My Notes

I would have uploaded all my public administration and history notes last year itself in October but I couldn't find a scanner. Only a few days back I found one and I thank Mr. Pranesh who patiently scanned hundreds of pages.

Second Administrative Reforms Commission reports' notes (2nd ARC reports)

World History notes

Miscellaneous topics in Indian history
(Only for people with History optional)

History maps
(Only for people with History optional)

I will upload few more things when time permits and I will share them in this post itself.

One More Time!

UPSC CSP - 2012 results are out and yet again I am through. Prelims is the only exam I have been performing well consistently since my first attempt. It is not like Mains where your luck and fate matters more than your merit. So even before I gave the exam, I knew that I would pass this easily, unless God wants to fuck me badly and prove that anything can happen if he wants. Moreover prelims is only the first and easiest hurdle to cross, most difficult being Mains. So there is nothing like feeling elated.

Some are saying 12876 have qualified, and some 13000 plus. I am too slothful to count. But what is special about this results is the day UPSC declared them. Today is Saturday and never ever UPSC released Civils results on Saturday. Everyone was cocksure that results wont be out today. That was till this afternoon. Someone called me in the afternoon and asked me whether I have qualified. I told him that results are not out yet. Then he informed me what UPSC is upto. UPSC has proved to the world once again that it is unpredictible and that nothing is sacrosanct.

Bye for today.

Analysis of Civil Service Mains - 2011 results

List of roll numbers and optionals of candidates who wrote civil services written test (Mains) in 2011.

List of candidates who passed Mains in 2011 along with their optionals, Indian language paper, center code.

Pass percentage in different optionals in Mains 2011.

List of Indian Languages and the corresponding number of students selected with these language papers.

Lion's share of 2418 candidates who are selected for interview come from Hindi heartland of India. 1496 candidates to be exact. They come from the states of Bihar, UP, MP, Haryana, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Chattisgarsh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, few from Punjab etc.

Last year, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu candidates performed extremely well grabbing disproportionately high number of seats. But this time their numbers in all likeliness will decrease as relatively less number of candidates are selected for interview. Maharashtra's performance will improve this time.

Coming to the performance of the optionals, this year UPSC didn't punish subjects and treated most of the optionals in a balanced way, evenly. Last year Psychology, History, some science optionals suffered, whatever be the reasons. Most of the candidates with Psychology optional got ridiculously low marks with few getting ridiculously high marks. Till now no body is sure about the reasons behind this. But this time that kind of surprises are limited to two optionals Management and Law. Management has 7.79 conversion rate and Law has 14.59 conversion rate. Low conversion rate with Management can be explained by taking in to account CSAT because of which non-serious MBA candidates wrote Mains.

CSAT also explains why number of candidates with optionals either History or Philosophy decreased drastically when compared with earlier years. Most of the Hindi medium junta with these optionals either failed in CSAT or didn't write it.

History and Psychology performed well this time with conversion rates over 22%. This is good news for me as one of my optionals is History. :-) Generally the conversion rates reflect the marking scheme, this year it is most likely liberal.

As usual literature optionals performed extremely well with conversion rates ranging from 25% to 100%. Overall conversion rate is 33.58% which is ridiculously high. Overall 538 got selected out of 1602. Kannada, Malayalam, Pali, Hindi, Tamil constitutes the bulk.

And as usual science subjects didn't perform well. Only silver lining is Chemistry which has seen this year its best performance since 2008 with 18.5% conversion rate. This is on par with the low level performance of Pub Ad.

Overall I am satisfied that UPSC's methods of normalization or scaling is more balancing than last year when Sociology, Geography, Pub Ad benefited and many undeserving candidates got through.

Civil Services Mains 2011 Results

Finally the wait is over. Results are declared today. In total 2418 candidates are selected. And I am one of them. :-))))

As usual, there are some genuinely deserving candidates who aren't selected. They are knowledgeable, intelligent, hard working, have good writing skills, and more importantly they did well in the exams. I can understand what may be going through in their minds now. Friends, don't give up! UPSC may be unpredictable, it may test your character, this time you may not be lucky, but persistence may pay you finally.

