Most aspirants who fail the Mains exam know the content. They’ve read the books. They’ve followed the newspaper. They can recite facts. And yet, their marks don’t reflect their knowledge.
The problem, almost always, is in how they write — not what they know.
After years of coaching feedback, topper interviews, and examiner insights, a clear pattern of recurring mistakes emerges. This article breaks them all down — so you don’t repeat them.
1. Not Reading the Question Carefully
This is the single most common — and most costly — mistake. Students begin writing within seconds of reading the question, missing the precise demand the examiner has placed in the question.
Mains questions contain directive words that tell you exactly what to do:
- Discuss — Examine from multiple angles, weigh pros and cons
- Critically examine / Critically analyse — Present both sides, then give a balanced judgement
- Examine — Investigate and evaluate the claim
- Comment — Give a brief, reasoned opinion
- Analyse — Break down the issue into its components
- Elucidate — Explain clearly with examples
Writing a one-sided “discuss” answer or giving a general essay when “critically analyse” is asked, loses marks regardless of how good your content is.
Solution: Underline the directive word. Underline the key theme. Then write.
2. No Introduction — Or a Weak One
Many students dive straight into points without an introduction, or begin with a definition lifted mechanically from a textbook. Both approaches miss an opportunity.
A strong introduction does three things in 2–3 lines: it establishes context, signals that you understand what the question is really asking, and sets the tone of a well-structured answer. Examiners read hundreds of copies — a sharp opening makes yours stand out immediately.
Solution: Open with a quote, a recent news hook, a surprising fact, or a crisp contextual statement. Avoid starting with “Since time immemorial…” or the likes.
3. Writing in Paragraphs When Points Are More Effective (and Vice Versa)
A common misunderstanding is that bullet points always look better in Mains answers. They don’t — it depends on the question.
For analytical or opinion-based questions (e.g., GS Paper 4 ethics cases, or “Critically examine…” questions), flowing paragraphs demonstrate reasoning ability and are preferred. For factual or multi-part questions (e.g., “List the features of…”, “What are the challenges of…”), well-organised bullet points are faster to read and easier to evaluate.
Solution: Match the format to the nature of the question. Use a mix — a short para for context, bullets for causes/effects/suggestions, a para for conclusion.
4. Missing the Multi-Dimensional Approach
Mains rewards 360-degree thinking. A question on a government policy is not just about the policy — it touches on economics, governance, social equity, constitutional provisions, international comparisons, and ground-level implementation challenges.
Students who cover only one or two dimensions score average marks even with correct content. Those who weave in multiple dimensions — political, economic, social, environmental, ethical, institutional — score in the top tier.
Solution: Before writing, spend few seconds mapping out dimensions. Ask yourself: what are the economic implications? Constitutional angle? Historical context? Gender dimension? Data points?
5. No Structure: Missing Introduction, Body, and Conclusion
Every answer, regardless of word limit, must have a beginning, middle, and end. Many students write pages of content with no conclusion, leaving the examiner with an unfinished thought. Others have a good intro and conclusion but no logical flow in the body.
A well-structured answer signals to the examiner that the candidate thinks clearly — a quality essential for a future administrator.
Solution: Even for a 150-word answer, reserve 2 lines for conclusion. For 250-word answers, aim for: Introduction (3–4 lines) → Body (organised by sub-heads or grouped bullets) → Conclusion (2–3 lines with a forward-looking statement).
6. Conclusions That Don’t Conclude
The most wasted part of an answer is the conclusion. Most students either skip it or write vague lines like “Thus, the government should take necessary steps” or “Hence, it can be concluded that this is an important issue.”
A strong conclusion adds value. It can:
- Cite a relevant committee recommendation or policy (e.g., “As recommended by the ARC…”)
- Quote a constitutional provision, a Supreme Court judgment, or a national/international target
- Offer a forward-looking, solution-oriented statement
- Summarise the crux of your argument in one powerful line
Solution: Never repeat what you’ve already said. Add something — a quote, a recommendation, a vision statement.
7. Content Dumping Without Relevance Filtering
In the anxiety of the exam, many candidates write everything they know about a topic — even if half of it is not relevant to the specific question asked. This is called content dumping, and it actively hurts your score.
Examiners mark based on relevance and precision. Irrelevant content signals that the candidate couldn’t distinguish what the question was actually asking. It also wastes precious time.
Solution: Ask yourself after every paragraph: “Does this directly answer what the question is asking?” If not, cut it.
8. Ignoring Examples, Case Studies, and Data
Abstract answers without any grounding in real-world examples feel hollow. Examiners look for candidates who can connect theoretical knowledge to real situations — because that is what administrators must do.
Solution: Maintain a running list of examples, data points, and case studies across all GS topics. Even one concrete example per answer dramatically improves quality.
9. Poor Time Management Across the Paper
Attempting only 15 out of 20 questions because you wrote 350 words on a 250-word question is one of the most preventable ways to lose marks. In Mains, an unattempted question scores zero — meaning spreading attempts across all questions is almost always better than perfecting a few.
Solution: Strictly follow the word limit. A 150-word answer should not exceed 2 pages. A 250-word answer should not exceed 3 pages. Practice timed writing at home until this becomes muscle memory.
10. Illegible or Untidy Handwriting
This is not about having beautiful handwriting. It is about legibility. Examiners evaluate hundreds of copies under time pressure. If your answer is hard to read, it creates friction — and that friction reflects in the marks.
Common handwriting-related issues: writing too small in margins, cramming content to fit the word limit, crossing out large sections untidily, and inconsistent letter sizing.
Solution: Write slightly larger than your natural size. Leave margins. Use underlining sparingly but effectively for key terms. If you cross something out, do it with a single clean line.
11. Not Using Diagrams, Flowcharts, or Tables Where Appropriate
A well-placed diagram or flowchart in a GS Paper 1 (Geography) or GS Paper 3 (Economy/Science) answer can communicate in seconds what would take a paragraph to explain — and it makes the answer visually distinctive in a stack of identical copies.
Tables work particularly well for comparison questions: “Distinguish between X and Y”, “Compare the approaches of A and B.”
Solution: Practice drawing simple labelled diagrams for key Geography topics. Create comparison tables for commonly contrasted concepts across all GS papers.
12. Over-Reliance on Memorised Templates
Answer writing practice is essential — but it can produce a different problem: memorised, rigid templates that get applied regardless of the question. Examiners can immediately identify templated answers, and they score them poorly.
A template is a scaffold — it should guide your structure, not replace your thinking.
Solution: Understand why a structure works, not just what the structure is. Adapt to each question rather than pasting in a pre-written framework.
13. Weak Ethics and Essay Paper Answers
GS Paper 4 (Ethics) and the Essay paper are where the gap between toppers and average scorers is widest — and most avoidable. Common mistakes here include:
- Listing ethical theories without applying them to the case
- Being preachy or moralistic instead of analytical in case studies
- Writing the Essay as a GS answer (all facts, no reflection or voice)
- Not taking a clear position in the Essay
Solution: In Ethics case studies, always identify stakeholders, competing values, and the institutional vs. personal dilemma. In the Essay, develop a clear thesis and return to it throughout.
A Final Word
The Mains exam does not reward the candidate who knows the most. It rewards the candidate who communicates clearly, thinks in multiple dimensions, manages time ruthlessly, and writes with the examiner in mind. Every mistake on this list is fixable — but only through deliberate, reviewed practice.
Write an answer. Get it evaluated. Fix one mistake at a time. Repeat.
That is the only strategy that works.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.