“My interview revolved around various topics which I had already mentioned in the Detailed Application Form.”
—Anmol Sher Singh Bedi, IAS Topper 2016-17, 2nd Rank (1st Among Men)
Mr. Anmol Sher Singh Bedi has secured the all-India First Rank among male candidates and the Second Rank in the overall list of successful candidates in the Civil Services Examination 2016-17. He hails from Amritsar, Punjab and holds a B.E. (Hons.) in Computer Science from the well-known Engineering college, BITS Pilani. He has secured distinction in BE (Hons.). Though he is a Science student from the beginning, he preferred Political Science and International Relations as his Optional subject. So far as his enviable success in the Civil Services Examination (CSE) is concerned, he considers a number of factors as the secret of his success, which are smart work, luck, destiny etc. The blessings of his parents and their constant support motivated him during his preparation for the CSE.
Here, Mr. Bedi gives an account of his UPSC interview to Competition Success Review.
Detailed interview
My interview was conducted on March 22, 2017 in the forenoon session. The Board was presided by Mr. Chattar Singh. It also had 5 other members, apparently experts in different fields. I was the last one to be interviewed in the session. My interview revolved around various topics which I had already mentioned in the Detailed Application Form.
I have written below arough outline of my interview.
Chairman: Is this your photo?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Yes.
Chairman: So your name is Anmol?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Yes Sir.
Chairman: You participated inARSSDC competition. What is this competition about?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: ARSSDC stands for Asian Regional Space Settlement Design Competition. This is an annual competition, where high school students generally from various countries across Asia submit their presentations, citing how they can create a space settlement. We were asked to submit realistic and legitimate designs as to how we can achieve the same.
Chairman: Were you alone or part of a team?
Anmol
Sher Singh Bedi: I was a part of 12-member
team, which consisted of seniors from class XI
and class XII. I was at that moment in class X.
Chairman: What was your role?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: I was part of the operations department, so I worked on how the space settlement would be stationed and what could be the best location or how artificial gravity would be created.
Chairman: So you read Social Issues, what kind of issues do you read?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Sir, I like to read on Social Justice.
Chairman: What did you read recently on it?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: I read the book‘Uncertain Glory’ by Dr. Amartya Sen, where he has written about socio-economic inequalities.
Chairman: What is capability approach?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Sir,Dr. Amartya Sen has come up with the idea of capability approach. He has stated that distribution of resources directly to people may be fiscally unmanageable. So rather than providing resources to people, it would be better to enhance their capabilities i.e. in terms of education, health etc. His approach can be understood via analogy of a bicycle. Rather than distributing bicycles to people, it would be better to provide them bicycling abilities.
Chairman: Good.
Chairman: What kind of places are there to see in Amritsar?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Harmandir Sahib, Akal Takht – Temporal seat of Sikhs, Durgiana Temple, Sitla Mandir, Wagah Border, etc.
Chairman: You are forgetting a very important place, which lies next to Harmandir Sahib?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Jallianwala Bagh. Thank you Sir.
Chairman: So you have been to these places before?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: I have been to all the places before once except Harmandir Sahib, where I have been a number of times.
Member 1: What is the role of prime numbers in computer science?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: They are basically used in cryptal analysis and cryptal algorithms. It is specifically used in prime integer factorisation problem. This problem is an NP problem, which means that it takes polynomial amount of time to verify but a long time to solve completely.
Member 1: Excellent!
Member 1: What is Turing Machine?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Gave a standard text book answer about it.
Member 1: Why has India not done well in football? What are the problems?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: First, football is generally found in spatially distributed localities like Goa, Bengal, Bangalore and is not found on pan Indian basis. Second, our country lacks in important infrastructure not in terms of big stadiums but in terms of simple community parks. Third, we would require experienced coaches to give better direction to Indian football.
Member 1: So why did India do well previously?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Yes, India did extremely well before. We reached semifinals of Olympics in 1956. However after that time, Europeans and South Americans have been able to professionalise their leagues.
Member 1: What are the problems faced by Indian Judiciary?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: There are 3 crore cases left in the lower judiciary and around 400 vacancies in the higher courts. Litigative environment has put a lot of pressure on judiciary. Judicial Activism is also often cited as problem in judiciary. The number of cases per judge is very high. However, judiciary is spearheading the campaign to democratise Indian Polity and has been fairly successful.
Member 2: What do you think is required for the development of our country?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Ma’am, there are number of interesting narratives on development of our country. However I believe that social modernisation is an important way to India’s development. We have had so many social cleavages within our society leading to loyalties which somehow obstruct India development.
Member 2: What do you think is specifically required for economic development?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Social Modernisation is still the key to economic development. We also require strengthening of our infrastructure, increasing output of industrial and manufacturing sector, creating meaningful assets and pushing towards human resource development.
Member 2: What is Public Debt?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Gave standard text book definition.
Member 2: What is external and internal debt?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Gave standard definition and differentiated between them.
Member 3: What is Data Mining?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: It is all about finding interesting patterns and correlations in a huge data set. It involves the use of statistics, probability, and regression to find important information in data set.
Member 3: What is Data Warehousing?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: It is used in an enterprise. Here data is obtained from a variety of transactional systems, for example pos terminals and machines; it is stored in a big data server, where it is analysed by OLAP tools. Then it is sent to Data Marts where departmentalised data querying takes place.
Member 3: Name two things that can improve India’s IT Industry?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: The first and foremost thing would be diversification. India is overly dependent on markets in USA and therefore it needs to explore markets in EU and China. Secondly, we need to move towards higher innovation sector in IT industry.
Member 3: How will you connect Data Mining and Social Networking?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Gave the term Social Media Mining and explained it by giving example of Indian elections.
Member 3: Name some important issues that you like to read in International Affairs?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: India- China Relations, New World Order, etc.
Member 3: Explain the issues between India and China.
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Gave a comprehensive explanation of all the issues. Starting from UNSC 1267, Afghanistan, NSG, UNSC etc.
Member 4: What is PPP?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Purchasing Power Parity or Public Private Partnership.
Member 4: OK, explain some advantages and disadvantages of PPP projects?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: I explained a few points like private sector financing of infrastructure projects, technology access etc. Similarly, explained a few negatives that private sector may not be willing to take as much risk as public sector takes, also difficult to regulate the terms of contract, non uniformity in allocation of ppp may lead to arbitrariness.
Member 4: What is BOT?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Build Operate and Transfer.
Member 4: Define?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: The private sector builds the project, it operates it for a certain while and then transfers the authority to public sector.
Member 4: Name the city, where maximum PPP projects are found?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Sorry Sir.
Member 4: Name the type math used in Computer Science?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Discrete Mathematics.
Member 4: Why is cyber security required?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: We live in a borderless and permission-less world as far as cyber security is concerned. It is required to protect our critical assets, infrastructure, private information of citizens and financial information.
Member 4: Give difference between Computer Engineering and Computer Science.
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Gave standard text book answer.
Chairman: What is Economic Globalisation?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Integration of national economies is called Economic Globalisation.
Chairman: What else is a part of it?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: There is freedom of trade in Goods and Services, Technology, Investment, etc.
Chairman: OK, give me advantages of FDI and some disadvantages?
Anmol Sher Singh Bedi: Gave standard answer.
Chairman: Thank you, Anmol.