Hello, everyone namaskar. Today we will be talking about master plan for upcs cse 2024. We will discuss the basic resources to be covered.
Also. We will talk about popular resources, but not that necessary if you have covered some other and at the same time we will talk about a basic plan, how to cover current affairs, and all of these things will get you up to speed so that you can start Preparation, this will resolve you problem of how to start so, let’s get started before we begin basic reminder.
Master Plan for UPSC CSE 2024: Basic Resources and Preparation Strategy
Introduction
- Importance of a master plan for UPSC CSE 2024
- Overview of basic resources to be covered
Choosing the Right Resources
- Spectrum or Bipin Chandra: Selecting the appropriate history book
- Importance of monitoring and reviewing the plan regularly
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Basic GS Subjects
- Overview of the core subjects: history, polity, environment, geography, economy, and science and tech
- Recommended books for each subject
- Modern History: “A Brief History of Modern India” by Spectrum Publications
- Art and Culture: “Indian Art and Culture” by Nitin Singhania
- Polity: “Indian Polity” by M. Laxmikanth
- Environment: “Environment” by Shankar IAS
- Geography: NCERT books and “Certificate Physical and Human Geography” by G.C. Leong
- Economy: Sriram’s IAS printed material and current affairs
- Science and Tech: Basic concepts from NCERT books
Additional Resources and Optional Books
- Constitution of India: “Introduction to the Constitution of India” by D.D. Basu
- Additional history books: “India’s Ancient Past” by R.S. Sharma and “History of Medieval India” by Satish Chandra
- World history books: “Challenge and Strategy” by Rajiv Sikri and “Plassey to Partition” by Shekhar Bandhopadhyay
- Modern World History: “Modern World History” by Norman Lowe (optional)
- CSAT resources: Free resource package available at upscprep.com/csat
Preparing the Plan
- Timeline: 12 months until Prelims 2024
- JULY 2023: Covering basic NCERTs from class 6th to 12th
- SEP 2023 onwards: Reading the recommended books for GS subjects
- Emphasizing the need for regular reading and setting a daily target
Conclusion
- Importance of following a well-planned strategy for UPSC CSE 2024
- Encouragement to stick to the plan and revise regularly for effective preparation
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There is a very common question raises that, should I do spectrum or bipin chandra, these alternatives will always exist and from these you have to choose one for you. If you keep on chasing these, then it will not be worth it. Secondly, there is no perfect plan. You need to monitor things like you had to complete polity in 4 weeks, but it took 6.
Then it will affect the whole plan, so you will have to review the plan at the end of every month. That is everything going as per plan. If you want a mentor for your upsc journey, , so we would be covering basic gs subjects.
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We will try and resolve your each and every doubt booklist. We have core things here, for example, history, combined, ancient and medieval art and culture, polity, environment, geo, art and culture, geo, ncerts, economy and finally atlas. So the first comes this a brief history of modern india by spectrum publications, the absolute textbook that you can get for modern history, because at the end of every chapter you will get summary for a 50 pages chapter. There is 45 pages summary at the same time.
What you want to do is that keep underlining important things. This book is 800 to 850 pages, but it is very easy to revise because of those summary pages. So this is one of the best books that you can follow for modern history now coming to art and culture book by nitin singhania.
Now you have to do this book selectively. First thing you have to do in this book is go to the index and you will see that in every chapter you have pyqs of both mains and prelims, and it is at the end of every chapter. I have marked the chapter on the basis of questions in prelims and you can see the crosses in front of calenders in india and fairs and festivals, because they are not that important. If you study this book selectively, then it is a very good resource for art and culture.
After this, you don’t need to do any other thing for art and culture, although there is no possibility to solve each and every question from this part now coming to polity. If you are an absolute beginner in the preparation, then laxmikant is a very great book. This one is older edition.
You may go for latest one, but core principles are same. Do class 11th. Ncerts first then use this book. You don’t have to read everything in detail in this book.
For instance, here I have written major point in the side margin highlighted important things. You also have to use it in this way. At the end of this book.
Also, there are a lot of appendices. I have kept the complete set separately. You can also mark important and keep them on your desk, making it easy for your revision. There are a lot of such articles also, which are reappealed, so I have cut out the whole section.
