Why every IAS aspirant should follow the Humans of LBSNAA FB page

Humans of LBSNAA is a tell-all Facebook page but is very different from its inspiration, Humans of New York, in terms of its origin and stories that are told. The page narrates the tales of the struggle of civil servants who graduated from Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), hoping to motivate people, "We created the page in June this year, following the devastating suicide of an IAS aspirant in Delhi. We want to spread awareness and to inspire people regardless of whether they are a UPSC aspirant or not," says Jitin Yadav, an IAS officer of the West Bengal cadre who graduated in 2016.

Along with his colleagues Torul Raveesh and Devansh Yadav, Jitin found time out of their busy schedule to start the Humans of LBSNAA, "We realised that sharing stories of IAS officers or any other services will have better reach. But, if you look at most of the stories, these are people who aren't that well known or are introverts and wouldn't have shared their stories otherwise. We convince them to share," points out Jitin.

The team of three collates the stories from their network of officers, "The person can either send a write-up or we will take an interview of 5-10 minutes and write it ourselves. In both the cases, only after the approval of the person do we post the content," he adds.

With over 32 posts and 29,000 likes, the page features stories of not just civil servants but also of the staff at the institute, "We feature stories of people who are connected to LBSNAA in any way. It could be a serving bureaucrat, retired officer or people at the mess," Jitin says.

When asked about their future plans, Jitin says that the team wants to diversify into other aspects of civil service. "There is a particular spectrum when it comes to civil services. We want to talk to experienced people and share their experience with respect to the academy and what their journey has taught them, so as to decrease the gap between the perceived notion about civil service and the reality, " he adds.