WHY DO YOU WANT TO BECOME CIVIL SERVANT??

It is a favourite question in UPSC interview board.Some times it is difficult to reply the real answer. Because It varies...for some it may be power,prestige,diversity of work or for some it is mere source of money.....to help the aspirant for the current interview I am presenting the writeup written by one IRS guy....
" In retrospect, it was not a totally unconscious choice. Somewhere along the years, I found that Government is the place where I would be happy to work. Nothing patriotic or serve-the-people or make-a-difference-in-people’s-life about it. I believe that only interest that men have is self interest. So when people tell me that they join civil services to serve the nation, I become a little circumspect. I am not really sure if we really serve the people. The job has a mandate to fulfill. We do it and we get paid for it. Nothing selfless or altruistic about it. It is just another job on earth.
However, the civil services do have an appeal of their own, distinct and undeniable. The challenges in the Government are immense. Any industry would have a section of population as its prospective clientele. But for the Government, the entire population is its clientele. The Government of India is represented in more countries and performs more varied activities than all the MNCs combined. The sheer numbers, the geographical stretch and mind-numbing diversity in its activities makes any Government the most challenging employer. The impact of its working is all pervasive. One of my batchmates, who had earlier put in more than a decade in the railways, recently told me that Mumbai runs more than three times the number of local trains for which the infrastructure was actually created. And that too with 99% trains running on-time. Trust me, work at Indian Railways is more challenging than any MNC.
If the challenges in the Government are one attraction, its conditions of employment are the other. It ensures that the work pressure does not lead to a burn-out. Personally, I always wanted to lead a balanced life. I believe that work should not become life. It should just be a part of life. I wanted to have enough time to pursue my other interests, say bore people by writing blogs. No wonder bureaucrats are such prolific writers. In such matters, Government of India is a very benevolent employer. Be it the five-day week or the sufficient leaves or the provision of benefits like health, housing etc, Government seeks to be the ideal employer. Its mid-career training programmes, where it funds the entire cost of post-graduation in prestigious universities like Harvard, Duke etc are something which you can never expect in even the best of the private sector firms. The exposure you get from the interaction with numerous institutions and distinguished persons in course of your career is invaluable.
So to put it simply, civil services offer a right mix of challenging opportunities and benevolent conditions of work, which nurtures a balanced growth of personality. As a pay-off, you might have to be contended with abysmally low salaries and curbs on your freedom in the form of conduct rules. But, that’s how life always is, a trade-off. I felt, and still feel, that implementing the Income-tax act, investigating tax evasions, conducting search and seizure operations, dabbling with transfer pricing and international taxation, being a part of budget formulation etc are more interesting than coding in a cubicle in a far off land earning tons of money but carrying the burden of monotony. It is a decision I made based on my observation of the world around me. It is for time to judge whether it would hold good in my case too."
SOURCE: Blogbharti