During Haritha V Kumar's first attempt in the civil services examination, she fell short of 18 marks in clearing the mains. Even though, that didn't dishearten her. Rather it gave her the confidence that she can crack the exams followed by a realization of a childhood dream if she gave it a small push.
Arousing a fact of interest, four years and an equal number of attempts later, the 27-year-old from Kerala on Friday became the topper of the UPSC civil services exam for 2012.
While she was asked about how her interview went and she brightens up expressing that they asked her the four issues that plague India while she told them corruption, poverty, (lack of) women's security and unemployment, particularly of the educated. Haritha is currentlygaining training at the National Institute of Customs, Excise and Narcotics in Faridabad as an IRS officer. They then asked her to suggest a single solution to tackle the four issues and Her reply was "transparency with the use of ICT (Information Communication Technology)" which Haritha believes, was among her best answers.
Born and brought up in Thiruvananthapuram, Haritha completed her schooling from a Malayalam-medium school and then obtained an engineering degree in Electronics and Communication from the Government Engineering College. Early on in her life, she had decided to become an IAS officer though and she said further that she knew she wanted to do this. Haritha, after graduating from college in 2007, Haritha started preparing for IAS and opted for Economics and Malayalam as her subjects and she believe economics is the underlying problem to all issues India is facing therefore she wanted to have a deep knowledge of the subject.
As a concluding factor, Haritha said that in her first attempt in 2009, she fell short of 18 marks from clearing the mains she thought when she could come this far with such average preparation, she could surely do better with a little more study, who is fond of reading books, particularly Khalil Gibran, and usually watches Malayalam movies.
Haritha is not just a topper in the UPSC but genuinely another topper in her perspective towards controlling the practicality of one's impulses and actions. Then only this miraculous success is possible!
Congratulations once again!
(AW:Samrat Biswas)
