Chennai: Mercy Ramya I.S, the 32nd All India ranker and second in Tamil Nadu in the civil service exams, says she wants to become an IAS officer and focus on education for girls in the country.The civil service examination results were declared on Saturday. As like Charusree, Ramya also has an engineering background and had taken geography as her optional paper. She had graduated in engineering (computer science) from KCG college of technology in Chennai.
“Even today in several rural areas we don’t find many girls getting educated and I believe that education would bring in change in their lives. If my parents had not educated me I would not have come up to this level, I want the same kind of opportunity to be given to all girls in the country,” Ramya, who already works as Indian Railway Personnel Service trainee, said.
For girls, not only is education a priority but hygiene too. “As an IRPS trainee I travelled to Chhattisgarh in a train but to my surprise there were no restrooms in the areas where we went. They had direct to home (DTH) television network in these areas but no restrooms. Such is the scenario in our country. I want to change this,” the 27-year-old bureaucrat said.
Dr T.S. Vivekanand, the 39th All India ranker and fourth in Tamil Nadu, is different from the other civil service aspirants. Vivekanand wants to join the Indian Foreign Service, as he believes that a country’s internal policy also depends on external factors.
At present, he is working as assistant commissioner in income tax department in New Delhi after he got selected for the Indian Revenue Service two years ago. The doctor had chosen history as his optional paper in civil service.
More engineering graduates opt for civil service
Over 100 civil service aspirants from Tamil Nadu have been selected for various cadres in government services through UPSC this year. Tamil Nadu candidates, according to coaching centers have been doing well in UPSC exam in the recent past.
D. Shankar, director of Shankar IAS Academy, attributes slowdown in IT sector and fewer jobs in these companies for candidates from Tamil Nadu to look to civil service as their preferred option. “In the past several candidates had to go to Delhi for coaching but today we have several good coaching centers in Chennai, besides the awareness level has seen an increase in our state,” he said.
Providing statistics of students getting selected to various cadres in civil service for the past few years, the coaching center director said that in 2009 the number was 120 from Tamil Nadu. Last year, the number touched 97 and this year it had gone up to 118.
Pointing out that in the past few years more engineers had taken up civil service, founder-director of Ganesh’s IAS academy S. Ganesa Subramanian said in 1970s students were mostly from sociology background but later their numbers dwindled and engineers moved into that space. “As opportunity for engineers dropped they have come to civil service. We also have more science students preferring government service,” he added.
