UPSC result 2017: Meet investment banker-turned-cop who got 10th rank

Rajasthan’s Abhishek Surana who finished 10th in the 2017 civil services examination, results of which were declared on Friday, says he missed the “organized chaos” in India during the two years that he spent abroad after graduating from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

“When I was abroad, I longed for my country. I call the situation in India ‘organised chaos’ but it is still my country. Jaisa bhi hai, apna hai (no matter how it is, it is mine),” said the 27-year-old electrical engineer from Bhilwara in Rajasthan.

Surana is currently undergoing training at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy, Hyderabad.

“After my IIT, I was recruited by Barclays Investment Bank in Singapore. I worked for the bank in London, before two friends and I founded a company and began working in Chile. It was during these two years that I was abroad that I realized that I wanted to be in India and do something for my people,” he said on telephone from Hyderabad.

Surana finished 10th in his third attempt in the exam conducted by the Union Public Service Commission. In the first attempt, in 2015, he didn’t qualify for the interview, the stage 3 of the exam. In 2016, he got 250th rank and got into the Indian Police Service. He also appeared for the Indian Forest Service exams the same year and got the all-India second rank but he preferred the Indian Administrative Service and decided to make another attempt in 2017.

Surana loves cooking and is crazy about astrophysics. Physics was his subject for the mains for the civil services examination. His father, Anil Surana, is a lecturer of the subject at the government college in Bhilwara.

His father says he was checking the UPSC website all day for the result on Friday because the interviews concluded on Thursday. “In the evening, I went out to buy vegetables and that’s when I got a call from Abhishek telling me that he got the 10th rank,” he said.

Surana says many IITians try the corporate route or start-ups after they get into the civil services and leave it. “I wanted to take risk in my life before deciding to settle down. If you settle down early in life, I feel you do injustice to your talent and to the vast sea of opportunities available to you,” he said.