It is clearly mentioned about those articles, so you don’t have to worry for it. The idea is that I have written the relevant things at the beginning of the chapter 52nd ammendment for anti defection schedule: 10 kihoto holohan case these. All things are important and whenever I open a chapter I get reminded of it now environment by shankar ias.
This book is for the basics of environment. It doesn’t mean that you are done with everything in environment and you don’t need to do current affairs, but this is a great book for covering the basics, like ecosystem biodiversity. How are biomes changing indian species? Wpa schedule 1 schedule 5, so your basics will be covered and then you may keep doing current affairs and in this book the more you underline the more useful it will be because revision is always very important now coming to art and culture introduction to indian art.
If you are done with nitin singhania, then all you can do is go for the pictures in this book. This is ncert class 11th and it has a lots of pictures. For instance, here you are shown lomas, rishi caves located in bihar. If I have seen this picture, then there are chances that it will be remembered by this only lion capital of sarnath.
If I have seen this picture then I will know the animals in that. So that’s why I suggest to just look at the pictures in the book coming to geo. For this we have 4 basic ncerts, india, physical environment class, 11th, fundamentals of physical geography, again class 11th and then 2 books from 12th, india, people and economy and fundamentals of indian geo.
So these all books covers all your basics, but there is one more important book for geo. That is atlas, because until you haven’t seen the map, then you will just have known things in mind, but you have to go for maps again n again. But if you look at my maps over here, I have marked things in my book. All the mountain ranges rivers because there are questions based on maping.
Now current affairs are sometimes relevant here because there will be places in news as well, for example russiaukraine news. So what you have to do is look for the map and the countries around them areas involved in russia and ukraine. You have to check these things in map. Thus, atlas becomes the important part of your geo preparation.
This book certificate physical and human geo by gc leong. The first part of this book is already covered in fundamentals of physical geo ncert, but the second part covering vegetation climate rainfall in detail. The great thing of this book is that you get maps of everything this map here shows that in this region you get an equatorial climate, and in these regions there is a monsoon or tropical marinetype climate.
These maps help in making things clear when you refer to maps while studying things it makes understanding more efficient. That is why, if nothing else, you cover second part of this book by gc leong. So that’s great. Now, generally, there is problem in economy of what and from where to study.
For this, the printed material by sriram’s, ias, gs, indian economy, 1 and 2 in this edition doesn’t matters because the new current affairs that will be added further will be covered by you separately. You don’t need to go for online available material. What you can do is simply study the basics from this book: basics, like cpi, inflation, fiscal deficit, primary deficit, all these basics – you will cover from this book and after that you have to study the budget. Economic survey summary, and that too of the same year as your attempt, your basics will be covered in this book.
This is available at multiple places and might also be at xerox stores. So these things covers the basics. Essentially, one last subject, which makes problem is science and tech.
So for this you have to study basic 9 10th ncerts. If you complete the book, then ignore all the formulas no need to worry about them, but you need to know this basic thing that if oxidation occurs, then what it does means what is rusting. So these are very basic things. We will cover these in class 910th.
Ncerts, at the same time, some basic concepts of heredity classification of species. If you understand them once then it will be very useful. Then it is a lot about current affairs. Now, if you are done with these basic sources, then there is a question that raises that: what to do with these remaining books, the consitution of india by pm bakshi.
This is a good companion book which you can buy alongside laxmikanth, as this book has bare acts. A substitute for this book can be the constitution of india app available at play store when you are reading about president, then why not open article 54? Why not read about the exact provision, so you will get to know about the provisions very easily. You read laxmikanth, then read things from the app and then you are good to go now. These are 3 books for history, history of india by bipin chandra india’s ancient past by rs sharma, and there is history of medieval india by satish chandra.
You may read these books, but since we have read spectrum, so there is no use of bipin chandra and for these 2 remaining books, effort to output ratio is very less. I may read them, but even then there will be questions that I won’t be able to solve. So these we will keep aside to be done at the end.
If we have time, then there is tamil nadu state board’s history book class 11th. You may read it, which is essentially a shorter version of these 2 books combined now for world history. There is a book by arjun dev. This book is only mains relevant because world history is not in prelims syllabus, while preparing for gs, mains and making notes for it.
