[UPSC Interview 2023] – Transcript #70: Suman Sharma Board, Literature Optional, Kerala Home state

Date of Interview: 10/01/2024: Afternoon Session
Board: Suman Sharma
Optional: Literature
Home State: Kerala
Hobbies: Writing, Chess, analysing bowling techniques.
DAF keywords: Kerala, Physics, Economics, Literature optional, Stephen’s, JNU

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Chairman

1. Why shifted from physics to economics?
2. What is MPI? What all in it?
3. Kerala’s rank? Best performed city?
4. What are green bonds? Green premium? Not able to recall other technical terms.
5. Who won a recent award for Chess in India?
6. Dronacharya award given to ?
7. Who are the siblings performing well ?

Member 1

1. If you are launching a start up which area would you prefer?
2. Where do you want to apply artificial intelligence ?( said AI to previous answer)
3. How it can be used in agriculture? ( As I said agriculture to previous answer)
4. What is your stance on MSP as an economist?
5. However, we are announcing it every season. What can be done?
6. Few years back there were farmers protest in Punjab. What was it for?
7. Which all were the farm laws?
8. What is contract farming?
9. How spice trading in Kerala is done?
10. That’s traditional. Can we use technology and e – market?
11. Which all regions of India have you visited?
12. Who invented Chess?

Member 2

1. Questions related to written work. Explain the title for me. Theme? How you structure it?
2. What is look east policy? Are we just looking?
3. Which all countries are we collaborating?
4. Port that we are developing in Indonesia?
5. Event that happened in Kerala that had huge impact on India?  ( Said 2-3 things. He had something else in Mind. Probably colonization via coastal route)
6. Are you a coach? What is the benefit of doing bowling analysis?
7. Who is the chucker?

Member 3

1. India is performing well in macro indicators, however micro indicator wise not so well. What could be the reasons?
2. Asked for clarification. Then he asked about PMI and reframed the question. Why low performance in PMI in last month?
3. If a chessboard were to have wheat placed upon each square such that one grain were placed on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so on, how many kg or tonnes of wheat would be on the chessboard at the end?
4. What’s this process is called?
5. What is string theory?
6. What will happen if we go into the black hole?

Member 4

1. What will be the issues Indian cities are going to face in 20-30 years?
2. What are the infrastructure aspects you look into?
3. There is an increasing drug usage in certain states like Punjab. How will you deal with it?

Overall exp: In short, felt purposive directed conversation. Chair was more or less expression less. However, keenly observed the entire process. Other members were active and acknowledging. Felt bit factual, especially Chair’s questions. So not aware to most of ma’am’s questions.

Mocks utility: 3 in Delhi – Vajirao, Rau’s and Chahal. Helped in gaining confidence. Mocks were conversational like the orginal one.None of the questions were repeated in actual interview.

O2O: Selective few in Kerala and Khan Sir. Mainly confidence boosters and helped in framing answers.

Peer mocks: Found most useful. Covered the DAF quite well and helped a lot in framing responses. Some of the questions were repeated in actual interview also.