The knowledge about current affairs holds a central place in competitive examination preparation. The competitive exams like UPSC,MPSC,Defence Services, Banking exams expect a candidate to be well informed about the current affairs and its impact on our society. Newspaper is a readily available source to keep oneself abreast with the latest happenings in our surroundings. Competitive examination aspirants often face difficulty in initial stages of their preparation regarding updating their knowledge of current affairs using newspapers as an adjunct. This article throws light on how to use the newspapers effectively to score higher marks in competitive examination.

Competitive exams like UPSC,MPSC,Banking,Defence services expect an aspirant to be able to know and analyse the latest happenings in national and international arena. The aspirants must devote minimum one to two hours daily for a comprehensive newspaper reading. A vigilant approach is required for reading and analysing relevant content from newspapers from the perspective of competitive exams preparation. The candidate should have a cursory look at the headlines on the first page of a newspaper as it gives an idea about the most important happenings of the day. Based on the relevance of topics, important news items need to be studied in detail and less important news can be skipped. Usually the political mudslinging, theft, dacoit, entertainment news and regional news are of lesser significance and the issues with state level, national and international level significance, with socioeconomic or legal connotations are of more relevance. We must go into the details of these news and should try to find out the comprehensive knowledge in terms of- ‘what,where,why,when and how?’ of a particular issue. The web services or search engines can be of great help to aid our understanding about the issue in addition to the newspaper content. Secondly, the candidates preparing for state level MPSC civil services examinations can focus their attention on state level news.

Government welfare schemes along with its impact on the society and economy, important persons in news, awards, important public conferences, etc are important from an examination point of view. Candidates should also focus their attention on international news, especially on news having a major impact on India or the whole world. The news related to international organisations like UN,WTO,IMF,etc can be of great help along with news on important conferences like climate change conference , measures for sustainable development, nuclear summits,G-20 summit, Brexit issue and so on. The competitive examination aspirants must focus on the contents of editorial page and its adjacent page where the views, counterviews and elaborate analysis of various issues are available. To prepare for the analytical views on various issues, a candidate can rely on the points gathered from these analytical articles and editorials. The views and counterviews prepare the aspirant for expressing oneself in a balanced manner for the mains examination as well as for the interview. The quality articles written by renowned editors, economists, social scientists, educationists are of a great help to develop the analytical bent of mind. The economy and financial news are available on the separate page and a few selective topics need to be focused by the aspirants. Usually the news related to mergers-acquisitions, quarterly profit-loss documents of companies and corporate sector news are of lesser significance whereas all the important news related to macro-economy of a nation, Government schemes, budgetary data, data on agricultural, industrial and service sector of an economy, important bilateral or multilateral trade agreements, monetary policy measures, etc are of pivotal importance from the competitive exams preparation point of view. Rather than focusing attention on sports pages on daily basis, a compiled material on important sports tournaments, awards, persons in news, etc can be used on monthly or quarterly basis, as few questions are asked on sports related news in competitive exams.

The competitive examination aspirants should develop the habit of making notes from their reading of newspapers and should add on the relevant material on regular basis. These notes would be of great help during the revision stage of competitive examination preparation. Considering the importance of newspapers in preparation of competitive exams, choice of newspaper for regular reading is an important aspect. The aspirant must select newspaper based on the quality of articles and editorial of the newspaper, as they help in framing the balanced opinion on an issue needed for competitive examination. Hence, a habit of regular newspaper reading will not only help you to achieve the success in competitive examination but will also make you more aware and empowered citizen of India.

(The author of this article ,Lt Col (Dr) Satish Dhage, is an ex Army officer and has been qualified for IPS (Indian Police Services) through IPS LCE 2012. Presently, he is Director, MGM Institute of Competitive Exams Aurangabad.                                     For any queries or feedback, he can be contacted on email id : drsatishdhage@gmail.com)