IAS Manoj Kumar Roy Success Story: Proving that dreams do come true, this egg vendor from Bihar cleared his UPSC exam

 IAS Manoj Kumar Roy Success Story:

When the situations test you, it is you who decide whether to give up or fight back against it. And the one who fights back is always a hero of his own story. And these statements suit an IAS officer Manoj Kumar Roy in every way. So, in this article further, we will earn about the inspiring story of this IAS officer. 

 

A resident of Bihar’s Supoul district, Manoj recalls that he had always been taught from his school days that earning money is more important than getting educated. And a person should always focus more on earning than getting educated. Following this ideology, Manoj after completing his education till Class 12th migrated to Delhi from Bihar, in search of a job in 1996. A sudden transition from living in a village to surviving in a big city prove difficult for Manoj, but he thought of taking up the challenge. Being not able to find a decent and secured job, Manoj thought of setting up a stall and started selling eggs and vegetables. After a while, he started delivering ration to the Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU University). 

 

During his times of delivering ration to JNU University, Manoj encountered a student from the university named Uday Kumar who was also from the same district of Supoul of where Manoj was a denizen. Manoj further shares that hailing from the same district, Uday advised Manoj to pursue his studies further. Accepting this precious advice from his dear friend, Manoj admitted himself to Aurobindo College (University of Delhi) evening batch and completed his graduation in BA in Rs. 2000/- from selling eggs. 

 

Uday further suggested Manoj to pursue UPSC Civil Services after completing his graduation. But Manoj wasn’t sure that does he really want to pursue the profession and become an IAS officer and to come to a final decision, it took Manoj a few days. But in the end, Manoj thought if giving it a chance. While Manoj was starting with his preparations for the USPC Exam in 2001, one of his friends introduced Manoj to a PHD Professor in Geography at Patna University who was in Delhi during that time. After meeting the professor, Manoj got inspired by his expertise in Geography and decided to consider Geography as an additional subject for his UPSC exam. Manoj to study for the subject went to Patna and spent 3 years on it. During that time, Manoj started giving tuitions to students there for his survival. In 2005, Manoj gave his first attempt for the UPSC exam but failed at it and returned back to Delhi.

 

Manoj chose to write the IAS exam in Hindi but that proved to be a barrier for him as the study material is not easily available in Hindi. Be it any language the candidate wants to write the UPSC Main exam in, it is necessary to appear for at least two language papers, out of which, one should be English, which was again a hurdle for Manoj. It is mandatory to clear one state language exam along with the English exam, and if someone fails to clear any of these, the candidate’s marks obtained in other normal and alternative subjects will not be considered. Language papers are those qualifying papers whose marks are not added to the final mark sheet but. 

 

Being not able to clear the English exam was a big hurdle for Manoj. But after failing four times, Manoj excelled in his practice and cleared the UPSC exam on his fifth attempt. While strategising for the exam, Manoj in his first attempt finished the whole syllabus of the Main exam instead of Prelims and that automatically covered 80% of the syllabus for the Prelims exam. Moreover, Manoj went through all the NCERT books from Class 6th to 12th to ace his UPSC exam preparations and ultimately made it to become an IAS officer.