UPSC Civil Services 2019: Here’s top ranker Nishant Jain’s advice on how to pass the exam

Nishant Jain who had secured rank 13 in UPSC exams, 2014 has some important tips for IAS aspirants.

Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) civil services is considered one of the toughest examinations in India. Lakhs of aspirants appear, out of which, only a few hundred qualify every year. The exam will be conducted in June next year for approximately 780 vacancies.

Here are the excerpts and videos of the interview of IAS officer Nishant Jain , who secured 13th rank in the examination in 2014. In the videos, Meerut’s Jain provides tips to civil services aspirants while talking to Hindustan.

Pankaj/Anuradha: What to study for clearing the civil services exam?

Nishant Jain: You don’t have to read everything. You don’t have to buy hundreds of books because research is not your objective. Your objective is to study smartly to cover the syllabus and crack the exam. Buy one book each for your subjects that are from reputed publishers and authentic writers. You can get a list of good books for each subject on some reputed websites. Also, develop a habit of reading one good newspaper daily and one monthly magazine that are aimed for civil service aspirants.

Pankaj/Anuradha: How much to study for the exam?

Nishant Jain : A maximum of 7 to 8 hours of thorough study is enough. You don’t have to be inside closed doors and read all day. You should go out and chill. Go for a good movie with your friends, listen to music, spend some time with your friends. You need to be stress-free to study effectively.

Pankaj/Anuradha: How to study for the exam?

Nishant Jain : Even though you have good books with you, it is important to make a proper plan to study. Try to interlink the subjects. Every subject is corelated. What you study in geography is somewhere linked to politics, politics is linked to history, history is linked to geography etc. Everything you study has a link with other subjects as well. Linking and studying can make your preparation even better.

Pankaj/Anuradha: How to chose the right optional paper for the exam?

Nishant Jain : Now that you have to chose only one subject as your optional paper, you should chose it wisely. You should chose the subject on which you have good command. However, it is not always necessary to chose the same subject you had in your graduation. If the subject is vast enough, try to look for the subjects that score well. Go through the syllabus, previous five years’ question paper. Also, see if there are good books and content on the subject available before opting for the paper.

Pankaj/Anuradha: Is it wise to prepare for some other exam alongwith civil services exam?

Nishant Jain : There are students who prepare for state services exam along with UPSC. It is always good to have a backup option. State services exam syllabus is somewhat similar to that of UPSC but the state exam syllabus has more questions related to a particular state. It is good to appear for your state exam which can give you a rough idea about your preparation. However, don’t appear for too many examination or it will drain your energy.

Pankaj/Anuradha: Give some tips for writing a good essay

Nishant Jain : Essay writing is a tricky section in which majority of candidates get stuck. Chose the topics you are more familiar with. Make sure your language is good. While giving your opinion about an issue, make sure you frame it properly. Take some time and make bullet points of the important aspects you are going to talk about in your essay. Using some authentic data and quotes of some great scholar can enhance your essay. Use small paragraphs.

Source: Hindustan Times, 28/11/2018

India needs a renewed debate on federalism

In these last four years, the BJP has actively sought to use its dominance in Delhi to re-centralise political discourse and re-assert New Delhi’s power.

The controversy surrounding Governor Satyapal Malik’s decision to dissolve the Jammu and Kashmir assembly — the dubious reasoning offered and the many questions this raised about New Delhi’s role (including Tuesday’s revelations that the decision was made to avoid interference from New Delhi) — raises important questions about the evolving nature of Centre-state relations and the dangers of the Modi government’s deep centrist bias. It also highlights the urgent need for a renewed political debate on federalism and the institutional framework through which Centre-state relations are negotiated.

The BJPs emergence as the dominant single party in 2014 and its subsequent consolidation of political power across India, after decades of coalition governments and regionalisation of politics, marked a turning point in India’s federal trajectory. Since the 1990s, regional political parties began to play a significant role in reshaping India’s federal character. As Yogendra Yadav argued, voters in the 1970s and 1980s voted in the assembly elections as if they were choosing their prime minister; in the 1990s, voters began to vote for the Lok Sabha as if they were choosing their chief minister. With state dynamics dominating national politics, power, too, shifted away from Delhi.

2014 marked the first reversal of this trend. In these past four years, the BJP has actively sought to use its dominance in Delhi to recentralise political discourse and reassert New Delhi’s power. Constitutional authorities, in particular the governor, charged with mediating the federal bargain, have become an important instrument through which this goal of recentralisation is being fulfilled. From Delhi to Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and now J&K, the office of the governor is being routinely used to impose New Delhi’s political will and encroach on state autonomy.

