How to Read NCERT Books for UPSC Exam

Importance of NCERT books:

NCERT books are considered as real foundation in Civil Service Exam preparation. Many of the UPSC aspirants end up choosing the wrong book materials which may even lead them to failure. These NCERT books focus on fundamentals to help the students clear the basic concepts which are necessary to read further advance books.

NCERT books if studied meticulously can clear all the doubts giving you a thorough understanding about complex topics and subjects even. That’s why NCERT books are considered ideal in Civil Service Exam preparation for beginners.

Which are NCERT books need to read?

GS Paper-1 (Indian Heritage and Culture, History, and Geography of the World and Society)

NCERT Books for Indian History

NCERT Books for Geography

NCERT Books on Indian Society

GS Paper 2 (Governance, Constitution, Polity, Social Justice and International relations)

GS Paper 3 (Technology, Economic Development, Biodiversity, Environment, Security and Disaster Management)

NCERT Books for Economic Development

NCERT Books for Environment & Ecology 

List of Old NCERT books for reference reading

1. Ancient India (Class XI) by RS Sharma 

2. Medieval India (Class IX) by Satish Chandra

3. Modern India (Class X) by Bipin Chandra

4. World History(Class X): The Story of Civilization by Arjun Dev

Stages of NCERT books reading:

Stage 1:

1. Student needs to read book chapter-wise without underline or note making
2. Just try to understand what the author is trying to convey.
3. If you want to underline, then do with pencil only
4. if any difficult terminology, the clear that at this stage and can write in brief there only with pencil

Stage 2:

1. Again start reading from beginning chapter-wise
2. Remove those underlines which were done unnecessary at stage 1
3. Revise the concept again
4. Try to interconnect with other topics/subjects/history or current affairs issue
5. Solve previous years MCQs if asked from those chapters

Stage 3:

1. This is final revision of covered chapters of stage 1 and stage 2
2. Students can do highlight the important lines in this stage
3. Notes can be written down on notebook
4. Solve questions again to assess the progress

Final advice:

If you are still feeling difficulty, then you can go through the all three stages given above again. After this exercise, student needs to cover same topic/subject from other advance/reference materials to enhance the knowledge base. NCERT books alone are not the reliable source to clear Civil Service Exam. Students need to make proper strategy for UPSC preparation.

Remember, irrespective of how much you read, if you don’t write and practice writing, you won’t be able to reproduce your knowledge during the examination.  So solve as many as questions from test series or UPSC previous years questions.

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All the best and Thank you!