Dear UPSC Toppers, You Women Are Inspirational. Never Bow to Personal Challenges

Retired IAS Officer Shailaja Chandra writes on personal challenges that women who have cleared UPSC exams may face.

A retired IAS officer's advice to young UPSC toppers on personal challenges that they and other women colleagues will face.

Image: Kamra Akhter/The Quint

Dear IAS Toppers,

Seven years ago, the first four ranks in the 2014 IAS examination were cornered by women. This year, you three have bagged the top three positions.

To have managed to do this by outdoing over 10 lakh aspirants and 5 lakh who finally wrote the examination and to have raced ahead of 177 others who have qualified for the batch of 2022, you have scaled Himalayan heights. From now on, every rung of your career will be followed with avid curiosity. You will continue to inspire generations of young women to shine like you. Congratulations!

In 2015 I wrote a few prescriptions for that band of women toppers but today, I want to focus on more personal challenges that you and other women colleagues will face.

And those challenges will stem not from politicians or society but from husbands, bosses, and colleagues. I share my words of advice to warn you against committing the same mistakes that many women before you have made – to give up the driver’s seat, only to build quotidian harmony.

Handling Romance & Marriage 

Your first challenge will be to handle romance and marriage. In the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, followed by the Bharat Darshan and several other field programmes, you will find yourself surrounded by male officer trainees.

Romance and marriage will inevitably be the natural outcomes of having been together in the rarefied atmosphere of the Academy – with rustling pine trees and with plenty of opportunities for twosomes to flourish. Far from the adage that says marriages are made in heaven, academy romances are often decided with deliberate purpose.

When I was a probationer 56 years ago, the Directorial staff (the Director and his band of Joint and Deputy Directors) would survey 140 of us from their perch in the administrative block. They would then lay bets on who would marry whom, as they observed the chemistry between the lovebirds!

Some engagements took place in the very first month of joining while some betrothals turned sour after a few months. Sometimes, nuptials were abandoned or postponed indefinitely because caste considerations became more important to parents and the biradiri. Known or unknown to the boy, marriage commitments were made by his family, including the opportunity cost of refusing dowry and thereby thwarting the chance to help siblings.

Cadres and Career Planning

Statehood and the creation of small cadres have impacted career planning.

Earlier all state cadres were mostly equal in terms of stability and governance. With the creation of new states and the formation of smaller state cadres, nowadays academy betrothals have become quite business-like.

Not that there are no happy IAS “love marriages,” but sometimes the need to get a cadre change to a less remote or less troubled state makes marriage to a batchmate a practical option. Such marriages may or may not last.

Lesson 1: Your entire career and future life will depend on a single decision to marry a colleague. Be discerning and don’t let rose tinted glasses throw you off balance.

Share Domestic Obligations to Excel Professionally

Once married, women’s careers can get derailed because of exogenous factors which follow a well-known pattern. The tenacity and perseverance that make women succeed in examinations, often withers away faced by the challenges on real life.

The benchmarks to succeed in IAS assignments are several but I mention a few.

The willingness to undertake domestic travel at a moment’s short notice, talk to a cross-section of local people every day but still manage time; to have the knack of sensing impending problems and deal with them; the readiness to sit late to complete paperwork (which is voluminous); to hone the ability to grasp the political gravity of some situations are not taught in academies and lecture halls.

They stem from zeal to use every moment to advance important official agenda and put out small fires before the damage becomes irretrievable. That requires asking probing questions and paying attention to responses, even from unlikely quarters. It requires more time and less clock watching.

But most husbands will not accept giving higher priority to office exigencies over his or the family’s needs; and unfortunately, most women acquiesce only to maintain harmony at home.

However, inside the grapevine that decides your suitability to handle difficult assignments, your dependability is measured. And if the grapevine says you do not make the grade, you will get marginalised, no matter that you were once a topper.

