- 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.
- 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.
Policy and Governance: Development of India, Shining, Demographic Dividend, Poverty, Judicial Review, Electoral Reforms, Niti Aayog, Make in India etc.
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.
Rating: 4/10
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
Rating: 2/10
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.
Rating : 7/10
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.
Rating: 8/10
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
Rating: 6/10
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.
Rating: 6/10
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.
Rating: 4/10
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
Rating: 1/10
Book Review
- Appears sometimes in the newspaper.
- Avoid it at all cost.
Rating : 1/10
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
Rating : 1/10
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.
Rating: 1/10
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
Rating: 0/10 (I know I said that the scale is from 1-10, but this deserve a big zero).
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
Rating: 2/10
I have deliberately not mentioned about the various pages like classified, matrimonial etc. Please read them if you are in need
I was going through my electronic world while I came across some e-notes which I made during my preparation days. This is an example of how I wrote key words and phrases from The Hindu newspaper in 2013.
These are my sample notes from March, 2013 and April, 2013. You may not understand the entire stuff as I have written only the keywords. Also I have taken note of Person in News because apparently that were asked a lot in 2011 and 2012. But no need to make such notes now. Hope it helps.
March 22, 2013
- Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt.
- Lathmar holi, Phag Mahotsava. Govind Devji temple, Jaipur.
- Save the children ‐ exclusive breast feeding for 6 months can save 210000 child complement it with soft food. 1/8th U5MR could be reduced by breast feeding alone i.e 830,000 baby in world can celebrate their 5th birthday. 22% new born death prevented by 1st hour Breastfeeding. Only 40% Indian receive colostrum‐ religious and traditional custom regarding colostrum.
- Meera Kumari ‐ Narmada Bachao Andolan
- Sardar Sarovar dam project‐ Navgam, Narmada Gujarat
- Bandhua Mukti Morcha to liberate bonded labour ‐ Rajesh Yagik.
- SP governemnt revived Yash Bharti prize (given for public service, literature, sports etc.)
- Jantantra morcha Anna Hazare former general VK singh
- Global sim card launched by hotmail fame Sabeer Bhatia, Jaxtr inc.
- Vrindavan widows play holi
- To tackle diarrhea ‐ ORT, zinc implementation, exclusive breastfeeding for first 6 months of child life and improvement in hygiene sanitation and drinking water, government funding terrific in development of rota virus vaccine
- President Xi Jinping at national people’s congress
- Sanjay Dutt: TADA arms act
- 3 high courts in Tripura, Manipur, Meghalaya, 21 to 24.
- Gujarat first state to use Geographic Information System in watershed management, for allocation of land for hospital, map forests
- Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger google Eric Schmidt + Narendra Modi + communication and info tech minister Kapil Sibbal. Activate Summit era of internet democracy, every serious politician should be on internet to connect to citizen instantly and it will automatically be reflected in media, without media filter ,creates ripple effect, but it is only add ‐on tool which is supplementary and complementary to traditional methods of campaigning.
- World water day march 22
- World TB day march 24, eliminate tb in my lifetime.
- Australian bat Lyssavirus
- Pietro Mennea Italy 1980 Moscow gold 200m also called arrow of the south Freccia del Sud
- Deals and discount website groupon chicago based company .
- Baba Kalyani head India-Japan business leader’s forum CMD of Bharat Forge Ltd .
- Exports to US and EU account for 30% overseas shipments from India during 11 months in 2012‐13.
- Merchandise exports declined by 4% to 266 billion $ mainly due to fall in exports of engineering goods, gems and jewellery textiles and petro. Yet it account for 80% of india’s export basket. Target 360 billion USD not even touching 300$. CAD last year 4.2% now already 4.4%.
- Tel aviv ben Gurion airport, Sana Syria’s state run news agency
- ESA (european space agency) revealed relic radiation from universe just after big bang, 50 million pixel, age is 80 million year older than previously thought. ESA planck satellite launched in 2009 to study Cosmic microwave background.
- Articles to be Bookmarked? That life saving drink article on colostrum page 8 periscope.
Most of you have asked me how to analyse or make notes from The Hindu or any book/source/material. I’m sharing my notes which I made 2.5 years ago. These are the summaries of The Hindu newspaper of that particular date.
If I found some article extremely awesome for the exam, rather than cutting its physical copy, I just used to bookmark it in my google chrome browser.