You may use this book. This is a background book challenge and strategy by rajiv sikri history of india’s foreign affairs and irs. What was non aligned movement, past relations of india and russia or the us relations? You will get the background from this and rajiv sikri ji was an ifs for 36 years, so he had experience in these matters, but obviously you will have to keep updating things with current affairs because things have changed after this book was published. You will get background from the book, but current affairs is the best way to go forward.
This is another famous history book by bipin chandra, but I would still suggest that if you are doing spectrum then stick to spectrum only because spectrum is the book written for the exam highlighted, things will be provided from the exam’s perspective only and this book by bipin Chandra and another book plassey to partition by shekhar bandhopadhyay both of these are scholarly text books. These are good history books not only for exams, so that’s why these kinds of books sometimes have different perspectives and thus not necessary for exams. So, for this reason, having spectrum is the book you have to go with another famous book of modern world history. If you have done arjun dev’s book, then this is something that you can completely avoid altogether.
This is book by norman lowe, modern world history, but this is for over things like when you have much free time or having 3 OR 4th attempt, and you have done all other things and not in mood to do any other thing. Then you can try this book, but before that, no point now coming to the most important book constitution of india by dd basu. When you are doing polity for the first time, then laxmikanth is the best to go with, because it is the book that is written for the exam, but this book by dd basu.
This is a book written for lawyers. Dd basu was himself an advocate and he is considered as one of the legal luminaries in india. Lawyers learn from his books, so language in these books can be technical.
That’s why I suggest stick to laxmikanth. This brings me to the end of booklist discussion and, let’s get back to the plan, we have discussed booklist. One important thing remaining was csat, so the resources for it. If you have to cover things from basics, then go to upscprepcom/csat there.
You will find the free resource package. You can check it out. You will find that for the topics in csat, mathematics, you get theory as well. Apart from that, there is theory for logical reasoning, topics you will get practice questions as well, like the basic theory of percentages, and then you get practice question that you can try with answers at the bottom.
So if you have to cover basic csat, then these are good to go and then you can practice your pyqs, so we have covered books for history, polity, eco geo, env, science and tech. Last thing remaining is current affairs, which we will talk about later on. For now, let’s look at the plan.
What’s the plan? Currently we are in JUNE 2023. You have 11 months till prelims 2024 . So this is a basic plan for 12 months, so the next 3 months of 2023. You will have to cover basic ncerts of class 6th to 10th and then 1112th.
You will get the pdfs online, download it and then start from class 6th. If you understand things clearly, then jump to class 8th. If that also seems easy to you, then you just have to do 912th ncerts.
Here it is written 6 10th, but primarily you can start 9 12th, but the idea is that if you read class 6th ncert – and you are not able to understand very clearly so in that case I would recommend you to go with 6th to 12th. Otherwise, 9 12th will work. You would have to cover these ncerts in 3 months time, because if you are taking 6 8 months for it, then you have wasted your half time on such basic things and are left with no time for more important things. You won’t have to give more than 3 months, as you don’t have to make notes.
Also you don’t have to read in detail, except for geo and art and culture. All the other. Ncerts are basics, after that only you have to do laxmikanth spectrum.
If you are doing ncerts, then no need to do in detailed manner from may onwards. You are starting gs. We have given 3 months to 1st reading because we don’t have to make notes. You just have to read books in this time of 34 months.
You will have to read around 4000 pages. You just have to read: no need to worry. You have 90100 days. That means you only have to do 40 pages in a day, and if you have to read 40 pages a day, then it is doable.
If you are not able to do even 40 pages, then you need to revise why you want to do upsc, because if you need time for this basic thing, then it will take you much more time. Let’s say you become an ias, then you will be given files of 50100 pages. Then it’s not that you will only read one file in a day, so you will need to increase your reading speed.
It will increase with reading. Only if I have to get better at reading, then I will have to read more so. These 4000 pages books can be covered in a 4 months atmost and which means 3040 pages. In a day.
If you read 5 pages in an hour, then it leads to 8 hours of study schedule for the day. So basically it is doable now, if you chill at that time too, then it can get problematic. You can complete it in 34 months for optional. We have given 5 months.
We will focus majorly on optional here. What we want is that we complete optional and makes notes of it too. If gs completes in august then from sep to nov, we will do optional, then in dec and some parts of january you will make notes while preparing for optional. Then you can give about an hour to answer writing also for practice.
You can go to upscprepcom, then to resources section. You will find daw so along side optional. You have to practice for gs. Answer writing as well.