It isn’t just the BJP. The precedent was set by the Congress, which missed no opportunity to use the office of the governor for political gains. This raises a critical question about India’s federal architecture and its ability to keep New Delhi’s centralising impulses in check. Adopted in the aftermath of Partition, our federal system is designed to have a strong centre or “quasi federal” character where the Centre has wide-ranging powers including the imposition of President’s Rule (PR). While necessary in 1947, this quasi federal character has proved limited in its ability to curtail Central overreach, especially with single party dominant national governments, highlighting the urgency of reform.

The role of the governor, and the relevance of Central powers like Presidents Rule (PR), as they have evolved in contemporary politics, need interrogation and existing mechanisms for representing state interests whether through the Rajya Sabha or the strengthening of the now moribund National Development Council so that they can serve as adequate checks against New Delhi.

Under the Modi government, however, federalism has been challenged not just through the misuse of constitutional offices but also by a subtle brand of administrative governance by the Centre, which risks undermining state autonomy. As this column has repeatedly sought to highlight, aided by political alignment between the Centre and states, administration under Modi has been about bypassing state governments to establish direct lines of communication and control with state administrators. This direct engagement has enabled New Delhi, rather than state governments, to claim credit for welfare schemes and directly promote brand Modi with voters. In fact I would argue that far more than Modi’s social media and PR strategies, it is this centralised governance style that holds the key to sustaining his national appeal in a way that continues to influence (even if the effects are waning) state elections.

Add to this, institutional innovations such as the NITI Aayog and the GST council that now dominate Centre-state deliberations, and India today has a new framework for negotiating Centre-state relations. By design, these institutions are technocratic spaces charged with developing common policy frameworks, best illustrated in the “one nation, one tax slogan”. Missing are platforms for political deliberation. With these innovations, India is moving toward what political scientist Ajay Kumar Singh characterises as “national federalism” where choices are negotiated by Delhi bureaucrats rather than through political accommodation.

The idea of a federal polity that is respectful of India’s myriad differences is intrinsic to the idea of India. With increased political decentralisation, India was ripe to evolve, as Siddaramaiah, the former chief minister of Karnataka, argued,from a “union of states” to a “federation of states”. Instead, these past four years have seen a worrying trend toward centralisation that strikes at the very heart of federal principles. It is now up to India’s motley crew of pragmatic Opposition parties, whose very existence is a tribute to India’s robust federalism, to challenge this centralisation and reassert the federal idea. This ought to be the glue that binds the mahagathbandhan together. Otherwise, India’s democracy is in danger.

Yamini Aiyar is president and chief executive, Centre for Policy Research

Source: Hindustan Times, 28/11/2018

The Source of Fear

Often, it is said that face your fear, but what does facing your fear really mean? And whatever it may mean, how to go about it? To begin with, personify your fear. Talk to your fear, send it vibes of love and compassion, befriend it. The same energy that was fuelling your fear will become your strength instead. By fear, I’m referring to conditioned fears we create or harbour due to our upbringing and other social norms. Viktor Frankl, in propounding logotherapy, once wrote about a man who used to sweat a lot in public. Every time he had to speak address a group, he would start sweating profusely, which he found rather embarrassing. The anxiety that surrounded in anticipation of his perspiration would make him sweat even more. “Announce your anxiety,” Viktor advised him. “If you don’t know the audience well enough, just announce it to yourself.” A week later, the man returned to report that whenever he met anyone who triggered his anticipatory anxiety, he said to himself, “I only sweated out a quart before, but now I’m going to pour at least 10 quarts!” The result: after four years of suffering, with this single selfprompt, he was cured of it within a week. Frankl called it hyper-intention: an excessive intention to be, act or feel a certain way.… Secondly, exposing your phobia, fear or cause of anxiety helps you calm down. Announce your anxiety or its cause right at the outset rather than trying to cover it.

Source: Economic Times, 29/11/2018

Why women are less successful than men at networking

Women’s tendency to underestimate their professional self-worth and reluctance to ‘exploit’ social ties makes them less successful at networking — vital for the success at the work place, a study has found. The research, published in ‘Human Relations’, shows that it is not only exclusion by men, but also selfimposed barriers, including hesitation and gendered modesty, that prevent women from networking as effectively as their male counterparts. The study, by researchers from EBS Business School in Germany, was based on interviews with 37 high-profile female leaders in German corporations. It showed that women’s tendencies to harbour moral concerns about ‘exploiting’ social ties causes them to under-benefit from networking activities. This tendency is further exacerbated by women’s predisposition to underestimate and undersell their professional self-worth. Understanding why women are less successful at networking is vital for the development of gender equality in the work place. Talking about personal hesitation, one interviewee stated: “Women look at networks from a social point of view. They do not ask ‘How will this benefit me?’ “Men, on the other hand, focus on the opposite, placing less emphasis on personal relationships and make networking decisions for egoistic and instrumental motives,” she said. “We hope that this paper’s findings will motivate women to scrutinise their positioning in networks and encourage them to interact more proactively and less reservedly with powerful social contacts,” researchers suggested. PTI

Source: Times of India, 29/11/2018

What is moralistic fallacy in philosophy?

his refers to the fallacy of assuming that only what is morally good can be a part of nature. In other words, whatever is considered to be morally wrong is assumed to be unnatural by people committing the moralistic fallacy. For instance, it may be assumed that since violence is morally wrong, it is not a part of human nature. The moralistic fallacy is often considered to be the opposite of the naturalistic fallacy where people assume that whatever is prevalent in the natural world is also morally good by default. It is said to affect the acceptability of politically incorrect scientific research.

