Strategy to Tackle Questions related to Indices in UPSC Examination

Going by the recent pattern of asking questions in civil services examination, now a days questions are not only being asked from international body and Government released indices but , also non-governmental organisation on frequent basis. The Government, along with various important organisations, release their report on various issues that are important for UPSC. UPSC has always tested the knowledge of the aspirants by asking several questions based on indices released by important national and international organisations.

Number of Indices related to various subjects published every year by the different international organisations and institutions to differentiate the countries based on their health, education, woman empowerment, hunger, trade, and business etc. In this article, we have put together some of the most popular and prominent indexes and has suggested the approach to help out the aspirants preparing for questions related to this segment of UPSC.

Reasons of Asking Questions from Indexes:

• Publishing of Index is like indicator module of growth, development and achievement of any institution/organisation. As UPSC students, it should be known of the different Indices that constitute the measuring scale or yardsticks of performance.
• Indexes give a statistical idea of the functioning of various social, economic and political elements in a country and thus adequate steps can be taken in right direction.
• The Government backed indexes present a detailed report of the essential factors that govern the country, indexes can used by the people of the particular country to measure the performance of government in Power.

Preparation Guide for Indexes:

• Aspirants preparing for indexes related questions should focus on organisation publishing the report as their first and foremost priorities.
• Next step of aspirants should be on important yet, common question is regarding the indicators/parameters of the report. For Example, Global Hunger Index report measure hunger scenario of particular country based on indicators like;

1. Malnourishment
2. Stunting
3. Wasting
4. mortality

• Most important thing that aspirants should keep in mind while reading indexes is, analysing the Index from Indian point of view i.e. About the performance of India and other developing countries in the Index, especially performance of neighbouring countries.

Source to Cover Index:

• Aspirants should rely on authentic sources for preparation of Indexes published by national and International organisation or by government. Generally, all important indexes which is being asked in UPSC examination are covered by Newspapers, even if newspaper misses any index then aspirants should rely on any magazines published by coaching institutions to cover the left out issues from the newspapers. Aspirants can even visit GS SCORE website for covering indexes, to cover GIST of Important Reports like: e-Government Development Index Aspirants can prepare for all indexes by relying on GS SCORE study material.
• Apart from this, aspirants should also try to cover important organisation form the websites of the publishing institution/organisation also. As, there may be possibility of addition of new dimensions in the index. For example, if any report is being published by World Bank, then aspirants are advised to visit World Bank website once to skim the index in one glance.

Update Notes:

• Aspirants are advised to make their notes of all important ones. If any aspirant will go for all Indexes notes making then it will be not only tiring job but, it will also be time consuming
• The first step is while preparing Notes is to read the books without underlining or writing anything down. Otherwise, you will re-write everything as you may find everything important. So, give it a first quick read and try to understand the major points. The next thing that you must keep in mind while preparing UPSC Notes for NCERTs is to write short sentences. Do not go for writing long sentences as it will be tough to read.
• Updating notes is crucial component. As Digital is the new age technique for anything! Optimally using apps like Evernote to make UPSC notes. It will help you in saving a lot of writing time! It also helps in editing or updating the notes very easily. You will also not have to worry about saving them physically.

Last but not the least, aspirants are advised to go for successive revision in multi-pronged (Multiple revision) approach. Aspirants should remember this, only revision can be a guiding tool to avoid mistakes and rectify your problems. For revision, aspirants can either directly revise form their own notes or they can revise thorough process of attempting mock test to understand the process of asking questions and how any student can develop their own individual plan of action.