Energy and persistence conquer all things. This has come true in the case of K.K. Saravana Kumar, an Indian Forest Service officer from the Nilgiris who pursued his dream to scale great heights in the civil services. Mr. Kumar secured 815th rank in his fifth attempt in the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination this year.
Son of agriculturist K. Kamaraj and home maker K. Ramba from Kil-Kotagiri village in the Nilgiris district, Mr. Kumar is currently serving as a Divisional Forest Officer in Dimapur division in Nagaland.
Belonging to the Kota community, a primitive scheduled tribe in the Nilgiris which has a population of 1,900, Mr. Kumar did his schooling in Kil Kotagiri and joined Tamil Nadu Agricultural University for his undergraduate programme in agriculture. Later, he joined the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi and completed his M.Sc. in Agriculture and PhD. He simultaneously prepared for the civil services examination.
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Unstinted support from his family and friends helped him realise his dream, he said.
His first attempt for the civil service examination was in 2004. He was selected for the interview to the Indian Forest Service in 2005 but could not get through.
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In 2007 he cleared the interview and became an Indian Forest Service officer. He had his training at Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy in Dehradun.
On completion of the training in 2009, he was allocated to the Nagaland cadre and was posted as Assistant Conservator of Forests and became a DFO of Dimapur district.
Agriculture and botany were his optional papers for the IFS and in the civil service examination in 2004. From 2005 he opted for public administration. His papers in his last attempt were agriculture and public administration.
Mr. Kumar is now expecting to join the Indian Police Service or the Indian Revenue Service. He has now come down to Vadavalli in Coimbatore, where his parents stay with his sister, to celebrate his achievement.