April 1, 2013
- Asha Bhonsle: Pd. Hridyanath lifetime achievement award
- Kalu dam + Thane district + controversial + FAC (forest advisory committee) of MOEF is reconsidering clearance given to this dam
- Armed force tribunal has a status of High Court ‐ may be given power of civil contempt in case of retired personnel but not in case of current personnel to avoid disturbing high discipline level
- Curfew in Sualkuchi silk village Assam’s Kamrup district + protest against Varanasi silk being sold as Assam silk Mekhla‐Chasdor assam female attire
- Dipak Bharali ‐ grassroot innovator got president’s state award in 2009 for inventing CHANEKI
- Cancer 45/lakh rural and 100/lakh urban; 40% tobacco + 15% obesity personal hygiene noridattartreyudu
- Swiss Udo Wilma Gaster + Puducherry + poor children.
- Depleting water level at alamatti dam capacity 123 tmcft only 20 tmcft
- India to setup FTL (food testing lab) & FPIC (food processing business incubation center) + ICRISAT (International Crops Research institute for semi arid tropics) Medak, Andhra
- International container trans‐shipment terminal (ICTT) European Tourism Agent urged Kerala to relocate ICTT in Vizingham area of Kerala
- Nepal radio 475 of them are allowed to report news. In india, private radio FM are only allowed to report from news borrowed from All‐India Radio, non‐news and other current affairs programme.
- Prabuddha Dasgupta women 1996 fine art black and white photographer died in Aug 2012 nude photo.
- BRICS bank: new Development bank e‐Thekwini declaration 5th summit meeting of forum in Durban- to cater for special aspiration of group and perhaps all the developing country, BRICS five accounted for 25% global GDP and 40% world population, proposed bank could be an optimistic alternative to 7‐decade old Bretton woods twins‐ IMF & WB. A shift way from trans‐atlantic focus for which these 2 institution are rightly criticised are ought to be welcome ought to be welcome. Global economy and financial system are not exactly in the pink of the health. Much of the drag is due to unsatisfactory performance of advanced economy, which itself is related to western financial mismanagement and with DOHA round of trade still stuck, the BRICS forum’s call for new head of WTO from the developing world, and for the revitalisation of UNCTAD, assume greater significance. China only among BRICS to have CAS and massive forex reserve. China is likely to dominate, especially if based on quota system or otherwise. But these worries and other cautionary words should not, however, detract from the merits of the BRICS bank, especially its development orientation and infrastructure financing.
- Bookmark : http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/bric-by-brick/article4567359.ece
- Having made its jump from animals to humans, which required a series of genetic mutations, the influenza A (H7N9) ,it is one of the most lethal, strain has now been diagnosed in four Chinese provinces: Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and the business capital Shanghai. H5N1 Avian influenza highly deadly for birds so easier to diagnose. H7N9 no effect on chick and duck. New suspect in hong kong. Till now no human to human spread.
- Bagram prison, now renamed as afghan national detention facility at Parwan handed to Afghanis
- Hamid Karzai. Washington rejected Kabul’s plan of rejecting prisoner who were considered threat .
- Us partial withdrawal saying they are training afghan soldiers for what will possibly be the only line of defence against Post 2014 Taliban in form of Afghan National Security Forces .burning koran and urinating on dead soldiers video. Less clear how many us soldier in post 2014 era, so obvious conclusion is that Parwan handover is only a smoke screener for the continuation of a muddled strategy that combines a desire to walk away from the problem with apathy & indifference towards Afghan sovereign capabilities.
- Jantantra Yatra Jallianwala Bagh Jan Morcha people. Parliament, Ramlila maidan, Anna Hazare, VK singh.
- COMMUNICATION HIT‐ SMW‐4, IMEWE, EIG 3 cables cut 18800 km. Also disrupted by natural phenomenon like earthquake, extreme turbidity current, fish trawlers, shark bites.
- 6 districts of Chattisgarh ‐ Naxal hit/ left wing extremism (LWE) ‐ Sukma, Jahspur, Koriya, Dakshin Bastar, Bijapur, Kanker.
- Population growth of above mentioned districts are decreasing, unethical removal of wombs to claim money under Rashtriya Swasthaya Bima Yojana. Sukma is a new district carved out of Dantewada.
- Kerala wants 6 months amnesty for NITAQAT- naturalisation of Saudi Arabia.
- Kudumbasree mission: safe return of expatriates in Kerala, might consider relaxation in municipal sanitation. 2 million workers will lose their jobs.
