The reality of Sociology in Vajiram

First of all, let me thank you all for giving me an opportunity to share my IAS coaching experience with you. I am not here for doing a social service, nor I feel I have anything superior and special to share compared to rest of my batchmates. I am not here to prove my point either. I am here just to tell you all some empirical realities of IAS coaching in Delhi. Please don't feel I am here to settle any personal score. In fact, writing this blog is not going to affect any of the bourgeoisie shareholders of these institutes. But my mail is certainly going to benefit hundreds and thousands of students who are blindly following the mirage of competence and effectivenes of these institutes. . This blog is quite long, but your patience to read this is definitely going to make you wiser at the end, so that you can take your own independent decisions.

I am a student of M/S Vajiran and Ravi, and took coaching of GS and Sociology during 2005- 06. My name is N Karthiga and I come from a middle class family. I spent Rs 55000 in cash taking from my salary account out of some bare minimum savings that I earned hard during 2 years of my service immediately after completing my degree in Engineering. This is the highest amount we ever paid for our academics. I dreamt of becoming an IAS from the guidance we'd get from your institute, but today I feel I am tremendously betrayed and victimized by what the institute has given me in return.

We are a group of five students and consider it to be entirely unjust on our part to keep you all ignorant about what is happening to the students, and so we have put our foot down today. I am talking about our experience with the Institute's sociology Tutor, Dr. Mahapatra, for whom, we had great respect and esteem while joining the institute. We expected a level of integrity and honesty from a person of his statute, but we are surprisingly horrified to find that as a University Professor, he is corrupt and as a tutor he is dishonest and lacks complete integrity. We know we are harsh with words, may be a kind of misbehaviour as per your standards, but our observation has passed the test of around one and three quarter years, and we have now come to some concrete conclusions that we are going to share with you..

Dr Mahapatra has been bluffing most of the times in the class. As a tutor of sociology for last so many years, we expected him to be at least aware of the pattern of questions asked by UPSC and the subject matter, but neither he is having any idea of the same nor anything worth has ever been asked by UPSC from what he normally teaches in the class. Adding feather on cap of his dishonesty, he claims every year that at least 110 ( !!) out of 120 questions would be asked from what he teaches and 60% of the questions would be from his test papers. However, we just did not find any truth in his hollow claims last year and this year as well. He further claims that 50% of his students have cleared PT. My goodness!!! Out of the students we know, hardly 2 or 3 have really cleared and they have done so on their merit. Rests of them are simply bluffing. That's a fact. We leave it to you whether you believe or not. The absence of any factual data pertaining to how many students have really cleared is of great help to Dr Mahapatra for making false claims. ( Neither the institute nor Dr Mahapatra has the students' roll numbers to find out how many have cleared). We were tolerant to this extent, but then we found, his train of bluffing and bragging doesn't have any end. Before mains, during the classes he took, he claimed that the same questions asked in his test papers would be word to word repeated in the UPSC mains, but leave apart words, not even the content of those questions was matching the questions which were asked in the UPSC exam. One of our friends, who took coaching this year has told me that he has made the same false claims again in the first class. My goodness!!! This is the height of deceiving the students.

We really wonder what moral authority he has to continue as a University Professor? During one of the years, he probably got a chance to set UPSC PT questions. He brings that confidential letter from UPSC every year in the class to show his pride, but in reality, this shows nothing but his lack of commitment and integrity to both the institutions he is serving, the University as well as the Institute.

Now we would like to give you some empirical evidences to substantiate our charges. We know, you are not from Sociology background, so some of the facts you may not appreciate, but these are very vital and important and show how students at large are deceived:

Dr Mahapatra asks each and every student to buy Dictionary of Sociology, by Duncan and Mitchell and a Dictionary of Anthropology. However, our analysis of last 13 years q. papers suggests that these dictionaries are really not required to be read as the questions asked in UPSC are application oriented and not based on any of the nitty- gritties that are asked in his test papers prepares for the student from these dictionaries.

Further, they have more biased towards political science, which is not of much help. There is one another dictionary that pertains more to UPSC kind of concepts on which Dr. Mahapatra has hardly emphasized.

