Adios amigos!

Friends,

I had started this blog as a hobby of mine to publish my opinions and analyses of various on-going issues. But then soon after the Civil Services Examination, 2014 results were announced on 4th July, 2015, I had transformed this blog into a platform to guide the civil services examination aspirants and answer their queries.

I attribute a majority of my modest success in the Civil Services Examination, 2014 to the previous year rankers, who were kind enough to share their experiences and wisdom about the exam. All I did was emulate them, of course only at appropriate places. A special mention to Gaurav Agarwal who did an unparalleled service to the next gen aspirants with his incredible blog, thesupermanreturns. You, sir, are truly my superman!! After clearing this exam, I felt that it is my responsibility to continue the legacy and usher in the next gen aspirants. I had poured in all my experiences into this blog and tried to respond to each and every query that had been posted.

Today, I have finally decided to officially end this blog. I shall not write any more posts on this blog. However, I will try and continue to respond to your queries, during my leisure time. But given that my training starts in a couple of days, I am not very sure if I’ll have enough time to respond to all queries swiftly.

I thank all my fellow rankers who were kind enough to share their strategies of various optional subjects. Also, please do check out the unravellingcse blog, which has been a joint initiative of the 2015 CSE rankers.

With best wishes,

C M Saikanth Varma IAS

Public Administration Strategy by Tushar Singla (AIR-86)

Unravelling CSE

Hi friends,

I am sharing few thoughts about how to prepare for Public Administration (PA) optional in CSE. But before that, I want to share my marks in CSE-2014:

Total 956 – written 755 + interview 201

Essay 113

Gs 378 (98,95,81,104)

PA – 263 (160+103)

I will dwell upon PA strategy in detail after giving little bit of factual information about my performance in PA. CSE-2014 was my second attempt. In CSE-2013, I got 172 in Pub Ad (94 + 78). And this improvement in PA was not accidental or by luck, but I was confident that I will get around 100 marks more in PA this year. Yes, PA has become quite dicey in recent years due to its unpredictability and rising difficulty levels, but still there is method to madness.

Also, before starting out, I want to dwell upon whether one should take Public Administration as an…

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Electrical Engineering Strategy for CSE Mains

Unravelling CSE

Electrical Engineering Strategy- by Neelabh Saxena, Aman Mittal, Anunaya Jha

For Electrical Engineering, Prakash Rajpurohit Sir’s (AIR-2 in CSE-2009) blog has all the relevant information.

Following is the link.

https://prakashrajpurohit.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/electrical-engg-strategy/

https://prakashrajpurohit.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/electrical-engineeeringmains-booklist/

With additional inputs from my side I am also writing the strategy I followed in my preparation.

• Theory and numericals both are scoring. Attempt theory as well if you are stuck in numericals i.e. not able to solve them or having paucity of time in completing the question paper. Just give small examples in your theory answers say a small RC circuit or any gate to emphasize your point made in theory.

• But one needs to understand that Electrical Engineering requires a lot of effort. The syllabus is vast and many books need to be prepared for the completion of the course. However, the needs of UPSC Civil Services Exam are not very stringent and only basic knowledge of…

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Preparing for GS Paper III – Remaining Topics

Most of this paper deals with current affairs and thus the most important sources are the newspapers and magazines like frontline, downtoearth and selected and relevant issues of Yojana and Kurukshetra. Apart from this, I have also relied on the material of “the-most-famous-test-series-of-Delhi”, which I got from one of my friends for certain specific topics.

Before venturing into the details of various sources for various topics in this paper, here is a special word on “How to prepare for Science and Technology (S&T) part?”.

Science and Technology

I have observed that UPSC is not keen on asking questions which are purely research oriented, instead she is keen on asking questions which are general in nature. Thus, the key to this area would be to keep an eye on the S&T aspects of all the recent developments. To give you an idea, some of the S&T topics that I have prepared on were: The Ice Bucket Challenge, which went viral on social media, to promote the awareness and funding for the research of a disease called Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which I have studied from the internet; the e-Cigarettes as there was a debate on its safety on the downtoearth magazine;  3D Holographic Projection as Narendra Modi had used it for the first time for election campaigning and also because of the release of a 3D holographic projection video of Michael Jackson’s “Slave to the Rhythm” song; Ebola which broke out in West Africa last year. And within the S&T part, anything that deals with diseases and drugs are extremely important. Although I may not be able to measure the extent to which this strategy of mine had worked in the exam, as there were hardly any questions from this area last year, I feel this is an important basic strategy that an aspirant must adopt. This was something which Gaurav Agarwal had also proposed in his blog. On top of this, one may adopt a supplementary strategy, like referring to any S&T material of a coaching institute, if she feels the need for it.

