My first interview at UPSC

Board Chairperson - Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Surinder Nath, former Chairman of the UPSC

After a wait of about 4 hours, my name was called.I went upstairs with the peon and he asked me to sit outside the room.Then an old gentleman came out of the room and asked the peon to send one more candidate before the lunch break, I assumed that was one of the board members.( that was the board chairperson) I nodded to him slightly (as good afternoon) and he shook his head furthermore slightly.

In the meantime, the peon ran to call the candidate upstairs.The candidate came and sat besides me. I said hello and since i was a bit nervous, to make sure that i perform well, I started talking to him about him and the recent telangana issue. Then the candidate who was inside came out, the sardarji, and I asked him how was it.(though his name wasn't there in the final list) He was overwhelmed and said "bahut achhe log hai n m bahut khush hu", that gave me further confidence.Then i said bye to them both and went inside the interview room.

(s-saurabh, m – upsc member, b1- board member1, lady- lady member, b3- board member 3)

S- may i come in sir,

M- yes yes please come in (I thought they would be arrogant and uninterested, being at that position, but they were not)

S- ( I stood besides the chair) good afternoon mam n sirs

lady member- please sit down

b1 (bengali may be) - u r shorab

s- no sir, Its Saurabh

b1- u mean shaurabh

s- no sir, SAURABH

b1- okay

m- so, saurabh you have done your graduation from delhi university, PGDAV. what is PGDAV?

s- sir, its my college. It is Pannalal Girdharilal Dayanand Anglo Vedic College.

m- so its a private college

s- no sir its under a trust.

m- so where is it situated

s- sir its in Nehru nagar. Near Lajpat nagar.

m- okay. So, u r from Delhi itself.

s- No Sir, I am from Haryana, but i have done graduation and my CA from delhi.

lady member- so, from where did you do your articleship?

s - mam i did it from Satish Tayal and associates. its in Delhi.

lady- what all did u do

s- mam, the firm was basically a taxation firm. so most of the work i did was related to taxation.

m - so u have completed your studies in 2011. what have you been doing since then since u r not working?

s- sir i have been preparing for civil services since then.

m- okay, so how many attempts have you taken till now.

s- sir, i have written mains this time and this is my second attempt.

m- what was your subject

s- sir, commerce.

m- is there any change in the syllabus of gs dis time?

s- sir, actually there has been no change, its only that the syllabus has been made more elaborates

m- but some students are cribbing about the change

s- sir actually the weightage of gs has increased and that of subjects have reduced. Since, subjects are quite static and gs is very dynamic, those who have crammed their subjects for the past many  years have actually suffered a setback.

m- okay, I got that.

M- so, how was the gs paper.

s- Sir, it was good. the questions were quite general and not something too specific. I liked the papers.

m- so, tell me you have been preparing for the civil services, and if you get selected there and here also, we select you. wouldn't you choose the civil services.

s- Sir, this is also civil services.

(at this everybody there laughed and b2 said that is quite witty of you)

m- you are correct. so what this b1 does, that is also civil service and in this manner everybody is doing civil service.

s- yes sir. Sir, it can be called public service. May be what others are doing is public service and what we do being in the service is civil service. i am a bit confused in the two terms.

m- you are calling them servants. They do not like to be called as a servant.

s- But they are actually servants.

lady- servants of whom?

s- servants of the public mam. ( lady smiled and nodded)

member asked b1 to start questioning.

b3- so mr. saurabh, in ca you must have studied financial accounting.

s- yes sir.

b3- so what will you do if your balance sheet is not matching

s- ( i thought of saying that  will put the balance in the suspense a/c. but that would seem like giving up)

Sir, i would try to match it.

b3- how?

s- sir, first i will check whether the trial balance is matching or not so as the identify where the mistake is. 

b3- okay okay, i got my answer. ( he was quite with me from the very beginning)

passed on to b1.

b1- so saurabh, since this position is for cost analysis and management, I would ask you a few question on that.

s- okay sir

b1- saurabh, in most of the companies, allocation of overheads is the major issue since other direct expenses are easily allocable, how will you do that.

s- sir, it depends the kind of products they make or what type of industry it is.

