The UPSC civil services prelims examination was being held yesterday.This year, unlike past few year, much more emphasis was laid on the conceptual questions and lesser so on the factual ones. Although, the weight-age of current affairs did not diminish much, but there were no disproportionate large number of current affairs and factual questions.
UPSC retreated its shoes to more focus on conceptual and applied questions this year. The questions, this year, were not from specific topics but rather, covered multiple dimensions of one’s knowledge. One could not just read the question and decide if he\she knows the answer or not as these demanded critical thinking and sieving through all one has known. The paper is said to be far more difficult than that of last year and is also said to affect the cut-off.
As usual, UPSC asked tricky questions which not only tested conceptual understanding but also factual information. And that makes prelims a roll of dice for many. Many students who had mugged up current affairs modules were stumped as there were far fewer questions from current affairs as compared to last year. It also highlights the fact that clearing the UPSC CSE Pre requires not only extensive reading, but also an eye for detail.
There were 15 questions for Environment, mostly asking through current affairs. These mostly concerned potential public health and environmental impact.
12 questions covered History and Art & Culture, 6 asking from Modern History and 6 from Ancient History and Art and Culture. A good read of NCERTs was essential to clear these questions as they were largely factual in nature.
70% of Geography went around questions from maps and were not a difficult cup of tea for those well versed with the world and Indian earth science. Though, there were questions, where if not thought thoroughly, the aspirant could go very far away from the real answer.
With around 7-8 questions, Economy consisted much factual and current affairs related questions. As expected, UPSC asked current affairs of 2012-16 in economics.
Science and Technology saw a bare minimum of 4 questions this year. Most of these were application based. Tech questions were covering current affairs and were not very difficult to crack.
With 22 questions, Polity was the most scoring section as most questions were direct. Even though much was conceptual based, they were not very difficult to answer. So here the NCERTs become important to understand the basic philosophy of the Indian Polity and Constitutional Structure.
Govt schemes, laws and policies have become a section in themselves, carrying at least 14 questions. If you combine Current Affairs questions this number goes up to 27. But this paper was a lot more balanced than last year in which Current Affairs dominated the whole paper.