Sources

Same as what I have mentioned in my interview on Mrunal.

Topic	How Did You Prepare?
Indian economy, resource mobilization	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
inclusive growth	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
budgeting	Covered the definitions of various terms in Economic Survey and Budget
major crops, irrigation	NCERT and Internet
agro produce – storage, marketing	Material of “the-most-famous-test-series-of-Delhi”
e-technology for famers	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
farm subsidies, MSP	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
PDS, buffer, food security	Yojana
technology mission	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
animal rearing economics	Covered basics from Agriculture Annual Report
food processing	Kurukshetra edition on Agri-Industries
land reforms	Studied in History part + Newspapers (LARR Act)
liberalization	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
infra	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
investment models	Material of “the-most-famous-test-series-of-Delhi”
science-tech day to day life	Newspapers – special focus on diseases, drugs etc.
Indian achievements in sci-tech	Newspapers
awareness in IT, space, biotech, nano, IPR	IPR – Recent developments and contentious provisions of Patents Act
environmental impact assessment	Shankar IAS Book
Disaster Management	IGNOU Material + World Focus (edition on DM)
non state actors, internal security	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
internal security – role of media, social networking site	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
cyber security	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
money laundering	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
border  Management	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
organized crime, terrorism	No special preparation apart from Newspapers
security agencies- structure mandate	Briefly covered from Wikipedia

With this post, I have covered all the topics related to the Civil Services Examination. In case you want me to write a post on any particular topic that I have not covered earlier, please mention it in the comments section.

Strategy For Medical Science as an Optional – by Dr. Khushaal Yadav, AIR 28

Unravelling CSE

At the outset,  let me warn the readers that I am no authority on Medical Sciences or CSE. Blindly aping could be potentially disastrous !

Having said that, I feel that some of my experiences and resources could be helpful to other aspirants. These would be instrumental in reducing the information asymmetry and consequently a great deal of anxiety. Since, this was my first attempt. My preparation was sub optimal. Time was of essence and I had to prioritize. This article is not about ‘taming’ the Med. Sc. but rather dealing with the vast syllabus in a couple of months.

MY CHOICE–
My decision to take up Med. Sc was a tough one.

No readymade material, No coaching, No test series.

It was mostly one of “exclusion“. After having exhausted Pub Ad, Pali, and similar other worthy subjects I thought it was better to deal with the…

View original post 557 more words

Preparing for GS II

Newspapers and various government reports are the most important sources for this paper.

Before I list out the various sources for various topics mentioned in the syllabus, I would like to talk a little bit about how to read the huge bulky reports. Government reports like 2nd ARC, Punchhi and Fourteenth Finance Commission reports are extremely important for the exam. Reading suggestions alone would not suffice because without the context these suggestions will not make any sense. So to appreciate the importance of the suggestions one must understand the context (like the problems in the existing system) and for that the whole report should be studied. But reading each and every line in these reports is not practically possible. So I usually look at the Contents and Headings to identify the topics, which would fit into the exam syllabus and then prepare on these topics.  That way, I was able to finish off these reports rather quickly.

Following is the list of sources that I had studied from.

• Newspapers – The Hindu and Indian Express
• Magazines – Frontline (only relevant articles)
• Indian Polity by Lakshmikanth – to get the basics right
• Punchhi Commission report – for Centre-State (federalism) issues
• 2nd ARC Reports:
  • Local Governance – for Local Bodies
  • Social Capital – for NGOs, SHGs, Civil Societies etc.
  • Selected readings from Personnel Administration and E-Governance.
• Fourteenth Finance Commission – This is extremely important as it came only this year.
• Representation of People’s Act – relevant provisions that appeared in Newspapers like the Supreme Court judgments.
• Comparison of Indian Constitution with others – I have prepared this only for few countries from internet like UK, USA and Japan in great depth. I also covered the ‘borrowed’ features of Indian Constitution from Lakshmikanth itself.
• International Relations:
  • Newspapers, especially C. Raja Mohan’s column in Indian Express
  • Frontline (extremely good for International Relations)
  • idsa.in website (selected articles)
  • Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) website
  • Wikipedia for the mandate and objectives of various bodies and organisations

Preparing for GS Paper III – Economy

Many people have been asking me about how to prepare for Economics. So, here it goes.

