[UPSC Interview 2022] – Transcript #287 : Lt. Gen Raj Shukla Board, Anthropology Optional, Delhi Home State

Date of Interview: 18/04/23; forenoon
Board: Lt. Gen Raj Shukla sir
Optional: Anthropology
Home State: Delhi
Background: B.Tech (ECE)’21
DAF keywords: Best out of waste, digital literacy, Delhi (home state), Rajasthan (alwar), covid related work

– Board had 4 male members including chairman sir and one female member
– Shukla sir’s questions were not straight-forward; he asked very long questions after telling a background story; and he dived a little deeper on the same topic
– overall board was cordial; mostly members gave time to complete answers barring a few cases; most members asked counter questions almost on every answer; scope for driving your own interview

• To view all IAS Interview Transcripts 2022, visit this page

Chairman

1. Meaning of name
2. Why did in India govt. had to launch swachcha bharat mission; what was the need for govt to intervene, why can’t we keep our society clean ourselves (long question, Crux was this)
3. Story about sir’s visit to Japan and Singapore, in Japan people not only clean their own front yards but also neighbours’; in Singapore very high fine; in India we keep inside of our houses clean but keep outside unclean, why so?
4. Are we as a civilisation not wired to keep our surroundings clean? Who is at fault?
5. Even in posh areas like lutyens Delhi, you can find garbage piling on roads, reason?
6. (in one of the answers, mentioned indore) Why indore so clean? What have they done differently?
7. Status of swachcha bharat in India? Is it a success?
– there might be a few more but on same topic

Member 1

1. Did you sit for placements in college? (said no); so why not?
Cross question regarding interview experience for placement would have only helped you ~ gave answer (seemed satisfied)
2. Talked about a position of responsibility (daf) I had in college; what skills it developed in you?
3. (one skill I mentioned – creative and innovative solutions) What creative solutions you built?
4. More cross questions on same, but factual in nature (asked numbers), like how much people it impacted etc ( I guess meant for seeing if person really did some work or just bluffing)
5. Indira Gandhi canal has benefitted people, but what is its strategic and security related importance?
6. Rajasthan has high unemployment rate, as DM of district how will reduce unemployment rate of your district (mentioned one point about soft loans)
7. Since you mentioned soft loans, you must have heard about MUDRA, but it is accumulating large NPAs, how to solve this problem?

Member 2

1. Talked about hobby best out of waste; general what is it, what do you make?
2. What work you did in covid? How did it help? Again factual numbers, how many people part of it etc? Is it still continuing?
3. Water sharing issue in South India between which 2 states (I said karnataka and Tamil Nadu)
4. What can be done to solve the issue? As DC of district affected by this issue what will you do
(gave general points like need to build consensus b/w states such that interests of both are met etc; Centre can intervene at later stage to solve issue in larger public interest)
5. Counter that all this has already been done; issue is from 19th century, how can we solve this (had to say sorry, will read more)

Member 3

1. Why took anthro despite engineering bg?
2. What are the branches of anthro?
3. How did humans evolve, from where origin of modern day man? How did we become what we are today?
4. Why neanderthals vanished from earth?
5. Tourist place near alwar (I said sariska; seemed like he wanted to hear something else; but ab bol diya toh let’s ask on this only)
6. Why tiger population in sariska not what it should be? What issues are there?
7. Why were tigers recently in news ( ~ tiger census)
8. What was unique about this census (I gave some point about increase in tiger numbers; sir himself said unique is it is happening at 50 years of project tiger launch)
9. What is the exact number of tigers in India as per new report?
10. Why project tiger successful? Why it increased tiger number in India when in other countries tiger number is declining

Member 4

1. About indira gandhi shehri rozgaar yojana of Rajasthan, what are its provisions, its pros and cons, should same be replicated in other states?
2. Exact number of people employed through the above scheme in Rajasthan till date?
3. What is more imp basic literacy or digital literacy?
4. How will you improve basic literacy of your district?
5. Initiatives that govt can take in field of digital India apart from what it is already taking (mentioned 1 point about more work needed to be done to bridge language barrier; translation of content on sites in regional languages)
6. How can translation be done in local languages of various things in digital domain? (mentioned AI)

Chairman sir said thank you, you may go now
Might be missing a few questions; during the course of interview chairman sir stood up from his seat multiple times, seemed busy or pre-occupied

Mocks utility – in mocks there were little counter ques or questions on keywords mentioned in previous answer; but in real interview, most of the questions originated from previous answer; there were also prolonged discussions on single topics
Though, since mostly interview was daf based, few questions got repeated; helps in building confidence and keep a smile despite all the stress

All the best to everyone else!!