Civil Services Exam – Simplified and Demystified - IV

Studying Current Affairs

Current Affairs form a large chunk of syllabus and questions at Prelims as well as Mains.  People suggest reading a number of newspapers and magazines. Some of their list contain newspaper – Hindu, Indian Express, Economic Times and magazines – Yojana, Frontline, World Focus, Economic and Political Weekly, Economist, Kurukshetra , Chronicle, Civil Services Times and Civil Services Mentor and many more. A normal aspirant like me will leave the preparation just hearing the names of these. Is reading all these required? No. If you are a normal human being, you cannot digest what all you learn in them.

I personally, never read any newspaper – not even Hindu. But, I followed quite a few things.

1. My Facebook page, serves as daily newspaper for me. I am lucky to have a network of well informed friends and colleagues who keep sharing good articles, important news on the facebook feed. The best part was that it was filtered material. Best articles on different topics were shared by them – so I got to read news from variety of sources – right from Times of India to Guardian to Wall Street Journal 
2.   I never read any newspaper, especially Hindu as I found it wastage of time.  Instead, I used to refer upscportal.com where they have Today’s Important News. They select some 10-12 important news from Hindu daily and publish it. I used to just read these 10-12 news articles, sometimes even 5-6 items as per what I perceive to be useful. 
3.    Read – Monthly Policy Review (a must do – it is a Goldmine) and Bill Summary from Prsindia.org. It will consume 15 hours per month of your time. 
4.    I found Current Affairs booklet of VisionIas published at the end of every month very useful. You can finish it in maximum 15-20 hours per month. 
5.   While you are eating or relaxing, you can watch some episodes of Rajya Sabha TV panel discussion. Avoid watch CNN IBN or Times Now, they create only noise and are of little use in terms of content.
6. You may choose to read some magazine , but I do not see any need, if you have followed above mentioned things quite well.

Newspaper Debate

I never read Hindu, dint like it. But surely, it cannot be avoided. As mentioned in point 2, I did selective newspaper reading. But is it effective? My calculation shows a normal aspirant spending at least 2.5-3 hours daily – which is around 90 hours per month on Hindu itself. Using Point 2, you spend 30 minutes daily, so effectively 15 hours per month. PRS Monthly Policy Review and Vision IAS document you spend another 30 hours. So, things can be done in a better manner covering more number of topics in just 45 hours rather than just wasting your 90 hours reading just Hindu.