UPSC / IAS Preparation: Culture, S&T, Environment

Some topics in GS syllabus are very tricky… specially culture, science and tech and environment. A lot of people wonder where to study them from and waste a lot of time studying this and that. I too did the same and could never find any single good source for these. However, after lot of this and that, I was definitely able to find some useful bits here and there which I kept on consolidating in my notes. So sharing here the relevant portion of my notes so that others may not waste their time. However, it is my duty to add that even these may not be ‘sufficient’ or ‘good’, these are simply what I studied.

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Culture

I had history optional last year, so ancient and medieval culture I didn’t prepare specifically for GS. Being an optional student, naturally I had read many books and extracted the culture bits from everywhere into my notes. These notes can be found here..

https://www.evernote.com/pub/crazyphoton/culture

Naturally the ancient and medieval culture notes are very deep (prepared from optional perspective) but what is relevant for GS part, I have highlighted in red.

Modern was very difficult and I found material by Insight, Nitin Singhania and 2 pdfs titled ‘Compilation of Indian culture’ and’Compendium on Indian Culture’ very useful.

These pdfs are https://thesupermanreturns.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/compilation-of-art-and-culture.pdf and https://thesupermanreturns.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/sgs-39-compendium-on-indian-culture.pdf .

I tried to memorize all folk songs/dances/drama etc. state-wise i.e. state first and then all its dances because remembering and recalling the name of a random dance was too challenging.

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Science and Technology

This is one section I could never prepare properly. Each year I prepared something and UPSC asked something else (except for 1-2 questions). What I used to do was I prepared google alerts for various S&T related topics (say satellite, telescope, robot, nano, computers) and 1 month before the mains, I used to read the coaching material of various coaching institutes available on photocopy shops in Old Rajendra Nagar. But no use.

However, seeing this year’s paper, I have an intuition. The questions asked were on Fixed Dose Drug Combinations (FDCs), silicone tape and hotspot, digital signature, 3D printing and FRP composite material. Now all of these had been in news for some reason or the other (though not in news for technology as such). FDCs were related to the Drug Control Pricing Order, 2013, silicone tape was related to Kevin Pieterson controversy, 3D printing related to ISS news, FRP was in Hindu. So I believe the key to preparing S&T is that while reading any news / issue, we should also think about the technology involved in it (if any) and then read on internet about the technology. This should be given preference to reading the coaching material 15 days before the exam which gives us confidence but no questions come from it.

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Environment

In environment, there is some static portion and then there is some current portion. The static portion is various environment conventions and protocols (Basel, Nagoya, CBD etc.). I have most of these in my notes which can be seen here
https://www.evernote.com/pub/crazyphoton/environment

(Read the Environment Protection Note only)

The current portions include global climate talks. Every year the COP happens and one should know the diplomacy of various groups before the talk, during the talks and the outcome of talks. And then what did India gain / lose in the talk, whether what has been achieved is good enough or not etc. Then IPCC / UNEP come out with their reports sometimes which are important. The other news like “Green Corridor” question have to be captured from the news itself. I have realized Hindu is very important to capture these news.

This year Ganga is in news, so one should be thoroughly prepared on Ganga – Ganga Action Plans, Ganga Authority, what has been achieved so far, reasons for failure, what do experts say, what do environmentalists say, what should be done in future etc.