General studies Civil service: Understanding foreign policy/relations of India

The foreign relations are an area where aspirants are often very confused. There are many aspirants who have these doubts...

Is India opportunistic?

Why India doesn’t severe ties with Israel /China/ US?

Is India a too soft state? Etc,

The list of queries and the confusion prevalent are plenty.

The primary thing to understand is “India’s foreign policy is directed at giving the best for OUR country”. The most important concern is “Benefit for OUR country “.

 In my college days i had a friend who hated Israel like anything. According to him, India should not procure any arms and shouldn’t have any business with Israel. If India’s policy is severe ties with Israel; who will be the looser? . Israel is a country with high end technology in arms and agriculture. If India has to have an edge in technology and other areas like agriculture, then a good relationship with Israel is needed. Here the emotionally charged decisions (seeing palestine’s suffering) may not be in the best interest of India.

And foreign policy is about “give and take”, it cannot always be “take, take”. If US or any country supports us in a particular area A, it doesn’t do it coz of good will. The help in any area is expected to be reciprocated in another area B. (There is no free meal, in life and in foreign relations). The bilateral relations have to be seen in its totality. That is why we see that certain nations are favoured in certain areas.

The foreign relations are long-term based and not based on knee jerk reactions.  After an incident (eg a bomb blast) people would become emotionally charged and call for war. The government at these moments do not go for it because it thinks of many things. It has to keep in mind the financial, political ties and support from other nations before going to war.

When analysing a foreign policy decision made by India, thinking of these questions will help to understand it better.

A.      Is it helping India and its people?

B.      Is the concession is a particular area helping in any other area?

C.      Is the decision made based on emotions (eg: pressure from a party to withdraw support) or is it a rational decision?

The comments in the web, media etc are sometimes one sided, its therefore our duty to look into A,B,C questions before deciding whether a policy is good or bad for us. 

Geography as civil service exam optional

Geography is a very popular optional in civil service exams. The benefits of geo are

It’s simple – land, water, plants, animals, air – aren’t we familiar will these terms?. Almost all jargons in the geo are easy. There are no tongue twisters.

The boundaries are defined. By learning a defined number of books, we can manage the subject. Even “out of syllabus” type questions can be managed. This is in contrast to subjects like psychology where only god knows where they ask the questions from?

The geo is cool subject. It helps in gen studies paper also.

There are some wonderful well written books in this subject. Majid Hussain deserves a good applause for writing books in lucid style.

There is hope for application of “theory of gasification” in this subject to some extent.

The effective presentation of geo answers can be made easily through diagrams.In case you are averse to drawing even a doodle, then geo may not work for you. In case 2D orientation (maps, diagrams) isn’t your area, then too geo won’t be a good idea for you. (There are some people who even if they try day and night won’t be able to get the 2d view. Dont worry, one of my friends who have such a problem is now working as a sugeon!).

Mr Abhiram Shanker has given a complete list of methods in his writing. Read it here (From website indianofficer). To add anything to it will be grave injustice to the subject. 

Is coaching at Delhi necessary for ias civil services exam

This question is something that somehow comes again and again in mind of aspirants. Delhi has traditionally been the hub of ias civil service exams. The story that came in mind about an ias winner a couple of years back was “Packing bags to delhi, standing like a stork to study for years, and coming out with ias”. The story doesn’t exist anymore. The trend of exam, the style of exam etc has shaken the role of delhi as the sole centre for ias exam coaching.

Still majority of good civil service coaching centres exist only in metros and certain cities. The so called “study ecosystem” for civil service largely exists in cities only. By study ecosystem i mean the fellow aspirants, availability of books and magazines easily, variety of teachers, sharing of ideas, study groups etc.

The internet has to an extent reduced this problem of information divide which students of rural area experienced in the past years. Most of books are now available now via e-commerce sites. Magazines like frontline, yojana, outlook etc are available free on internet. The quality online coaching, study materials etc are still scarce. The students rarely share good materials on internet. The end result is there is large number of leechers while no one is there to seed. This blog can be counted in the latter side.