We have read all the subjects once so you will not find things very random and new. Sometimes that too will happen, but it will be because you haven’t done current affairs. We will cover them too, but here our primary focus is to cover optional, because once optional is completed in this aug to oct space, then you will get mains 2023 optional as well.
So you will have clear idea about questions that are asked and if you have prepared well for optional in this time, then you can focus on prelims for next 56 months. That is why it is important for you to make notes of optional till jan and answer writing. Alongside jan onwards, we will start getting free from optional.
You can do some remaining optional in jan too, but beyond it we will not do optional in feb. We will only focus on gs notes, because till now we have just completed gs. First, 6 months we had introduction of gs. This is our second introduction to gs first reading of reference books, but we are rereading all the subjects.
Then we take some gap and then again return to gs. When we return to gs after some gap made notes, then we can give the extended time to current affairs. You have to do current affairs from june 2023 from there do monthly magazines or make notes from newspapers, as it will become your regular activity. But if you do monthly magazines, then you can do it in jan feb, also, finally, in march april, and may only revision and testing, we first read ncerts, then reference books and made notes for gs.
Now we have ample time for revision and we will give tests. So if you organize things like this, then you will stand among the people who are clearing prelims. Now. The important thing that you have to remember is your revision should be done very effectively.
It is based on 2 ideas, 1 spaced repetition. This means like, in our plan from feb to august, we did gs and then in jan 2024 we did gs again, then in march one more time, gs. So with spaced revision, we observed that things get stuck in our minds more effectively. 2Nd is active, recall how many of you can say that rs sharma and satish chandra’s books on ancient and medieval history were on which position nobody was giving attention to the serial number.
But if I break the book set in lots, so it was not in the first lot. It was in second lot books and it came after 3 books in second lot. So if I reviewed it hand to hand, then it improves my memory. This demonstrated that you get a way to recall what you have learnt, and this is a very important thing.
There is a way to learn things too. It is not like that. Only reading will work. You have to make pathways in memory like here.
We made a pathway that it was not in the first lot of books. We earlier told that it is not that necessary and in second lot too, it came a bit earlier, only not in the second half. So approximately.
I have an idea of its position too, and if I want to count then I can so if, at the end of every chapter, let’s say that you read a chapter from laxmikanth, then after completing the chapter, you recalled the topics from it. Then you get an idea of all the things once again. If you are unable to recall something, then you can revisit at the same time.
So that’s absolutely essential. For this reason, we made this plan in a standard manner, gs, then optional, again, gs and finally, testing and revision. If you want a pyq test series, then you can avail the free test series on coursesupscprepcom and for free csat resources go to upscprepcom/csat.
At the same time, if you want us to be mentors for your upsc journey, you can join our prelims 360 course and finally, coming to current affairs now. Finally current affairs, it requires a separate video to discuss, but there are 3 basic ways to do current affairs. If you do it from newspaper notes, then it becomes a daily activity, and this is the best way to do this, but it is obviously a lot more time taking and effort consuming because you can’t miss even a single day.
Second option is current affairs magazines. Magazines of different institutes just pick one and do it in a single go. It can be anywhere from 80180 pages, so that is something we can discuss.
And finally, there are annual compilations one of the most famous compilations is pt 365. Sometimes people get confused and they do both monthly as well as annual magazine, which is absolutely waste of time, because the content in monthly magazine that same content will be there in annual compilation. The difference is that monthly magazines would be of single month, but in annual compilation the month by month, let’s say updates of polity. You will get it clubbed in pt 365 of polity.
So if you are doing pt 365, then don’t do monthly magazine and vice versa. So that is a general idea about current affairs, but obviously we have to make notes from this of short summaries. Otherwise it gets too much. So this is where we will stop the video for today, and I will come with a separate videos on how to cover current affairs.
And if you want your doubts to be addressed by me, then please put them in the comments below. Thank you all for watching and best of luck for your upsc journey.
Sircilla Srinivas is a Senior Journalist with 35+ years of experience in Professional Journalism from United Karimnagar and Jagityal Dist, Telangana. Awardee of TS Govt Haritha Haram 2017 State cash Award. Participating in social activities such as Assistant Governor of Rotary Club Dist.3150, Dist committee member of Indian Red Cross society.