A detailed study plan for GENERAL STUDIES, UPSC Civil Services Exam

Remember the numbers : Be it economics or history or current events or for that matter, anything; try and collect important numbers related to that. For example, one should know the GDP, GNP, foreign reserves, fiscal deficit, public spending in key areas (education, health, defence, subsidies, national highways, bharat nirman, nrega), percentage of population in different age groups etc. In this context, a thorough study of the “Economic Survey” will help you a lot, particularly the first chapter (which gives a glimpse of the Indian economy) and the last chapter (which contains a beautiful summary of the different social programs run by the Indian Government).

Start with NCERTs: NCERTs cover beautifully the basics of history, geography, economics, civics/political administration. I'll advice you to start from class 6 onwards but I only read from class 9 due to paucity of time. These books, available for free download from the ncert and even otherwise (on other blogs) are much better than the previous versions in terms of the quality as well as the visual appeal of the textbooks. NCERTs make up the base and you'll have to build up on that. This building up can be done by internet, notes of coaching institutes (vajiram's notes are good), other references.
Current affairs form the base of your understanding of the world. They are also a fundamental part of GS and the interview. So, an indepth reading of newspapers, magazines, blogs, tv news, coaching institutes' material etc. is expected. But, the question again comes how do we manage to keep ourselves abreast of all the current affairs in a fairly indepth manner. To me, managing current affairs was an arduous task. I think the strategy which could help is to try and put things into context. What i mean by putting things into context is to analyze the current affair into the already existing perspective. For example, if you read that israel is starting heavy bombarding on the gaza strip, then simply memorizing the number of persons killed or the immediate reason of the bombarding will not help much. Instead, trying to put this event into already existing perspective of Israel-Palestine relationships and some critical appreciation of the current event will help. Hence, our first task should be to read Israel-Palestine relationship. What has been the history? What has been the role of international community on this? What is India's perspective on this issue? Using this strategy might take a huge amount of time initially but as you move on, the number of issues on which you would have to read indepth would decrease for the simple reason that you already know about a lot of events now. Be judicious in devoting time for current affairs as they drain a lot of time. Simply skim through magazines by reading the key point(if it is bold or separately mentioned as a paragraph, for example, in frontline). Simply reading the titles of all the magazines will also help. I am an ardent fan of Yojna and Kurukshetra. Frontline is good but drains away a lot of time but make it a point to go through the headings once or twice a month. This magazine also is freely available for download on Hindu's website.

