UPSC Interview 2024] – Transcript #71: Lt. Gen Raj Shukla sir Board, PSIR Optional, Madhya Pradesh Home State

Date of Interview: 4 April 2025 afternoon session, last one to go
Board: Lt. Gen Raj Shukla sir
Optional: PSIR
Home State: Madhya Pradesh
Keywords: Jabalpur, MP, Ramacharitmanas, Rani Durgavati, psir

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Chairman

Read out a few things about my DAF and began discussing Ramacharitmanas and asked its salience and difference from Mahabharat. As I started answering, he described how he saw a play and a long monologue . Then asked , why don’t we know about our scriptures in depth? Why have we not promoted our scriptures well enough?
Do you think initially humans were good later they became cunning as time progressed?

Member 1

– Industry based assessment of Jabalpur as a city
– If you were made the Collector of Jabalpur how will you boost industrialisation there?
– MP Tourism places to visit
– Places to visit in Ujjain other than Mahakal (I mentioned Ujjain in previous answer)
– How can we bring about inclusive growth?

Member 2

– what was the contribution of Rani Durgavati in Indian History?
– Fav Doha/ chaupai
– why sundarkaand is most popular?

Member 3

– Sri Ram is an ideal but the way he abandoned Maa Sita was it appropriate? [I said he had his reasons for Praja Bhakti, yet I consider it unjust] cut me short and counter questioned me
– Have you been to abroad? Which place would you like to travel in India? I said Kerala. Why so many disasters there? Why has the govt not prepared itself enough for it?
– what are the 3 biggest issues facing the humanity today- I said Climate Change, Geopolitical disturbances and wars and before I could give 3rd, she asked isn’t terrorism one? I said yes mam, it’s a major challenge too. Then she asked do you also consider X as a non state actor? I said yes technology MNCs are critical non state actors in current geopolitics. She said why and how. I explained the polarising effect it has on people’s ideas, increasing extremist perspective and narrowing down identity lines.

Member 4

– Why all wars happen in Afganistan? What’s the problem there? I mentioned in contextual sense, reason for various wars, but Chairman asked me for more reasons, I said geostrategic location, mineral endowment nearby,etc
– Such a big mishap happened in Bangladesh. Why?
– why anti India sentiment? Apart from big country, small country syndrome, political calculations and multicultural society, I mentioned the role of China and Pakistan. He countered – but they have always been there, why have we not been able to predict such an occuring? Kept grilling me and I had to say sorry sir, I’ll read more on it.
– 5 fugitive economic offenders from India.

Chairman again-
– It is seen that increasing Militarisation is seen as promoting wars but less military spending leads to weak ground deterrence and hence more wars. Do you agree that if Europe had spent more on its military, I could have deterred Russia?
– Is it apt for India to spare just 1.98% of its GDP on defence? What should we do?

Chairman said- Thankyou and I left.

Overall experience – The board seemed bored and saturated with questions. Seemed to be in a hurry to finish, didn’t even listen to complete answer. Was DAF based but not much “happening” CA was asked. No smiles, blunt faces.

Panel Mocks-
2 at Samkalp (lil confrontational in reviews), Vajirao and Reddy (grilled a lot), Vision (cordial and decent), Chahal (good experience), Chanakya Mandal Parivar (gave my best performance here).

One to one- Understand UPSC Satyam Sir ( gave extensive analysis of all my answers and suggested specific ways to improve answers (not personality ).
Special thanks to Smartwork Labs for spending hours in fine tuning my answers and current affairs revision. Also MPOA for regular online one to one sessions with officers (gave 6-7).