Civil service IAS exam preparation: How to select a coaching institute part 2

I had written about the gimmicks certain institutes (not all) employ to fool students in my earlier article. Now let me continue on how you can choose a good coaching institute. A very important thing to keep in mind is the faculty at the institute. There are certain teachers who know the in and out of the civil service exams. All of them may not be even located in metros. The best judge of a teacher is the students who have gone for classes to him. Ask the students who have attended his classes and you will know the truth. There are thousands of fooled aspirants. I wonder why no one writes in web about their failed experiences.

There may be good faculty for certain areas while not for other. See if the good faculty is teaching subjects you need. In case you need info on “Indian economy” and the institute has a real bad teacher in that topic; would it do any good?

There are many institutes which have faculty who are just hired as engineers are hired in an IT company. The motive of some of these institutes is just money making .So they employ faculty just to milk out the money. The aspirant would loose his time as well as money going to such places. Another set of institutions may employ retired professors with big long degrees at the end. The problem is that they would be knowledgeable but may not be able to adapt it to the needs of civil service. So its not big big degree tails at the end of name that is needed but a person who knows the techniques needed for civil service exam.

Also keep in mind your study style. The teaching style has to be in sync with your learning style. There are teachers who like to treat the aspirants like KG children. They would incessantly take class and be hard. If you like that style of ‘strict’ teaching then he may be your choice. There are aspirants who love friendly down to earth easy style of teaching. If you are such a kind then find such a teacher/institute. It fully depends on you. There are some students who would like the teacher to be ‘strict’ ‘tough’ and ‘punishing’. You have to be able to carefully identify the teaching style before you join.

One more thing to keep in mind is regarding study materials  Have you seen the proclamation by certain coaching institutions in ads like these ‘ 100 questions our of 120 questions in general studies was from our material’. Many times this proclamation is useless for the aspirant. I will explain why. Some institutions just print loads and loads of material and push it to students. It wont be practical to learn all this material by any human being. They do it to make sure that at the end of the period , this proclamation of great coverage can be made. It is like saying ‘100 of 120 questions was there in book store!. Here you should select coaching institutions that can guide a person to the question. See what material is being supplied. There are certain institutions which will print same notes year after year with no relevant timely changes being made. Make sure the institute is dynamic and is in tune with times.

A slew of online coaching websites have been started recently. Most of them neither publish the faculty nor method of teaching.Most of them are just taking away your money and giving you readily available stuff which would be of no use for exam. Send enquirer emails and see their response before joining.

Civil service IAS exam preparation: How to select a coaching institute

‘Mr Sasi, an engineer from Maharashtra decided that he would crack civil service this time. So he resigned his job at Infosys and packed his bags to delhi. He joined an institute that advertised itself as the bestest ever coaching institute which produced loads of civil service toppers every year. Mr Sasi was given loads of material from which no question came. Mr Sasi failed miserably. Now he is jobless and helpless. ‘ This is the story of many aspirants who jump to start the civil service preparation and waste their precious time as well as life.

The students need to understand the coaching institutes and how they work deeply if they are to select the best institute. You can see in advertisements these statements: 5 above 20 rankers from X institute, 20 winners from y institute etc. How does this work?

There are number of techniques the coaching instituted do to achieve this success rate. A prominent method is ‘free mock exam method’. Here the coaching institute conducts mock exams for free. They would collect the role number, photo and a sign during the process. When the results come, the institutes check these role numbers. In case he clears, suddenly the whole credit for his victory is taken by the institute. Marvellous right!.

Another method is ‘following the student’. The student after getting petrified by the classes might have left for another good institute. But the first institute where he/she enrolled too takes the credit. The reality is that he would never have made it if he continued there.

