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Journalism of Courage
A young doctor who juggled duty at his rural posting while preparing for UPSC Civil Services prelims, 26-year-old Mayur Hazarika from Assam is the All-India 5th rank holder and the highest-ranked man in UPSC CSE 2022.
Hazarika has studied in Assam all his life, having passed Class 12 from Ramanujan Junior College in Nagaon, which is affiliated to the Assam state board. He then did his MBBS from Guwahati Medical College which he completed in 2020. This was his first attempt at the civil service examinations and has his eye on the Indian Foreign Services.
He claims to have an interest in foreign affairs from a young age but went ahead with the medical field because he did not have much guidance on how to approach the civil services.
“Then when I was in the third or fourth year of medical school, I started getting more interested in foreign diplomacy and international relations. So then I thought of attempting for the foreign services,” he said.
While he was preparing for the prelims, he was working at a hospital in the Nagaon district as part of his rural posting under the National Health Mission. Owing to the constraints on his time, he said, he got by mostly through self-study.
“I didn’t take offline classes. I did follow some online courses, but because I had duty, I didn’t have that much time to study. So sometimes I would watch a video for some subject if I didn’t understand a topic… I had duty only till the prelims, not after that. When I had duty I would study for around an hour in the morning or for 3-4 hours after returning in the evening,” he said.
After his prelims, he said that he was able to increase his study hours.
He said that he was able to find most of the resources he needed online.
“Each of the three stages – prelims, mains and interview – have different demands. In prelims, you need more factual information. For mains, you need to be analytical and in the interview, they look at practical knowledge. So for each stage, there are different resources and these resources are available online. You just need to put in the effort and need to have your own understanding of what to apply where,” he said.
“During his internship, COVID came and he had to do COVID duty as well. Whatever time he got in the middle of his duties, he studied. He put in effort but I think not as much as he would have wanted to,” said his mother Moushumi Hazarika. His father, Krishna Hazarika, is an executive engineer with the Public Works Department.