- Manipur holi aka Yaosang ‐reduce it from 5 to 2 days. Vaishnavism in Manipur 2 kings since 15th century.
- Sirhasar Bhawan aka abode of trance was demolished in Jagdalpur.
- Gujarat: Mustaq Ali trophy cricket defeated punjab
- Andy Murray won Miami open defeating David Ferrer
- DRC Lumumba MI6 played a role assassination as he was giving mineral wealth to Russia‐largest reserves of cobalt and much diamond and copper ‐ used in hi tech industry. he was sheltered by Rajeshwar Dayal UN secy general’s representative in Congo.
- New Pope Francis: Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, on 13 March 2013 the papal conclave elected Bergoglio, who chose the papal name Francis in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi. Bergoglio is the first Jesuit pope; the first pope from the Americas, and the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere.
- Rajiv Shrivastava ‐ India head of Hewlett ‐ Packard
- Laiki bank will be closed‐ Cyprus.
1 April complete.
April 2, 2013
- Glivec (Imatinib)- Competitive Tyrosine‐Kinase inhibitor prevent BCR‐ABL fight in ph+ve CML (Chronic Myeloid Leukemia), also gists + (j) and (ja) of section 2(1)? Does the product for which the appellant claims patent qualify as a “new product” which comes by through an invention that has a feature that involves technical advance over the existing knowledge and that makes the invention “not obvious” to a person skilled in the art? In case the appellant’s product satisfies the tests and thus qualifies as “invention” within the meaning of clauses (j) and (ja) of section 2(1). Section 3 d ‐ prevent evergreening.
- Tomoko kikuchi ‐ hindi student in india
- Ahilya bai holkar ‐ ruler of Maheshwar, MP, Rehwa name of narmada sari
- Snapdeal ‐ by Kunal Bahl & Rohit Bansal copied Groupon then shift to market place model. 40 million $ by bessemer venture 50 million $ by Ebay inc.
- NMDC ltd and IndusInd Bank included in CNX nifty index of National Stock Exchange (NSE) replacing Wipro & Siemens as part of re‐balancing exercise. CS Verma CMD of NMDC of a Navratna.
- SENSEX becomes S&P SENSEX as BSE ties up with Standard and Poor’s to use the S&P brand for Sensex and other indices
- Loursen and Toubro got EPC (Engineering, procurement and construction) in Rajasthan for 2 8660 supercritical thermal power plant
- GV Prasad new chairman of reddy
- Mynamar dailies from weekly
- Mayflower, arkansas ‐ exxon pipeline burst, Heavy crude form called wabasca.
- Badam zari and nusrat begam from FATA
- Facelift surgery done in UK dental using 3d printer: Dr. Andrew Dawood
- Hike in motor automobile prices due to compliance of onboard diagnostic compliance changes (OBDC)
- CAD record high of 6.7% in December quarter.
- 8 core industries output contracts by 2.3% (namely crude oil, natural gas, fertiliser, petroleum refinery products, cement, coal, electricity, steel)
- Norms for Joint Venture in insurance ‐ any core investment company (CIC) registered with RBI needs minimum Rs. 500 crore owned funds to setup a Joint venture company to undertake insurance business. NPA should not be more than 1% of net advance, registered net profit for 3 years continuously, track record of subsidiary, if any, should be satisfactory. At least 30 % of aggregate risk weighted asset on balance sheets. Not allowed to conduct business departmentally. Further a NBFC is not allowed to join an insurance company on risk participation basis. CICS permitted upto 100% either solo or JV ,if foreign contribute 26%, more than one CIC may be allowed to participate in the equity of the insurance JV. Prior approval of bank.
- Atal Jyoti Abhiyan ‐ bhopal uninterrupted power supply to rural areas, improvement in rural economy with growth in cottage industries
- Yash pal committee on to advise rejuvenation & renovation of higher education,
- Sam Pitroda committee on National Knowledge Commission (NKC). Dams on river Yarlung Tsangpo ‐ west to east ‐
- JIEXU
- ZANGMU
- JIACHA
2nd April complete
I have lots of other notes which I made during preparation. Let me know if you guys want me to post that.
I was also planning to start writing the summaries of all The Hindus combined, on a weekly basis. This is because I can understand how painful it is to read the newspaper on a daily basis, both physically and mentally. Let me know if you guys will be interested in something like that.
