Date of Interview: 6 May, afternoon session
Board: Smita Nagraj
Optional: Anthropology
Background: NIT-H
Home State: Himachal Pradesh
Hobbies: meditation, reading spiritual and self help books, journaling

Chairman

  1. Recent Chandigarh issue controversy
  2. What should be thr stand for Chandigarh?
  3. Monologue on centre state tussles going on. What is your opinion?
  4. River sharing disputes between states. What can be done to ensure stability?
  5. Migrants issue is present. What should the states who are receiving the migrants do about it?
  6. What are some migrants scheme by Chandigarh?

Member 1

  1. Which spiritual books you’ve read recently?
  2. Reasons behind India’s lagging semiconductor industry?
  3. Taiwan is having the same due to robus power systems. What should India do? ( I answered to create an ecosystem of electronics manufacturing)
  4. Which kind of ecosystem do you mean?

Member 2

  1. Why is Bangladesh better than India in parameters of HDI, per capita and others?
  2. Is it due to the MFIs?
  3. What are the schemes for the same MFIs? (Said not aware)

Member 3

  1. What is Pandemic and epidemic?
  2. If one continent not having any disease, is it still pandemic?
  3. What are the key indicators in food? Like carbohydrates, etc?
  4. Do you know about Isha foundation? What is it’s founder’s name? (Since I wrote meditation as hobby)
  5. What are the 2 programmes being run by Isha foundation?
  6. Tell me something about them?

Member 4  Says okay will ask some other questions ( started with some unconventional ones to check stability)

  1. What are the issues with WHA?
  2. What is kala azar?
  3. Which state in India has highest cases of this disease?
  4. Livestock smuggling? What are the schemes to stop it? (Wanted to know about an exact scheme, said not aware)

You can go now. Your interview is over

Utility of mocks- helped to a great extent. But the grilling factor and follow up questions were almost nil in actual interview.

Suggested mocks- KSG, Nextias, GsScore (took online), Drishti was also good (can choose panel 2), Chahal, Vajirao and Reddy

Source: Forum IAS

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