Lesson 2: The IAS isn’t a 9-5 desk job – it is a 24x7 commitment. Before marriage, have an agreed plan on sharing domestic obligations. Discuss what could happen. You have the right to give priority to official responsibilities when those are critical or time bound. Test whether your future partner is likely to support you.

Show Initiative, Show You Care

A word about reaching out. If you go out of your way to be accessible and pleasant, politicians, businessmen, the media, colleagues, and even troublemakers and faultfinders will appreciate you.

Early in my career, the Commissioner forwarded to me a representation with the remark that I should meet the signatories who had a grievance. No one came so I thought the matter was resolved.

A fortnight later I ran into him at an event, and he asked me whether I had met the people. I said “no” because they never came. He never pulled me up but advised me:

“Always meet people, and reach out to them when you know they have a complaint. You had their name and address with you.”

Lesson 3: Don’t operate from an ivory tower. Reach out.

Create Buzz Around Your Name

In every profession, and the IAS is no exception – women’s ability to multitask is legendary. Most women think laterally, have the capacity to mediate as problem solvers, display empathy and are by nature considerate.

But these qualities are assumed to stem from natural womanliness, and never draw appreciation because women do not project themselves sufficiently.

A central Minister, who liked my work, advised me to ring every person whose request I had approved.

“Be the first to call him to give the news,” he said. In similar vein, a venerable homeopath in the Health Ministry, where I worked for many years, once said to me, “You have a good reputation, but you have no constituency. Build one. Be it your college, people from your home state or your husband’s family, people you have helped, use them to let the world know what you have done.”

Lesson - 4: Project your work and your abilities and invest in making friends and allies who will put in a good word and create a buzz around your name.

Your Career Is Not Dispensable

Not just family, conservative bosses if they happen to subscribe to the old-fashioned world view will dislike a woman for speaking up or sticking to her viewpoint in meetings.

The response around the conference table will generally be to agree with the boss, not you. More reason to work twice as hard and to pick your moments (and fights) with care and insist you are heard.

If you are drowned out by colleagues or even the boss, (which is more the rule than the exception,) ask for two minutes to speak without interruption. It will not be denied, not these days. But always keep your balance and be polite.

Having got the stage, stick to your point without becoming emotional. Losing the argument might still happen but losing your identity is inexcusable.

Lesson 6: Stay professional, stay balanced but stand up for your beliefs. Only be selective.

Choose Your Mentor With Care

I was cleared to be part of a delegation to attend the World Energy Conference which my predecessors had always attended. But after the Minister had approved the delegation, it was shot down by a rather colourful Secretary, who—I was told by a catty colleague—had said, “We can’t have her around in a sari and a Bindi, aboard a yacht off the coast of Cannes.”

I met the Minister and told him I had been excluded from the delegation. He immediately undid the damage and gave an earful to the flamboyant Secretary, but I had taken a huge risk. Fortunately for me, it worked; it could just as easily have boomeranged.

Lesson 7: Choose your mentor with care. Don’t balk at seeking help when you are certain you have been wronged. If you can’t join the male bastions, you must occasionally find ways to beat them.

You Are Equal to Your Partner

You have successfully cleared the most competitive examination in the world. Your biggest satisfaction will come from making a difference to people’s lives not in making only one man in your life happy.

My appeal is not aimed at provoking you to become a rebel at home or in the office; only to motivate you to remember that while the odds are that you will marry a service colleague, you are equal to him in every way – (sometimes far better,) but second to none.

To be liked is easy. To earn respect, you will need sustained hard work. But to make a lasting mark you will need to stand up for yourself. Not on one day, but every single day of your official life! Good luck! The world is watching!

Shailaja Chandra,

Former Secretary in the Health Ministry & Former Chief Secretary, Delhi.

(Shailaja Chandra (IAS retd) has over 45 years of experience in public administration focusing on governance, health management, population stabilisation and women’s empowerment. She was Secretary in the Ministry of Health and later Chief Secretary, Delhi. She tweets at @over2shailaja. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)