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Essay

   The essay paper in the Mains examination involves writing two essays of 125 marks each, while the word limit is between 1000-1200 words. Essays, in UPSC CSE, can be divided into two types - factual and philosophical. While most find the former easier to write, candidates often find themselves in a quarry when attempting the latter type. I'll delve into my strategies for both in this blog post.

 Given a choice between the two, I would always attempt factual essays as the content was easily available through GS and optional prep as well as newspapers. I would simply structure the essay by first providing a paragraph long introduction, followed by the body - which usually included an analysis of the issue at hand from a historical, economic, political, social, legal (etc.) perspective and would end with a solution (if possible) and a suitable conclusion.

 Philosophical essays, though a little difficult to write, provide the candidate an opportunity to truly display their writing skills. A skill for writing such essays usually has to be cultivated through practice. My basic strategy when writing such as essay would be to provide examples to support the statement given. These examples could be from the field of history, polity, society, economy, culture (I once used The Office as an example!) etc. A better idea can gauged from my mock essays that I've attached below.

 Some key points to enhance the quality of the essay would be -

  • Take out about 15-20 minutes before each essay to draw a basic structure.
  • Always try to do a 360 degree analysis of the essay topic.
  • Try providing a balanced view, as far as possible.
  • Cite quotes, statistics, constitutional articles. If possible, begin your essay with these.
  • Ensure a certain degree of continuity in the essay.
  • Try ending on a positive note.
Following are some of the essays I wrote as part of the mocks that I took. In one, a quote has been wrongly attributed to Benjamin Disraeli when in fact it is by Lord Acton. As always, there's scope for improvement so pick aspects of my essays you like and discard those which you don't.






PS. The files for Forum IAS may say pages removed/deleted. Rest assured, the pages have been deleted to remove my personal information. :)




 

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Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 27, 2020 at 9:58 PM

    Hi Chandrajyoti! Congratulations on your amazing rank and wish you all the best for your life in the services! Could you upload the corrected versions of your essay tests from Vision? Would help us frame our answers better.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UGMay 11, 2021 at 10:42 PM

    Mam, you have uploaded the same file for Forum IAS Essay 1 and 3.

    ReplyDelete

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