This summary gives some tips to read the newspaper for UPSC.
- First of all, there is no need to read every article in the newspaper.
- Regional news, political news, crime news are irrelevant to UPSC, hence can be skipped.
- Select only national-level news or the news articles which come under the syllabus of UPSC. Out of them, start reading the news article in your field of interest.
- In the editorial section, each news article takes 20 to 25 minutes to read and understand. If it took more than 30 minutes to understand, skip and mark it to read it later.
- The editorial section is challenging to understand because it lacks the background story. Hence, browse the topic via the internet to get an overview of the article.
- In oped, read the data points which are related to any national issue. There is no need to memorise the points/graphs. Read to understand the current situation.
- In the case of world news, skip the articles which are not related to India.
Example to select articles from the newspaper - The Hindu, dated 1st November 2021:
Page - 1:
The article 'Row over caste split of MGNREGA wage' is related to the scheme MGNREGA (2005). Hence can be read. The article 'No timebound pacts on climate change at G20' is related to the environment and international relations so it is selected to read. Other articles on the 1st page are related to political news hence they are neglected.
Page 2 to 5 contains only regional news - can be neglected.
Page - 6:
Editorial. Since Pegasus is related to national security, it should be read. The 2nd article is about the under-nutrition problem in India. Hence it can be read. The article 'Underestimed Utility' is about the MGNREGA scheme and 'The Big Push' is about COP26 so it should be read.
Page - 7: Oped.
The article, 'Living on death row with illness' talks about the mental health conditions of death row prisoners. This is not so important but can give a glance. The data points show the declining accidental deaths due to the pandemic so it can be read.
Other articles can be skipped.
Page - 8:
The articles 'Ahead of COP26, Indian site highlights emissions gap' and 'Navy takes delivery of warship' talks about environment and security hence can be read. Articles on the 1st page are covered here so they can't be skipped. Other articles are irrelevant to UPSC hence can be skipped.
Page - 9:
The article 'Informal sector shrank sharply in 2020-21' is the only topic relevant to UPSC on this page. Hence that alone can be read.
Page - 10:
The article 'Punjab does a deep dive for Indus dolphins' talks about Indus dolphins hence can be read. Other regional articles can be skipped.
Page -11:
The article 'China grapples with challenges of slowing economy, outbreaks' talks about the slowing economy in China. This helps in comparing the situation in India. Hence it can be read.
Page 12: Moneywise. This page can be skipped as it is irrelevant to UPSC.
Page 13 - 14: Sports. If sports is your field of interest then it can be read. If not it can be skipped.