For the GS Paper III, you don’t need to be an economist to answer the questions that are being asked. You need to be a generalist.

The ONLY book I’ve read for Economy part in GS Paper III is the Macroeconomics – NCERT. It helped me in getting the basics right. After that I DID NOT refer to any other book at all. I feel that Economy is all about understanding the meanings of various terms correctly. Once you understand what a term really means, the logic that goes around that term isn’t very difficult to understand. So for this purpose I’ve maintained a table of 2 columns, in my notes, consisting of various terms in one column and their definitions + relevant contemporary examples in the other column.

To get the list of different terms I did 2 things, but before I mention that I based my preparation on one basic assumption. That is, UPSC will not ask for an Economics concept which has not been in news/Union Budget/Economic Survey. I believed that it is rational for me to think that there is no reason why UPSC would ask a question on a topic which doesn’t fit into this criteria. Being an ardent follower of newspapers, I believed that I wouldn’t miss any important topic or issue that comes up in the newspapers. So with this as my base, I did the following 2 things:

1. Whenever I see any new Economics related term in newspapers that I don’t know, I would first go and study the definition and try to understand the concept in the context of the newspaper article. This made it easy for me to remember the concept. For example, I read about “Sovereign Debt Crisis” in the context of Greek crisis. It serves me 2 purposes – understanding the concept well and also remembering that concept well because I have the context of some contemporary issue around that concept.
2. Went through Economic Survey and Union Budget, not to get a hold of the numbers scattered in there, but to identify different terms (like ‘tax expenditure’) and then know their meanings (by looking it up in the internet). This year’s economic survey is quite good – especially the First Volume. Several concepts were well explained there and I strongly recommend the aspirants to go through it, from the mains point of view.

Apart from this, I’ve also read the Fourteenth Finance Commission Report and I’ve written an analysis on it earlier, which can be found here. In summary, the sources that I had followed:

• Macroeconomics – NCERT
• Newspapers
• Economic Survey and Budget for identification of different terms

NO OTHER SOURCE WHATSOEVER!! 🙂

Anthropology – by Mohammad Roshan (Part 1/2)

Here’s the strategy of my friend Mohammad Roshan for his optional Anthropology and I thank him on behalf of the aspirants. Following is the text written by the man himself.

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Anthropology

First of all let me take this opportunity to congratulate my dear friend C M Saikanth Varma (AIR 18) for his tremendous success in the Civil Services examination.

Optional subject:

Optional subject means that one has choice. One must exercise one’s choice with a lot of care. Choice of optional is very important in civil services as one may end up appearing for this exam more than once. Interest towards the subject must be the driving force while choosing an optional. Also, other factors include availability of teachers, mentors and books. Anthropology was all that and much more for me. Therefore, my choice. This attempt I scored 288 marks out of 500 in anthropology. There is no short cut to this subject. If one wants to crack this exam with Anthropology as their optional then one must be a Subject Matter Expert in Anthropology. Here’s my way of studying this wonderful subject. Let’s take the bull by the horns. I believe that we must start with the tough topics first, get a foot hold and later just breeze through the simple topics. In this write up I will deal with Paper 1 and very soon another write up on paper 2 will follow.

