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ANSWER WRITING, PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Approach to Public Administration (Basics)
In Uncategorized on May 26, 2012 at 06:30
In this post, I will share my experiences about the study of Public Administration (PA). I must emphasize here that the following points must
be taken more as a guideline rather than as some formula to scoring well. This post is like an introduction to the discipline for beginners and
how to get started. I will discuss detailed strategy for the subject in another post.
PA is divided into two papers. While Paper-I has contents related to the discipline of PA itself, Paper-II is more about Indian Administration.
For this subject, I took classroom coaching only from Mohanty Sir. I also joined multiple Test Series at dierent institutes.
To begin with, students must rst understand what PA is all about. Read the syllabus thoroughly and go through old question papers. This way,
you will get a feel of the subject and you will be able to decide whether to take this subject or not.
In PA answer writing is very important and this is a skill that can be mastered only with practice. The more you write answers, the more
condence you will gain of handling new questions in the exam. Handwriting does not maer as long as it is legible. Initially, you need not
worry about time limit but later on you must practice writing test-papers within the alloed time. Once you have given the tests, come home
and sit down with your answer sheet and question paper. Think calmly as to what points you missed in the questions you aempted. How
you could have improved a particular answer. Think as to what is unique in your answer that may not be found in others answer scripts. It is
always a good idea to underline basic points of your answer especially in short answer questions (20 marks). Do not forget to think over
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questions that you did not aempt in the practice test.
Sometimes, if you do not understand the question, look at the Hindi translation and see if you can gain clarity on what is being asked.
Prepare your own handwrien notes to remember various facts such as ARC recommendations, reports of various commiees and other
important points you come across while reading books. Read them again and again, especially before the exam date. Even if you have joined
a coaching class, it is still advisable that apart from the class-notes, you also prepare some more notes when you read books and IJPA articles.
Do not try to remember too many quotations as it is dicult to reproduce. The introduction and conclusions should be wrien well. Make
sure that whenever you write the answer to a question, you mention the basic points rst and then you must try and mention some extra
things to convey to the examiner that you have a depth of knowledge in the subject. This may not be possible in every answer but do this at
least in some answers. Also, organize your answers in small paras rather than in points.
Always remember, that quality of the answer maers more than quantity. You can actually just write around 250 words in a 30 mark question
provided your answer has substance. Similarly if you feel the need to go up to 400+ words in a 30 mark question, you can do so provided you
are not repetitive and you indeed have as much content relevant to the question.
PA is becoming more and more challenging each year. For both Paper-I and Paper-II, it is always a good idea to keep an eye out for new
information in newspapers and magazines such as Yojana and Kurukshetra and also IJPA articles. But you will be able to do this only when you
have got a grip over the fundamentals in the subject and these fundamentals are in your mind all the time. Only then, you will be able to
immediately make correlation of something you read with a particular topic in the syllabus. Making this correlation at the right times (rst
while reading the article and then while writing the answer in the exam) is a skill that you will gain only with experience. That is why, I have
emphasized in my Geing in the right frame of mind post, that students must spend time with their optional subjects. It is advisable to not
go for shortcuts even though at times, they may be necessary to cover the entire syllabus.
Let me briey recapitulate what I discussed above:
To begin with, go through the syllabus and old question papers.
Practice answer writing as much as you can
Quality maers, not quantity
Keep an eye out for developments related to PA while reading news articles for GS.
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