GENERAL STUDIES 1 BOOKLIST

 BOOKLIST FOR GS 1

Indian Art and Culture
    An Introduction to Indian Art – Class XI NCERT
    Chapters related to culture in Ancient and Medieval India NCERTs
    Centre for Cultural Resource and Training (CCRT) material
    Heritage Crafts: Living Craft Traditions of India -NCERT

    For someone who is starting just now, this topic can overwhelm them. So I suggest beginners read this section after they get acquainted with other GS topics

    In Art and Culture, questions asked by UPSC in recent years are more analytical— which requires both the factual content and good analysis to answer the why and how. You can answer such questions well only when you understand the historical background in which such art was produced. This is why it’s important that you read NCERT XI Ancient India for it gives you that historical context.

    For instance, don’t just memorise features of say, Sangam literature or Chola architecture, but understand the social, political, religious and economic context in which such grand art was produced. They will form the analysis part and will help you write great answers.

    Make good use of the internet to watch both visual and performing arts to understand how they actually look in real life. You will be able to recollect such visuals more easily. They will help you write a decent answer for questions which you only have a vague idea about.

    Wherever relevant, draw diagrams to illustrate your answers. For instance, you can draw a rough sketch to show the features of a Stupa, Dravida, and Nagara style architecture, Paleolithic art, Folk arts such as Warli, Harappan pottery etc. You don’t need to be a Michelangelo for this, but you must ensure that the fundamentals are correct. For example, in Warli art, human bodies are represented by triangles, heads by circles and hands by simple lines. Just get these basics right. Link to download diagrams is given at the end of the article.

    Art and Culture requires a ton of memorisation and there’s really no shortcut to mastering it except through multiple revisions.

Modern Indian History

    A Brief History of Modern India- Spectrum Publications
    India’s Struggle for Independence – Bipan Chandra (Read selectively for topics not covered in the Spectrum book)

    Questions on Indian history are something that every serious aspirant will answer well, so you really cannot afford to let go of these questions. If you had done your prelims preparation for this topic well, that is good enough. You just need to practise answer writing.

India’s Post Independence History

    India Since Independence by Bipan Chandra
    For certain topics, I made notes from this book. Download link is given at the end.

World History

    I prepared entirely for this topic from this outstanding book called World History: Patterns of Interaction by McDougal Littell. For UPSC, read from Chapter 22 to Chapter 36: You can download the book from this link: Download here

    Since revising this big book before the exam was difficult, I prepared concise notes from it. I also practised maps to demonstrate major world historical events.

    Link to download my notes and maps is given at the end of the article.

Geography

    The study plan is the same as for prelims, which I’ve explained Here

Indian Society

    This is a generic, nebulous topic with no style or structure. Questions are sometimes vague, philosophical and the challenge we face is not so much in lack of content as in presenting it concisely in 200 odd words. To understand the basics, read NCERT Sociology Std XI and XII. Make concise notes on each topic that includes: a crisp definition, latest statistics, govt schemes, criticism of these schemes; causes of issues such as communalism and regionalism, historical and current examples, their impact on our society, and your suggestions as the way ahead. (you can get these suggestions from the internet or ARC 2 or some committee report). In case if you find good coaching material for these topics, that’ll do as well.

    For this topic, a generic answer with proper structure and subheadings that cover multiple dimensions is good enough to fetch you marks. You can find my notes at the end of the article.