“I wasn’t able to serve these (rural) people while being in the IT field,” Saxena, 30, told Newsline on Monday evening, “so I decided to quit and appear for the civil services examinations.” Saxena, who quit her job in the US software company Computer Sciences Corporation’s (CSC) Noida firm, said she wants to work for the deprived masses, and that rural development schemes “work better if we have devoted people to implement the policies”.
An IIT-Roorkee alumnus, Saxena joined Oracles in Hyderabad in 2002 but shifted to Noida when her software engineer husband Shashank began working for CSC. “Soon, Shubhra too joined her husband in the same company,” her brother Rahul Chandra Saxena said, “but she was not satisfied with her job. Itching to serve the rural population, she would deliver free lectures to students who came to her for guidance on rural development schemes.”
Saxena gives all credit to her family for having faith in her while she was preparing for the civil services. “My family, and especially my husband, worked hard alongside me,” she says. “I had to stay with my mother and study; my husband Shashank boosted my morale during those days.”