In a country of 1.3 billion people with the highest youth population in the world, the defence services are struggling to get adequate candidates to join as officers.

Isn’t this ironic?

Though there are lakhs of boys and girls applying for officer posts, the Services Selection Board (SSB) is not able to select the required numbers. Does that mean that most of those who are applying are not good enough?

In my 3 years of experience as a GTO in 33 Services Selection Board and 11 years of training defence aspirants, I have often seen that most of them fail due to a lack of understanding about the qualities they need to possess to be successful service officers. As a trainer, I have seen hundreds of them make it once they get clarity on what to inculcate and how to project their qualities in the right manner in the various tests that are conducted in the SSB, and hence I conclude that while most of them have it in them, it is just a lack of understanding about the process and the desired qualities that makes them unable to reach the mark.

It was this realisation that led to the founding of AFPA. From inception, we have tailored the training methodology around teaching the defence aspirants the desired qualities and practically showing them how to showcase these in the various tests. Having taught them this in the first week, we put them through the assessment process as followed in the SSB to make them realise the gaps or weak areas, and each student is counselled on ways to improve this.

Since most of the qualities are trainable and can be improved with effort, those who genuinely put in this effort will find success sooner rather than later. It is this that has enabled AFPA to produce so many success stories. I urge the defence aspirants to join this programme and transform themselves instead of finding cookbook recipes for cracking the SSB, which don’t work in reality.