Wow! IAS officer Ankur Garg gets 171/170 marks in a Harvard course

Photo Credit: Garg's FB profile

IT MAY sound odd, but 2003 batch AGMUT cadre IAS, Ankur Garg, got 171 marks out of 170 in the final examination of macroeconomics course in Harvard University, USA, where the officer has been studying after taking a sabbatical from the service. “When I was in school, my father used to say - 10 out of 10 isn't good enough in any exam. Always strive for 11 out of 10,” Garg wrote in a Facebook post last month. He also placed photo of his mark sheet along with the post. Garg was thrilled that the mark sheet was signed by none other than…

Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard professor and noted macroeconomist of international repute. Garg termed it “an icing on the cake”. In American education system, one can score more than 100%, but only the brightest ones achieve that. 

Garg, who was the private secretary of union civil aviation minister Suresh Prabhu till July end, went to Harvard University to study a course on international development. Microeconomics is a part of that course only. 

“This one is for you, dad”, he wrote in the emotional Facebook post.

Garg, 38, did his B.Tech in electrical engineering from IIT-Delhi before getting selected as an IAS. Originally belonging to Punjab, he was posted in Chandigarh and then in Arunachal Pradesh. Between 2007 and 2009, he was district magistrate of Tirap district of Arunachal Pradesh. Also, he served as additional secretary (at the rank of a GoI deputy secretary) in the power department of the Northeastern state. 

Garg is also a polyglot having command over five languages — Bengali, English, French, Hindi and Punjabi, according to records available with the DoPT.