General Studies – Paper I

General Studies‐I : Indian Heritage and Culture, History and Geography of the World and Society.

• Indian culture will cover the salient aspects of Art Forms, literature and Architecture from ancient to modern times.
  • Modern Indian history from about the middle of the eighteenth century until the present- significant events, personalities, issues.
  • The Freedom Struggle — its various stages and important contributors/contributions from different parts of the country.
  • Post-independence consolidation and reorganization within the country.
  • History of the world will include events from 18th century such as industrial revolution, world wars, redrawal of national boundaries, colonization, decolonization, political philosophies like communism, capitalism, socialism etc.— their forms and effect on the society.
  • Salient features of Indian Society, Diversity of India.
  • Role of women and women’s organization, population and associated issues, poverty and developmental issues, urbanization, their problems and their remedies.
  • Effects of globalization on Indian society.
  • Social empowerment, communalism, regionalism & secularism.
  • Salient features of world’s physical geography.
  • Distribution of key natural resources across the world (including South Asia and the Indian sub-continent); factors responsible for the location of primary, secondary, and tertiary sector industries in various parts of the world (including India).
  • Important Geophysical phenomena such as earthquakes, Tsunami, Volcanic activity, cyclone etc., geographical features and their location-changes in critical geographical features (including water-bodies and ice-caps) and in flora and fauna and the effects of such changes

As the syllabus of GS Paper -I mostly comprised of culture, History, Geography and Society; paper is mainly static in nature apart from the Society part. Module wise sources for the paper are also mentioned below

Culture

Nitin Singhania book + NIOS materials 

Post independence

NCERT + Vision IAS material for post independence (Not attached here, as both are easily available)

World history

Part 1 of Vision IAS material and other issues covered by UPSC in recent years. 

Sociology

Only news paper and current issues from Vision IAS current affairs – extensive writing practice is needed.

Freedom movement

Spectrum+ Indian history by Grover and Mehta (Bipan Chandra for general reading)

Geography

NCERT X, XI, XII + Leong physical geo + Hand written notes. Topic covered in hand written notes; one can read from the notes or from any other standard Geography book

One can also take help of Geomorphology notes, already provided under Geography optional.

Notes for General Studies-I

Attaching all the available notes of Ravi Anand, IAS (Presently posted as SDM Gumla, Jharkhand) and Soumyadip Bhattacharya, IPS (Presently posted as Addl SP(HQ), Darjeeling). Ravi’s note is not only concise, informative, written in beautiful hand writings but also an ideal one; which can be followed by the aspirants to make their own notes

Indian Heritage and Culture

Art & Architecture by Ravi Anand

Modern & Folk Paintings by Ravi Anand

NIOS Culture material

Modern History

Modern History 1 by Ravi Anand, IAS

Modern History_2 by Ravi Anand, IAS

Modern History 3 by Ravi Anand, IAS

Modern History_4 by Ravi Anand, IAS

Modern History_5 by Ravi Anand, IAS

World History

World History part I -VISION IAS Value Added Material

World History Part 2 VISION IAS Value Added Material

World History notes by Ravi Anand, IAS

Geography

GC Leong Part-I & Indian Physiology by Soumyadip Bhattacharya

Notes on Indian Monsoon

Climate of India -Khullar

Notes on Plate Tectonic

Notes on Oceanography