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UPSC : Warmup and Siestas  

30Wednesday  M  AY 2012  POSTED BY VIBHUGOEL IN UPSC PREPARATION 

≈ 9 COMMENTS 

Lets add fun to the UPSC preparation.

These scribbles are for the future UPSC aspirants (not to exclude the general readers) who

are interested in preparing for the Civil Services Examination and might appear anytime in

or after 2013. This post is definitely not for the aspirants who are appearing this

year as it refers to some long term preparation requiring considerable time and effort,

which this year students don’t have the luxury of. 

Talking of humanities as any of the optionals (even if there are speculations that there

might be a significant change in the UPSC syllabus next year onwards), or for that matter

General Studies and Personal Interview, I think there are certain books and reading

material which if you are able to devour before starting your actual preparation, you have a

head on start compared to others (and yeah, for aspirants who are serious about 2013, I

know you have at least next 3 to 4 months, go slow on movies and dates, follow or at least

try to read some of these).

Here is my recommended list:

1)  ‘India Unbound’ by Gurcharan Das (exceptionally good written, yet easy to

comprehend work, detailing the history of India post independence, seen from an eye of an

entrepreneur)

2)  ‘India after Gandhi’ by Ramachandra Guha (very useful for GS and interview) 

3)  ‘The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of the World Order’ by Samuel P Huntington

(very useful for GS Paper II, Political science & IR students ,and also for the interview)

4)  ‘Development as Freedom’ by Amartya Sen (Especially important considering the

debates on sustainable development, and growth vs development)

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5)  ‘Public Institutions in India: Performance and Design’ by Devesh Kapur and Pratap

Bhanu Mehta (very good cases for public administration and GS)

6)  ‘Splendour in the Grass: Innovations in Administration’ (sixteen cases on Public

Administration by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, Ministry

of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Government of India)

7)  ‘Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India’s Poorest Districts’ by P

Sainath (very useful for quoting some cases, very detailed, read only if you are interested in

the topic)

8)  ‘Imagining India’ by Nandan Nilekani 

9)  ‘The Future Shock’/ ‘The Third Wave’ by Alvin Toffler (infact any of the Toffler books’

would give an idea that his predictions were spot on)

10)  ‘The Wonder that was India’ by A L Basham (especially good for History Students)

11)  ‘Arthaśāstra’ by Kautilya/ ‘The Prince’ by N Machiavelli 

12)  ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ by Francis Fukuyama 

Talking about some of the light reads which are somehow connected to the prep, might

make for a light fiction, here’re my suggestions: 

1)  ‘English August’/ ‘The Mammaries of the Welfare State’ by Upamanyu Chatterjee 

2)  ‘The Strange Case of Billy Biswas’ by Arun Joshi 

3)  ‘Journeys through Babudom and Netaland’ by T. S. R. Subramanian 

4)  ‘Lunatic in my head’ by Anjum Hasan 

Enough, right . I second this.

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Please understand that this is not a ‘must do’ list, what I am merely saying is that for the

aspirants who have time on their hands and want to constructively use it, these

recommendations might come in very handy.

Last, but not the least, dailies like ‘The Hindu’ and ‘The Indian Express’, a good monthly

magazine like: ‘Civil Services Times’ or ‘Chronicle’, even ‘The Economic and Political Weekly’

(a bit difficult read for the starters, but believe me, pays in the long run; only selected

articles and not the entire magazine, its online subscription also comes in very useful),

coupled with the standard texts (how innocently I have added thousands of pages, you see)

are indispensable, no matter at what stage of preparation you find yourself in.