HOW TO READ THE HINDU FOR UPSC CIVIL SERVICES EXAMINATION?

The role of The Hindu in UPSC Civil Services Examination is undeniable. People often wonder  what makes The Hindu so important for UPSC exams.

The answer for this might be the rationality in the content. The Hindu, primarily  focuses upon “sense” not “sensation” and here the  emphasis is clearly on “news” or may be as mentioned in the UPSC Prelims syllabus “events of current importance”.

Most of the articles or news pieces do follow a format of

• Brief background
• Current issue
• Relevance of the issue
• Advantages and disadvantages
• Measures and suggestions.

As you can see, such a format of news writing provides an UPSC/IAS aspirant with ready-made material while preparing for the Civil Services examination.

How important is reading “The Hindu” for UPSC Preparation?

It’s always better to hear it from the horse’s’ mouth, we say. It is the case with The Hindu also – despite having many Current Affairs magazines for UPSC examination. Such magazines and websites serve the purpose of supplementary reading.

How to read The Hindu for UPSC examination?

Well, reading a newspaper from the point of view of preparing for an examination is a different ball game altogether.

Every Civil Service aspirant must firstly bring about a change in attitude while reading the paper. For most beginners Newspaper reading would be a confusing task .

“ I know i should read editorials; but what else should i read ? Do i need to read the entire newspaper ? What is the strategy  I  should apply while choosing the news items?”;

all these confusions are deemed to happen when you start. In some cases reading newspaper might have been a leisurely activity, where often the emphasis was on the Sports and Tabloid pages. UPSC preparation requires you to have a paradigm shift in  your outlook towards newspaper  reading.

Initially, every aspirant may spend around 2-3 hours reading the newspaper, which is absolutely fine when you’re beginner. However, moving forward allocating too much time for newspaper might not exactly prove to be the right strategy for your Civil services preparation.

Making notes and underlining the important aspects of news item is critical while  preparing for UPSC exams.

What do I read from The Hindu for UPSC examination?

For a beginner, every news in the newspaper will look important in some way or the other.  Breaking this myth is the first challenge. Following steps would help in reading the Hindu newspaper in a focused manner

• Do not read the whole newspaper– We need to know what is relevant for UPSC examination and can avoid news that has no connection with UPSC syllabus.

• Reading the newspaper leisurely and in half an hour is not the goal. Reading the newspaper leisurely will not help a civil service aspirant. It is advisable that you keep a notebook to note important events and its relevance because re-reading newspapers over an year before exam is not  practical.

• Read the news which are in connection with UPSC syllabus. If you look at the trends in UPSC examination, the questions are always asked from the syllabus that UPSC publishes every year. So reading news that are not relevant like political controversies doesn’t help and is a waste of time.

• The Editorials , Editorial Article and Oped relating to UPSC Syllabus are to be read with an analytical perspective. These are the most important portion of the newspaper that would help you in your Mains Examination. The questions in Mains are often in depth and analytical in nature. You will be asked to write opinions and suggestions or criticise the statement given in the question, for which these portions in The Hindu would help you giving better answers.

• Special features like “The bottomline” on Mondays, supplements like “Education Plus” “Art and Culture” etc are also important.  Bottomline explains the Economic developments, Education Plus contains a page on Science and Technology and Art and Culture discusses past in the present. All the three are part of UPSC Syllabus which shows its relevance. But again you can choose the most relevant according to the Articles.

• Upgrade your vocabulary with sentence construction with precise Editorials that appear in The Hindu. As per UPSC Notification 2017 (as given in the UPSC notification), the answer-writing method UPSC expects is given as follows “Credit will be given for orderly effective and exact expression combined with due economy of words in all subjects of examination”. In order to write an answer so precisely as UPSC desires, you have to have good authority over language and Editorial section in the Hindu will help you in this venture.

What should I not focus upon?

• Political Controversies

• Political Statements

• Election Campaigns

• City News and State News [except news that are of national relevance]

How to Read the Hindu ? – A Page by Page Analysis

We believe that a page wise analysis might prove to be more beneficial for you as a beginner.

Page 1 – Front Page: Well, often highlights all the major news and events of the previous day. An aspirant need not dwell upon this page for long, except when it’s budget day or so. A quick glance of the major headlines is more than enough.

But if the news item discusses about any recent SC judgment or observation, Government Policies /Programmes, any path breaking international agreements/events, you should not miss it.

Page 2 – 6 – Regional news and local events feature in these pages. Most of the news does not bear any relevance to the UPSC examination. Hence you need not bother much and not spend more than 5 minutes glancing through these pages.

Page 7 – The page before the Editorial and Perspective, often contains news related to the Nation. Highly important from the standpoint of Civil services examination. An aspirant must try to focus upon important Supreme Court (SC) judgments, launch of various schemes, government orders , DRDO and  ISRO projects and so on.

Editorial – A page you cannot afford to skip as an UPSC/IAS aspirant. An aspirant must focus on the 2 editorials on the left before moving towards the Main editorial. However, before you start reading the editorial, try to place the news into UPSC syllabus (GS 1, GS 2, GS 3, GS 4 etc). This would help you in better understanding the relevance of the news for UPSC examination.

At the end of reading an editorial, an aspirant must be able to form an opinion regarding the piece of news. These opinions matter the most in your UPSC Civil Services Mains and Personality Test.

Perspective – This page contains the “OP-ED” (Opposite to editorial) segment. Authors of repute or eminent personalities usually write the articles here. (This is the segment with the disclaimer that the views expressed reflected solely of the author and not the paper). Hence, this page gives you multiple dimensions of the same issue.

These 2 pages should ideally be completed in 35-45 minutes (Your reading speed and ability to grasp concepts will improve in a few weeks once you make reading newspapers a habit).

Page 10 – 11 – These pages stresses more on political events in the national sphere. However though some news of significance related to Federalism, Central policies do figure here. One must not spend too much time on these pages.

The World – This page focuses upon all events in international and geopolitical world. This becomes crucial for your Mains preparation. An aspirant must also focus upon the maps given along with the news as these might figure in UPSC Civil Services Prelims also.

Business – An aspirant need not look into the day-to-day activities in the secondary markets (Sensex and so). The stress, in this page is upon, monetary and fiscal policies and any measures to improve existing regulations. Not to spend more than 15 minutes on this page.

Sports – Well, normally do not figure in UPSC examination and therefore need not spend much time here.

There are weekly features for Science & Technology, which must not be skipped. Similarly, any news related to environment and climate change must also be looked upon with importance.

Ultimately, an aspirant must focus upon those areas which are important from UPSC syllabus point of view and not dwell upon trivial issues. He must be able to read and analyse the topics of current relevance.