Showing posts with label general knowledge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label general knowledge. Show all posts
Tips on reading The Hindu
Never
give more than 90 minutes to read The Hindu on an average (except for
the first 1-2 months, where you haven’t acclimatized yet). If the
newspaper is filled with good information, you may give upto 2 hours
also, but sometimes in the week, you will find that the newspaper does
not contain important information. Hence, it can even be finished in
30-40 minutes. So try to keep the average time devoted to reading The
Hindu to less than 90 minutes.
Environment and Ecology: Biodiversity, IUCN, hot spots, global warming, critically endangered species, climate change, sustainable development, deforestation, wildlife conservation, Indian environment law etc.
Geography: Any recent disaster, Tsunami, Earthquake, Landslide, monsoon, draught, and its management, human refugee crisis, Change in cropping patterns due to Global Warming etc.
New Flagship Schemes: Analysis of the new flagship schemes and policies of government of India. Ex: AADHAR, Food security bill, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Janani Suraksha Yojana, Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, NRHM, JNNURM etc.
Disaster management: (Earthquake, Tsunami, Floods, Landslides etc.), hunger, malnutrition, empowerment, climate change, global warming, global governance, internet governance, important summits like BRICS, World level or UN level summit or any big meeting of G-20, G-7 etc.
Now we will deal with specific sections in the newspaper. I have given them rating based on the average content which I seen in the newspaper for last five years (2010-2015) on a scale of 1-10, where 1 mean lowest yield topic (avoid it completely) and 10 means highest yield topic (odds of a question popping in the exam from this particular section are astronomically high).
- Do not read multiple newspapers. For ex., If you are reading the Hindu, then no need to read the Indian express or vice-versa. Also no need to subscribe to a financial newspaper (unless you have economics optional).
- Difference between high yield and low yield material:
High yield material is the one which has a very value of the ratio of
in examination to the number of hours studied. Theoretically, questions
can be asked from an section or any news of the paper. But, it is not
wise to read the entire newspaper by devoting 4 hours everyday, because
you need focus on other subjects as well. So, always try to read only
those topics which have a high yield.
High Yield Material = No. of Questions Expected/Number of Hours Studied
- When dealing with editorials, you ought to have a good vocabulary, otherwise you will waste way to much time and you will not comprehend anything in the newspaper. I will write a separate blog post on how to improve your English skills (watch out for that).
- Notes making:
- Do not cut and paste any article from the newspaper. You and I both know that those articles will wound up in the dustbin.
- Also don’t copy paste the text as it is either from the newspaper.
- If you are reading from the web and if you really like the article, try to book mark it.
- Always try to rephrase the articles using keywords and phrases.
- No need to write in complete sentences. No one else need to understand those notes except you. I have attached my sample notes which I made from March and April 2013. You will know how.
- You have to filter out the news item based on the following:
- Syllabus: There are hardly 4-5 lines written when it comes to prelims syllabus, but a detailed guidelines are given when it comes to mains syllabus. Read the syllabus at least once every week. Especially true for syllabus of GS paper 1 to 3. Topics like security, disaster management, new development in Science and Technology, animal rearing, contribution of Indian scientists etc. are new additions to the syllabus in 2013. So, watch out for any news articles which talks about these issues.
- Previous Year Questions: Look out for last 4-5 years questions and try to read all the articles which are relevant to frequently asked topics. You will also realise that with the addition of new syllabus, the questions have become really dynamic and more and more current focussed in the mains exam.
- Keywords and phrases: If the newspaper articles contain these important keywords and phrases, you should read them in details. However, this list is merely indicative and not exhaustive. You should try to add your own words as the time passes by.
Environment and Ecology: Biodiversity, IUCN, hot spots, global warming, critically endangered species, climate change, sustainable development, deforestation, wildlife conservation, Indian environment law etc.
Geography: Any recent disaster, Tsunami, Earthquake, Landslide, monsoon, draught, and its management, human refugee crisis, Change in cropping patterns due to Global Warming etc.
New Flagship Schemes: Analysis of the new flagship schemes and policies of government of India. Ex: AADHAR, Food security bill, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Janani Suraksha Yojana, Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, NRHM, JNNURM etc.
Disaster management: (Earthquake, Tsunami, Floods, Landslides etc.), hunger, malnutrition, empowerment, climate change, global warming, global governance, internet governance, important summits like BRICS, World level or UN level summit or any big meeting of G-20, G-7 etc.
Now we will deal with specific sections in the newspaper. I have given them rating based on the average content which I seen in the newspaper for last five years (2010-2015) on a scale of 1-10, where 1 mean lowest yield topic (avoid it completely) and 10 means highest yield topic (odds of a question popping in the exam from this particular section are astronomically high).
Main page
- Read all the headlines (usually 5-6 in number)
- Few important articles are there.
- Political commentaries, announcements, gossips, crimes etc. are not be read at all.
- Most of the important news usually redirects to the inside pages of the newspaper
- So, you should spend no more than 5 minutes
- Sometimes there are announcement of major schemes, policies, meets, laws etc. Then you need to give 10-15 minutes.
State (2-4 or 2-5)
- Cover regional level news. For example: New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai etc. The news item don’t shares anything in common with each other.
- Sometimes the news differ even within NCR
- UPSC knows this, so they will not ask questions from these pages
- If a regional level news is important, it will be covered in the national section.
