Download
The Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) Reports are important documents from the UPSC civil services exam perspective. They contain a lot of useful information important for the
IAS mains exam covering aspects of public administration, governance, ethics in civil services, conflict resolution, etc. Even though highly beneficial, most aspirants skip reading the ARC reports due to their bulk. How do you read these reports and extract value from them? Read on for more.
What is ARC?
The ARC or the Administrative Reforms Commission is a committee set up by the Government of India to review the public administration system and give recommendations to improve it. The reports by the Commission are called the ARC reports. The first ARC (1966) was headed by Morarji Desai initially and later by K. Hanumanthaiah. The second ARC constituted in 2005 was chaired by Veerappa Moily. The 2nd ARC submitted 15 reports to the Government covering areas like RTI, ethics in governance, local governance, terrorism, public administration, e-governance, financial management and so on.
How to read ARC Reports for UPSC Exam?
The ARC reports contain a lot of material for the UPSC mains exam and all serious IAS aspirants, not just those with public administration as the optional subject, are advised to read them. These reports are indeed bulky and UPSC aspirants (who are generally hard pressed for time) find it difficult to read them from cover to cover. It is recommended that aspirants read at least a summary of the reports that are available. The reports themselves summarise the contents at the end of each report. Aspirants can go through them. The reports are available online in the ARC official website for free. Reading the reports (or the gist) will help aspirants in all the General Studies papers.
The most important reports of the 2nd ARC are given below in case you are not able to go through all of them:
- Report 1: Right to Information
- Report 3: Crisis Management
- Report 4: Ethics in Governance
- Report 8: Combating Terrorism
- Report 11: E-governance
- Report 12: Citizen Centric Administration
- Report 14: Strengthening Financial Management Systems
Highlights of the ARC Reports
- The recommendations of the committee are important and should be focused on by the aspirants in their mains preparation.
- Another wonderful thing about the reports is that they contain a lot of case studies and relevant quotations that you can use in your answers in the UPSC civil services mains exam.
