After opting for PSIR as a optional for UPSC , the first thing the aspirants get to know is about shubhra mam notes,
as many of the toppers has mentioned about her notes so there is always a hype among the students and they are always in search of it
so i'm just briefing out some of the good and bad points according to the topics in the syllabus
Paper 1 - section A
For this part you can have faith on her notes without any doubt.
Every topics from this section is well explained in her notes
for example- western political thoughts are very well explained and once you understand the western thoughts completely it'll help you to understand the rest of the portion from this section
you can also take some help from the books such as
O.P Gauba for political theory, theories of the state, justice , equality, rights democracy, Concept of power, hegemony, ideology and legitimacy
And for the ideologies portion you can refer to book Andrew heywood
Don't read the entire book. only those topics which are given in the syllabus
PAPER 1- SECTION B
In this section her notes are somewhere OK but you have to take the help from some of the books
for example
P.M Bakshi
Subhash kashyap or DD Basu with one of these you have to read Fadia's book on Indian constituion
PAPER 2- SECTION A
This is the most complicated one, you have to read newspaper along with this you have to read
Heywood's Global politics
IGNOU's notes from their BA program and on Pol science,
and in addition you should always check the site of MEA's for ongoing current events.
PAPER2- SECTION B
This is completely Current events based portion so you can't rely on her notes, just read notes for the static portion of every topics given in the syllabus and then quickly switch to the important sites as MEA's website, newspaper, and to make your static portion strong you can refer to a great book called
"Does the elephant dance"
My personal suggestion to whoever reading my blog
I would not suggest you to completely rely on her notes because most the PSIR students approximately 90% are reading the same material and they gonna vomit the same things during exam time
so to make your answer little bit different and to add some ghee and makhan to your answers in the examination you should read the above mentioned books to gain some unique points which you can add in the answer to make it different from others.
Thank you😉