The test papers he gave at the end of the class last year had no questions which could be potentially asked in the UPSC. None of the questions were discussed in the class and the answers had lot many mistakes. Further, he claimed that 60% of those questions would be asked from those questions. Therefore, we spent a lot of time in preparing those question and getting confused. During such a crucial point, Dr Mahapatra was not available to solve our queries as he was busy earning money from the mock interview sessions (and helping us would not fetch him any further money, of course.)

Most of the time, in the class, he wasted our time by telling unnecessary stories from his family, talking about his children's achievements etc which did not have any relevance with the subject matter. To site few examples like his wife has 11 siblings, what his mother in law does when he visits their place etc, and boasting about his family and children.

Dr Mahapatra suffers from tremendous ideological bias. He is biased towards political science and his questions and notes are heavy with political thinkers which are though asked, but rarely in actual UPSC paper. On the other hand, his repulsion from Economics (due to personal or professional reasons) is clearly visible in his lectures and notes on Economic System. Further, his knowledge of applied sociology is very poor, and nowadays, UPSC is asking more and more questions pertaining to the same. Ignorance of the applied portion of sociology costed very dearly to us both in PT and Mains.

Dr Mahapatra has bias towards functionalism. To site an example, he has repeatedly emphasized that Durkheim is a pure functionalist, but reliable sources and texts reveal that he has used and developed the concept of social structure as well, after Herbert Spencer.

Dr Mahaptra didn't cover many vital topics in the class on which 60 mark questions are frequently asked. Some of these topics are population policy, Stratification theory of Wilbert and Moore and its contradiction by Tumin etc. He covered Science and Technology portion of Mains as well as PT in a very unorganized manner and covered a very important topic "Ethos of Science" on which a 60 marker was asked, very hurriedly. The entire chapter of Population Dynamics was willfully ignored on which a 60 mark question was asked. The same happened with the chapter of Social Policy as well, on which again a 60 marker was asked. Thus, we all were very poor in tackling questions of Applied sociology.

Dr Mahapatra seems to have a lot of anthropological bias as well. In the PT classes, he has digressed to a large extent to various anthropological details in the unit "marriage, family and kinship", which are really not in the syllabus and questions hardly asked from them. This bias is mainly because he has studied social anthropology in his alma mater and now is forcibly making us read that as well.

He even suggested such books to study which are not much relevant from examination point of view. For example, he refers a book "Sachadeva and Vidyabhushan" for definitions. Now UPSC has stopped asking questions on definition of common sociological terms like society, community association etc, which this books amply gives and Dr Mahapatra frequently asks in his test papers. However, this book largely misses the applied definitions and viewpoint type questions which UPSC is normally asking. Similar is the case of another book called Shankar & Rao, published by S Chand & Co. We suspect some spurious tie up with the publishers of these books and Dr Mahapatra based on some monetary gains.

Dr Mahapatra utters a lot many cheap jokes and shows gestures while teaching like speaking flawed Hindi etc just to make students laugh. The problem is that he does this frequently as a result of which a lot of time wastage is caused and thus, imp topics like Science and Technology, Indian Population Policy etc on which 60 markers are asked, normally get left out.

The style of question papers he asked in the regular tests is largely different from that of UPSC. Even from the test series he gave this year, we didn't find any question useful.

Now, this was a height of an extreme misguidance, which cannot be expected even from a commoner with some sense of moral values, leave apart an educated professor like Dr Mahapatra. He told the entire class that it is possible to bribe the UPSC clerks to clear PT. After hearing this, who would have faith on the polemics of hard work and rely on one's merit to qualify for this coveted exam? This is clearly spreading of the seeds of corruption.

Friends, in almost all the coaching institutes like that of yours, poor students like we are on the receiving end. We pay hefty sums of money to ultimately get what is really not beneficial for us. But in this case, the teacher himself is taking students for a ride taking advantage of their ignorance and being fresh and first timers. We can always be contacted on our e- mail id karthiga07@gmail.com

Yours Truly,
N Karthiga and Friends