1. I would recommend everyone to start with Paper 1 Chapter 2.1 The Nature of Culture: The concept and characteristics of culture and civilization; Ethnocentrism vis-à-vis cultural Relativism and 2.2 The Nature of Society: Concept of Society; Society and Culture; Social Institutions; Social groups; and Social stratification. For these topics please refer Ember and Ember Anthropology published by Pearson. Chapters to be covered include Chapter 13 and chapter 19.
2. After this, please read Chapter 6 anthropological Theories; Read Ember and Ember Chapter 14 for a broad understanding of the theories and later read History of anthropological thought by V.S. Upadhyay and Gaya Pandey. Even after this many topics like structural functionalism and Cognitive theories may not be clear. I will take up these topics at the end of this write up.
3. After this Read paper 1 Chapter 7. Culture, language and communication: Nature, origin and characteristics of language; verbal and non-verbal communication, social context of language use. Read Ember and Ember Chapter 16. Now that we have a foot hold on the broad concepts of anthropology, we may look at a few other and more interesting topics.
4. Now Chapters 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 and Chapters 3,4 and 5 that is marriage, Family, Kinship, Economic Organisations, Political Organisations and Religion. For these topics I attended Dr. Lakshmaiah Sir’s online classes. They were quite helpful. Topics like marriage also cover topics from Anthro Thought like structural Functionalism. One may also refer to the book written by Dr. Lakshmaiah sir on these topics.
5. Now let’s take a look at Chapter 1.3. We have already covered socio cultural anthropology and linguistic anthropology. What remains in Archaeological anthropology and biological anthropology.
6. Let’s now start with archaeological anthropology. For this I would recommend one to combine paper 1 and paper 2, that is both World and Indian archaeology. Refer Nadeem Hasnain’s General Anthropology Chapter “Section C” for world archaeology and Nadeem Hasnain’s Indian Anthropology Chapter 7 for Indian Archaeology. I also read D.K. Bhattacharya’s “An Outline of India Prehistory” for enhancing my answers. This would cover Chapter 1.8 b in paper 1 and Chapters 1.1 and 1.2 in paper 2.
7. For Human evolution, that is Chapter 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6 in paper 1 please refer Dr. Lakshmaimah sir’s books. One may also refer to the book written by B.M.Das titled Outline of Physical Anthropology. I read only Part 2 Man and Living Primates and Part 3 Evolution from B.M.Das in this section.
8. Now we shall take up one of the most difficult topics to remember, Chapter 9.5 Race and Racism. For this I read Dr. Lakshmaiah sir’s book and also read B.M.Das’s Outline of Physical Anthropology Chapters 24, 25, 26 and 27. This would also cover parts of Chapter 2 in paper 2. This part needs a lot of revision and there is so much to remember.
9. For Genetics I attended Dr. Lakshmaiah sir’s online classes and read P. Nath’s Physical Anthropology Section A topics 1 to 29. I would recommend sir’s online classes for this as it would make your life quite simple.
10. For Dating techniques Chapter 1.8 a; read Chapter 2 Measuring Time from D.K. Bhattacharya’s An Outline of Indian Prehistory. For Research methodologies in anthropology, please refer to Nadeem Hasnain’s General Anthropology chapter 4, Tools of Data Collection in Anthropological Fieldwork.

Most of the syllabus in paper 1 would be done by now.

Miscellaneous topics

• Chapter 9.6- refer Dr. Lakshmaiah sir’s book.
• Chapter 9.7 found most of the topics on the internet.
• Chapter 9.8 read a medical book that my Father gave me. (Both my parents are doctors)
• Chapter 10- I read P. Nath’s Physical Anthropology Section C Human growth and development. This chapter is very important from the exam point of view.
• Chapter 11- I read Sosin ma’am’s notes for these topics. These topics were also covered by Dr. Lakshmaiah sir’s online classes.
• Chapter 12- this topic has been beautifully covered in Dr. Lakshmaiah sir’s book.

For topics like Structuralism, structural functionalism, symbolic, interpretative and cognitive theories please check out related videos on youtube. There are some wonderful videos explaining these theories both in terms of sociology and anthropology.

Public Administration – by Rakesh Chintagumpula

Rakesh had scored a magnificent 284 out of 500 in Public Administration, this year. He has been kind enough to share his strategy for Public Administration for the benefit of future aspirants and I thank him on their behalf. Following is his strategy in his own words.

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My basic profile

Name: RAKESH CHINTAGUMPULA

Rank: AIR 122,  UPSC-2014

Education Qualification: B.Tech (EEE) from CBIT; M.A. (Public Administration), IGNOU

I had given 3 mains with Public Administration as optional scoring 330/600, 335/600 and 284/500 marks.

