External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar recalled the time of his UPSC Civil Services interview, saying it was on the day when the Emergency was revoked.
Sharing the experience and learnings of the UPSC journey, Jaishankar said that his interview took place on March 21, 1977 – the day the 19-month-long Emergency was annulled in the country.
“(1977) Election results were coming from the previous day… The sense of the defeat of the Emergency rule was coming into understanding. In a way, that is what got me through the interview,” Jaishankar told fresh batch of entrants at Guru Samman and felicitation programme by Samkalp Foundation in Delhi.
Jaishankar, who was 22 at the time of his UPSC interview, said he had returned from the interview with two key takeaways — the significance of communication under pressure and that important people may be living in a “bubble”.
He called his UPSC examination an ‘Agni Pariksha’ (trial by fire), and said it is a “very unique” testing system in the world to select candidates for the services.
“My interview was on March 21, 1977. That was the day the Emergency was revoked. Revoked! So, I go in for an interview at Shahjahan Road… First person that morning,” 70-year-old Jaishankar recalled.
The 21-month Emergency was imposed on June 25, 1975 and lifted on March 21, 1977. Nearly a month ago, the PM Narendra Modi government marked the 50th anniversary of the imposition of the Emergency by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, with events held across the country to recall what its leaders called a “dark chapter” in Indian democracy.
In the 1977 elections, the Janata Party, a coalition of opposition leaders, emerged victorious, handing a defeat to Indira Gandhi, and Morarji Desai became the prime minister.
Jaishankar said, in the interview, he was asked about what had happened in the 1977 elections. “I was lucky,” Jaishankar said, as per PTI.
“We had taken part in the 1977 election campaign. We had all gone there and worked for the defeat of the Emergency,” Jaishankar said.
So, in response, “I forgot I was in an interview”, and at that moment, “my communication skills somehow came together,” he added.
Jaishankar, who earlier served as foreign secretary and has widely travelled, said at that time, to explain to people who were “quite connected, sympathetic to the government, what had happened, without offending them, was actually quite a challenge”.
From that day, Jaishankar said he learned how to communicate under pressure and to do it without offending people.
“How do you persuade, how do you explain. This was one carry-away. The second carry-away was that important people may be living in a bubble and not realising what is happening in the country,” the Union minister said.