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You must have had practised writing enough, must be trying to locate your centre and might be a little nervous as well. It is ok! After all you are about to get into the battleground of probably the toughest examination in the country. Do not let the nervousness overwhelm you. 

Thy who lost sweat practicing, shall lose no blood!

You must have read a plethora of tips about how to writing answers, I thought of sharing few from our side. Here are quick 19 on answer writing for IAS Mains:

1. Write in simple, grammatically correct English. No literary prose is needed.

2. Try to give the context of the answer if you can in your opening remarks. End it with a something concrete and do not leave it hanging in air with an abrupt end which mostly happens due to paucity of time.

3. Write in points or paragraphs as you feel comfortable. There is just no restriction or stated rule for or against any of these ways of answering.

4. The thoughts should flow across the answer seamlessly with no hopping from one idea to another but in a systematic manner.

5. Try that you don’t leave any question unattempted as it forecloses any chance of getting any mark even if the examiner was in a jubilant mood. But that does not mean you should write just about anything. Just think of one-two relevant point and write it.

6. Come over this ‘Should ‘black’ or ‘blue’ pen be used?’. Use whichever of them you are carrying.

7. Avoid cuttings and over-writing (that college tactic to write an alphabet such that it can be interpreted as a ‘b’ or ‘d’  shall not work in UPSC). College examiners could be approached to make them interpret the word as we wanted them to interpret. No such liberty is available in UPSC.

8. In case you want to underline certain sentences, do it there and then. If you leave it for the fag end, it shall entail reading the answer all over again and you really might not be able to finish reading them all.

9. Do not write in the margins as is also instructed by the UPSC. And these fellows do take their instructions seriously. In any case if you had something really good to write you would have written it in the main portion. Anything written in margins shall only be superfluous in most cases.

10. Avoid using red ink for writing or underlining.

11.  When you use diagrams/maps, give them a title, give them a number like fig1. or fig2. and give their reference at the relevant point in your answer.

12. Do not actually sit down to count words. Those who have been practicing answer writing shall have a fair idea of how many of their sentences/paragraphs make up 150-200 words. (Another benefit of answer writing). And this is how even the examiners will guess the number of words in your answer if they must. They shall never actually count them. (And of course you must also remember that content matters more than the length)

13. Some of us have this tendency that as we write on un-ruled sheets, our sentences tend to get tilted in a particular direction. It is annoying for the examiner to tilt his/her head at odd angles to read what you might have written. So avoid it.

14. Ensure your hand-writing is legible. If it is illegible, who can stop the examiner from just marking it with a zero or one or two and move on. No one is going to question him/her. So why give him/her this chance?

15. UPSC instructs that unwritten pages should be crossed. Please do it with a small diagonal line across the page. Avoid a big cross cutting across the length and breadth of the page which might also leave a mark on the back page.

16. When you are done with an answer, draw a small horizontal line telling the examiner it is over.

17. Keep the booklet neat. You must have noticed that sometimes, when we write, our palm rests on the sheet. Ensure it is free of any ink marks (or is sweaty) which may leave smudges on the answer sheet.

18. Keep the water bottle that you may carry on the ground near your seat. I have heard cases where the bottle was kept on the table itself loosely capped in a hurry and an inadvertent push by an invigilator or a fellow candidate had the candidate’s hard work floating in water.

19. Carry enough number of pens/pencils and other stationery. And do carry a stencil of the geometrical figures.

And finally, 

Wish you lots of writing and lots of answers that you have already prepared!

Want to read more?

• IAS Mains answer writing – Explained via a model answer
• IAS Mains 2015 GS Paper Analysis: The Ringside View
• IAS Mains Writing Essentials – Reading and answering a question as it should be!
• IAS Mains Writing Essentials – Reading and answering a question | Part 2

Here is a set of 21 probable questions forward by Mitra’s IAS – Leading coaching academy for Philosophy and Ethics.

For those appearing for IAS Mains 2015, give this a last minute look. For those preparing at leisure, see if these concepts strike as common sense to you.

