Name: Raja Bharthari
Date: 28th Jan, Forenoon
Board: Sheel Vardhan sir
Daf Pointers: IITD, Civil Engineering, Indian Mythology, Devotional songs, Prayagraj
Optional: Chemistry
Time:25-28 min
*Chairman sir*
Welcome to this conversation
1. What is the difference between mythology and history?
2. Is mythology fiction?
3. Is folklore fiction? Added something along the lines of if there is a story there must be some truth behind it
4. Coming to West Asia, Israel has been under prolonged war, between which countries was the Abraham Accords signed?
5. Who mediated it, under whose presidency?
6. Why the name Abraham? He had two sons, do you know about them?
*Member 1*
1. On a scale of 1-10, how much do you love your country?
2. How much did the government invest upon your graduation?
3. What is the budget of IITs? Suggested a ballpark range of 100 cr, 500 cr or even more?
4. Don’t you think you took the seat of a candidate who could’ve utilised the IIT seat to pursue engineering?
5. How did you turn towards civil service preparation?
6. Why are IITians and engineers doing everything else apart from pursuing their core engineering field, gave me 3 choices as to what the reason could be (I already had an answer ready so didn’t quite listen to the three options rather gave an alternative 4th option :p)
*Member 2*
1. How much is the trade deficit between India and China?
2. What can we do to address this?
3. Talks of Chinese takeover of Taiwan, impact on semiconductors?
4. How can this impact India?
*Member 3*
1. You have a hobby of listening to devotional songs, is it common for people your age?
2. Why do you listen to these songs?
3. What has recently happened in the field of AI?
4. Why is it a cause of concern?
5. Which companies lost the most in the stock market collapse?
6. How is India doing in AI? (Talked about some startups and govt initiatives but highlighted that much needs to be done to compare with US and China specially in terms of funding)
7. Funding by whom? (Talked about a collaboration between Govt and Private sector just like Stargate)
8. There is a recent AI summit coming up in France, what is it? (Told him about PM co-chairing it but couldn’t recall the name, he told me it’s name then)
9. What is the agenda of the summit?
10. What can we do to emanate the threat from AI?
11. But there are some countries who advocate for no policy/govt intervention in the growth of AI? How would you compare with their approach?
*Member 4 (Lady)*
1. There’s an event in your hometown right now, you must’ve been there given your interests?
2. What gets you excited for the kumbh mela?
3. What are some other gatherings around the world of such scale?
4. There is currently one going in Europe, you aware of it? ( I said No)
5. It’s the 80 years of Nazi camp survivors at Auschwitz, what were some other famous concentration camps, name 4-5 of them. (I said i will have to read about it)
6. Do you think anti semitism still exists?
*Chairman sir*
1. I listened to your answer of why you listen to devotional songs, have you heard of the story of Raja Bharthari and the Pingla bhajan? (I said No sir, he said it is very famous, gave a gist of the story and his bhajan is a very good confluence of mytho, history and devotional song)
2. Can AI make devotional songs?
3. Suppose you sing devotional songs and I like you very much, tomorrow there is a robot who replaces you, would I still like it as much? (I said it’s a personal choice, personally I would prefer to have some human connection but it may vary from person to person)
4. But AI can use your voice to compose songs even after you’re gone, so AI can lead us into some very dark alleys. ( I said that it has equally good potential to lead us into light alleys)
5. Thank you, your interview is over.
Experience: The room was very comfortable, its aesthetics calmed my nerves down initially. Chairman sir was keenly listening and responding to my answers and expressions. M1,M2-smiling in between
M3,M4-poker faced
Mocks: Vajirao, NextIAS, Samkalp (2)