Going by what I see, this time more veterans got selected than freshers. That was expected, as many of the people who got selected in prelims were freshers who were not good either in GS or optionals. They got through only because of the aptitude exam newly introduced in prelims. It was natural that they would funk in Mains.

After the results are out, we can estimate which optionals have high success ratio and which have low. That can't be said now.

IAS Coaching: Public Admin - Puri and Pawan

These two achieved lot of name in the last two years because of their test series. Promotion by top rankers like Anay Dwivedi helped Pawan a lot. I happened to attend one of Pawan's course  which he called as quality enrichment programme. I am not sure about the name though.

Pawan used to teach at Sriram 3 years back. Some of his students didn't like his teaching and they complained to Sriram. Something happened and his courses were removed from the curriculum and he was forgotten. After 1 year or so I heard from Anay Dwivedi that someone by the name Pawan offers test series and he was immensely helped by the test series. Honestly speaking, I didn't think that this Pawan and the Pawan I know were the same.

Pawan is not money minded which is rare among the coaching breed of Delhi. He is always available to the students at a phone call. These are the 2 best things I observed. But in my opinion this very same advantage is working against him. He is not able to manage the time properly. Instead of wasting time in explaining the silly doubts to idiots who come to him after the class, he should concentrate on test series which originally brought him the name.

Coming to the teaching, he makes every thing simple, teaches in simple language which every one can understand. But one problem is he rushes through the things a lot. For someone who read the things once that may be okay but for a beginner that is a big hurdle. So beginners be careful before joining his coaching. He actually tries to correlate the current events with static part, which I found good. That, some what makes our life simple.

I will write about his test series (whatever name he calls it) later which I found not worth.

Puri also became famous because of test series. From what I heard is that he is not good in paper 1 but very good in paper 2. That means that he is good at the dynamic part of the syllabus and he correlates the current affairs with static part well which is good news. His teaching is more information oriented than concept oriented, i.e. he focuses more on delivering lot of information.

I will talk about his test series later.

My suggestion would be don't join any coaching and study yourself. But if you are itching to join one then follow this. If you are a beginner with absolutely no knowledge of the subject then the preference order shall be Mohanty, Puri, Pawan. If you have some knowledge, then the order shall be Pawan, Puri. No Mohanty in this list. Vajiram etc are out of picture as far as Public Administration coaching is concerned.

And avoid Bhavani Singh, Sunil Gupta at all costs.

IAS Coaching Centers: Public Administration (Cont)

Other famous PA coaching centers in Delhi are Pawan Kumar's institute, Bhavani's institute which is NIAS if I am not wrong, Sunil Gupta's institute which is Inspiration. Other one who is on the rise is Puri who teaches in Vision IAS if I am not wrong.

First of all, about Sunil Gupta's Inspiration. Believe me, he is the worst teacher you can come across ever. I happened to attend 2 of his classes. He cant speak even one proper sentence in English. I don't expect him to speak grammatically correct English which I admit that I cant do. But he is completely incomprehensible, can't communicate anything properly. We cant make out what he is mumbling. Here I am not even complaining about his Bihari accent, which I actually like. He uses his some refrain once in every 15 or 20 seconds, which fortunately I don't remember. Once in a while we may make out what he is saying only to realize that what he is saying is bullshit. His class notes is full of bullshit. Even though I didn't fortunately see his printed notes, safely we can say that even that is bullshit.

I will write about his famed test series in later posts. Don't miss it.

Don't fall for his publicity which unfortunately many does. You will repent later.

Next comes Bhavani Singh's NIAS. He takes up classes in Hindi and English, I am talking about his classes in English here. I met three persons who attended his classes and all of them gave scathing feedback. Absolutely nothing comes from his notes, his teaching is largely irrelevant to UPSC requirements. Most of the time students don't understand what he is teaching. His notes is crap.

