(FREE) UPSC Current Affairs 2024 PDF

Importance of Yojana, Kurukshetra Magazine for UPSC Exams

Introduction

UPSC examination has very huge syllabus of which many topics can be related to the debates and issues going on in the recent times. Recent times does not mean not a year, it varies from past 1 to 3 years. There are always questions in the mind of the aspirants that how to cover so many arrears? What should be the authentic source for data related to such topics? How to present those insights?

Why to study these Magazines?

They are representing government point of view on issues and also provide data and analysis for the same.
You will get the idea about Essay writing in different ways. For Example, if you go through any such magazines, you can see that same topic has been analysed in multiple perspectives by various people of diverse background. Therefore, these magazines are very good source for essay preparation.
In a year, there are 12 months and therefore there are 24(12+12) magazines one need to go through. In these you will get at least 35-40 topics covered. Therefore at least 25% of your mains preparation especially for the General Studies can be done. It means this bunch can prepare for on an average a whole GS paper.
You can also find out information about recently launched government schemes, government initiatives, policy initiatives etc.
Even you read just the Gist of yojana, kurukshetra magazines; you will be getting good quality data for the mains examination.

How to study them?

There are many ways to read it. Some read it word by word, for some it is about topical read, for some it is about just 4-5 important articles and for some it is just the 1 page summary.
We would recommend that a fresher should read at least 4-5 magazines very thoroughly. Thereafter, if he/she is convinced that he is able to find out the important articles from the UPSC examination perspective, he/she should definitely follow just the 4-5 important articles only.
If you have taken a Science Optional and can’t afford so much time upon these magazines then just read the lead article and summary. It would hardly take 30-35 minutes of your entire month.
For fresher’s and humanities optional people, there are many new learning’s and out of those 35-40 topics as discussed before at least 10-15 topics are directly part of the Paper-2 syllabus.
Don’t give much importance to the government schemes if you are following them from the PIB otherwise read about them briefly too.
If possible read the summary of last 2-3 years of these magazines and make 4-5 pages notes out of it.
Ultimately, what matters is your own note upon these magazines, it does not matter how you have prepared it. Finally, revise, re-revise and repeat the same process till you become Exam ready.

All the Best!!!