Strategy for UPSC Mains by IPS Tushar Gupta

Strategy for UPSC Mains by IPS Tushar Gupta

Just being done with the Prelims feels like a big relief. You feel that a lot of burden has been lifted off your shoulders. And the joy of performing well and knowing that you get to go the next stage ( Mains) is beautiful. You plan to chill for a few days, but there is still that anxiety somewhere regarding mains.

I had felt the very same anxiety. Especially for aspirants giving UPSC the first time, the feeling is more horrifying. For the past 2–3 months, your sole focus had been to clear prelims. But now that it is over, you have to face the Mains. Worry not, it can be managed.

For anyone who is expecting more than 95 in the recent Prelims, I would suggest, get ready to gear up and plunge into the battle again.

I managed to score a decent 122 in GS2 and 145 in GS3. You can also get a good score. PLANNING and EXECUTION are very important.

NOTE : No GS coaching was taken, so everything was covered from varied sources.

WHAT TO DO AFTER PRELIMS

• First of all - enjoy for 2-3 days. A lot of work has been put in. A few days of relaxation and planning ahead is very important as the next 4 months of ur life will be very crucial.
• If you feel that there is even a slightest chance that u will make it through prelims, start preparing within 4-5 days.
• For all those aspirants who find themselves as the Borderline case with a margin of +-4 days, start your preparation. Dont wait till results. Wasting 1.5 months of the 4 months that you have for Mains is not advisable, rather it will pretty much be the end of your chances at a good rank.
• The most important thing to do here is planning
• I had made a very clear plan on how i was preparing with each day marked for something specific - What was your timetable while preparing for UPSC? ( This has the images of the document I had prepared as a planning for my Mains )

MAINS : HOW TO GO ABOUT IT

• For mains one needs to realise that it is NOT NCERTs which make you capable of writing answers. This is where all the time spent into reading the newspaper and making its notes comes to use. Vision IAS Mains 365 booklets are the most comprehensive source for Mains writing material for GS2 and GS3.
• For answers, understand that all the big paragraphs of answers cannot be learnt. Rather, one only needs to remember the keywords to the answer. This is what one will revise near the Mains as the material to be revised starts to pile up. So underline only the key words. Taking short notes on the sides of the VisionIAS booklet (among other sources) would also help in quicker revision.
• Always remember that you need to read enough to answer a 200 word question effectively. So don’t delve into depths on all topics.
• This is not the time to be reading something new. Value addition has to be done obviously. But do not start the preparation of a new subject now. This should be done before the Prelims examination.
• Though smaller topics like Disaster Management and Internal security can still be completed, it is always advisable to finish them before your Prelims.

I will deal with each paper and how I had gone about tackling them.

NOTE : In a lot of subjects, I had followed Vision IAS printed booklets on those specific topics. This was done due to paucity of time and because I felt that Coaching notes in those specific topics would be much more helpful than some book

ESSAY

• I would suggest that you watch Siddhart Jain AIR-16 video on how to write essays. That will give you a pretty good technique to think of dimensions and organise it in a good way.
• For Eg, I had “SPEECLIH” - Societal, Political, Economic, Environmental, Cultural, Legal, International and Historical aspects while writing essay.
• I would also suggest you to read Gaurav Aggarwal sir’s essays given on his blog “the supermanreturns” to understand how he used to write essays and try to emulate his technique into yours in case you find them useful.
• Out of the 1.5 hrs that you will spend on each essay have
• 15-20 mins Planning - Planning is very essential. How to organise your essay decides your marks.
• Rest - Writing the Essay
• I had searched a lot for getting good content to write essays. Shubhra Ranjan Mam’s Essay Book was the best one which was the most relevant as far as UPSC was concerned. I had made a rough structure for around 20 essays which were to be used in case essay came on those specific topics.
• Also have a good quote to begin and end the essay as it really does make a difference in marks.
• Take 1-2 essay test series and get them professionally evaluated if u dont have a good mentor.
• Do not, i repeat do not get them cross check with ur peers who have the same experience as u as 2 noobs do not make an expert ( This is especially for the guys preparing for the first time )
• Lot of people have asked me - when practicing essay how much time should i take - 1.5 hrs or should i just my creativity flow and not focus on time. I would suggest that write 2-3 essays without time constraints, but after that write within time limit because u will not have the luxury of time in the Mains exam. Practice in limited time is very crucial to be able to score well in an essay paper.
• If I had to prepare again, Essay writing is one area I would have focussed on more.