My friends says that strength of the class rapidly declines as the course progresses. By the end of first 2 months of the course, less than 10 people attend his classes. This happens with every batch. You can understand that he is incapable of sustaining any interest in the students.

Pawan Kumar and Puri, in next post.

IAS Coaching Centers: Public Administration

Public Administration is the most popular optional as of now because of three reasons. Firstly, the syllabus if relatively small. Secondly, people get good marks with not much effort. This may be because UPSC is trying to promote the subject and twice in the last three years people scored heavily in PA (leaving aside 2009). Lastly, PA is very simple to understand. It closely resembles GS, helps in both GS and Essay and so helps in reducing the work load.

Naturally, the number of people who give CSE(Mains) more than doubled in the last 3 years. Number of PA coaching centers kept up with the rising number students. It has become a fad of sorts for those who complete their attempts of civil services to come to Old Rajendra Nagar or Mukherjee Nagar and open PA coaching centers to make a living.

As I wrote in one of my earlier post, PA is dynamic subject. So no amount of coaching is useful. Moreover most of the PA coaching centers in Delhi are of spurious kind which cheat the students under the sun and ruin the precious time and the chances. I will share the info on some of the PA coaching centers in Delhi.

First of all there is Synergy institute in Karol Bagh, run by a failed candidate in civils, Mr Mohanty. Many students attend his coaching and speaking in terms of market share, my guess is he has 30-35% market share. His class rooms overflow with the students, all the time some students have to stand outside the class as there is not enough space, there are not enough chairs. I heard from some that those students dont get to see him while he is lecturing but only get to listen to him through speakers located outside the class.

He is lazy bug, not punctual. He teaches only some part of the syllabus, static part essentially. I should admit that he is good at teaching the static part. Heard this from many. He leaves many important topics which are mostly dynamic to his minions who are utterly useless. He passes good chunk of time teaching what he knows the best. Rest all is rushed through by his minions in Usain Bolt's speed.

The problem is he doesn't relate the current events with the static part. I heard that he is trying to rectify his mistakes but still not okay. He gives case studies in explaining the things and I have to say that they are way pedestrian and stupid. Read them and read the case studies in ARC reports, you will understand what I am saying. I guarantee that if reproduce them in the exam, evaluator of your paper will be amused.

Moreover his students tend to insert his case studies forcefully in the answer. This spoils the flow of the question. Right way is to seamlessly integrate the case studies with the actual answer. More on this, later.

He gives some printed booklets to read from, which are highly unorganised. He merely copied from some papers, textbooks. He is such a lazy bug that he didn't even compile them properly. His class notes is better than his printed notes.

I will write about other coaching centers in the next posts.

IAS Coaching Centers: CSAT

Last year CSAT was introduced and that opened flood gates for many new coaching centers. Irony is that all these measures of UPSC to introduce changes in the pattern of the exam are aimed at eliminating the coaching centers. But introduction of CSAT frightened many students. Many didn't give attempt as they thought it was better to get a feel of the difficulty of the question paper first. Coaching centers made a killing from their fear.

Coaching center people were expecting questions of slightly lesser standard than CAT. They taught keeping in mind this level of difficulty. But the questions which were actually asked were of still lesser standard. Except a few questions of comprehension, every question was so easy that most of the people ended up scoring around 130-140 marks out of 200 with some people scoring as high as 180 marks.

I wrote mock tests of Vajiram, ALS, Sriram, TIME, Career Launcher put together around 20. Of all the question papers, I found TIME's question papers some what closer to the difficulty level of questions asked by UPSC but still on the higher side. I never used to complete the mock question papers of TIME within time but I completed the UPSC question paper within 1 hour 40 or so. Paper was that easy.

