Sehar Shah KAS She is the lone female from Kashmir who made it to Kashmir Administrative Services or KAS in 2008. Daughter of renowned lawyer and senior counsel Zafar Shah, Sehar Shah cruised her way to success in open merit category in the state public service commission in a meticulous manner as she narrates her winner’s methodology to Rabia Noor in achieving 11th rank among the selected lot. Sehar Shah has joined state’s social welfare department as Assistant Director and is evaluating all programmes of the department for poor beneficiaries. R N: A glance at your family and academic background? S S: I belong to Srinagar. My father is a lawyer and my mother a homemaker. I have got two sisters who have studied medicine. I did my schooling here in Srinagar from Presentation Convent. Then I did my higher secondary part I and II from Kothi Bagh Srinagar with Arts as subject. I passed my graduation in Arts from the Government College for Women M. A. Road. After that I went to Delhi in 2004 and did my M. A. in Public Administration from Jamia Millia Islamia University. And also I am pursuing my M. Phil from the Centre of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University Delhi which I will be completing in July this year. R N: You are the only female from the valley to have qualified KAS this year. How do you feel about it? S S: Obviously you feel very happy when you do well. But I suppose that I could have done better and probably ranked higher. But I had my M. Phil exams as well at that time, where I stood first. That overshadowed the fact that I didn’t top in KAS. R N: What was your rank? S S: I ranked 11th in the combined services. I don’t know my marks yet; I don’t know where I did or didn’t score well. R N: Are you planning to appear in next KAS to improve your ranking? S S: No, I really don’t want to do all those things all over again. I am a bit tired of academics now (laughs). I just want to work now. R N: When did you first dream about civil services? S S: I really didn’t dream about it as an academic option. I had chosen law as my field and I wanted to be a lawyer, inspired from my father of course. But then circumstances were such that I was not able to pursue law. Consequently I got Public Administration as my second best optional. And that is why I started taking Public Administration more seriously and then specializing in that, doing my post-graduation and then law and governance, and hence administration seemed to be the logical choice. That’s how I went. R N: So when exactly you planned to go for KAS? And how did you proceed? S S: It happened as a sequence of events. After I finished my M. A. in Public Administration, I appeared in a lot of examinations at the same time. I appeared for my JNU entrance, I appeared for the NET (National Eligibility Test) exam and plus I heard that JK PSC was holding KAS exams, so I thought I should appear for it as well. So it was just in the whole routine of events; it wasn’t a conscious decision. It just happened. R N: What were your optionals and why did you opt for them? S S: Public Administration was a natural choice, for I had done my masters in that. Then I had been an Arts student since 11th and Political Science had been my option all through, so I had control over that subject. I knew what it was about. So Public Administration was my first option for my prelims and mains. Then the second subject I took was Sociology, for its syllabus was very concise. It was very easy to learn. And then I thought the paper B of Sociology relates a lot to the Public Administration, because there you deal with the things like social setup, welfare schemes, sociological view of administrative problems and assets, etc, and so the pressure to learn other subjects was reduced. That’s how I opted for these subjects. R N: What has been your strategy for success in KAS? S S: I think, exams become easier with every step; it is the prelims that is the toughest one, because there is no syllabus at this stage. There is a vast array of subjects that you have to deal with. What helped me personally doing KAS was the state of helped me personally doing KAS was the state of mind. When you decide that you have to pass an administrative exam, you go through all the question papers of the previous batches and you talk to the people who have already succeeded and so on. When you do those things, you realize that what kind of answering is required. It is not an academic exam, but really a different kind of a test. When I wII administrator how I would answer. Your answer has to show conviction, the logic, clarity on facts and most of all it has to show perspective. You need to have objectivity, neutrality, logic and cohesion in the way you think. It is very difficult to remember all the events; you have to remember the issues. You have to know that why certain event is important and you need to educate yourself on that perspective. And above all, you need to be very curious, when you appear for an administrative exam. If you are not much curious about the world around you and you are not sensitive enough, it is not going to be easy. This is applied to even theory exams. There you get to have questions like what is the cover of a capsule (medicine) made of. So you have to be curious about the things like that, for these are the kinds of questions they usually ask. You need to be very vigilant. Twenty four hours you have to keep yourself focused that you are an administrator and think what you are going to do as an administrator. You need to give educative answers and tell the interviewee that if tomorrow you would become an administrator, how you are going to see certain things. You can’t afford to be biased and yet you can’t afford to be indecisive. You cannot say that this is right and that is also right. You need to be able to balance the two. So it is more of state of mind. You read a book in the whole different way. That’s how you learn.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 18:27:56 +0000