From MBBS to the Civil Servant: Dr Ritika Aima’s journey to the IAS

“Success or Failure to get into the civil services is not the end of one’s dreams.”

For most young doctors, the years after MBBS are spent in choosing a specialization, or preparing for post-graduation entrance exam. Dr. Ritika Aima chose a different path altogether- one that took her from Community Health Centre in the hills of Uttarakhand to the country’s most competitive examination, and finally to the Gujarat Cadre of the Indian Administrative Services as Assistant Collector.

Ritika grew up in Dehradun, her schooling from Brightlands School.  Her father Dr. Ramesh Aima, is retired Indian Forest Service officer of Nagaland cadre, making her a second- generation civil servant. Her mother, Rekha Aima, and her younger sister is qualified as doctor. Dr Ritika claims that she aims to serve and give back to the society in the best possible manner.

Ritika’s journey began in medicine. She completed her MBBS at Dr Sushila Tiwari Medical College in Haldwani. After becoming a doctor, she says during this posted in a Community Health Centre in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, that her thinking began to shift. She felt that the existing health infrastructure was not adequate to deal health crises. Good doctors alone cannot fix the health system that lacks the infrastructure, staffing and planning to support them. If she wanted to change the outcome at large scale, she realized she would need to influence the policies that shaped system itself, not just treating the patients is enough to change the system.

That realization set her on the road to the Union Public Service Commission examination- a exam attempted by lakh of aspirants each year, of whom only a small fraction succeeds. Balancing preparation with clinical duties, Ritika appeared for the civil service exam in 2022 and cleared it on her first attempt, securing All India Rank 186 and place in the Indian Public Service IPS. It was a result that would have satisfied most aspirants. For Ritika, it was an achievement rather than a destination- her goal had always been IAS, she said, as compared to IPS officer, IAS officers have a wider role to play in this context.

Rather than join the IPS and live an officer life, she chose to prepare again with greater clarity, continued with Anthropology as her optional subject and refined her strategy. It paid off. In Civil Service examination 2023, Ritika improved her rank and secured All India Rank 33- a jump that put her firmly among the top recruits and secured her place in the IAS, allocated to the Gujarat Cadre as Supernumerary Assistant Collector.

Reflecting on what changed between two attempts, Ritika has spoken about the shift being less about content and more about composure. In interview about preparation, she has described the clarity of thoughts, self-awareness and letting her genuine personality come through in the civil services interview, rather than reciting rehearsed answers. She has also pointed out that something as small as a choice of phrasing — the difference between saying women should be empowered versus women are being empowered — can signal very different depths of conviction to an interview board, and that awareness of this kind of matters as much as subject knowledge.

She is candid, about the role of chance in an exam of this scale. With over ten lakh candidates competing to close to a thousand seats each year, more than 99 percent of aspirants do not succeed in any given attempt. Ritika has been careful to frame her own outcome within that reality, Hard work, she maintains, is the foundation of success in the exam, but luck plays its part too, and a single difficult day in life can spoil one’s chance of succeeding in civil services and one should not feel that he or she did not deserve. UPSC is a rewarding journey but it must be acknowledged that it is also equally unpredictable.

 According to her “True success comes from having the courage to face life’s challenges everyday with hope, resilience and honesty, regardless of the outcome.”

As she now trains to take up her role as an IAS officer, Ritika carries her medical background with her rather than leaving it behind. She chose to leave medicine not because she stopped believing in the profession, but because she believed she could contribute to healthcare in a different way- through governance, policymaking and public administration.

Her journey — from treating patients during a pandemic to shaping the systems that stand behind them — reflects a broader shift in India’s civil services, she says that there are many technocrats in the bureaucracy and their handling portfolios other than their own qualifications does bring a different perspective, which is quite useful.

For a generation of young professionals weighing whether to leave secure, respected careers for the uncertainty of the UPSC, Dr Ritika Aima’s story inspires to do hard work for the goal of your life. Sometimes, “success is not about accepting the first opportunity that comes your way. It is about staying committed to the purpose that inspired the journey in the first place.”