My Marks

Prelims

Paper I: 118

Paper II: 155.83

Total: 274

Mains

ROLL NO. :	115513
NAME :	CHINTAGUMPULA RAKESH
MARKS OBTAINED

SUBJECTS MARKS ESSAY (PAPER-I) 096 GENRAL STUDIES -I (PAPER-II) 109 GENRAL STUDIES -II (PAPER-III) 107 GENRAL STUDIES -III (PAPER-IV) 072 GENRAL STUDIES -IV (PAPER-V) 113 OPTIONAL-I (PUBLIC ADMIN.) (PAPER-VI) 105 OPTIONAL-II (PUBLIC ADMIN.) (PAPER-VII) 179 WRITTEN TOTAL 781 PERSONALITY TEST 168 FINAL TOTAL 949

Books/Materials/Guidance I followed during my preparation

1. MK Mohanty sir’s class notes and I also attended his classes

*From here on I will refer Public Administration as PA

2. Vajiram and Ravi PA notes of Rajesh Gupta sir and Kiran sir (I didn’t attend their classes though and I am referring to the old notes which have been very neatly written and compiled)
3. Certain Insights on the subject by Rajesh Kankipati IAS sir, 2011 when he had taken one month long course in the approach to frame answers and linking concepts of P1 with P2.
4. Sriram Sir’s guidance on current events and Indian polity topics which I used extensively in paper 2 of PA
5. Public Administration and Public Affairs– Nicholas Henry (Selective reading of few chapters; Chapters 2, 3, 8, 10 are compulsory, Chapters 4, 6, 9 are optional)
6. Essentials Of Organizational Behavior – Stephen Robbins (Selective reading of few chapters; Chapters 5,6,11 are compulsory, Chapters 4, 10, 14 are optional)
7. IGNOU materials which I received when I enrolled for MA course in PA, I have done selective reading of the same.
8. Public Administration by M. Laxmikanth, TMH Publications (This is the book I have been reading right from my first attempt, Infact in my first attempt I had given prelims with optional PA, that is when we had mastered the book word by word for prelims exam and it had helped me a lot in future course of prep)

Well,  I also bought Prasad and Prasad, Mohit Bhattacharya, Poli Naidu, Subhash Kashyap- Our Political system, Indian Administration by Arora and Goyal, Fadia and Fadia etc but they were mere show pieces in my book collection. I sincerely suggest people to refrain from buying more and more books as I feel reading few books with good understanding is the key rather than reading more materials.

I am also attaching some pics of my answers during test series, in the end of this post.

My journey/strategy into world of CSE:

After quitting my job and reaching Delhi, I attended MK Mohanty sir’s classes at Synergy Academy, Delhi in 2010, and I had no knowledge of PA initially. I could not understand the concepts also thoroughly. Later on I felt the subject was very lame and simple. I referred to Prasad and Prasad while the classes were going on but felt the classes were more easy to understand and sir was covering all the points in the book, so there’s no need of reading the book again.

I also felt we could understand the concepts of PA if one has a real time experience in an organization , like how the hierarchy work, why it is important to have chain of command, use of IT/E-Gov in Organization or Administration etc. Here my work experience at Infosys Tech did help me.

I gave my first attempt just with sir’s class notes, mind you those were the times when PA, Psychology, PSIR were favored optionals and thus scoring was sort of liberal. and my score of 330 was not extraordinary I guess, but my paper 2 score of 175 was good I would say.

For Paper 1, I feel I never got extraordinary marks in my 3 mains papers (I got scores of 155/300, 156/300 and 105/250) and I believe one would succeed if he has strong theoretical knowledge and clarity in core concepts and strong grip on technical words and vocabulary necessary for using them liberally in the exam. Especially this year’s paper and 2012 papers were shockers for our PA civil service aspirants fraternity, and here I believe covering the ‘LEAKED SYLLABUS’ would be handy as many questions were asked from those topics.

For Paper 2, I would say right from my first attempt I was writing it like a GS paper and hence used all sorts of current events related to paper 2 topics liberally. Here I would like to mention, the conceptual clarity that Sriram Sir provided in Indian Polity, which in fact has almost everything overlapping with PA, did help me a lot. In recent pattern polity qs were themselves becoming dynamic like centre state relations, concepts of federalism, secularism, GOMs, E-GOMs etc and all this helped me in PA too.

