Hi All,
We all know that major portions of the
"newly-added" syllabus for Mains-2013
have been sourced from/can be referenced from one of the Optional. Thereby the huge cry by coaching institutes of so and so marks of GS coming from their subject :P
I am trying to
source and link the contents for the newly added GS portion with relevant sections from my optional, Geography. I am also attaching the
Previous Year Papers from those concerned sections. Though the content for the Optionals are of Graduation and above level, however, it won't be a surprise if
UPSC picks up questions from these sections of Optionals / or use them as base reference.
This is just my opinion.For Example. For GS-I - History of the World, UPSC can/may refer Questions from Paper - II of History Optional -> Unit 18 - 26.
18. Industrialization.
19. Nation-State System.
20. Imperialism and Colonialism.
21. Revolution and Counter-Revolution.
22. World Wars.
23. The World after World War II.
24. Liberation from Colonial Rule.
25. Decolonization and Underdevelopment.
26. Unification of Europe.
I reiterate that the level for Optional is Graduation and above and the nature of the paper demands specialization. Also the questions that have been asked may be well above those required for Generalist/"Well-educated-individual" level of understanding. However, my intention is that we get some basic/rough idea as to what kind of questions can be expected from these section? That is all that I am trying for.
As stated earlier, I will attach the portions from Mains Optional that are relevant to GS papers and I would also attach the question paper for those sections.
Please note that the questions may be a few notch above what may be necessary, please use your discretion for the same. As we all know,
it would be difficult for every individual to source all the question-banks and pick-up the relevant sections / questions. Thus I would request fellow ForumIAS folks to contribute from their Optional. As History, especially World History is the flavor of the day :P, I would request
@Eric @rm1 to help with that. For Sociology related sections (including those from P-IV), I think
@arindamsarkar would be the right person.
@Partho for Public Administration (Although GS P-II is more of Polity, however there is P-III and P-IV, Disaster management, Ethics among other topics),
@stardust1901 for IR. Among other ForumIAS members. Apologies if I got the Optional wrong and for unsolicited tagging
Please do suggest any changes or alternative that one may have. My apologies if this seems like an overkill!
Cheers!
Comments
Please note that 1. Salient features of world’s physical geography and 3. Important Geophysical phenomena.... have already been covered for Prelims. So there should not be any problem. The books that were followed for Prelims along with the what has been discussed in Booklist for GS Mains coupled with Wikipedia, Youtube videos, Google-ing should suffice. No specialist-level study is needed.
For 2. Distribution of key natural resources across the world (including South Asia and the Indian subcontinent); factors responsible for the location of primary, secondary, and tertiary sector industries in various parts of the world (including India)
-> For the India based portion one can refer Industry Portion of Geography Paper-II
For GS-III - Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc., one may refer Transport, Communication and Trade chapter from Geography Paper-II.
Please find attached, Previous-year question papersfor the mentioned sections.
I hope this helps!
But I'm sticking to my graduation subject for mains.as I'm more comfortable with it than my newly-deified erstwhile second optional.
As far as GS IV is concerned, I have a sneaky feeling that it's going to be a long format version of the CSAT decision-making questions. 2nd ARC reports & DoPPGP, MHA, etc relevant annual reports are going to be important.
Mains syllabus.
General Studies- I:
===================
(*) Salient features of Indian Society,
Diversity of India.
(*) Role of women and women’s
organization, population and
associated
issues, poverty and developmental
issues, urbanization, their problems
and their remedies.
(*) Effects of globalization on Indian
society
(*) Social empowerment,
communalism, regionalism &
secularism.
General Studies- II:
====================
(*) Government policies and
interventions for development in
various
sectors and issues arising out of their
design and implementation.
(*) Development processes and the
development industry- the role of
NGOs, SHGs, various groups and
associations, donors, charities,
institutional and other stakeholders
(*) Welfare schemes for vulnerable
sections of the population by the
Centre and States and the
performance of these schemes;
mechanisms,
laws, institutions and Bodies
constituted for the protection and
betterment of these vulnerable
sections.
(*) Issues relating to development
and management of Social
Sector/Services relating to Health,
Education, Human Resources.
(*) Issues relating to poverty and
hunger.
(*) Important aspects of governance,
transparency and accountability,
e-governance- applications, models,
successes, limitations, and
potential; citizens charters,
transparency & accountability and
institutional and other measures.
(*) Role of civil services in a
democracy.
General Studies-III:
====================
(*) Inclusive growth and issues
arising from it.
(*) Land reforms in India.
(*) Investment models.
(*) Disaster and disaster
management.
(*) Linkages between development
and spread of extremism.
(*) Role of external state and non-
state actors in creating
challenges to internal security.
(*) Challenges to internal security
through communication networks,
role of media and social networking sites in internal
security challenges, basics of cyber security;
money-laundering and its
prevention
(*) Security challenges and their
management in border areas;
linkages of organized crime with
terrorism
Any help with the compiled question bank with the previous years' questions from World History section of the history optional would be highly appreciated.
Please help!