This is a motivating story of Ramesh Gholap's journey from bracelet seller to IAS officer assigned in Jharkhand as Deputy Secretary for Energy ... He was known as Ramu in his Mahagaon village in the Solapur district of Maharashtra. His father, who worked in a bicycle repair shop, could earn enough for his family, but his constant drinking problem stopped his business.
It was that Ramu's mother, Vimal, took over and started selling bracelets in the villages to earn money for the family. She was assisted by Ramu, whose left leg was affected by polio. Raju completed his primary education in Mahagaon but then went to live in Barshi with his uncle to study further.
His efforts paid off and he was a favorite of his teachers, but before the model exams in class 12, his father passed away. He had no money to visit his house, so his neighbors helped him with the money so that he could perform the last rites of his father.
After going back to school, he took his final exams and scored 88.5 percent. After school, he earned a Ph.D. in education (Diploma in Education), as it was the only subject he could afford. In 2009, he began working as a teacher and began to support his family. They stayed in a small room provided by her aunt, who had got her a two-bedroom house through a government plan called Indira Awas Yojana. But, they were unable to get their own home as their BPL card (below the poverty line) was not eligible.
Ramu was angry with all this. He saw the Tehsildar as the most influential people so he also wanted to become a Tehsildar himself to solve all his problems. In 2009, she used the loan her mother had taken from a self-help group in her village and went to Pune to prepare for the UPSC exam. Initially, I did not know what MPSC or UPSC was. It was from whose teacher Atul Lande, who guided him for the exams. He gave the UPSC for the first time in 2010 but, he did not qualify then.
But, he passed the State Institute of Administrative Careers (SIAC) exam, which gave him a shelter to stay and a scholarship. He painted posters to take care of his expenses. Finally, he passed the UPSC exam with flying colors with a rank of 287 across India. Within months, his MPSC results were out as well, and he topped the exam with the highest scores in his history of 1244 out of 1,800. He returned to his village in 2012, no longer as Ramu, but as Ramesh Gholap, IAS.
