English and Comprehension Skill (25% marks)

Reading Comprehension and Inferential Skill

This part measures the candidates’ ability to infer meanings and answers from a given paragraph. Candidates should answer the questions that follow on the basis of what is said or implied in the paragraph. Multiple choices will be provided for each question out of which students should choose the correct answer.

Improving Sentences

This part tests the candidates’ ability to recognize and correct faults in usage and sentence structure. Here some sentences will be provided to test correctness. Part of each sentence will be underlined and beneath each sentence will be four ways of phrasing the underlined material. Students should choose the most effective way of expression.

Remedial Grammar

Variety of questions will be asked involving the application of grammar. Item types will include gapfilling, sentence re-ordering, dialogue completion and sentence transformation. This will cover the areas of tenses, verb patterns, active and passive constructions, articles, determiners and modals.

Vocabulary Skill

This part measures the candidate's knowledge of dictionary and thesaurus, and his/her over all knowledge of language. This may include expressions in one-word substitutes, antonyms and synonyms, similar sounding words, phrasal verbs, use of words as both noun and verb etc.

General Knowledge (in four parts - 50% marks)

Indian Economy since Independence:
This section is intended to test the awareness on some of the key issues of the Indian economy with a focus on the developments after Indian independence. The range of issues covered is given below

Basic Features

Natural resources, population size and composition, occupational distribution and national income concepts. Major Economic Problems: measures of poverty, trends in poverty, unemployment and its types, inequality, rural-urban disparities, inter-state disparities and inflation.

Development Objectives, Strategy and Planning

Objective, priorities and problems, Five-Year Plans, Trends in Savings and investment.

Sectoral Development

Agriculture, green revolution and technological changes, employment in agriculture, rural employment schemes; anti-poverty schemes, strategies for industrial development, public and private sectors, small and cottage industries, infrastructure, transport and communication and consumer awareness.

Foreign Trade

Balance of payments, foreign exchange reserves and trade policy. Indian Banking: role of Reserve Bank of India, and commercial banks.

Indian Public Finance

Finance Commissions, concepts of deficits and government budget.

India and International Economy

I.M.F., W.T.O., International aid for economic growth.

Human Development

National policy on education, health and health care policies and human development index.

New Economic Policy

Meaning, components and appraisal.

Indian Society

Structure of Indian Society - Indian Social Demography – Social and Cultural Differentiations: caste, class and tribe – Institutions of marriage, family and kinship – Political Institutions. Social Change in India - Sanskritization, Westernization and Secularization – Social Movements and Regionalism - Panchayatraj Institutions – Affirmative Action Programme of the Government – various reservations and commissions.

History and the Making of Indian Society - Mughal era and the social changes – British Raj – Sepoy Mutiny – Reform Movements in the 19th century - Freedom Movement – Independence and the emergence of India.

Indian Philosophy and Indian Thinkers - Jainism and Mahavira – Budhha and His teachings – Vedanta and Shankara - Sikhism – Sufism – Gandhi and Non-violence.

Contemporary World Affairs (post-World War II )

This part of the examination will test the candidate's awareness of the contemporary world that we live in. Issues relating to history, polity, society and culture since 1945 will be covered in this section.

The aftermath of the Second World War – Emergence of the US and the USSR – the cold war and the nuclear race – disintegration of the Soviet Union and the decline of communism – Arab-Israel conflict – NAM and the role of India – Sino-Indian conflict – Indo-Pak relations and wars.

Democracy and Development – Challenges to democracy – UN and the Permanent Five – Nuclearisation and non-proliferation – India and SAARC – Rise of terrorism and fundamentalism – The world after 9/11 – US-Iraq conflict and the axis of evil – War against terror and the role of India – Indo-US partnership – Emergence of European Union.

Hunger and poverty – Environmental degradation and environmental movements –social movements – Race and ethnicity – Gender discrimination – Deprived classes and minority politics–Communal violence–Religion in the contemporary world – Culture and civilization – Globalization and culture – Mass media and cultural change – Leftist movements.

Literature and art – Popular culture and film – Developments in Information Technology – Weather and climate – Natural disasters – Social and economic dimensions of AIDS.

Environment and Ecology

Global Environmental picture: Population Growth, Degradation of Soils, Global Atmospheric Changes, Loss of Biodiversity

What are ecosystems? Structure of ecosystems – biotic structure – categories of organisms, feeding and non-feeding relationships

Ecosystems - How they work? Elements in living and non-living systems; Energy Laws; Nutrient cycling

Solar and other renewable energy: principles of solar energy, hydropower, wind power, biomass energy, Ocean thermal energy, geothermal energy, and tidal power.