[UPSC Interview 2022] – Transcript #125 : M Sathiyavathy Board, PSIR Optional, Football, Fitness.

Board: M Sathiyavathy
Optional: PSIR
Duration: 20-25 minutes
Background: Civil engineering from an IIT
Hobbies: Football, Non-Fiction, Fitness.

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Chairman

1. *Skipped her favourite question cause I graduated in 2022 only.*
2. Why didn’t you work as a civil engineer?
3. Did you not apply for the placements?
4. Do core firms visit your campus?
5. Tell me about the technologies that were used in Qatar World cup?
6. Did you go to Qatar?
7. Why are so many bad things happening in sports? (Very open ended question, wasn’t ready for it but learnt from the question for the rest of my interview)
8. Is our media getting less ethical everyday?
9. Something about money in sports?
10. When did you start your preparation?
11. Something about my marks in final year and UPSC preparation.

Member 1

1. How did you start your preparation?
2. How did you cover political science in such a small time?
3. Do you get time to read books while being in college and also preparing?
4. Tell me about the books you’ve read.
5.  What is Abhijeet Banerjee’s methodology?
6.  So it’s something about facts, do you favour facts or intuition?
7.  Will you never trust your intuition then?
8.  What is fitness for you?
9.  Difference between fitness and health?
10.  Do you have like a childhood dream to become a civil servant?

Member 2

1.  Let’s talk about financial fitness, What’s your take on the issue of freebies? and suggest me a solution.
2.  What would you choose between free electricity, free food and a Health and wellness centre?
3.  World is looking towards India but India lacks basic infrastructure, how do you see it? (Very open ended question again, without any closure..but I gave an elaborate answer learning from my previous mistake)
4.  If you can become secretary of MoD or MoW&C what will you choose?

Member 3

1. Tell me something that stood out for you in “Pakistan: at the helm” (a book I mentioned earlier.)
2. Tell me things that you think general people won’t know about Pakistan but you do.
3.  What was Musharraf’s role in Kargil?
4.  What happened to Musharraf recently?
5.  Is his body being brought back to Pakistan?
6.  What is Gross happiness index and the country that introduced it?
7.  What other growth indicators are there? (Agreed with me when I said GHI is about development and not growth. Suggested some other indicators too.)
8.  Tell me some growth indicators then!
9.  Difference between GDP and GNP?
10.  What do you think is more for India?

Member 4

1. *Caught me smiling for no good reason*
2. You’ve lived in North East for FIVE years, right? I hope you know about the place. You do right??
3. Tell me about some of the development initiatives in NE?
4. What’s happening under PM Devine? What are the projects?
5. Something apart from the bridges?
6. Two factual questions that I don’t even remember smh
7. Many states in NE are going to polls, can you name some?
8. Nagaland too is going right?
9. What is Naga peace accord?
10. If the accord was entered into in 2015 why hasn’t it been implemented yet?

Chairperson – thank you… your interview is over!

Be ready for some vague and open ended questions, adapt to them and give a closure on your own.

Don’t fret over the excercise, board members are so kind and welcoming.

Mocks : Gave around 8 mocks.
Good ones : Vajirao and ready(I fell into an argument but they reviewed me well and helped me), Unacademy, Subhra Ranjan (closest to interview in my case, more like a conversation between experienced people and a young naive boy), Next IAS (covers DAF well), Samkalp(Quality of questions was good)

Won’t suggest: KSG (khan sir is not sitting for the mocks and chairman is too hostile, felt like some personal grudge tbh)

Thank you.