Attempt the following

1. Today , building trust in government is a worldwide concern.
2. Develop your own set of core values. Would these provide you with guidance or be a straightjacket on decisions you have to make ? Why ?

3. What is the difference between responsibility and obligation ? Give example where you have experienced the tension between the two ?

4. What is difference between obedience and loyalty ? Are both always virtues ?

5. The “many hands” problem in public offices often makes it difficult to pin point responsibility.

6. Draw on your experience or otherwise of how organizational culture shapes individual behavior.

7. People often argue that it is wrong to use immoral means to serve moral ends. Describe a situation that you experienced or imagine in which immoral means are used to achieve a moral purpose.

8. Free rider issues often confront public managers. Discuss two examples of free rider problems.

9. Why does corruption captures the headlines when it is often the same old story with different actors?

10. Why is leadership so important to developing and maintaining an ethical organizational culture ?

11. “History of mankind is actually history of values.” Critically examine with suitable illustrations.

12. Define by giving suitable examples
I. Ethical competency
II. Ethical illiteracy
III. Work is worship
IV. Inculcation of values
V. Dignity
VI. Intellectual Integrity

13.Knowledge without character is a deadly sin.

14. Is it ethical for a public employee to market the job knowledge and skills he has acquired while on a public payroll?

15. It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it .

16. When employees own the culture of their workplace – when they feel responsible for “how things work around here” – they won’t permit wrongdoing.

17. As we practice resolving ethical dilemmas we find ethics to be less than a goal than a pathway , less a destination than a trip , less an inoculation than a process.

18. How emotional competency and attitude helps in taking ethical decision?

19. Narrate one incident in your life when you had displayed leadership quality but you were sufferer and at the same time severely condemned . Also enumerate lessons learnt.

20. Suggest certain measures to encourage ethical behavior at your workplace. What could be challenges and how you would tackle them?

21. Is there any difference between practical solution and ethical solution ? Substantiate with suitable examples .

Prelims has a fair number of questions from Geography and fair number of them are actually based upon the map reading by the candidates. Geography Mains Paper II has 10 map based entries carrying a weight of twenty marks (as in the last paper).

So let us see how we can attempt Map Based Questions in IAS Prelims and Mains.

For Geography Optional:

The weightage carried by map based question has been reduced from 60 to 20 as in the last year’s paper. Twenty is good enough score to be ignored and even more for the claim that getting these entries right enthrals the examiner and weighs heavily in getting good score in Paper II and a poor attempt in the map entries has opposite effect on the examiner and consequently your score in the paper (though the claim still remains to be verified by any UPSC examiner or UPSC itself). So let us see what the trend is and how we can make the best out of it.

#1. In the last two years, the entries asked have been the ones that are not unheard of (who can forget the yesteryear’s Akrimota, Pirotan, Meghnagar,Van Tivu which had candidates literally in tears in that year). Luckily now, the entries can be easily located in the Atlas and a geography candidate would have definitely prepared about 8 out of them. So, do prepare all the prominent entries in the Atlas well in advance.

#2. Many of the entries are picked from the places that repeatedly appear in current affairs but for some unknown reason are still ignored by the candidates. Make a note of all such recurring places, locate them and prepare the write-up. While locating such entries scanning its neighbourhood shall not be a bad idea either and is recommended.

#3. Do have a outline map of India and practice and make small write-ups behind it itself. Helps in quick revision and breaks the monotony of referring to the Atlas.

#4. If you are not sure of an entry take a calculated risk and at least mark it in the right state if you must. Nellore marked in Tamil Nadu can sometimes infuriate sensitive examiners. That is to say don’t take wild risks.

#5. Don’t ignore the question to be attempted in the last 15 minutes which appears to be the general tendency among the candidates. In the last minutes you shall be too tensed to might just mark them wrong and then waste time in erasing and cutting. Treat the question on par with other question.

#6. If you do not know most of the entries (something I do not foresee going by the latest trend but for an examiner fired with strong wanderlust who decides to ask unheard of entries. In that case God Bless Us!)