The current events in paper 2 are a strong point in my prep as I would follow The Hindu religiously (I know it’s sort of critical always and leftist in a way but I had time constraint, so stuck to this one paper; though I would appreciate going through editorials of The Indian Express and The Economist). Right from day 1 of my prep in CSE, I almost never skipped reading Hindu, I would read, reflect, write short notes and revise it regularly for maximum retention and connection and link formation with various topics. This has helped me to use examples liberally in paper 2.

Few examples of such interlinking of theoretical and practical issues

• Chris Argyris concept of Maturity-Immaturity paradigm can be referred to in P2 when a minister asks a matured administrator to act in an immature way leading to dissonance and loss of initiative and efficiency in administration
• Concept of participative management used in Teacher-Parent committees in Sarva shiksha abhiyan/RTE and maintenance of Mid day meal scheme
• Antonio Gramsci concepts of Ideological hegemony or concepts like circulation of elite used in the functioning of PRI’s (Panchayat Raj Institutions) and their ineffectiveness, How a zilla parishad chairman despite being granted a cabinet minister rank is less valued than an MP/Member of Parliament
• CPA/Comparative Public Adm will lead to enrichment of PA by placing one’s nation in a cross-cultural setting and the need for paradigmatic shift from look east policy to link east policy etc

Like this there can be plethora of linkages, one needs to expand one’s horizon of thinking and experiment radically in presenting concepts of P2 linked to P1.

Another important thing that happened to me is that I started teaching Public Administration, Indian Polity and Current Affairs in an IAS Academy in Hyderabad after my second attempt for degree and post degree students wherein I gained immense conceptual clarity and thoroughness in my subjects. I would make it a point that I would not refer to any book or material throughout my lecture. I was adamant that I have to memorize everything before the class and give lecture unhindered and in this process I was the ultimate beneficiary.

Also I conducted many mock tests on preliminary based questions and mains based qs for my students, I evaluated their papers too and in this process, I started to observe from the mind of an examiner like what would one look while correcting a bunch of papers and what would their mindset be in awarding relative scores to the candidates. I found that an examiner would look for 3 things to stand out in an answer:

1. Definite presence of  the core points of an answer. Example: An answer on Fred Riggs should not miss concepts on Prismatic societies, formalism, heterogeneity etc.
2. Some exemplary knowledge a student displays in the answer writing which gives an impression that she/he is well read and is better than the competition.
3. Good flow of language, neat handwriting, diagrams, flow charts, pie charts are all added advantages.

During my prep in Delhi, I also attended test series every time before mains, not majorly to guess what questions would come in the forthcoming exam but as a way to have a discipline prep of PA. Once I has taken test series of Vajiram too. I had got decent scores I would say during the tests. And I have to mention the point that I never missed any question whatsoever in the exam. I had made it a point to answer every question in the paper how so ever remotely I could relate and write .

Also I had to mention I had stint with Pavan Kumar sir, I attended only one test with him and I was totally disappointed with his style and didn’t attend any other tests. I know in one test, I cannot judge his method of teaching, but that’s my opinion. Also I feel opinions regarding him are quite polarized – people are extremely favorable or extremely unfavorable to him.

Meanwhile during my second attempt , I met this gentlemen RAJESH KANKIPATI sir. He struck a conversation and asked me to try his short course on PA answer writing which I would say has given me a new perspective on social sciences and re invigorated my love for the subject on PA.  He would give many quotes of different authors and theorists, their key points and loads of technical jargon which I had memorized to some extent to be used in the exam. He had explained how we could link concepts from P1 to P2 and P2 to current events.

After my first attempt I got enrolled in M.A.(PA), IGNOU. I started out to get an additional degree while I continue my prep. But in the coming days, I would discover the profound love I would find in this subject. And friends I have to admit that during this MA, I gained some insights into the subject and that has helped me too, eg. I could understand the concept on Max Weber Authority in a whole different angle which I had not contemplated during my previous prep. Additionally their material is awesome and comes along with the course enrollment which also aided in my prep. I see people buying the material from Delhi markets or asking me if they could order it online. I say enroll in an MA course and prep for the course and get the books and an additional degree too in the process :)..well, it’s not a tough exam to finish and its part of our prep only.