Important References: The following is a list of things that you should try and get access to, if possible. If not, then there is not much to worry because already there is a lot to study and not reading one or two things will not matter because they might anways be overlapping/could take too much of your time. Some of these are available online as well as in print while some of them are on TV.
1. Vajiram Notes on Indian Polity and Indian Economy: These notes are very well structured and are very informative. You can call them up for asking the correspondance charges if you are not in Delhi.
2. Gurcharan Das blogs (also published in the Times of India) : Gurcharan Das is the author of the famous book, “India Unbound”. He writes mostly on economic issues and the need for effective governance in the country. His writings on comparison between India and China are full of insights. His articles also contain correlations of present circumstances with the Mahabharata, which also form the subject material of his another book, “The Difficulty of being good”.
3. Swaminomics (also published in the Times of India): This section is also on economics. The most wonderful part of his articles are that they are full of information and numbers. He explains current economic affairs as if he is wrting the article for ncert textbooks. In one sentence, “easy to understand, remember and retrieve”.
4. www.indiatogether.org
This website is an archive of articles from eminent journalists and writers on social issues, ranging from environment to poverty. Authors like P.Sainath, Harsh Mander, Kalpana Sharma contribute to this blog.
5. www.en.wikipedia.org
This well known website is a brilliant resource for understanding almost anything – abstract to real, from economics to biology, from literature to quantum physics – it has it all. Written in superbly layman language, this is a wonderful place to get your concepts clarified. Any phenomena that you do not understand, just do a search here; you'll get your desired entry almost 90% of the times. It will serve you not only for your General Studies but also for your optionals. In addition, read the article India and follow the links in that article. Also, it has arranged articles on India in a gorgeous way e.g. Military artillery of India, different satellite programs.
6. www.news.bbc.co.uk
This website is a beautiful resource for preparting the international affairs section of the GS paper as well as issues of global affect and/or which are tackled at global level e.g. Climate change, terrorism, United Nations, issues related to United States (yes, issues related to US have become global issues !!). The 'special reports' section in this website is also very informative and should be read to assimilate global events in detail. e.g. I read the section on Copenhagen Climate Summit for the interview and it was very informative
7. Economic Survey : As has been mentioned before also, this document is phenomenal. Although the Hindu criticizes this document a lot for it being pro-governmental and extremely optimistic, I would suggest you to compulsorily read the first and the last chapters. Other chapters are optional for you. The Economic Survey is available for free download on the website of Ministry of Finance although its hard copy (although a bit too costly) is also available for sale at book stalls, particularly those having books for UPSC exam preparation.
8. Articles by P.Sainath : P.Sainath writes on issues related to agriculture. His book “Everybody loves a drought” has been acclaimed a lot. He spends almost 300 days in a year in rural areas and his insights on the plight of Indian agriculture has no parallels.
9. Articles by Harsh Mander: Harsh Mander became a journalist after his experiences as an IAS officer in Gujarat during the 2002 riots. He writes a lot on communal violence and has been pressing for a bill on communal violence to be passed in India. But, his immense knowledge and rich experience makes him adept at almost any issue that he picks up, which are almost always social. He writes regularly in 'The Hindu'
10. Articles by Kalpana Sharma: Kalpana Sharma writes regularly in 'The Hindu'. She writes particularly a lot on women issues.
11. Articles by Dr. K S Jacob: Dr. K S Jacob is a professor in the Department of Pscyhiatry at Christian Medical College, Vellore. His insights on public health as well as medical health and contemporary medical practices & healthcare are phenomenal. You'll love it when he mixes political concepts of communism/capitalism/governance with medicine/health and comes out with an interesting insight.
12. www.time.com This website is phenomenal. This is a website of the Time Magazine. Although there are no sections which I can directly point it to you for the fact that this magazine is written for people who read for leisure. However, the lists of 100 most powerful men of the year, 100 most powerful women of the year, 100 most powerful thinkers, 100 persons of the century are worth looking at. Similarly, Forbes list of richest persons could also be seen as knowing about eminent personalities help a lot in the exam. In addition, some of the articles in the website www.time.com, particularly on health or other social issues might help you a lot. There are articles by Barack Obama also on this website.
13. The India Year Book: This book is available for free download as well its hard copy is available for sale. This bulky book has a lot of material but you can read sections what you like. I just browsed all the sections but would have loved to read it completely, if I had time.
14. TOI Blogs : This section is an archive of different articles written by eminent journalists in the TOI. Sometimes, browsing these articles could be very helpful.
15. Hindu Opinion : These contain the articles on the mid page of the Hindu. You'll particularly benefit by the editorial section of Hindu.
16. Files on Hindu website : Another good thing about the newspaper Hindu is that it publishes a lot of original material on its website www.thehinduonnet.com e.g. Jairam Ramesh's letter which contained his decision of issuing a moratorium on Bt brinjal, Ramalingam Raju's letter in which he announced his crime, a copy of Karan Thapar's interview with eminent personalities. These files help you get an independent opinion on various issues rather than listening to/reading the analysis of these original materials by the media.
17. Down to Earth : This website is a very good resource on environmental issues. This magazine is published by the Center for Science and Environment, whose director Sunita Narain is a very dedicated lady championing environmental issues. You'll also benefit a lot from reading her articles.
18. Articles by Vir Sanghvi : Vir Sanghvi is associated with the Hindustan Times. His articles on international affairs as well as India's foreign policies are very informative as well contain deep insights, primarily because he is an extremely knowledgeable and well read person.
19. Resources on Television: TV is a wonderful resource for learning since its audio-visual nature helps us to retain a far greater fraction than we read from the books. Also, since it is not possible to read all throughout the day, taking breaks sometimes can help. Watching something meaningful on the TV can be a lot more meaningful and additionally, you save a lot of time being wasted since you've utilized your time for a good purpose.
1. Lok Sabha TV: Although this is a new channel, some of its programs, I feel are very beneficial. There is a program called 'Conversations' which showcases interviews with eminent personalities discussing contemporary issues. e.g. Sam Pitroda, Nandan Nilekani, Gurcharan Das, C P Chandrashekar. Just try to catch up this channel if anything interesting is coming there once in a while when you are bored.
2. Arnab Banerjee: You might have seen this journalist on Times Now. He is wonderfully inquisitive. He gets hold on to top-notch ministers during his prime time show (i.e the main news at 9 pm) and asks them critical questions.
3. Other journalists to watch are Pranab Roy (NDTV), Rajdeep Sardesai (CNN IBN), Karan Thapar, Barkha Dutt (on her program 'We the People' on NDTV), Deepak Chaurasia (Star News)
4. National Geographic, Discovery Channel and History Channel have now been showing a number of documentaries on India e.g. The story of Tsunami that struck India, the Gujarat riots, the IC-814 hijacking etc. Also, their other documentaries are phenomenal.