This answer is everything I can recall about the D-Day.

My UPSC-ISS interview was on 20th July 2021 in the afternoon session.

Board- Shri Rajiv Nayan Choubey Sir

Educational background: MSc in Statistics from University of Allahabad

Home state- Uttar Pradesh

Hobbies: Playing Cricket, Socializing with friends.

I was the first person to go in.

There were 4 members (Chairperson and 3 other members) in the interview panel, I will call them CP, M1, M2(Lady member) and M3.

I reached UPSC bhavan around 12:10PM. First there were many security checks and briefings. then, they will make you wait in the waiting room. a peon will call as your turn comes. We were seated in row due to the covid19 norms rather than in a circular table, in meantime of document verification and other process I went to washroom to have a final glance of my dress and hair. Since I was the first one to go in I don’t have to wait for long time, merely after 10 minutes there was an assistant who called me and when we were heading towards conference hall I asked him about the board and he said R.N. Choubey Sir is chairman. I waited approximately 10 minutes outside that conference hall noticing everything which was around that place, having various thought in mind like Animeshi you are not the first one who is facing all these things each and every officer gone through same stage and those people who are going to take your interview also gone through same process, thoughts like these were helping to remain me calm. Finally, the bell rang.

Before entering I tried my best to stay calm, confident and cheerful. After entering I wished all board members and the chairperson offered me the seat.

Chairperson: Animeshi Kumar. So Animeshi do you have any COVID symptoms like cough cold or anything?

Me-No, Sir

CP: Did you meet any COVID positive in last 10-15 days?

Me-No, Sir

CP: Fine. You may take off your mask.

*I removed my mask

CP-Animeshi, this is a personality test. Consider us as your friend. Please be relaxed. There is no compulsion of answering every question we all know that that it is not possible for a person to know everything so be direct if you don’t know anything. And if you are not able to hear or comprehend the question then please do not hesitate in asking to repeat the question. So, shall we start?

Me-Yes Sir

CP- Please tell us about your education and job experience if any.

Me- Sir my name is Animeshi Kumar and I completed my schooling from a small town named Gola Gokarannath in Lakhimpur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh state. After that I went to Bareilly College, Bareilly to pursue graduation and later I went to University of Allahabad, Prayagraj to enrol in my post-graduation program; after that I joined Field Operation Division of National Sample Survey Office as a Field Officer where I collected primary data for government of India in Time Use Survey Scheme.

CP- In Which Scheme?

Me- Sir in time use survey scheme, this survey is conducted for the first time by NSSO from 1st January 2019 to 31st December 2019 in this scheme our objective was to calculate time disposition of household members in paid and unpaid activities.

*CP nodded and said OK Animeshi.

CP- So Animeshi how would you calculate monthly income of household?

Me- Sir it depend upon what kind of household it is, if member of household are regular salaried employee the salary slips of members will do the job for us and we can calculate it easily, if in case the members of household don’t have salaried income suppose the household is solely depend upon the agriculture then we will try to estimate the income with the help of the imputed value of Agricultural product they sold in market as well as they use for own final consumption.

*CP interrupted me here

CP- what if the household is consist of 1 casual wage labourer as head who don’t have a regular place of employment his wife who do domestic duties only and 5 children who are student now how would you calculate it?

Me- Yes sir I faced situation like these while calculating monthly expenditure of household during the survey, for situation like these I will ask him how many days he worked in last 30 days and how he was paid, whether he was paid in cash only or paid in cash and kind and with the help of this we will calculate it.

CP- Are these the only factors you will consider?

Me- No Sir, the imputed value of thing he received as a free collection or gift will be also taken in account, like in present time of covid-19 government is providing free ration so the imputed value of such collection will be also taken in account.

CP-Suppose there is a household who owns a poultry farm only, nothing else all he has is hens in his farm now what will be the criteria?

Me- Sir again the imputed value of final product he sold in market or he used for own consumption will we taken as factor.

CP- will the final income will be difference of expenditure on that farm to raise hens and final monetary value of product?

Me- No Sir, we do not take expenditure in account while calculating income as it is not a net quantity, we take it in account when there are terms like profit are involved.

CP- Animeshi what will you do if a household don’t want to tell you all these things due to any reason?

Me- Sir first of all I want to assure them that all the information will remain confidential and will use for statistical purpose only I will also tell them the objective clearly and why I am collecting information.

