Magazine
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- March 2022
Index
Toppers Talk
Governance & Social Justice
International Relations
- The South China Sea Conflict: Analysis in In-depth
- Bangladesh’s success story, Role of china, current issues between the two countries, cooperation
- India’s Act East Policy | Analysis | objective of Act East Policy
- Blunders of NATO
- Indian firms to buy more oil from Russia, energy ties to deepen | Russia-Ukraine Crisis
- India-Myanmar Relations: Importance & Background
- India – Bhutan relations | Important debate simplified
- India’s Game plan for Tibet | Geopolitics Simplified
Geography
Economy
- NITI Aayog announces 5 aspirational districts in Agriculture & Water Resources sector
- Inland Waterway Vessel MV Lal Bahadur Shastri from Patna to Guwahati
- After Russia, Iran offers oil to India, proposes revival of Rupee
- Hydropower development turns a Uttarakhand village into a graveyard
- Operation Greens | aims to ensure right price for farmers | promote FPO | Government Policies
- Why India has to be ‘Atmanirbhar’ in Tech?
- Can Russia use Cryptocurrency to evade sanction?
Defence & Security
Disaster Management
Science & Technology
- How can Artificial intelligence/machine learning help the Indian judiciary reduce pendency?
- How Blockchain technology can make UPI a Global Payment System?
- India lacks a solar waste handling policy. What is Solar Waste?
- Kahani Koyle Ki’ | A satirical Representation of Extraction of Coal and Increasing Pollution
Environment
IFS Interview – Complete guidance for UPSC CSE Prelims by Saurabh Kumar, IFS
- Tell us about your journey to becoming an IFS (Indian forest service) officer ?
Saurabh Kumar – I graduated in 2010, then worked for 6 years. I left my job in 2016 to prepare for the services. Since I had started my preparation late I decided to take Mathematics optional which was common for both Civil service and IFS (Indian forest services). This decision was taken so that I could give maximum number of Mains attempts to get into the services. This strategy worked for me and I was able to crack the exam and get into the services in 2019.
- What motivated you to leave a well settled job and start the journey of preparing for civil services ?
To be honest coming from a middle class family my first aim was to gain monetary independence. Once I attained it i started looking for job satisfaction.I also wanted to serve the people of my country.
- What can aspirants do to attain the same conviction as you had while preparing for civil services ?
This can be done by putting consistent efforts. Try to be better than you were a day before. Secondly, remove the fear of failure. By merging hard work with smart work one can easily clear the examination. One must understand that one can still find success in various other fields if one fails to attain success in the examination.
- Kindly suggest a strategy for an aspirant which will help him in clearing the examination and prevent him from facing repeated failures ?
First suggestion I would give to the aspirants is Self analysis , second key to success is to Identify mistakes and work towards rectifying them. Personally after giving the exam I used to make a list of mistakes I would want to correct in my preparation and while giving the examination. Next one needs to balance out their preparation and allocate the preparation time based on the relevance and importance of a topic for the examination. Both hard work as well as smart work is required in all 3 stages of the examination.
- Sir please simplify how an aspirant should approach Static as well as current portion (especially from Prelims perspective)?
Priority for an aspirant should be to first cover the static syllabus. During preparation it was my priority to cover the static syllabus. Current Affairs is like a vast ocean so my suggestion to Aspirants would be to not compromise on static syllabus while trying to cover current affairs. Daily reading of the newspaper along with current affairs magazine is sufficient to cover the current portion.
- Kindly put light on how an aspirant should strategise for Prelims?
I would recommend a 3 step approach 1) First, cover the basic books 2) Look at previous year questions while covering these basic books – this will help you prioritise relevant topics. The topics which have not been covered holistically in the basic try and make notes from online sources 3) Third, try and develop elimination skills (I refer to them as smart skills) to arrive at the correct options in Prelims.