PSIR - Strategy, resources & discussion

Hey guys!

I was a little confused about the way in which we should go about attempting this question, "Do you agree that liberal international theories are essentially ‘Eurocentric’ and not necessarily imperialist?" 

What do you think should be the structure? 

Did anyone join psir quest of only ias? Is the explanation of concepts upto mark?

Which video lectures are better? Gs score or only ias for psir crash course?

Chaliye isko revive kiya jaaye.

People getting good marks in PSIR in previous mains, please suggest few tips.
 Also, What are they mainly looking in PSIR answers ?

Anyone who has written mains with PSIR, please share a few tips or any info on the exam

@root why isnt the thread showing up in the activity? 

Yes we all will contribute as much as we can!

Have short revisable notes for the end >you should be able to revise one section a day. This will help loads.

Definitely agree with@Villanelle about the short notes thing. Especially for 1A areas like Justice, State, Democracy etc where you need to cover a lot of thinkers and a lot of approaches comprehensively in one answer. I would say also try and do the same for the WPT and IPT section (I didn’t manage to find the time to do that, and I struggled with covering that section in the end). Another thing I would urge everyone to do, is to go through the PYQs for the static portions, i had in brief answered most of them which made my revisions for those sections very structured as well.

Paper 2 is something i really enjoy anyway so studying that has never been a drag. I did the same thing of making really short one page notes for all the theories which really helped because i ended up using most of them in the answers as well. Also it really helps to consolidate the most important information on a particular topic in your mind. I also had my own notes made from different books for this section which also helped (or so I think). The rest would depend entirely on the marks I get.

The actual exam scenario— I was able to finish Paper 1 a minute before time and answered most of them from SR notes (that meant my answers weren’t really innovative) don’t know if I’ll get penalised for that. I also answered more questions from section A than B.

Paper 2, since I relied mostly on my own notes and i felt it was a lot more analytical than the morning session took more time. I was rushing through the actual paper due to which some of the 10 markers suffered in quality. I knew pretty much all, except one (the vaccine patent one). I’m just hoping that the examiner is convinced that I actually know stuff and just ran out of time in the end.

What books you used for paper 2? I have mostly done part A from Shubhra ranjan notes and Andrew Heywood's Global politics. For part B I am referring SR notes only...I don't think I will be able to write even average quality answers for this part with those notes. Satyam Gandhi (AIR 10) recommends onlyias IR material for paper 2 part b... What would you recommend? How to go about it?

@LetsGetThisBread 

Yaar i read both Heywood and Baylis for paper 2 and i extensively read on ORF purely out of interest, which really helped. Obviously not feasible for everyone, but if you can get your hands on Baylis and Smith its a brilliant book. Never made any separate notes just underlined in the book itself (which if I would do in an alternate universe). For part 2 i would advise you to remember the points from mains 365 and add some of the part 1 ke thinkers itself as well as supplement with C Raja Mohan, Happymon Jacob, Hash V Pant. Beech beech m daal dena. I also remembered few keywords from diplomats and FS like Amb Nirupama Rao, Amb Vijay Gokhale (brilliant for China analysis), EAM, former NSA etc and i had googled a few book reviews which really helped in my answers. But again all of this remains unproven till the time mains result is out, and more specifically mark sheet.

Edit: as my friend @HeNeArKr pointed out (after calling me a jhooti XD) this seems way more than what I actually told people. It isn’t because it’s about the extent to which you do this. I have one comment from few of the FS, and a few by EAM. I googled 2-3 book reviews and found some blurbs that were helpful and would make me look like I read the book. You can obviously do so much more if you have the time or the energy to not procrastinate. 

Also in comparison to paper 1, I prepared a lot for paper 2, but objectively speaking I didn’t do much.

Reading Mains 365 itself is good idea. Will skim through Baylis and Smith once. Thanks buddy!