Srushti Jayant Deshmukh ranked first among the 182 women who passed the IAS exam in 2018, conducted in 750 positions across the country. She scored the fifth rank overall (All India Rank – AIR). A resident of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, Shrusti had the determination to become an I.A.S. officer right from her childhood. Even after knowing how difficult these exams are, her positive attitude kept her going and not once did she think that she might not make it. In the end, she cleared her UPSC in the first attempt itself.
Srushti Jayant Deshmukh – Age and Height
Srushti Jayant Deshmukh was born in the year 1995 and is currently aged 26. She had managed to clear UPSC at the mere age of 23 itself. She has an impressive height of 5 feet 6 inches.
Srushti Jayant Deshmukh – Family
Deshmukh’s father is an engineer working for a private company and her mother is a teacher to kindergarten students. Her younger brother is still a student and is the only sibling she has.
Srushti Jayant Deshmukh – Education
Srushti Jayant Deshmukh completed her primary education from Carmel Convent, BHEL, in Bhopal with a CGPA of 8. Attaining a percentage of 93.4, she aced her 12th board examinations. She is an alumni of Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya, Bhopal, as she pursued engineering (B. Tech in Chemical Engineering) from the same. Her involvement in extracurricular activities managed to get her an NCC A Certificate. Apart from academics, she is popular as an active debater and a member of the scouts. She began preparing for UPSC while pursuing her engineering degree and had a plan of attempting UPSC only once. The engineering degree was her Plan B, in case UPSC did not happen.
Aims and Aspirations
In her 3rd year of engineering, she decided that a simple job is not what she wanted to do in life. She had a determination to crack UPSC. Often in her interviews, has mentioned the support her family had given at such a crucial point in her life.
UPSC became her prior focus after this, although she continued studying Chemical Engineering as well. To prepare for the most competitive exam of the country whilst focusing on a degree is no child’s play and yet her will was not shaken. When her semester exams would approach, she would shift her focus from UPSC to the exams. Her efforts and dedication are praiseworthy after all candidates try for years and still are unable to clear the exams, whereas she managed to balance UPSC with her bachelor’s degree and cleared both.
She has mentioned in her interview that the people you choose to stay around, can affect your motivation and preparation largely. She, in clear words, mentioned that the best thing one can do is remove negative people from their lives. Negative people might demotivate you by telling things like “you can’t do it”, which can leave a lasting impact on the mind, leading to failure in the end. So, picking your company carefully is very important.
Scoring an amazing total of 1068 marks out of a total of 2025 marks, she ranked fifth in the country. She chose sociology as her optional paper and had a score of 895 in her mains and a score of 173 in her interview.
Srushti Jayant Deshmukh – Hardwork
Srushti Jayant Deshmukh in an interview mentioned that even though she took the help of coaching, she believes that in the end the amount of studying you have done counts. She stated that she would dedicate around 6-7 hours to the preparations. However, the dedication and focus with which you studied matters more than the number of hours you dedicate to your preparations. She goes on to say that she had deactivated all her social media accounts while preparing for the exam but relied a lot on the internet. Even though she took coaching, she never completely relied on the coaching and took help from the internet. She infact calls the internet a huge boon as she was dependent a lot on online resources for study material. She had signed up for a few online test series that really helped her work on her final preparation.
Srushti Jayant Deshmukh believes “Consistency is one of the main keys to crack any examination. Choose to study for five hours for one day. Then you need to be capable of doing that every single day for the rest of the whole year. You need to have self-discipline and persistently chase your goals till you achieve it,” and goes on to say “‘Even though you may study for very long hours in a day unless you take up a test, you will not know where you stand.” She used NCERT from class six to 12th Social Sciences as her basic study material, along with other standard books on each subject. Yojana and Kurukshetra were some magazines she has read. She relied on newspapers like The Hindu and The Indian Express. The online sources that she relied on were PIB and Rajya Sabha TV.
Current Posting
Srushti Jayant Deshmukh has been allocated to the IAS cadre based on Civil Services Examination (CSE) – 2018 to her home state Madhya Pradesh, as an insider. The posting was published by the Government of India, Ministry of Personnel & Public Grievance & Pensions, Department of Personnel & Training, All India Services Division on 17th October 2019.
Conclusion
As an IAS officer, Srushti Jayant Deshmukh wants to work towards the betterment of society. This can be done by focussing on the empowerment and education of women in India. She wants to help young girls. The ones who are forced into child marriage, study and get a job to become financially independent. She believes that no matter which forms of education you have received and from where you can be successful. If you work hard and have the dedication towards your goals in life, success will come. When life throws an opportunity at you, you should always seize it and make the best out of it, and who knows you might just end up creating history. You can also read about the 10 toughest exams in the world here.
