NEW DELHI: Don’t play golf , do yoga to beat the stress; the Narendra Modi-led government is a hard-taskmaster so you may have to work 18-20 hours a day at times.A dozen toppers of Civil Services exam got this as a teaser for their job from PMO Minister of State Jitendra Singh on Monday. The Modi government, on coming to power, cracked the whip on bureaucracy — coming late to work was frowned upon, long lunches were out and afternoons on the golf course were disapproved.“I can say with certain amount of confidence that this is one of the best times for you to have entered the services. Because the political establishment is very favourably inclined to make the atmosphere work friendly, to make the atmosphere stress-free,” Singh told the toppers. “Of course we expect lot of (sic) hard taskmasters this government has proved to be. We expect our colleagues also to work for long hours, maybe 18-20 hours also when Parliament was in session, which was not so as earlier. But then we also started yoga so that you don’t have to go out to play golf and you can have in-house yoga,” Singh told them.He added for good measure: “We are hard task masters under PM Modi but at same time we also realise the importance of giving you a proper frame of mind and proper environment so that we can extract the best to your potential,” Singh said. “The kind of performance level expected from you is very high. Accountability is too high. You should not only be non-corrupt but also appear to be non-corrupt,” Singh advocated.He asked the toppers to be upright but not antagonise ministers . “Sometimes you realize at the end of 20 years that you have served the minister more than the public. You end up following that famous BBC serial ‘Yes Minister’. Be upright with tact – you don’t have to compromise your career. Without antagonizing your minister, you have to impose the checks and balances. You have to subtly show the right direction to the political bosses,” Singh said.He then dropped a stunning comment. “You are not the best. This may sound little bitter over this treat of sweets,” Singh said, saying PM told him the same when appointing him as a Minister. “One pearl of wisdom the PM gave me – he said aisa nahi hai ki ham sabse yogya hain. He told me I (Modi) am also new to Delhi, I have never visited Parliament. But vyavastha aise hai, humse me se kuch is zimavari ke liye aa jaate hain,” Singh said, asking the toppers to maintain humility. “Be humble to know that you don’t know,” Singh added.