Source: The Hindu, 28/11/2018

A prescription for the future

While using cutting-edge technology, we need to find ways to continuously lower the cost of healthcare

The world as we know it is changing so fast and so much. Global mega-trends only reinforce this fact. The Internet has taken over our lives, smartphone penetration is growing rapidly, demographics are evolving. For the first time, in 2019, millennials (born between 1981 and 1996), who feel fully at home in a digital world, will overtake the population of baby boomers. There are dramatic lifestyle and behavioural changes occurring every day, with strong implications for the future of our planet and its inhabitants.

Impactful changes

Healthcare is no stranger to change — in fact, the most impactful transformations in human life have happened in healthcare. Time ’s cover three years ago showed the picture of a child with the headline, “This baby could live to be 142 years old”. That is the extent of the breakthrough in longevity that modern medicine has been able to achieve. Healthcare in India too has been transformed over the last three decades, and as members of this industry, we can be proud of how far we’ve come in terms of improved indices on life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal deaths and quality of outcomes.

But we cannot rest on these achievements now, because the pace of change is still scorching, and is fundamentally altering disease patterns, patient risk profiles and their expectations. Information technology and biotechnology are twin engines, with immense potential to transform the mechanics of care delivery, the outcomes we can achieve and, above all, the lives we can touch and save.

There are several examples of the kinds of impact technology and biotechnology can make on healthcare. Telemedicine has already brought healthcare to the remotest corners of the country. The use of artificial intelligence for preventive and predictive health analytics can strongly support clinical diagnosis with evidence-based guidance, and also prevent disease. From the virtual reality (VR) of 3D-printing, we are now moving towards augmented reality (AR), by which, for example, every piece of node in a malignant melanoma can be completely removed, thereby eliminating the risk of the cancer spreading to any other part of the body. Biotechnology, cell biology and genetics are opening up whole new paradigms of understanding of human life and disease, and have made personalised medicine a way of life.

Largest health scheme

So, the outlook is clear: those in healthcare who wish for status quo and for the comfort of the familiar run the risk of becoming irrelevant. And that goes for countries too. India needs to rapidly adapt to, embrace and drive change if it wishes to stay relevant in the global healthcare order.

India’s change imperative has become even more pronounced with the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana Abhiyan, or National Health Protection Mission (NHPM), under the ambit of Ayushman Bharat. This major shift in approach to public health addresses the healthcare needs of over 500 million Indians in the first stage through what is probably the world’s largest public health-for-all insurance scheme. The vast scale of the programme requires reimagining an innovative model which will transform healthcare delivery in the country. By leapfrogging through smart adoption of technology and using emerging platforms such as Blockchain, significant improvements are possible in healthcare operations and costs.

The private health sector is committed to support this programme, and ensure its success, because we are beneficiaries of society’s social licence to operate, and it is our responsibility to make sure this programme reaches the most vulnerable and the under-privileged, for whom it is intended. At the same time, we have a solemn responsibility to ensure that the sector is sustainable in the long term. For India to grow, healthcare as an engine of the economy needs to flourish. And the private sector, which has contributed over 80% of the bed additions in the last decade, needs to earn healthy rates of return on investment to continue capital investment in infrastructure, technology upgrades, and to have the ability to acquire top clinical talent, which can lead to differentiated outcomes. In our quest to achieve low-cost healthcare, we must not inhibit our potential for growth, nor isolate ourselves from exciting global developments.

The way forward

The prescription is clear. We need to achieve a balance between staying at the cutting edge of clinical protocols, technology and innovation and continue to deliver world-class care, while finding increasingly efficient ways of operating to continuously lower the cost of care and bring it within the reach of those who cannot afford it. This is a difficult balance to achieve, but not impossible. And when accomplished, India would have found an answer that can be an example for the rest of the world to emulate.

With clarity and focus, we can create a blueprint for the legacy we wish to build and set the trajectory for Indian healthcare for the next several decades. The decisions we make today are decisions we make for our children, a future we will create for them. Will they lead healthier lives than we do? Will they approve of our choices and actions? Are we building an inclusive and sustainable world for them? We have it in our hands to shape the winds of change we face today into the aero-dynamics that will definitively propel our collective destinies forward.

