IAS Officer Shares 4 Important Tips to Ace Polity Paper in UPSC CSE

Every UPSC CSE aspirant knows how important the subject polity is. A solid foundation in polity and governance is crucial for an aspirant who is looking to secure a good rank in the examination. It will also help during the interview stage.

Manjul Shashi Jindal, an Indian Administrative officer who secured an All Indian Rank (AIR) of 53 in the 2017 UPSC CSE and is currently posted as CEO Zilla Parishad, Jalna.

He often takes to Twitter to share tips and strategies for aspirants preparing for the examination.

A recent Twitter thread reinforces the importance of being well prepared in polity. He said that a large number of questions in both the prelims and mains paper are from polity. He also mentions that this is a scoring subject.

He breaks this down into four parts:

1. What, how much, when:

This covers what sources to study from, how much time to dedicate to this subject, how to change preparation strategy from prelims to mains, how much time to dedicate to this subject and the importance of mocks and previous year’s question papers.

He recommends studying the NCERT class 10 book called ‘Constitution at Work.’ Along with this, Indian Polity by Laxmikant and his own set of notes. He also says that polity as a subject should be among the first three that one tackles while preparing. As far as the time to be allotted to this subject, he recommends one spends two full months preparing for it.

2. How to use resources:

While preparing for Laxmikant’s book, Manjul recommends not to go chronologically but follow his method of study instead. Following his method of study, he says will be more contextual and easier to even remember and understand in the long run.

While the book chapters deal with the history and making of the constitution feature, in the beginning, Manjul recommends only coming to these chapters towards the end of one’s preparation.

3. Key areas of focus:

Some of the areas that aspirants must necessarily focus on include, understanding the structure of our political system, understanding constitutional dimensions, being well updated on important Supreme Court judgments, especially the landmark orders passed and a focus on the previous year’s papers.

This will give aspirants an idea of the kind of questions that UPSC expects the aspirants to be prepared for.

4. Get your fundamentals right:

Reiterating the importance of NCERT’s Indian Constitution at Work, Manjul says that to ensure that one’s fundamentals on the subject are clear, this text must be used for preparation. Only after one has read this thoroughly should they venture into preparing from Laxmikanth’s textbook.

(Edited by Yoshita Rao)