My suggestion is please don't join any coaching center for CSAT. Just give mock tests. You can get the photocopy of the mock question papers in the market. Don't give more than 100 hours or 150 hours of your time for preparing for CSAT. It's not worth more than that. Buy a good CSAT manual and practice only from that book.

IAS Coaching Centers: General Studies

As I wrote in earlier posts, coaching for GS is absolute waste of money and precious time. I told this to my friends and some others when they asked me to suggest some good coaching centers. But they didn't listen to me and joined Vajiram which is quite famous in Delhi.

What I want to say is that even if many advice the beginners not to join any coaching center for GS, they join them. I am familiar with some coaching centers in Delhi, I will give comparative analysis of some coaching centers with the help of the views current among the IAS aspirants in Delhi.

Rau's, Chanakya are the two names which many IAS aspirants would be familiar with even before they come to Delhi because of the advertisements in various magazines. Avoid these two at any cost. Two persons whom I personally know joined there when they came to Delhi and they still regret a lot.

Vajiram, Sriram in Delhi are two names in this field which are famous. Both are located in Old Rajendra Nagar.  Vajiram takes thousands of students into several batches. Sriram admits 100 or 200 mostly those who dont get admission in Vajiram. So teacher-student interaction is lot better in Sriram. In the class one may ask any doubts, after the lecture one can go to the teachers and ask any doubts.

Vajiram dedicates more time teaching biology, other sciences, ancient and medieval history, some useless things in economy, things from Manorama and shit which are quite useless from prelims point of view. Sriram doesn't waste much time on these useless things(except ancient and medieval history).

Polity is taught equally well in Vajiram and Sriram but I would prefer Sriram over Vajiram. Economy is taught very well in Sriram, badly in Vajiram. Geography is taught well Vajiram but no questions come from their teaching. S&T is not taught well in Sriram but the notes they give for S&T more than makes up for any deficiencies which is not the case with Vajiram.

On the whole I have to say Vajiram teaches well conventional part of the syllabus and ignores the non-conventional current affairs part. Vajiram is not keeping up with changing times. Sriram is a lot better in this regard. That is why Vajiram students regret a lot, after the giving prelims, after realizing the reality.

In Vajiram, notes is dictated instead of giving printed notes like in Sriram. This is because Vajiram is too lazy to update the printed material which renders it's printed material useless. Sriram updates the printed notes regularly and distributes the notes in the class. This saves a lot of time in Sriram classes.

Coming to the notes given by the coaching centers, there is consensus among the student community in Delhi that Sriram's notes is excellent, whether it is polity, economy, current affairs, social issues, international affairs, India and the World, S&T or anything. Same can not be said about the notes provided by Vajiram. Don't ever read the printed current affairs booklets provided by Vajiram. Even class notes is not upto the mark.

Enough of Vajiram and Sriram. there is one more famous coaching center, ALS in Mukherjee Nagar. It is more on the lines of Vajiram, focus is more on the conventional part.

I will add more later.

IAS Coaching Centers (Cont)

In the case of the static subjects the personality factors like ability to work hard, ability to understand the things, one's memory power, quality of one's peer group, quality of the guidance one can get etc comes into play.

One has to remember that everything that is taught in the coaching centers of static subjects is readily available in the text books. If the text books are not sufficient, notes of the coaching centers is readily available in the market.

One has to also remember that in coaching centers everything is taught superficially. This shallow knowledge is unhelpful in answering the questions in the exam which are being asked now a days. This is particularly true in case of subjects with huge syllabus like History, Geography etc. So after listening to the lecture, one has to study the textbooks to get a deep picture of the things. Coaching in this case only familiarizes the subject to the beginners. So what is the use of coaching then?

If one is patient enough and works hard, the necessity of the coaching centers can be eliminated. But if one has a starting problem in reading an entirely unfamiliar subject, he may join the coaching center for that static subject.

