Sanjeev Sanyal is a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM).He advocates that young people should look at other alternatives. “At the end of it if you must dream, surely you should dream to be Elon Musk, or Mukesh Ambani, why did you dream to be Joint Secretary?” he asked.
According to Sanyal, India needs more billionaires. “We need to get used to Indian billionaires. Our problem is not Indian billionaires, but that we don’t have enough of them. I want more billionaires, new first generation billionaires, they will generate the jobs, they will generate the energy, and there should be a continuous churn of them,” he said.
“Just like Bengal aspired for pseudo intellectuals and union leaders, Bihar aspired to small-time, local goon politicians, or UPSC. So in an environment where those are the role models, you can either become a local goon or basically become a civil servant. Now even that (UPSC), although it’s better than being a goon, even that is a poverty of aspiration,” he said. “One of the problems of a place like Bihar, is not that it had bad leaders. Bad leaders are a reflection of what that society aspires for. Thankfully, across the country, our aspirations are changing,” he added.
Kids wasting their time on UPSC: Sanjeev Sanyal
Sanjeev Sanyal is of the view that too many young kids are wasting their time trying to crack the UPSC. “I’m not saying you don’t want people to take the exam. Yes, every country needs a bureaucracy, that’s perfectly fine. But I think lakhs of people are spending their best years trying to crack an exam where a tiny number of a few 1000 people actually are going to get it makes no sense,” he said.
“If they (kids) put the same energy into doing something else, we will be winning more Olympic gold medals, we will be seeing better movies being made, we’d see better doctors, we would see more entrepreneurs, scientists, and so on,” he explained.
“I would say it’s a waste of time. And I always discourage people unless they really want to be an administrator, they shouldn’t take the UPSC exam,” he said, adding that many people who crack UPSC end up being frustrated in their career paths.
“Life in bureaucracy is not meant for everybody and large parts of it, as with any profession, are largely dull and boring, and about passing files up and down. And unless you really wanted to do it, and you know, you’re not going to be particularly happy with it,” he added.