10/8/2014 THE INNER VOICE

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THE INNER VOICE

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Thursday, July 31, 2014

Posted by Varun Ranjan at 3:33 AM 1 comment:

Civil Services Exam – Simplified and Demystified - IV

Current Affairs form a large chunk of syllabus and questions at Prelims as well as Mains. People suggest reading anumber of newspapers and magazines. Some of their list contain newspaper – Hindu, Indian Express, Economic Timesand 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 justhearing the names of these. Is reading all these required? No. If you are a normal human being, you cannot digest what allyou 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 andcolleagues who keep sharing good articles, important news on the facebook feed. The best part was that it wasfiltered material. Best articles on different topics were shared by them – so I got to read news from variety ofsources – 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.comwhere they have Today’s Important News. They select some 10-12 important news from Hindu daily andpublish it. I used to just read these 10-12 news articles, sometimes even 5-6 items as per what I perceive to beuseful.

3. Read – Monthly Policy Review (a must do – it is a Goldmine) and Bill Summary from Prsindia.org. It willconsume 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 inmaximum 15-20 hours per month.

5. While you are eating or relaxing, you can watch some episodes of Rajya Sabha TV panel discussion. Avoid watchCNN 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 thingsquite well.

Newspaper DebateI never read Hindu, dint like it. But surely, it cannot be avoided. As mentioned in point 2, I did selective newspaperreading. But is it effective? My calculation shows a normal aspirant spending at least 2.5-3 hours daily – which is around90 hours per month on Hindu itself. Using Point 2, you spend 30 minutes daily, so effectively 15 hours per month. PRSMonthly Policy Review and Vision IAS document you spend another 30 hours. So, things can be done in a better mannercovering more number of topics in just 45 hours rather than just wasting your 90 hours reading just Hindu.

Studying Current Affairs

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Varun Ranjan

I like to be againstthe odds.I am notafraid to be lonely atthe top.With me it'sjust the satisfactionof the game. JustPerformance.

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About ThisBlog

It has been a long-long

night. The wait to see

the Sun rise from the

corner of the street ... I

have forgotten my

work , my dream .

Now, I must awake ,

rise and follow my

dream -- the order that

has been summoned

upon me by none other

than "My Own Inner

Voice ".

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