Dear All,
We have received few mails from aspirants on strategy, preparation and general doubts and through this article, we are trying to answer them and hope to clear your doubts.
Question-Sir, I have been reading almost all strategies but at the end could not figure out what to do exactly or how to tune them and adopt them for my preparation ?
Answer- There is no harm in reading strategies. You can read it for varied reasons, for inspiration, to get ideas or to find out short-cuts (although there is none) . Nevertheless, almost all strategies have a common ground and beyond the convergence the strategies are individualistic in nature.
The Common Ground :-
- All the successful candidates were consistent.
- All of them wrote tests diligently.
- All of them knew their strength and worked on their weaknesses.
- The books and reference materials are almost same for all. (For GS papers)
- The marks for all toppers for the fours GS papers are more or less the same.
The Divergence:-
- All of them secured different marks in interview owing to their personality and profile ( That makes a difference in Ranks)
- The optional is varied and hence it can help you secure a rank or put you out of the list, depending upon what UPSC is targeting for the given year.(Some years are good for some optional and some years are bad)
- The third one is essay, invariably every topper has to a get an above average mark in this paper
What You should do:-
Before we delve in to answering what you should do, allow us to recite the story of Buddha to you:-
Many of us think that Buddha was a Social Reformer. This is one of the greatest misconception in understanding Buddha. He never wanted to reform the society and even if he did he did it “marginally”. On the contrary, Buddha gave emphasis on Individual Reform. So his many thrust was to reform the individual and not the society as whole.
Before attaining Nirvana, Buddha wandered from place to place, sought help of many saints and seers, but in the end, he understood that Nirvana can not be sought or understood, it only can be attained. And if one has to attain Nirvana, one has to do it on his own. You carry your virtues and vices. No one else can carry them for you and no one else ever will.
Thus he gave the gospel of truth – “Atto Deepo Bhava” – “Be Your Own Light”
So the learning from life of Buddha applies to civil service exam as well. The exam tests every aspect of your personality – Physical, Psychological etc. All of you know that. And when you started preparing , you also knew that this is going to be tough.
So, while there are hundred of strategies are out there, what you can essentially do is, fine-tune them according to your needs. But how to fine-tune them is the bigger question. So, allow us to help you. We will give your targets which will help you decide accordingly.
Targets for Success:-
Here are the targets that can help you fine-tune your strategy:-
Target 1 – Securing 300 marks in optional ( 250 will do fine , but target for 300, you will secure 250 at least).
So If any topper related to your optional is giving strategy, listen to it and find out what can you adopt from it. Any article regarding strategy for your optional should be given priority.
Don’t rely solely on ready-made notes from shops, because then you will not have the intimate relationship with the optional paper. You have to prepare your own notes. You can go for standard material for GS papers, but not for optional. You can read ready-made notes, but they should be supplementary in nature. Read the books and prepare your own note.
After all , what is the last time you heard a topper saying that s/he secured the rank because s/he read somebody’s note for optional. ?(If someone did say so, that would be an exception rather than a norm)
Target 2 – Securing 150+ marks in essay.
The paper has no syllabus and hence can be a huge advantage or disadvantage. This paper almost every year decides your rank. ( apart from your Optional papers). Hence, it should be given second priority.
Not to brag, but we excel in this paper ( Many of our students have secured more than 140 this yr).
For essay, you should write to know where it can go wrong. We also know that many institutes and websites run essay initiatives but writing on a topic which has very little chance of being asked in the real exam will not help you either. So, invest your time wisely. Drop a mail to us in case you want to write on a certain topic (irrespective of whether your are part of our program or not), and we will guide you on that. Read couple of strategies selectively, but you have to write to know your strength or weakness and work upon it.
Essay has learning curve, so it takes time to build and secure 140 and above. Start early if you can.
Target 3 – Securing 400+ marks in General Studies.
This is doable because, reference materials are abundant, but you have to score better in each paper. Each paper has its own set of critical words. In addition to that, each question also has its “set of critical words” and if you know them and judiciously use them, you will score well.
A note of advise would be to join a test series, because that can help you cope with the demand of exam, especially time management and content management.( We also opened registration for our Mains Test series 2017)
Listen to one or two strategy from toppers for GS papers, no need to read all the strategies in this regard.(Almost all of the student follow the same strategy for these papers)
Target 4 – Interview
This is mostly based on your personality. Read interview transcripts to get an understanding but don’t over do it. Take time to introspect and understand and have to-the-point answers ready for current affairs based questions. Prepare your DAF carefully.
Now that you have your targets with you, we hope that it will help you save some precious time and help you where to focus and where to defocus.
Lastly, when you chose to appear for this exam, there is a certain degree of conviction in you which propelled you to go for it. Don’t loose that conviction. We can provide “wise counsel” but the last mile has to be walked by you, not by your friends or family. It is a lonely and only mile that you will ever need to achieve your goal. Lonely because no one else can study for you, nor one can write the exam for you or appear for the interview.
It is YOU, thus the focus on – Atto Deepoo Bhava- BE YOUR OWN LIGHT !!!
Receive Daily Updates
Recent Posts
The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.