For Prelims:

#1. What has been mentioned about the entries in the current affairs remains true here as well, in fact even more so in Prelims. So do locate them in the Atlas.

#2. Whenever you are bored with reading heavy stuff, try map reading. Many claim it is rejuvenating and that is not without truth.

#3. The questions asked in Prelims like arranging cities or rivers or hills or the likes in a particular order are designed in a way that the entries asked are at enough distance physically that the candidates can use elimination method or even their cursory reading of Atlas to zero in on the right answer.

#4.  If you have no idea about an entry, do not attempt it. More often than not it shall be a trap question. In 2009, a deceptively innocuous question on the country of location of Barail Range was asked and I still admire the examiner who had enough candidates waylaid into marking alternatives other than India.

#5. When you are dealing with map based questions and have enough time at disposal (which might be a rarity) and want to take a calculated risk then try to picture each entry separately in the Atlas and use elimination method.

#6. Do cover all the prominent entries from every continent. It is an easy attempt.

#7. When you locate a current entry in the Atlas, also notice the neighbourhood, for the neighbourhood is more enticing for few. For example, the examiner may not ask about the country the Sinai Peninsula is part of but the water bodies between which it is located.

#8. It might sound cliché now but is the most important instruction and that is, ‘Please do what you have just read in the above points!’

Happy Mapping!    

Note – CD is experimenting with user generated content that can help initiate a discussion at large. Should you wish to write on our platform, read the footnote in the bottom.

So… India is now intolerant?

For millennia, India has faced several invasions from outside, many of them even massacred thousands. But, people of India adjusted to them and accepted them.Now, don’t go so back in history, just see after independence. Remember Sikh Massacre after Indira Gandhi assassination(1984)? Gujarat riots(2002), Muzzafarpur riots(2013), few days back here in Phulwari Sarif, Patna(2015), curfew was imposed.

Well, if you don’t know, let me tell you…As per the Indian constitution, public order and police are state subjects as enumerated in the state list of 7th schedule. That means state has the responsibility for maintaining public order. However, state has responsibility,but for this non sense killing/rioting a government cannot be held responsible. It is the people, illiterate people, whose religiosity is more than required. It is these people who are ready to kill anyone on the name of saving GOD. Also, in my opinion, hatred towards a ‘particular’ community is a result of terrorism. This intolerance in India can be attributed to these terrorist acts and terrorism. They contribute and make people more intolerant towards others.Intolerance is growing all over the world, not just in India as you may see 13 out of 50 states of USA are now not ready to accept even one refugee from Syria and Iraq after Paris attacks. Even earlier Germany and Hungary closed their border for refugees. Anti-muslim protest can be seen in Paris and other part of the world.

As fas as India is concerned, I cannot see any civil war going out here. People are living in peace. However, as already stated some people initiate communal riot and these illiterates will continue to do so. That doesn’t mean we should blame someone else for the act of these rascals.Now, as Amir Khan said his wife asked her that she want to leave India. I want to say one thing. Under article 21 of the Indian constitution, every Indian has a right to leave country. And this is a fundamental right, who are we to stop anyone?India is tolerant, however, this situation is somewhat created to destabilize the government and the country and to show to the world that India is intolerant and not invest here and to hamper its economic growth.Also, communal riot is not new in india.

It’s happening for more than a century. There was days when Hindu and Muslims lived in peace and communal riot was unknown in India as Hindu and muslim both fought soldier to soldier in 1857 mutiny. This communal problem is a result of historic process and british policy of divide and rule. As you may already know British gave active support to Muslim communalism and little support to Hindu communalism as no one can please both communalism at same time. This communalism resulted in partition of this country in 1947. This policy of divide and rule is well adopted by some Indians who use this for their own benefit.

Even doctored video and images are circulated to fan communal violence. All thanks to social media! Also, some communal news channels are always ready to propagate their agenda. Don’t fall prey to these communal people and stay away from any violence. Now, you decide yourself, India is tolerant or not.

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