*CP interrupted again

CP- No he is completely in mood that he will not tell you anything what will you do, will you left him out or will fight with him to gain information?

*at this question everyone laughed

Me- No Sir I am not going to fight with them if a person is reluctant to give information I will replace him with another household and also data collected from such respondent is highly unreliable and have high likelihood of having non-sampling error. we can not collect data by putting quality of it on stake.

*Chairman Sir indicated to member 1 to ask questions.

M1- Do you live in a village?

Me-No Sir.

M2- so you lived in an urban area?

Me-Sir my native place is a small-town area but for last eight years I am living in urban area.

M1-So you don’t know about agricultural things.

Me- Sir I don’t know about exact process of cultivating a crop.

* M1 interrupted

M1-do you know about wheat crop, what kind of crop it is?

Me-*I thought for few seconds and then replied Sir it is a Rabi crop.

*M1 said to other members “he knows everything” and everyone had a sarcastic kind of smile

M1- which season of crop is currently in cycle.

Me- Sir currently kharif season crop are in cycle.

M1- tell me some zaid crops name.

Me-watermelon, cucumber, melons.

M1- we often hear that this year the estimated production of wheat will be x metric tons how these estimates are found?

Me- Sir these estimations are calculated with the help of crop estimation survey.

M1- tell me more about this.

Me- Sir in crop estimation survey we obtain an estimate of total production by multiplying yield rate to area under cultivation.

*while giving example of this answer I fumbled little bit in nervousness as I forgot few appropriate words so I asked that whether I can explain in Hindi.

CP- No Animeshi, speak in English only and we assure you that there will be no deduction in marks due to English speaking, we are not here to test your English take your time.

*I explained a little bit and fortunately I didn’t fumble in my remaining interview.

M1-Suppose you are Registrar General of India and you are said to conduct census at gap of 5 years only in place of gap of 10 years, how will you respond, will you say yes or no?

Me- Sir I cannot say straight yes or no, I will talk about this with other officers of my department.

M1-No you are the highest rank officer, it is you who have to take the decision, tell me your decision yes or no?

Me- yes Sir I might be highest rank officer but still I have to take a deep conversation on this as census has the widest area to cover and it is largest scale data collection procedure so the feasibility of changing periodicity must be reviewed very carefully.

M1-so you will give reasons like census took too much time to be conducted and there is also requirement of a lot of time and resources to prepare reports and all.

Me- yes Sir

M1-do you know about land statistics?

Me-sorry Sir I will read about this.

M1-do you know about trade statistics?

Me-sorry Sir I don’t have any idea.

M1-do you know about Finance statistics?

Me-really sorry Sir.

(I said sorry on consecutive three answers cause the member was slightly grilling me at each answer and I was not aware about these field deeply so I tried to play safe here)

*M1 was going to ask any other question but CP Sir indicated mam to ask questions.

M2- Have you read time series?

(at this question I was like oh no God as I didn’t read time series for paper 3 I stick to my plan of studying econometrics and sampling only to the deepest possible level but since time series is part of compulsory paper so I cannot say NO, fortunately I brushed up concepts before interview)

Me-yes mam.

M2- what are the components of time series?

Me-mam there are four component of time series secular or long-term trend, seasonal trend, cyclic trend and irregular component.

M2- what is difference between seasonal and cyclic trend?

Me- mam the main difference is periodicity, seasonal trend is a oscillatory pattern occurs in period of less than or equal to one year while cyclic fluctuation occurs in more than one year gaps.

M2-what is irregular component?

Me- mam all the random factors which are beyond human control which affect the time series significantly are counted under random component, in present time covid 19 is example of irregular component.

M2- how do we remove seasonality from time series?

Me- I was not sure so said sorry mam.

M2-ok you must know how do we remove trend effect from time series?

Me- in nervousness I was blank again and cursing myself for not reading it properly but I said sorry mam can’t recall it now.

M2- do you heard about moving average process?

Me-yes mam I heard about it.

M2- then what is it?

Me- mam in moving average process of order q the study variable is function of q lagged value of stochastic variable.

M2- how it differs from AR process?

Me- In AR process study variable is function of lagged values of study variable itself while in MA process it is function of lagged value of stochastic variable.

M2- How do we decide order of any such process?

Me- mam on the basis of ACF and PACF we decide the order of process.

M2- Tell me in detail what is ACF.

