Picture a small room in a village in Bihar. A mother sits beside her son with a textbook open in her lap. She reads while he listens. When something needs to be written down, he dictates, and she writes.
She is not a teacher and has never coached anyone for competitive exams. A homemaker from Mauli village in Nawada district of Bihar, she spent years helping her son study this way. Today, her reading and writing support are among the reasons behind Ravi Raaz’s success in the UPSC Civil Services Examination (CSE) 2025.
Despite being visually impaired, 27-year-old Raaz secured an All India Rank of 20. He is the first person in his family to attempt civil services — let alone clear it. And when asked who deserves the credit for this achievement, he said, “My parents are the real architects of this achievement. My mother, Vibha Sinha, and my father, Rajan Kumar Sinha, are my motivation.”
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A Village, farm, & dream
Nawada is a quiet district in southern Bihar, where Ravi’s father is a farmer. His mother runs the household, and his elder sister is married. Ravi studied at SRS College in Nawada, where he completed a BA in Political Science (Honours). When he was in Class 9, a conversation with his peers changed the direction of his academic journey.
“Some people in my school friends group were discussing civil services,” Ravi recalls. “They didn’t pursue it themselves. But I decided to consider this as my first step in knowing what UPSC is,” he said. By 2020, he had moved from conversation to commitment and began his UPSC preparation.
Five attempts, two exams & zero certainty
Raaz appeared for the UPSC exam thrice; however, he couldn’t crack it. In between, he also sat for the Bihar Public Service Commission’s exam. After failing BPSC twice, he was successful in clearing the exam in his 69th session and was recommended as a revenue officer, though he took the big risk of not joining the services.
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When asked whether this decision was a gamble, he said, “Yes, my bet could have been reversed; I might not have achieved it. But I was certain that if I prepared sincerely, then even without civil services, I would still be somewhere better than any other.”
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Then came Ravi’s fourth attempt at the Civil Services Examination. This time, he secured rank 182 and was recommended for the Indian Revenue Service (IRS). While many might have stopped there, Ravi decided to continue preparing even as he joined the IRS and began his training.
In his fifth attempt at the UPSC CSE, he secured rank 20 and now hopes to be allotted the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
“When I failed two or three times, I got demotivated,” he says, adding that he often feels that CSE was his ultimate aim in life. “When you want to do something with your heart, you strive for the best.” During his preparation journey, Ravi had no backup option. He frames his lack of options not as a disadvantage but as a kind of liberation.
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“Engineering was too far. Medical was out of reach. Banking, Railways, SSC, I had no desire for any of it. There was only one path I wanted, which was CSE,” he said, adding that sometimes having no option is the best option.
The woman who became his eyes
Preparing for UPSC is an enormous undertaking for anyone. Thick textbooks, endless current affairs, answer writing practice, mock interviews — it is a years-long, all-consuming endeavour. For a visually impaired aspirant from a small town in Bihar, the logistics alone could have been overwhelming.
But Ravi’s mother made it manageable, one page at a time. She read out books to him. He listened, absorbed, and when it came to written practice, he dictated, and she wrote. No formal training, just a mother’s patience.
His father, meanwhile, kept the household afloat. A farmer’s income is rarely predictable. Yet through all five attempts, across years of UPSC and BPSC preparation with no guaranteed outcome, the family held. “They believed in me even when the results didn’t come. For me, they are my everything,” he said.
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AI and UPSC preparation
When asked about his preparation strategy, Ravi became almost cheerful as there was no expensive coaching package, no star-studded mentors, no big-city advantage. What he had was his smart study and the internet.
“I enrolled in Drishti IAS under the ASMITA programme for both CSE 2024 and CSE 2025. Apart from that, I used to watch free videos on YouTube, particularly for CSAT and Geography. I got a free subscription to a coaching institute’s videos that helped in the early stages. For Ethics answer writing, I joined a Telegram mentorship group, where I would write one or two questions and receive feedback from the teacher via voice notes and written responses,” he said.
When asked about the role of AI in UPSC preparation, he said he used it selectively. “For Ethics, where strong examples are important, I used AI to generate references from religion, history, and modern science, and then cross-checked them carefully. AI can make some things easier, but it cannot replace books. I did not let it replace my core preparation,” he said.
On the question of Hindi-medium resources — a long-standing concern among aspirants — he said, “We can either complain or work around the challenge. If someone wants to make an excuse, they will always find one. Resources do exist; they may not always be easy to locate, but if you are serious about the exam, you have to make the effort to find them.”
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He also pointed to recent years in which several Hindi-medium candidates have secured top ranks, saying this shows that language alone does not determine success.
When the system doesn’t keep up
Ravi’s achievement is remarkable by any measure, but he is also quietly aware of how the system has not always made space for people like him. He speaks carefully on the issue of service allocation for visually impaired candidates.
Under UPSC rules, candidates with visual impairment are excluded from the Indian Foreign Service and Indian Police Service. Ravi does not dispute the rationale behind IPS restrictions, but he finds the IFS exclusion harder to square.
“There are tools and technologies available. You can become a visually impaired IAS. You can become a collector. You can become a diplomat,” he says. “If you are excluding someone from a particular service, it means you are not fully inclusive. A little reconsideration on this would make things much better,” said Ravi. When asked about cadre preferences, he said it is Bihar or Uttar Pradesh.
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When asked whether UPSC’s decision to limit the attempt of serving or trainee officers, he said, “The decision is fair. Selected candidates already have exposure, opportunities, and a stronger background. The real competition lies with new aspirants. Yes, it may feel unfair to those wanting to improve their rank, but overall, the rule is justified. Perhaps a two–three year window for recent qualifiers could balance apprehensions, but I support the decision as it stands.”
Further, he supports UPSC’s new rule on scribes. “The step is indeed good, and UPSC is trying to fix cheating instances. But because of that effort, genuine candidates often suffer,” he said.
He pointed to a specific concern: the treatment of two different categories — low vision and blindness — under the same administrative framework. According to him, a candidate with low vision, who can partially read the paper, and a fully blind candidate who requires complete assistance from a scribe have different needs. However, the rules do not always distinguish clearly between the two.
“For a blind candidate who has worked with their own scribe for months, the coordination matters. That scribe knows your pace, your style. An assigned scribe doesn’t,” he explained.
