The 2006 competitive
examinations for India's civil services is notable for the number of young
people from non privileged backgrounds who feature in the merit list. For the
first time, none from India's elite metros feature in the top ten.
We will bring you some amazing success stories in this special
series. Today, meet a rickshaw vendor's son from Varanasi who is one of the IAS
toppers this year.
Tears
ran down Govind Jaiswal's face and refused to stop. Staring him in the face was
the only thing he had ever wanted, and now that he had achieved it, he couldn't
even reach out for the keys on his cell phone.
He
waited till the tears dried up, till the news sunk in and made that one phone
call on which depended the hopes of his entire family.
Govind,
24, the son of an uneducated rickshaw vendor in Varanasi, had grown up with
cruel taunts like 'However much you study, you will still be a rickshaw puller.'
He had studied with cotton stuffed in his ears to drown the noise of printing
machines and generators below his window in a poor neighborhood where small
workshops existed cheek by jowl with tiny residential quarters.
He had
given Math tuitions to supplement the paltry sum his father could afford to send
him each month. His ailing father had sold a small plot of land to give Govind
about Rs 40,000 so that he could move to Delhi which would provide him a better
place to study.
Throughout his life, he had lived with only one dream -- to become an officer of
the Indian Administrative Service. For him that was the only way. And when he
broke the news to his family, that he was ranked 48 among 474 successful
candidates in his first attempt at the exam -- it was the turn of his three
sisters and father to weep with unbridled joy.
'Besides the Civil Services,
I had no option'
I could
not afford to have any other career goal. My life would have been absolutely
futile had I not made it into the civil services, says Govind, just back from |
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