I personally have no complaints. Though I had always feared being placed in the 'Dreaded DP interview board', I found him polite and attentive when I appeared for my interview. Yes, he was a no-nonsense man and did not go out of the way to crack jokes or seem charming. He was just like an IIT professor (as a matter of fact he used to be one) - nurturing but not patronising. I was quite nervous in the interview and I remember him even saying a few encouraging words now and then... though he had created a tense environment in his board.
Coming to his tenure as Chairman. I believe people are going to remember his tenure more than anyone else. This is a man who is a change agent; he understands that the age-old pattern followed by UPSC is archaic and needs to be changed for a more scientific examination pattern. I believe, had he had his way he would have completely upturned examination. But to start with, he has made major changes in the preliminary exam pattern. The subject paper has been replaced by a common paper assessing students on certain basic aptitudes that a civil servant must possess.
I am amazed by the number of students who clear civil service yet are pretty weak in numbers. How can a civil servant work in finances (which every civil servant does at some point) without a good hold over maths? Second, there are many paper in UPSC such as pali literature, santhali literature which, no doubt, help recruit students from varied backgrounds; but how useful are these backgrounds in technical services like IRS? Even during training period it is marked that certain students at a higher age group take too long time to learn new things. Hence a sharp IQ is must... and hence the need for an IQ test.
Said that, I believe Prof. DP Agarwal is a transformative leader. Not only he thinks out of the box, at that high a post he has the enthusiasm to experiment with a pattern that is diagonally opposite to the existing pattern.
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