‘Look for rules that help us move forward’

Among those felicitated were first three rank holders — Dr Shah Faisal,Prakash Rajpurohit,Iva Sahay — and 69 others who have cracked the examination. Among them was Manoj K Roy from Bihar,with rank 870,who has done everything from selling eggs at bus stands,working as a peon to giving tutions to students to finance his education.

Faisal also interacted with students from Abida Inamdar Senior College (AISC),organised by the Maharashtra Cosmopolitan Education Society at Azam campus.

Kakodkar further said the functional lifespan of a bureaucrat is much more than that of a government,which usually changes every five years. So it is the bureaucrats who have the power to decide the course the nation will take in the long run.

Shah Faisal,who is a regular columnist with leading newspapers in Kashmir, a playwright and an RTI activist,said for him the two driving forces in life are passion and compassion — while his passion for the UPSC helped him crack the exam. To work as a bureaucrat his decisions would be driven by compassion.

Iva Sahay began by citing the example of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer,who could get his friends to paint a fence for him by making it seem like an opportunity rather than work. “The most common question I am asked is how I prepared for the examination. But in my opinion the motivation and the reason to appear for the exam should be passion for the job rather than crack the exam.”

Later in the day,while talking to AISC students,Faisal said while many students feel they face discrimination due to their background,but the fact that they have secured first rank despite being Kashmiri Muslims and Urdu being one of their subjects for the UPSC examination makes such claims false.

“I’m not shy of my identity,but I’m an Indian first and then a Kashmiri. Poverty and hunger has no religion. But the biggest menace today is communal violence that is destroying the basic fabric of our democracy,” said the doctor who believes in striving for the best.

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