Suneeta Reddy is Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Group

Source: The Hindu, 28/11/2018

Rulers of law

Today, institutions speak not for the rule of law, but for those who rule, unconcerned with the law.

Since May 2014, our institutions are afflicted with galloping atrophy. The war within the CBI, allegations made on oath before the Supreme Court involving corruption of high public functionaries, are not limited to one institution. The recent face-off between the RBI and the government, with the latter seeking to influence monetary policies, is fraught with danger.

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A nine-hour-long meeting of the RBI’s Central Board on November 19 resulted in a temporary truce. The misgivings expressed in the public domain by no less than the deputy governor of the RBI in a public speech may well erupt in the near future. The government’s attempt to access a part of the reserves of the RBI has been temporarily forestalled. Consider this. There are no bankers on the RBI Board and no monetary policy expert. The Board consists of a few government officials, businessmen and two new members, S Gurumurthy and Satish Marathe. Both are ideologically committed. The nature of the Board’s composition is a matter of concern. In this context, the governor of the RBI has little space for manoeuvrability. The present ceasefire may not last. In the coming months, before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the government may well succeed in accessing RBI’s surplus capital.

The spectre of a large section of the electronic media eulogising the prime minister on the one hand and ensuring the blanking out of news that is critical of the government on the other, suggests that the one institution that has historically kept the government on its toes and served democratic traditions, has also capitulated. The institution has also been diminished by it forsaking any semblance of neutrality.

Governors have been partisan in the past, but have not been openly party to the Union government’s agenda. The recent decision of the governor to dissolve the J&K Assembly just when the PDP staked a claim to form the government is the latest example of institutional decline. Governors have, in recent years, facilitated formation of governments at the bidding of the Union and held back clear majorities even when governments appear to be in a minority. The role of the speaker in legislative assemblies is even more disturbing. The speaker, in matters of disqualification under the 10th Schedule, acts as a tribunal. It is settled that decisions of a tribunal are open to judicial review. When speakers choose not to take decisions which are inconvenient to the ruling establishment and let years pass by without acting on legitimate complaints relating to disqualification, the whole purpose of the 10th Schedule is subverted. Then, when courts render judgments to the effect that no mandamus can be issued to the speaker even though his position is that of a tribunal, it suggests that somewhere down the line, judicial decision-making has unwittingly jeopardised the rule of law. Four distinguished judges having aired their concerns in January publicly about the threat to democracy is yet another example of the institutional malaise that has set in. Unique procedures adopted by the Supreme Court in dealing with specific cases strike a jarring note.

The bureaucracy, too, has become captive to the diktats of ideological prescriptions. Individuals are appointed in key positions with the view to ensure that the so-called “political enemies” of the established ruling class are targeted. This reflects a level of bureaucratic subservience never witnessed before. The chosen few appointed to key positions, especially within the enforcement agencies, facilitate the rot. The positions of the chief vigilance commissioner, the enforcement director, CBI and the NIA are key in upholding the rule of law. If these institutions are compromised, its very foundation is jeopardised. The leadership’s favourite few, appointed in key positions in these institutions, are a threat to democracy. This rot must be stemmed. When political opponents are targeted and those whose names figure in unimpeachable documents are not investigated, the partisan nature of such institutions tends to destroy the confidence of the lay public.

Our country’s majoritarian thrust is denigrating not just the institutions under our Constitution, but others designed to protect democratic values. The independent voice of those manning our institutions has been muffled. Consequently, they speak not for the rule of law, but for those who rule, unconcerned with the law.

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The reason for this is the unique nature of Indian democracy. When a government has absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, it does not need the support of the Opposition in matters of policy, nor can the Opposition impact the government in decision-making in any substantial way. The 10th Schedule of the Constitution has ensured that members of Parliament have no voice in decision-making. This is because any violation of the whip issued in Parliament jeopardises their membership of the House. So, even if a member of the legislature disagrees with his own government, he can neither air his views nor question his own government since the whip requires him to vote for the government on the issue in question.

This is unlike any other democracy. In the presidential form of government in the US, the president, if he is a Republican, has to work with those who dissent within his party and also reach out to members of the Democratic party to ensure that his policies pass muster both in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. This applies in equal measure if the president is a Democrat. In England too, the Conservative party, if holding the reins of government, has to work with both dissenters within and members of the Labour party to ensure passage of bills. However, the unique nature of Indian democracy is held to ransom by majoritarian decision-making of a few individuals at the helm of affairs which is thrust upon the party in power and consequently on the people of India.

Today, the ruling establishment does not have a majority in the Rajya Sabha. The tyranny of the majority will be unleashed if and when that happens. The battle to save the fabric of our Constitution has begun. There is no option but to succeed.

Source: Indian Express, 28/11/2018