How to study current affairs | Additional Study Material for UPSC PDF Download

How to Prepare Current Affairs for UPSC?

With the change in UPSC Exam pattern and syllabus from 2013, current affairs play a major role in the preparation and the exam requires the awareness of current happenings both nationally and internationally. Read on to know more about how to study current affairs for UPSC prelims & mains.
The UPSC syllabus for prelims quite clearly mentions “Current events of national and international importance” and this part of the syllabus is called as current affairs. The commission has included current affairs in the exam but the syllabus of current affairs is not defined for both prelims and mains exam, hence all that you have to do is to read major newspapers every day and make notes out of it or can also refer our monthly current affairs(subject wise) & weekly news compilation & Daily current affairs based MCQS, which covers all the major news that is relevant with regards to UPSC Current Affairs.
For daily coverage of editorial, you can check our The Hindu editorial analysis.

Current Affairs Question Analysis of previous question papers
As said earlier, the current affairs part was included in the UPSC Exam from 2011 onwards. Let us look at the previous year question papers to analyse and check the weightage of current affairs question in the prelims exam.
The following graph and table will give you a clear picture of the importance that current affairs plays in the UPSC exam.

This analysis of past years’ question papers shows that the weightage for current affairs question is increasing every year and hence, aspirants should give more importance to current affairs and related aspects while preparing for UPSC.
While speaking about current affairs question in UPSC Mains Exam, particularly in General Studies Paper 1 to 4, most of the subject related questions asked are correlated with the current affairs. Hence, it could be said that the percentage of current affairs in UPSC mains is also huge.
For example: If we analyze the UPSC Civil Services Mains 2013 Question Paper,

The above question was asked in UPSC 2013 Mains Exam, which is linked to World War and Current Affairs.
For e.g. US and Cuba have recently decided to restart their diplomatic relation, this is how we can correlate this news with the world history syllabus, by giving importance to “Cuban Missile Crisis”.

This year President Obama visited Cuba, which made waves in the newspaper, hence it is advised to give importance to this current affair as questions may be expected related to this.

This question was asked in the year 2013 in UPSC Mains Exam when the Telangana issue was at its peak.
It is advised to candidates while preparing for the current affairs section to keep the previous year question papers along with them and understand what type of questions has been asked as it will give an idea to candidates on how to prepare for current affairs.

Reading the newspaper alone is not sufficient for UPSC Current Affairs preparation, below listed are some useful books which candidates can refer for current affairs:

• India Year Book
• Newspaper- The Hindu, Indian Express
• Economic Survey
• Yojana Magazine
• Kurukshetra Magazine

EduRev tip: Even though you collect fodder points from multiple sources, it is advisory for you to concise the content as it will be useful during revision. Also, practice Daily MCQs to check yourself regularly.