Nexus of Good: Fuelling the dreams

“It is indeed gratifying to note that as many as 121 aspirants who were provided free interview guidance under Nexus of Good Mentorship Programme by Study IQ qualified for the civil services this year. Compliments to all this that made it but they should remember that their journey begins now. Their worth will not be determined by what they did to make it to the civil services but what they do now.”

This was posted on the social media. What surprised me was the overwhelming response to this post. Not many were aware that Nexus of Good was indulging in such an activity and some even sought the details of Nexus of Good in providing such guidance.

Nexus of Good is all about enabling the good to be displayed so that the naysayers start believing that good can happen, because it is already happening. Nexus of Good is also about scaling the good work that is already happening. The key factor therefore is public-private partnership. There is a belief that whereas innovation and efficiencies will come from the private domain, for scaling, public (read government) participation is essential, especially in evolving economies where government has an extremely important role to play. There are a large number of examples (Akshay Patra being one of them) where the government and the private domains have come together and scaled good work. Hence, it is important to take as many civil servants as possible on board for each good to be understood and scaled. There are already a large number of serving and retired civil servants on board Nexus of Good as members and donors to take the movement forward. This momentum has to sustain and gain pace. It was felt that getting young new entrants to the civil services on board will go a long way in inculcating a sense of commitment towards good work and partnership with the private domain to scale good work. This was one of the primary driving force behind initiating Nexus of Good Mentorship Programme.

Many civil services aspirants had been approaching me in the past, seeking guidance on how to prepare for arguably the toughest exam in the country. I did that in an unstructured manner during the initial couple of years post-retirement. As I was already in touch with a large number of young civil servants on the social media, I approached them to mentor such aspirants. I was pleasantly surprised by the response. Around 200 of them agreed to join the list of mentors. This was primarily being done on my own and was cumbersome and time-consuming. There was also no way to assess the impact of what was being done. Along with this, I was also guiding those that qualified for the Personality Test. Here, too, it was being done randomly for those that approached me for guidance in an unstructured manner. As I was indulging in all this, someone from Study IQ approached me for an interview. This recording was done virtually during COVID times but provided me an opportunity to understand what this organisation was doing. I was truly impressed with the quality of videos they were making for UPSC Civil Services Exams (UPSC CSE). Despite having done my masters in Political Science, I gained enormously watching these videos on complex thought of political thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. Later, I had the occasion to visit the headquarters of Study IQ in Gurgaon for an off-line interview. The person who interviewed me had done a lot of ground work and posed some extremely relevant questions. I was also impressed at the professional manner in which all the activities were being carried out. I was looking out for an organisation that could assist me in taking forward the guidance to aspirants, especially those that qualified for the Personality Test. I had few things to offer on account of personal experience. When I had appeared in 1979 for the first time, I didn’t do very well in the Personality Test, getting only around 55 percent marks. I couldn’t make it to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and landed in the Indian Police Service (IPS). What I did during the next year made all the difference. I secured 80 per cent (perhaps the highest in the country) and qualified with a good rank in IAS. I could now share this strategy in a structured manner to the aspirants but I needed an organisation to assist me in doing the ground work. I found Study IQ ideal for this. We soon entered into an informal arrangement wherein I was to be the Chief Mentor and Study IQ did all the ground work regarding analyses of Detailed Application Form (DAF), organising sessions on Zoom where I could guide, constitute WhatsApp Group for interactive session and set up one-on-one physical interactions with the aspirants. The condition was that no fee would be charged from the aspirants for Personality Test guidance under the Nexus of Good Mentorship programme. The advantage to Study IQ obviously was that they could take credit for those that qualified.

The result during the first year of this partnership between Study IQ and Nexus of Good Mentorship Programme was pretty encouraging. As many as 70 aspirants qualified for the civil services in 2023 (2022 exam). For the year 2024 (2023 exam), results of which were declared recently, there has been a distinct improvement as 121 candidates have qualified. Many of these successful candidates have formally joined the Nexus of Good. Some have also agreed to mentor future aspirants to civil service. As the Nexus of Good movement gains momentum, these young officers will have an important role to play in identifying, understanding, appreciating, replicating and scaling good work. They will hopefully become the beacons of spreading goodness, the essence of Nexus of Good.

Views expressed are personal