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ETHICS

• Ethics requires a very different approach. It needs to made as simple as possible as it is a very simple paper.
• Firstly you should go and read DK Balaji sir’s article on Insights. It will provide you with a deeper understanding of what kind of answers and personality UPSC wants from candidates.
• I have heard many people say that preparation in Ethics paper is not required. This is not at all correct.
• I would suggest that First Print the Ethics syllabus and then cover it from a source (preferably coaching printouts ) which has the least amount of material. 50-100 pages total. Your aim here is to understand each and every term given in the course and understand its technical intricacies of all the terms.
• You can use Google or Mrunal notes by Kavan Limbasiya (AIR 198, CSE 2014) to better understand concepts. Create ur own notes after reading the sources you may want to refer to.
• Do not read the Lexicon the very first time if you don’t have any idea of the subject. It is not a good book to understand concepts, but is a very good book to supplement notes. This would make your theory answers pretty good.
• Make examples for all the Values in civil services like Integrity, Accountability, Transparency etc, preferably from your personal experiences. In case you are unable to find a personal experience, then create a good short incident or use a currently occurring event. Balaji sir’s article explains it beautifully.
• Make a table of most imp Values and fill in as many as you can. I had made a big table with many different values.
  

• For the part on Great Administrators, leaders etc have unconventional names ready who may have really inspired you. Unconventional names in answers would show depth in a person rather than just making up an answer for the sake of it. Eg- Dag Hammarskjold was an inspirational for me.
• Create quotes for all the important topics, so that you can put them in your answers. Collect them over time. (PSIR students can very easily get them from their own coursework)
  

• In Ethics once you are done understanding and making notes, the most important stage comes. It is writing answers. I cannot overstate the importance of writing answers in Ethics. It requires some practice to be able to seamlessly use the technical terms in the answers such that they come out very well. You will not get this ability by simply reading others answers. Write answers such that they are able to reflect your personality with the required terminology. Don’t mug up coaching notes. Make your own definitions and try to keep your answer original.
• I had written around a 100 answers which were collected from IASBaba TLP program and from Insights 70 day Ethics initiative. Write and compare with model answers. Broadly you should be able to get a hang of writing answers at the end of these many questions.
• Also there are many questions on thoughts of various great leaders like Swami Vivekananda, MK Gandhi among others. In such question just give a basic reading to the model answers on them to get a general idea. There is really no need and no time to get into the nitty-gritties of thoughts.
• For Case Studies, I had solved Subba Rao Book on Ethics. It has a lot of case studies given in it and it helps you form a general idea on solving them. Kavan Limbasiya (AIR 198, CSE 2014) also has explained how to approach case studies to solve them effectively.
• In the end i would recommend solving test series in time so that you get in a habit of completing the paper as that is the most important and crucial point to be kept in mind. I used to solve all the questions in order in the Ethics paper except in an extraordinary situation when I had absolutely no idea in a question.

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Subject wise plan

• Mains 365 by VisionIAS and solving the TLP questions by IASBaba were the most crucial aspects of mains preparation.

GS1

Edit : For this portion, writing answers is very important. What I had done here was downloaded the last years VisionIAS test series which goes on topic wise and written answers to all questions. This helps in 2 ways

1. It helps you build content and cover any areas you may have missed.
2. It helps you organise knowledge. For e.g. say if there is a question regarding Communist movement in India, you definitely know enough to write an answer but it is scattered in your mind as it was in Spectrum. So the thinking part is utilised now, and in case it comes in the paper you can very easily write the answer without much thinking. Remember, in the paper “more you think the less you write”

Topic wise -

• A&M History - Art and culture questions come - same as pre strategy
• Modern History : Same as pre strategy
• Post Independence History : VisionIAS printed booklets
• India After Independence - should be avoided - it only wastes ur time and is a very biased book in my opinion.
• World history : One needs to realise that in all of tests in UPSC - only 1-2 World history questions will be asked. For this, one needs to put a proportionate amount of work.
• Read the History optional World History syllabus - note down all the events
• Read the past years questions in World history, History Optional - this is to understand the type of questions that UPSC is expecting us to answer
• WIKI these topics and make notes accordingly.
• Supplement this with VisionIAS World history printed notes - around 50-60 pages - not thicker than that, (Not the hand written ones) Keep revising.
• Society : VisionIAS Printed booklet, Mains 365 and Newspaper reading cover this portion rather well.
• Geography : Same as pre strategy
• Resources topic in Geography : Topic comes once in 4-5 years And by the end of your preparation you would also be able to make a pretty accurate guess regarding common resources. There is a lot of study material to read. I had skimmed through the material given on Mrunal website regarding this topic.

GS2

• Polity : For this I had got Shubra Mam’s 2 pretty thin booklets on GS2. They were very useful as topics in it are covered in Question Answer Format. A lot of questions I came from here directly or indirectly. Other than this Mains365 is very important.
• Social Indicators : Poverty and Hunger : Mrunal videos cover these topics very well. Supplement these with all the schemes that have been prepared as well as Yojna magazine
• International Relations ( My optional was PSIR, so I had a lot of help)
• This is a topic whose one single source for preparation is difficult to find. One learns a lot by reading the newspapers.
• But the best way to go about this is to get the Mains 365 on IR and read it religiously. I really dont think there is a better source that this to be able to answer UPSC level questions.
• (For students who have started preparing, referring to Mains365 of the nearest mains will be very helpful to you. As it will make you understand the newspaper much better.)
• Also the 2 books of Shubra mam which I had got for GS2 had IR portion which was very good, but overlapped significantly with Mains365.
• Dont go after books like Globalisation of World Politics, or Does the Elephant Dance. One word : Waste of time. Such depth is not required in GS papers. They form a part of Optional Booklist.

