[Studyplan] Best Strategy & Studyplan for Economics Optional UPSC by Topper Neeraj Kumar Singh (AIR Rank -11/ UPSC CSE 2011) 1st Attempt

My Strategy for Economics Optional

Background I graduated in June 2011 with an integrated master's degree in economics from IIT

Madras.

When did I start my preparation?
I started preparing for CSE May 2010 onwards. So it was around that time that I started looking into Econ seriously from CSE point of view.

Coaching:
Despite having a degree in Economics I didnt feel that I was prepared enough score good marks in Econ in CSE. Hence I joined Prof Lalwani at Axiom Indian Administrative Service Academy, New Delhi for Econ coaching. Attending his classes brought a lot of conceptual clarity that I didnt have earlier. So at the end I can say that joining his coaching was a very good decision indeed and I owe a large part of my success to him.

Strategy for Paper - 1:

Books Referred Micro :

• Microeconomicsby Koutsoyiannis / Here
• Microeconomics by Pyndick and Rubinfeld / Here
• Macro - Macroeconomics by Richard Froyen / Here
• Monetary Economics - Macroeconomics by Richard Froyen and Prof Lalwani's notes 
• Public Finance - Did not follow any specific text. Relied on the things I had learnt during my graduation and Prof. Lalwani's Notes 
• International Economics - Salvatore; Krugman and Obstfeld / Here 
• Growth and Development by AP Thirlwall / Here
• EconomicDevelopment by Todaro and Smith / Here

Strategy:

I tried to use only the standard texts recommended at good universities around the world. I think this is very essential to get the concepts right. I havnt seen the traditionally recommended books for CSE Econ like Jhingan, Gupta etc; so cannot comment whether those books should be used or not. But my advice would be, read good standard and universally appreciated text as far as possible. (But I must also add here that I was used to reading all the text I have mentioned in 'books referred' right from my undergraduate days. So I had a bias towards reading these texts.) I finished the syllabus once before Union Public Service Commission Preliminary Examination. But as I have said above I wasnt very confident about my preparation. Hence I took at coaching from Prof Lalwani. I used to revise class notes almost everyday and devoted a lot of time to understanding each concept that I thought was important. 

Answer Writing:
Writing practice is very essential for Economics because one has to train oneself to speak in the language of graphs. I feel that it is important that as far as possible things are explained through a graph in paper 1. Making good and accurate graphs requires a lot of practice. So I devoted a lot of time in mastering drawing the graphs. Once a graph is drawn the answer automatically flows as an explanation of the graph. I used to write answers frequently and give it to Prof Lalwani to review it critically. In my CSE paper, I tried to include at least one graph in every answer except where it was absolutely impossible to do so.

Strategy for Paper - 2 :

Books Referred:

There are no standard texts I referred for paper 2 preparation. One has to read a lot about the happenings in the economy through various sources.

Some of the sources I referred to are:

• Indian Economy Since Independence by Uma Kapila  / Here 
• IndianEconomy Performance And Policies by Uma Kapila / Here
• Oxford Handbook on Indian Economy / Here
• Class notes of Prof. Lalwani 
• Relevant articles in Economic and Political Weekly including articles from the archive relating to some important issues like the poverty debate 
• Opinion articles on Indian Economy from sources like Economic Times, Live Mint and Business Line 
• Economic Survey / Here
• Budget speech and budget documents 
• RBI's handbook on statistics for various data 
• Speeches of RBI governor and deputy governors available on RBI's website 

 I had tried reading Indian Economy by Dutt & Sundaram / Here initially. I feel that it is an eminently unreadable book. It is very poorly edited and the data are not updated even in the latest editions. It is very poor source of preparation if you are aiming at getting high marks in paper 2. But I admit that at times some topics may not be found elsewhere other than this book. So you may have to go through the frustration of reading some part of this book. 

I never referred to Mishra & Puri's Indian Economy / Here, so cannot comment about that book.

Strategy:

The strategy for paper 2 was to first read up on each topic mentioned in the syllabus from different sources (mostly web sources). Then I prepared notes on each of these topics and did a critical analysis of each of these topics so that I understand them better. I supplemented my understanding with research papers in EPW and editorials in newspapers. I had done all this before writing Union Public Service Commission Preliminary Examination. After Union Public Service Commission Preliminary Examination I devoted most of my time to understanding paper 1 better. For paper 2 I read Lalwani sir's notes.

Answer Writing:
Never did any answer writing preparation for paper 2 because it is mostly about expressing one's opinions on issues and I was confident about being able to do that well.

My advice to aspirants with Econ as an option:

1. Try to read from good text
2. Answer writing practice an absolute must for paper 1. I cannot emphasize this fact more. The more you practice, the better you will score.
3. For paper 2 do not stick to any one text. Try to read up as different sources till you are able to critically analyse the issue from different angles.

My Scorecard- UPSC CSE-2011 Rank- 11 AIR

Subjets		Marks
Essay		105
General Studies Paper-1		118
General Studies Paper-2		103
Economics Paper-1		170
Economics Paper-2		209
Public Administration Paper-1		184
Public Administration Paper-2		167
Total Written		1056
Interview		210
Total		1266