Making sense out of news

On 4th July 2015, about 1200 candidates gained independence from the gruesome cycle of Civil Services Examination. The odds are stacked high against the lakhs of people who appear for it. 4.5 lakh appeared for Prelim exam(objective), about 17000 went on to write the Mains(written exam) of which ~3300 were interviewed and 1200 liberated.

The sad part is that the process takes 1 whole year. Besides, many among the successful candidates, are the ones already having a services and are aspiring to get into coveted IAS. This excessive demand for such a scarce resource has led to inflation of price people are ready to pay for acquiring this position. Naturally, a whole gamut of middle men has come up, who peddle in resources required to get to this destination. As there is no question of regulation of this market, any one can put up coaching classes and sell crap/ give funde. The Gaussian curve(random event) is bound to throw up a couple of successes, which then attracts some better talent pool and the business takes off. The core issue is that no one really knows, what works. So, for an aspirant, it is like buying travel insurance. You know you will reach the destination if all goes well. But just in case, things go south, you want the mental comfort of having tried the all-hailed classes. But, I feel that much like the actual cases, where insurance companies simply raise their hands, any coaching class would say that due to extraneous factors it is impossible to expect a guaranteed success. So, ultimately ownership of success or failure lies with the aspirant.

I did not qualify beyond Mains 2014, and it is already quite late, when I realized that the cycle has become shorter for me, compared to a new entrant(who has comfort of 9-10 months) before prelims, while I have only 6 months. On other hand, I might say, I have the 'experience'. But again, I would only be fooling myself. With 1.5 months to go for Prelims, I felt the need for cultivating writing habit. Also, I wanted to humanize the aspirants community. For us it is a binary identity. On gaining success, aspirants are put on a pedestal of greatness, while the failures are looked down upon. So, I hope to make all my ideas/views available before greatness is thrust upon me. 

With that background, I thought it is imperative that I make contribution to the vast community of fellow aspirants who don't have access to organized resources. I am not a master of any topic, but then I have cultivated some skill for extracting and contextualizing news, which would save others some time. Of course there are 'newspaper analysis classes' available in market, but they are limited in accessibility. Besides, they take up too much time and also lack the much required 'relevance' filter.

So, here's how to make sense out of news:

Reading news for civil services aspirants is much like crows snacking on trash cans. Its not that all news is trash, but then trash is by definition, something that is worthless to someone. In that spirit, one must scan looking for only valuable stuff and skip the rest.

It helps a lot, if one maintains topic wise news notes IT could be done on paper or using software/internet platforms like MS OneNote and Evernote. This lets a person collect all related news at a single place and track stories, make timelines or simply collate relevant points which can be directly imported in an answer.

Organization of news can be done in a notebook(hard or soft copy) with following sections and then putting pages in them:

Social issues: Health, education, employment, poverty, women, children, minorities, other weaker sections, Urban development, Rural development, LWE(left wing extremism), NE north east India, land issues, food issues

Economy : budget, RBI(measures it takes), tax related issues/reforms, Agriculture and food, Infrastructure, Industry, Energy sector, Manufacturing sector, PSU related, etc

IR (international relations): region wise sections can be made like Neighbourhood of India, SE Asia, Central Asia, Middle East, West Asia, Europe, N Am, S Am, Aust, Multilateral orgs

SnT (science and tech): Biotech, Medical, Defence sector, Nano/mfg/materials, Space, Nuclear sci, Computers and communication, etc

Polity: Judiciary issues, Federal issues, Legislations, Political news(not too deep)

Art Culture Sports: General overview, artists, sportspersons, Games, performance of India

Environment: pollution, Forests/wildlife, Disasters, Conventions, Ganga, Policy measures

Profile: your state, district, college/school, your job/sector related news

This is a general overview of various sections and the pages one can insert in them, later as required one can reorganize them, to make them MECE mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive.

Now, when you go thru news, try to place the news in one of these sections, always extract not more than 5 points from any news articles. You have 6 minutes per question in mains, so you wont be able to put more than 5 points/angles on paper, so no point noting down all 20 points in a policy.

I began with The Hindu, but I felt that The Indian Express is more aligned for what we need. The latter have revamped their paper with new sections, which is great.

Front page: pick up major national news, no need to dive into political news/crime reports

City: communal attacks or gender crimes are valuable case studies. One should see what is being done by administration to tackle such situations. It will help enrich answers and also keep it real.

Govt & Politics and Network news: only pick those articles that are about policy matters(for and against arguments), no point in reading mud slinging between parties

The Economist: no need to dig deep, but it gives a world view. Can be used in citing examples in answers on suggestive measures, or in essays to give a touch of current affairs, helps in a couple of prelims Qs on world geography too

Economy: valuable analysis and data on policies and realities. Useful in every way, But one should try to check relevance quotient. Also, if one doesn't understand some news, perhaps it is too technical and better left alone. Example, often SEBI takes measures to regulate markets which are very technical. We cant use it in most answers in mains, nor is it asked in pre, so no point breaking our head over it.

Explained: this used to be a small section, now its a whole page, which is simply awesome. It gives good background so that current happenings become clearer. Again, not all that is there here is relevant to our purpose.

Editorial: useful to pickup analysis, salient points(for/against arguments), again pickup not more than 5 points(most important ones), often there is much rhetoric, which should be skipped, unless alternative/suggestive measures are also given on a particular issue

Sports: good to know who's who, who won what, etc, issues for sports admin and sportspersons

Then, there is the question of reading more than one newspapers. I read both Express and Hindu. I feel that in news, and in general for this exam, more revision you get, the better you will be. So, it has complementary and supplementary effects. But, one should be quick in sifting through news or it costs more than 2 hours, which is counter productive.

Underlying problem is the anxiety of missing out on some points, which makes us go for multiple sources. As a result, we end up biting more than what we can chew. So, it is better to narrow down on the sources and ruminate.

For things that I might miss out on in newspapers, I make up with magazines. There are many available in market. But I feel, Competition Wizard puts in good effort in sorting out the news in sections properly. They also give background, so its quite helpful. This is not an endorsement, but simply a statement of my preference. One is free to follow any magazine one feels comfortable with.

Further, once in a while, we slip out of routine and end up with a stack of unread newspapers. I have tried many times to cover backlogs of such kind. I would say, it is better to dump it and move on.

1.You always have the magazine to touch on important news, 2.Most of important news keep reappearing in  news, so no point spending 1 week on catching up with news backlog(a cycle is created with backlog diminishing but never ending-- Zeno's paradox)

I hope this makes sense.