Me-mam ACF is an auto-correlation function by which we can calculate autocorrelation between series with its lagged values.

M2-what is rho(k)?

Me-mam it is ACF between a point and its k lagged values.

M2-how would you calculate it?

Me- mam it is the ratio of gamma(k) to gamma(0).

M2- what is this gamma?

Me- mam it is autocovariance function.

M2-what is ARMA process?

Me- mam ARMA(p,q) is mixture of AR(p)&MA(q) process.

M2- then what is ARIMA?

Me-mam ARIMA is nothing but ARMA process which become stationary after differencing.

M2- Do you know full form of ARIMA?

Me- yes, it is Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average process.

M2- what is this integrated term?

Me- mam it represents the order of differencing required for a time series to be stationary while initially it was non-stationary.

M2- do you know Durbin Watson test?

Me- mam it is used to check autocorrelation but don’t know detailed specification, sorry mam.

M2-how would you fit these process on data set?

Me-all I can remember was something like Box Jenkins model but was not sure hence said sorry mam.

M2- ADF test, augmented Dicky Fuller test, do you know anything?

Me- not sure mam, I will read about this, sorry.

M2-Unit root test, anything you know about it?

M3- sorry mam.

*CP stopped mam from asking further questions and passed the baton to M3, A rapid fire round with mam came to an end.

M3- you mentioned census in your previous answers, who conducted first census in India and when?

Me- Sir the first census was conducted by British officer Lord Mayo in 19th century Sir I don’t vividly remember the year but I guess it was 1872.

M3- yes it was, you mentioned problem in conducting census in 5 years don’t you think there will be possible solution of this problem, can you mention few of them?

Me- sure Sir there will be solution which will tackle is problem significantly, Sir if we able to reduce time spent on paper work considerably then we may be able to conduct census on 5 years.

M3- How would you reduce the time spend on paper work?

Me-Sir by working efficiently.

M3- Not everyone want work efficiently tell me some more alternatives.

Me- *Nervously sorry sir can’t think of any now.

M3- You worked in FOD how did you collect the data?

Me- Sir by personal interview of person.

M3- No I was asking whether it was pen paper based or on the digital platforms?

Me- Sir for my first sub round of 3 month I collected data on paper and for the last 2 sub rounds I collected data on ADAB server developed by ISI.

*at this point I realises he was asking about digitization of census procedure to produce result in significantly less time.

M3- which mode you find better and why.

Me- Sir the digital one because there was significant reduction of time in all procedure also there was built in checks so there was low likelihood of filling wrong codes accidentally as compared to pen and paper method.

M3-Animeshi suppose you are not a Field officer but supervisor of them, how would you ensure that they are actually collecting the data and not generating the data by themselves?

Me- Sir by surprise inspection, since NSO do not compromise with data quality so there is procedure of multiple checks, inspection and scrutiny.

M3- all these things are OK but how would you know that they collected data by themselves from actual locations?

Me- Sir there was process of online attendance with location of FSU in Prayagraj RO, we have to submit location of FSU daily twice a day while leaving and entering the FSU. So Sir the location attendance will ensure this.

M3- Exactly

*After this M3 asked me question about policy of Tamil Nadu state (I still don’t know why), mid-day meal, digitization and I answered partially few of them said sorry Sir I will read about this and after 4-5 such questions CP interrupted.

CP- OK Animeshi It was a nice conversation with you, is there anything you think we should ask to you, any specific area?

Me- NO Sir.

CP- is there anything you want to tell us by yourself?

Me- Yes Sir, Sir I collected data for TUS and it is obvious that this survey result will be very crucial for formation of macroeconomic policies but Sir in my personal opinion this survey results also contribute heavily in context of gender statistics, I personally experienced while doing field work though I don’t have any statistics to support my statement that there is rapid feminisation of Indian traditional agriculture. Hence this survey data must be considered while formulating gender sensitive policies.

CP- that’s a very good point of view Animeshi, your interview is over you can go now.

Me- thank you Sir.

*Stood up and leaved the conference hall.

Marks- 117/200

Verdict- secured the 36th spot in final list.

My experience in nutshell- the board was very cordial; chairman Sir was smiling whole time. M1 was also good but he asked questions from previous answers with slight difference, lady member was something like rapid fire round and M3 asked questions from very diverse field and he and M1 grilled me slightly but not too much. Overall, I can say this was good 25 minutes of my examination process.