Cassian Baliarsingh

The Civil Services Exam (CSE) conducted by UPSC is regarded as India’s most prestigious exam and it is certainly not for the weak-hearted. It takes a lot of patience, failures, and most importantly years of hard work and sacrifice to become a civil servant.

Today, we will discuss IAS Surabhi Gautam, a Hindi medium student, who was once mocked for her poor English. With her hard work and determination, she shut down her trolls and cracked the UPSC CSE exam with an impressive AIR-50.

Hailing from Madhya Pradesh, Surabhi attended a government Hindi medium school in her hometown that barely had any basic amenities. However, her mother, a teacher by profession, and her father a lawyer encouraged her in her studies and helped her realise her aspirations.

She scored an impressive 93.4% in her Class 10 boards with full 100 marks in Science and Maths. After her Class 12, she went on to pursue her Engineering degree in Electronics and Communications in Bhopal. She was the gold medallist of her college for her outstanding performance and was placed first in the University.

After her graduation, she spent a year working at BARC as a nuclear scientist. Interestingly, she had aced multiple exams such as GATE, ISRO, SAIL, MPPSC PCS, SSC CGL, Delhi Police, and FCI before taking the UPSC CSE exam.

In addition, she received an impressive AIR-1 in the 2013 IES exam. However, she decided to become an IAS officer and worked hard to improve her English. Despite getting mocked many times in her school and college for her poor English, she refused to give up and chose to give it back to her trolls with her success.

The result was that Surabhi finally cracked the IAS exam with AIR-50 in 2016 and became an IAS officer. Currently, she is posted in Viramgam district of Ahmedabad as the District Development Officer and serving as the Assistant Collector.

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