GS3

• Having scored 145 in GS3, I will try to tell you everything that I had laid stress on to try and maximise my score here.
• Again instead of reading something new, download the last year vision booklet and answer its questions. Follow TLP of IAS Baba and write answers. Content building is important through question answer writing format.
• While writing answers time yourself and word yourself. Focus on introductions and conclusions.
• Economy : Same as pre. Focus on answer writing and test series.
• Agriculture :
• Will be covered by Mrunal videos and Geog videos by Mrunal.
• It should be supplemented with the Agriculture chapter in ShankarIAS
• Environment
• Now the focus will be less on the various summits but more on the subjective part
• Do focus on Envt Impact Assessment (EIA). Rest gets covered by Mains365.
• Sc&Tech : The Prelims strategy and Mains365 are enough to cover this portion easily.
• Disaster Management :
• Roman Saini sir videos on DMgt (Ones taught by Roman Saini sir himself) will help you understand most of the theory.
• Go on the NDMA website and make notes on all the topics given - especially understand IRS ( Incident Response system as this is one unconventional point that u can have in your answers )
• Skim through NDM policy and NDM plan - make short notes on these - these are more to observe and understand how the NDMP actually envisages the Mgt. Dont spend more than 2-3 hours on each document
• Then supplement the notes with VisionIAS Disaster Mgt printed notes and Mains365 on Dmgt.
• Tip : Have separate notes for each of the disasters and their corresponding maps which should definitely be drawn in case a question comes on it. For Eg : If a question is asked on Earthquakes, I used to ensure that I made a map of India and marked the Zone IV and Zone V. This ensures that you answer is more interactive and attractive.
• Have a standard conclusion for all answers on Disasters. Some common points can also be added in suggestions like IRS System, Capacity building of local communities, Effective information dissemination, etc.
• Internal Security : VisionIAS Printed booklets and Mains365 are good.

Language papers

• English : was easy, no preparation was required
• Hindi :
• Since most of us stop studying Hindi from class 10, some difficulty is definitely faced.One needs to be careful as a number of candidates are unable to make through just because they are unable to clear this qualifying paper.
• If u fail in language papers, your other copies will not be evaluated and u won’t come to know the marks of other papers and that attempt will do down the drain.
• Preparation requires at max 4-5 days. Open 3-4 years questions and see the pattern you will notice that Hindi Grammar is easy and doable - so learn up some muhavres in the last days ( My mom used to make me learn Muhavres while I ate my food so that I could save time in the last few days )
• Next unseen passages are easy Essay can also be tackled easily - practice 4-5 essays so that u come back into the writing practice of Hindi and dont make spelling mistakes The difficult part is English to Hindi and vice versa.
• I would suggest that take the important terms from Mains Syllabus and convert them into Hindi
• Next - look at last 3-4 year papers and interconvert specific terms like Sovereign or socialist or secular. Now u will have a decent list of words which u can use especially in ur Language essays as well.

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ANSWER WRITING TIPS

• Answer writing is the most important and crucial factor which can make or break your result. The amount of knowledge that you have matters, but what matters more is how well you can Convert that knowledge into good answers. People who are giving 5–6 th attempt have much more knowledge than what I could have, but are unable to properly do answer writing.
• Writing good answers does not come in a day. Its a long drawn out process, but one that is definitely rewarding in the exams. I was also very bad at answer writing in the beginning. It took a lot of work to improve my answers.

How do I improve my writing skills for the UPSC? - You can see this for How i had went about answer writing.

Around 70% of your time will go into optional. Do not sacrifice you optional for the sake of General Studies, because good marks in optional are crucial for a good rank. Interview is the most fickle and subjective part of UPSC. Do not depend on it to help you get a rank.

I had extensively used IASbaba TLP program and Vision IAS Test series to solve questions. TLP was done to get more relevant content and practice writing answers, and Vision was done to ensure effective time Management. You will find many questions which are new. Consider them as notes and keep revising.

Finally some points that you should keep in Mind.

1. Do not ignore Essay practice. It is very important.
2. Create boundaries for your course, so that you can get 3–4 revisions atleast.
3. Stick to the syllabus like it is your mother. Go topic by topic and cover each and everything given in the syllabus.
4. Do not ignore Test series. Giving One test is better than 2–3 days of revisions as in the end time management is everything. Balance out learning raw material and writing answers
5. Complete all the questions in the exam. Write something relevant in the tests even if you dont know much about it. 1–2 marks fetched like this take you a long way. And every question that you knew and left because of paucity of time takes your rank down atleast 50.

Though I realise that ideally we should read from various different books to build a holistic knowledge. But paucity of time and vastness of the course often pushed me towards Coaching notes which were very to the point.

For all those aspirants who are expecting to give Mains this year, Kudos. Chill for some time because you have a busy schedule waiting for you in a few days.

For those, who missed this time. Its okay. Next time will be the golden time. Do not lose hope. Get yourself together and work again with patience !

Study hard, Stay motivated and Prepare well !

All the Best !

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