These days another popular method is "Catching the probables". The coaching institute would offer free travel accommodation for the those who qualify for interviews. They would also provide mock interview sessions. When the results come, surely there would be some successful candidates. The credit of all these success naturally goes to the coaching institute. In fact  the institute would have neither trained nor given any substantial benefit to the student, but will show off that they got 'big result'.There would be sufficient PR acts (felicitations, talks, tv shows) to show "How the institute created magic". The students would flock in queues to these institutes just like fleas getting attracted to candles; to end up burnt and ruined. Next year same act repeats.

This does not mean that all coaching institutes are fraud. But you need to keep these things in mind when you see an ads. This will enable you to cross check the facts and separate it from the fiction many coaching institutes weave around them.

I would continue the topic in part 2 about the coaching institutes.

(*Mr Sasi is our imaginary newbie civil service aspirant and Mr Arnie the guy who cleared civils)

Are old question papers useful?

Referring old questions are important key to solving future papers. The upsc question papers should be analysed to understand the following areas-

Style of questions

Areas/coverage

Depth of subject

The above three areas will help analyse each question paper. In the recent years the questions aren’t asked directly. The application of things learned is expected from candidate. The coverage of syllabus is another thing to keep in mind. In earlier years there was an expected line of asking questions in civil service exams. Certain areas were always asked, while certain areas weren’t. In previous years GS papers the tennis cup winners were one of the most frequently asked question. Now the upsc wants to remove the predictability from the exam. So you can always expect new patterns and style. The aspirant should also note the depth of knowledge being expected. This is especially true with regard to the optional. If you see last years psychology paper or pub ad(geeks who wrote the paper say the question paper was greek!) , you will easily understand that.

There are few points aspirants that can be handy in exam:

1.       Dont panic seeing questions. Always expect some twist and turns. The twist and turns you see is experienced by all the students who take exam. Chillax and handle the questions well.

2.       There is no ideal answer. Many students waste time searching for a complete perfect answer for previous years question papers. The questions usually focus on some areas and not on any particular matter specifically. 

3.       Form an opinion. There are many areas where your opinion matters. Eg: Nuclear power or energy production etc. Here you should have an opinion of which are good and bad. And what stand you will take when asked. Here too there isn’t an ideal answer.

I feel that aspirants should review questions of last few years. There are students who refer question from times of forefathers and exclaim “OMG....UPSC asked thissss??”. That is pretty useless job.UPSC may have asked since that topic was relevant at that time. Lot of water has flown through the Ganges since then. The pattern, areas, and importance of a subject have changed. Looking papers which are very old doesn’t serve much purpose.  The new trends and ways are to be understood. 

How to write CSAT exam?

The CSAT exam is the first step towards the IAS civil services exam. This primary step is taken by lakhs of students. Around 14,000 clear this exams to move on to next step. A general knowledge, mental ability, comprehension etc are the key aspects of the CSAT game. There are many students who study but doesn’t clear, which can be due to these....

1.       Lot of students grill hours in front of books , but fail to manage questions. This is due to lack of practise in doing questions. Knowledge is important so is its application. The importance of doing practise test (at least 2 or 3) is forgotten by these students

2.       The approach during real test : Fear is a powerful emotion, when it exceeds certain limit, it will damage our capacity to do well. Lots of students fail because of fear rather than lack of knowledge.

3.       Style of writing CSAT : When Sehwag was asked “How  do you manage to get so many runs” he told “I play bal by ball”. The desperation of not getting runs in a ball doesn’t infect the next ball. In CSAT too its same way. Each ball (question) has some marks. In case you spend 10 minutes on a question and solve it, then its not worth it. The 10 minutes you spend on that single question could have been used for attempting many questions.

Many students especially in maths question has this feeling “i know to solve it..” and they spend lots of time in solving that problem. These students have won their personal battle of solving that question, but have lost the CSAT game.

4.       Taking too lightly: There are students who get into service in previous attempts but fail to clear the CSAT. These students are brilliant in CSAT game , but lost due to complacency.

A good approach in CSAT is to attempt the easy ones first, leave the harder time consuming ones for later. As in angry birds game, lets go for easy ones first, later we can try something adventurous after putting sufficient marks in our basket.