least one hour of the day to newspaper..

Good night for now.