b1- no no, you take any industry or any product. e.g. take sail, BHEL, etc etc...( he named some 10-12 PSUs). how will you monitor the overheads?

s- sir, i will do that by standard costing.

b1- how will you do that by standard costing. what are the various elements of that?

s- sir, overheads variance generally has two parts. the price factor and the activity level. i.e. whether the prices have increased or whether there is variation in my production.

b1- what are your views on activity based costing in PSUs.

s- sir, in activity based costing, the allocation is done individually and various cost drivers are used unlike in traditional method, wherein there is only one driver. This thing makes the process very complex. so, i feel ABC is the future of allocation but that cannot be done as a replacement. we have to adopt that slowly.

b1- okay now, i will give you a situation and you answer me what this concept is called.

s- ok sir

b1- suppose, there is a company and that company has invested huge resources in some technology. and after few years, that tech becomes obsolete and now the company has two options. whether to  wait and revive the tech it has. or whether to go for the new tech. and you are advisor to the company. tell me the amount that has been invested by the company till now, what is it for the company.

s- sir, it is a kind of sunk cost for the company.

b1 nodded

he passed on to the lady member.

lady- so saurabh, tell me you have done your articleship, you must have done all the stuff there.

s- mam, actually the firm in which i worked was basically a taxation firm.

lady - okay. so tell me do you know about revised schedule vi. how is it different from the earlier one. and when was it introduced.?

s- mam, in the revised schedule vi, the classification of the asset has changed and has been made more realistic. earlier, there used to fixed assets and investments and other things but now it has been  

changed to current assets and current liabilities.

lady- what else besides current thing. we have fixed assets also

s- mam, there is current assets and non current assets. ( she nodded)

lady- okay, do you know that the government follows single entry system but all others follow single entry system. What is the difference and should we shift to double entry system.

s- mam, in double entry system there are two entries in each transaction. e.g., if i am depositing cash into bank, the entry is bank a/c to cash a/c. Here, both the bank and cash a/c are affected. which is not the case with single entry system. ( the lady nodded).

lady- so should we shift to double entry system.

s- mam, i think we should shift to double entry system because in the double entry system, there is an inherent control in the system. the probability of mistakes are less.

lady- do u know What is xbrl ( smiling, as if she thought i din know)

s- mam, xbrl is xtensible business regulatory language ( it was actually reporting instead of regulatory but she nodded at that time). its a machine readable language, in which codes are specified and  documents are to be filled in those specified codes. With the use of xbrl, it becomes easy to compare the records of companies and to get more standardized knowledge about the industry(s). e.g. if want to know the cost and position structure of a particular industry, that can be done through this.

lady- which documents are to be filed in xbrl

s- mam, balance sheets, p/l and other related documents. ( she nodded)

the member, then started to say something

member- okay tell me one thing, we have so many good chartered accountants like you in the country but then why still we hear of so many frauds in the country?

s- sir, the issue is not with the knowledge part. CAs do have much knowledge but the issue is with their ethics and integrity. There should be severe punishments for the wrongs done by them. even the  new companies bill talks of severe punishments.

m- for the frauds done by the company?

s- no sir, for their gross negligence and for being involved in the fraud.

b1- Due Diligence also

s- yes sir, even Due Diligence also 

m- what are the punishments?

s- sir, there is jail for 3 years for the wrongs done.

m- okay now tell me, do u understand NPAs. where are shown NPAs shown in the balance sheets of the banks

s- sir, NPAs is non performing assets and these are assets which are non- performing i.e. interest or the principal is not being paid. but these are still assets of the company and shown in the asset side of  balance sheet. Sir, we do create provisions on such assets and such provisions are shown in the liabilities. sir, if interest is not paid for more than 6 months, we create some provision, if the period  increases the amount of provision increases. and after 3 years or so, the whole amount is written off.

m- written off?

s- no sir, not written off, but the provisions are created.

m- r u sure three years??

s- no sir, I'm not sure 3 years. these things are decided by RBI, this may 3 or 4 yrs. but it is something like that.

m- okay. now you can go.

s- Thank you sir.

( I thought I would go till the door and then turn back and say a final thankyou but when I did that, nobody was looking at me and everybody was busy writing something, so i had to drop that plan.)