And I have to wholeheartedly appreciate ‘doodlebean’ initiative on covering the new syllabus on forumias.com. This issue of ‘LEAKED SYLLABUS’ which actually is a double whammy for us PA optional aspirants as UPSC is hitting under the belt by asking questions that are actually OUT OF SYLLABUS and its and unfair game. But, I have to say I didn’t cover that syllabus during my prep and was planning to do it for next attempt. And I would definitely suggest anyone to finish that syllabus also for the exam to be on the safer side. I could answer those questions by using my previous knowledge gained during my teaching process and from IGNOU materials.

And finally friends, my scores especially 179 in paper 2 did push me in securing a rank. But I can assure you that there’s is no secret James Bond formula in this and I would attribute it partly to the unpredictability of UPSC and their obscure Moderation/Scaling formula besides our strategized preparation, good answer writing skills and most importantly our loads and loads of hard work.

Jai Hind.

Anthropology – by Raja Gopal Sunkara (AIR 49)

Raja Gopal has been kind enough to share his strategy for his optional – Anthropology and I thank him on behalf of the aspirants. The following text was contributed entirely by Raja Gopal himself.

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Anthropology Preparation

In my first attempt, I scored 198 marks in Anthropology. In this attempt, I scored 293 marks. The reasons behind this drastic increase (apart from the fact there has been an overall increase in optional marks) will, hopefully, give us some pointers on how to prepare for Anthropology.

Reason 1 – I covered close to 95% of the syllabus

In my first attempt, I left vast portions of the syllabus. Obviously, I could not answer many questions despite the choice available. This time, I corrected that mistake. So, how did I go about covering the syllabus:-

1. I do not hold a brief for anyone but I took coaching under Mrs. Sosin in Hyderabad. I read her notes time and time again. I suggest that aspirants should stick to notes of one teacher and gather notes of others only for those chapters which haven’t been covered.
2. For physical anthropology, I referred Physical Anthropology by P. Nath and Khan Academy videos. I made my own notes.
3. I also selectively read General Anthropology by Nadeem Hasnain, Tribal India by Nadeem Hasnain and Indian Social System by Ram Ahuja.
4. One of my doctor friends helped me out in covering topics like primates, archaeological anthropology, etc.

Reason 2 – Choice of questions

Being an engineer, I would generally shy away from answering questions from physical anthropology. This is despite being told repeatedly that these questions fetch good marks. This time, I overcame my phobia of physical anthropology and attempted those very questions and my marks are proof that these questions live up to their reputation of being marks fetching.

Reason 3 – I answered almost all questions

In my first attempt, I left around 5 questions in each paper. This time, I left 1-1.5 questions in both papers put together. This brings in to the picture, the importance of practising writing answers. Good quality answers in anthropology consist of not just text but diagrams, flowcharts and examples as well and all this has to be done in limited amount of time and in the limited space provided. This level of time and space management can come only with practice. So, practise writing answers.

Reason 4 – Structure of my answers

My doctor friend introduced to the world of side-headings and I am thankful to him for the same. Side-headings, according to me, have the following advantages:-

1. They bring structure to your answer. This, I believe, is also easy on the eye for an examiner who has to skim through pages and pages of text day in and day out.
2. They make remembering content easier. Few days before the exam, you’ll realise that you don’t remember much of what you have read over the last couple of months. This is where side-headings will help. For example, for topics like land alienation, tribal health, indebtedness, I would remember the side-headings – cause, consequences, government measures, way forward. For lithic ages, my side-headings would be time period, location, settlement type, occupation, culture, etc. I would then generate the content under these broad side-headings.

Reason 5 – Value Additions

Once you have written a good quality answer, a diagram here and a flowchart there can fetch that extra mark which makes a lot of difference.

Below is a diagram of great and little traditions given by Mrs. Sosin.

The following is a flowchart depicting Linguistic Elements of India.

Examples are great value additions and newspapers were my source of latest examples. One can quote the Vedanta and Posco issues when it comes to tribal anthropology. In archaeological anthropology, once can quote a new discovery like the one in this link.

I quoted research papers in some questions and committees (Dhebar, Bhuria, Virginius Xaxa, Ministry of Tribal Affairs reports) in others. I also sprinkled names of some thinkers (Frazer, Geertz) in Paper II. The point I am trying to make is that all these value additions separate the wheat from the chaff.

Now that I have run out of reasons, I would like to tell you that I owe my rank to anthropology and I wish my brethren with this optional all the very best.