- So, AVOID it at all cost
National (6-7)
- This section usually contain a lot of high yield news material.
- Read important news like:
- Debate on whether PM Jan Dhan Yojana will enable conditional cash transfer
- Has Mid-may meal made more impact in tackling malnutrition and improving attendance in schools in few states more than other
- Any inter state river dispute
- Distribution of Free generic medicine in a particular state. Its impact and replicability at a level.
- India-Africa Forum summit : Key points
- Government limiting surrogacy to “infertile couples in India” and not extending this facility to foreigners
- Powers of Delhi police : Kerala house raid
- Development of Nuclear pact with Australia
- Usually, about half of the news item are worth reading.
Editorials and Op-Ed
- When it comes to editorial, read the two smaller ones on the left hand side of the page. They are extremely useful and can be read in 10 minutes.
- The main editorial should be read at least 20/30 times in a month. It helps you shape your opinion, and also in answer writing. The editorial is arranged in a structured manner: starting from introduction, body and conclusion. It generally has a mix of optimism and pessimism, followed by constructive criticism and redressal mechanism. This is precisely how your answer should be.
- Open editorial also encompasses lots of brilliants articles, though some of the articles are totally useless. So you need to apply a proper filtering using the keywords which I have written above.
- A.S. Panneerselvan: He is the readers editor of The Hindu. Please do not read articles written by him as they usually revolve around effective journalism and has no relevance whatsoever with respect to The Hindu.
- Writers whose articles are to be read include P Sainath, Harsh Mander etc.
International section
- The events progress at a very slow pace akin to snail’s pace.
- Most of the news items talks about deaths, protests and political upheavals
- By and large, you don’t need to read them in detail on a daily basis.
- However you should keep an eye on the main sub-events. For example, Syrian civil war is going on for almost 5 years and at least 15-20 news item appear on a monthly basis, so obviously you can’t and shouldn’t read all of them. However, it becomes imperative that you don’t lose track of Russia’s decision to enter the civil war because it is a major sub-event under the overall aegis of Syrian crisis.
- My personal suggestion is that rather than tracking such sluggish events on a day-to-day basis, read them all at the end of the month from wiki or current affairs module, because very few of them are actually worth reading.
- Never forget to focus in important news which can be useful for International Relations section
Business/ Finance
- Read all the articles from government sources, like Raghuram Rajan, concerned ministers, secretaries etc.
- Relating to SEBI, IRDA, RBI, Inflation
- Any change in fiscal policy by the government (tax rates, subsidises, government expenditure) or monetary policy by RBI (Repo rate, Reverse Repo rate, Open Market Operations etc.)
- Economic aspects of exploiting Demographic dividend,
- New developments in annual financial statement (Budget)
- Avoid reading boring and tedious interviews, profit-loss news of a particular corporate entity, Q1, Q2 etc. quarterly reports, salaries of CEO, fluctuations in share, rupee, dollar, gold, silver etc.
Science and Technology
- Earlier it used to come on a Thursday (from 2010-2014, I can vouch for this fact as I have personally read it).
- But it has been discounted since then.
- So I will suggest that you make a shift to Science Reporter (monthly government magazine)
- Read all the major articles which are scattered through out the week under different sections
- Make copious notes from this section as many questions will be asked directly plus they are extremely volatile esp. for non-science background
- Especially focus on the ones which are dealing with the present technologies (vaccines, space exploration, national schemes, diseases, recent advances in medical science, its use in others fields like sports, agriculture, manufacturing etc.)
- Avoid all those news which are based on one-off research, based on current fads like dieting, exercise, weight lose etc., and also which talk about technologies being developed for distant future.
Agriculture and allied sections
- Comes sometimes where they talk about which worms are good for he crop or which fertiliser to use for increasing productivity of the soil.
- Avoid completely
Book Review
- Appears sometimes in the newspaper.
- Avoid it at all cost.
Sports
- 2-3 pages everyday.
- Extremely low yield material
- I myself have been guilty of wasting 30 minutes on this section, so I will advice caution (especially to the darker sex).
- Avoid it completely
Open page
- Readers write their personal experience on topics like
- How India is developing or not
- How always their mother is the best
- How younger generation has stopped respecting elders
- How childhood times were the best when they were eating Dosa and Imli Ki Chatni with their Amma.
- Avoid it. Completely worthless.
Supplements
- Most of the aspirants use them to clean their tables, eating lunch, packaging material and throwing out garbage in it.
- They usually contain news on fashion, movies, cooking, art and culture, book release, travel
- Some stupid arguments in favour of reading the supplements is that they contain questions on Art and Culture. It is 100% true that they do contain fodder material on Art and Culture. But so does every other damn books, coaching notes and photocopy material on the by-lanes of Old Rajinder Nagar and Mukherjee Nagar.
- Whenever I went to eat some rolls in the Old Rajinder nagar (along with my friends who were also preparing for civil), I found tons and tons of material and even bought some of them
- But all of them were copy paste from standard books like NCERT, Spectrum or from the wikipedia.
- So my sincere advice is never ever to read the supplement which comes inside the newspaper.
- Avoid reading them
Last page
- Rarely important news
- Avoid news relating to archaeological excavations, recovery of stolen artefacts, new coins unearthed, new clothes found.
- Also avoid news related to discovery of new species in Western Ghats.
- Sometimes, they talk about humanitarian issues, read them
