Economic Survey 2017 for UPSC IAS Exam : How to read it ?

Well, it’s that time of the year when everyone looks up to the Finance Minister of the country and has their eyes and heart fixated on the budget and economic survey 2016-17. The survey has been an important document for UPSC Civil Services examination. (It has grown in prominence especially in GS 2 and GS 3 of Mains)

With 2 volumes and over 20 chapters (Economic Survey 2015-16), the document is obviously voluminous. No aspirant should make the mistake of going through each and every line of the Economic Survey. 

So, how exactly do we read the Economic Survey? We can begin by setting forth a list of Do’s and Don’ts.

1. You always find a disclaimer associated with action movies, we can have a similar version here as well – Do not attempt to read the entire Economic Survey. You have to be smart about choosing what to read and which chapters to focus more (We, at Selflearn would be offering you a chapter wise analysis of the Economic Survey 2016-17 to help you for both UPSC Prelims and Mains examination.)

2. Volume 2 of the Survey has traditionally been the more important one, relevant for your preparation. Therefore it would be wiser to focus your energies better on this than the first volume.

3. Economic Survey comprises of boxes to go along with the normal content. We have had instances of some questions being asked from the box itself. So, it would be essential to understand the underlying essence of the important boxes.

4. You can skip many chapters in the Economic Survey based on Investments,Market equity, Share and debenture financing and anything related to microeconomics. (We would provide you with a list of chapters you can skip with regard to Economic Survey 2016-17, don’t worry). You can also ignore the graphs and charts to a large extent.

5. An aspirant must also not take the “number game” too seriously. You don’t have to mug up any of those except for understanding the trends in indicators.

Also Read : Top 10 Key Highlights of Economic Survey 2016-17 for UPSC Aspirants

How to approach the Economic Survey 2016-17?

1. Brush upon your economic terminologies (Yeah, acclimatizing to the concepts would help you in understanding the survey better). The concepts also tend to appear in UPSC Preliminary examination; so, this becomes the starting point for any aspirant.

2. Who prepares the Economic survey? (Before you get started, you need to know the ministry and the department in charge of the survey document)

3. Understand which chapters are relevant to your preparation and mark them separately.

4. You can use Selflearn’s Economic Survey – Key Features (chapter wise) document to understand what is the essence of a chapter and then begin reading the original survey document.

5. From UPSC examination point of view, you need to keep three things in mind and make note of,

• New concepts introduced (We have had terms like Effective fiscal deficit, Chakravyuha challenge and so on figuring in the Economic Survey in the past)
• Factors behind certain economic events (Inflation, current account deficit, demonetization etc.) 
• Government schemes (Ministry in charge, objectives, eligibility etc.) policies and intervention.

6. Once you are done with the Economic Survey 2017-18, you can test your reading by undergoing a Mock test series based on the survey. This would help you in assessing how well you read the Economic Survey 2017-18 and also pick up some points that you might have missed.

In these 6 steps, you would be done with the Economic Survey. Hope you found this article helpful. Write to us in case of any doubts and read our Economic Survey 2016-17 Key Features document to get ahead of the pack.