Hobbies: Trekking and Hiking (40% of interviews revolved here), Watching documentaries on Indian Tribes

Prize – Certificate of appreciation from the prime minister’s office (My Initial 30% of the interview revolved here)

Your experience in interview- Very cordial board, smiling faces of all. DAF-based mostly. I did not notice the time. But I felt it went somewhere around 25 minutes. It was not very long I guess.

Utility of mocks: (if any)- I found Vajirao and Reddy, KSG, Fortune IAS, and Chanakya Mandal good. But, the real interview is very different from mocks. It is as mentioned in the UPSC notification ie. A directed and purposive conversation. No grilling and counter-question. 1-2 layers of follow-up.

Chairman :

Reading my DAF continuously for 1-2 minutes.

Q.1 Which places did you trek? 

Q.2 Where is Triund? How was it? 

Q.3 I believe most of the treks you have done in your college time. Are you still continuing trekking?

Q.4 Tell me about your work where you got the certificate of appreciation from PMO? What you did do there? 

Q.5 What did you learn from it?

Member 1(Lady, smiling always) :

Q.1. What values do you believe are important for a civil servant? (I replied Integrity, Honesty, Courage of conviction, Leadership, and empathy)

Q.2. Tell me an instance from your life where you have shown the courage of conviction? (I gave an instance from my trekking experience)

Suddenly, a member interrupted and asked me the height of that trek. I replied. And then he said, ki zyada nhi tha with a smiling face 🙂

Member 2:

Q.1 Do you know who prepares Tribal Atlas? 

Q.2 Who are your favorite anthropologist and why?

Q.3 Nowadays a lot of pollution is there in Ghaziabad(my current district). If you have to give three recommendations to the DM of Ghaziabad, what will you give?

Q.4 What is the preparation required before going for a trek? 

Member 3 :

Q.1 Do you know about the criminal justice system?

Q.2 What are the main flaws in it as per you? 

Member 4 :

In sleepy mode. Member 3 woke him up when his turn came :). He gave a long monologue on RBI and Govt. Difficult to understand what he saying. I asked him to repeat the question as well.

Q.1  Recently, RBI said that bank mergers would have a disastrous effect on financial inclusion. What is your opinion?

Q2. Do you know which is the largest PSB and Private sector Bank?

Q3. Difference between social anthropology and sociology?

Chairman:

Thank you, Rishabh. Your interview is over.

A few more questions were there, but I am not able to recall them.

All the best!