Tapasya Parihar grabbed the 23rd rank in the UPSC examinations, 2017. This daughter of a farmer Vishwas Parihar from Jowa village in Narsinghpur district, Madhya Pradesh, since then has inspired many other young girls to aspire and try to become an IAS officer.
Tapasya’s grandmother is the President of the Narasimhapur Panchayat and her uncle Vinayak Parihar is a social worker.
So, she already had a background that fuelled her interest in working for the betterment of society. After completing her schooling in Narsinghpur, she shifted to Pune and completed her degree in law from India Law Society’s Law College. Then she decided to pursue her dreams of becoming an IAS officer and shifted to Delhi.
She could not clear the preliminary test on the first attempt but continued to work hard and appeared for the UPSC exam for the second time. To ensure that she clears the exam with a good rank, Tapasya used to study for 8 to 10 hours. Her hard work and dedication paid off and she passed the exam with a very high rank.
During an interview, the successful UPSC candidate said that she is not an extraordinary student but it was her hard work and persistent effort that helped her fulfill her dream of becoming an IAS officer.
Although Tapasya had joined coaching classes to crack the civil services exams, she mostly relied on self-study and making small notes on each topic so that she could understand every subject in depth and hence, could pass the exams on the second attempt with a good rank.