Some persons may remember the things by just reading the topics of the subject a few times. But to many persons listening to some topics is sometimes helps them more in memorizing the things than just reading them. Here coaching definitely helps. As the coaching centers only teaches superficially, this advantage of coaching is some what neutralized. But I have to admit that the basic structure of the subject sticks in the mind.

Some subjects require proper understanding of the subject unlike some subjects which require lesser understanding and more memory power. Philosophy comes under former category, History comes under later category. Obviously in this case coaching actually helps. Literature subjects like Pali too require coaching which makes life easy.

In my opinion, if there is someone who can guide you well, tell you what to read and where to read them from, clarify your doubts, then there is absolutely no need of any coaching for any subject. I will elaborate on this now.

Even in coaching centers, many times they tell the students to read from their notes and not from any textbooks. It is suicidal to follow this as their notes are ill-organised and written badly in most of the cases, not comprehensive in all the cases. Reading only their notes wont help you in answering most of the questions which are asked now a days. Reading from textbooks is must. Now, there may many textbooks for a subject, and not every thing is given at one place in a text book. Also, not everything given in the textbooks is useful. If there is someone to guide and tell you what to read and where to read from, your time wont be wasted. Coaching centers definitely don't do this.

If there is a quality peer group, your work is simplified, as through discussion your understanding improves. Shelf-life of the subject, in the mind improves. Coaching center's need will be reduced.

So I would say, analyse the subject and your personality from the above mentioned angles and assess the need of coaching yourself.

IAS Coaching Centers

Is it necessary to join any coaching center? If it is, then which coaching center? These are the two questions which inevitably come to a beginners mind.

The 'necessity' of joining any coaching center depends on the subject, the person's ability to work hard, ability to understand the things, his memory power, quality of his peer group, quality of the guidance he can get etc.

I call a subject static if the content of the subject isn't dependent on the current events. I call it dynamic if the content of the subject is dependent on the current events. In a dynamic subject, the questions asked in the exam 'may' be based on the current events. So are the answers to that questions. One needs to read the newspapers for the current events which are related to the subject and constantly update his knowledge about the subject. Needless to say, static subjects don't need all this.

General Studies, Public Administration, Political Science, Sociology, Economics etc come under the category of dynamic subjects.

Sciences and engineering subjects, History, literature subjects, Philosophy etc come under static subjects' category. Content is not at all dependent on the current events.

Geography, Psychology etc should ideally be put under the category of static subjects even though few things are current affairs related.

What is the use of this distinction?

With years of teaching same things again and again (as the content is static), teachers of static subjects are better than those who teach dynamic subjects. Even in dynamic subjects, there are some things which are static which are taught well by some teachers.

Problem arises when the content is dynamic. Most of the teachers are lazy to update their notes, relate the current affairs with the subject, read the government reports (as in the case of public administration). They just teach the static part of the subject and leave the dynamic part to the student himself. In the beginning, students may find that coaching is actually helping them but as the course progresses they realize that they have wasted their money. They feel that they could have easily learnt whatever they are taught by studying the textbooks themselves.

As the students realized this deficiency in them, now a days the teachers are trying hard to rectify it. But things more or less remain the same as of now. Because of few years of experience I have, with conviction I can say that students themselves can do far better job than the teachers. They just have to prepare notes of those things.

General Studies is the most dynamic of all the subjects. Most of the questions are based on the current events. Needless to say, coaching is least effective in it's case. Self-study is the best in this case.

Public Administration is equally dynamic. One can actually call the 2 papers of Public Administration as GS Paper 1 and GS paper 2. There are numerous coaching centers in Delhi which teach the subject, most of them are fraud.

So my concluding suggestion is don't join any coaching center for the dynamic subjects. That stands irrespective of the various personal abilities I mentioned above in 2nd para. I will deal with the static subjects in the next post.

UPSC: CSE Mains 2011 question papers

Here are the question papers of civil services exam mains 2011.

General Studies Paper 1

General Studies Paper 2

Essay

Public Administration Paper 1

Public Administration Paper 2

History Paper 1

History Paper 2