Geography Optional – Paper 2

This paper is a mystery! The geographical aspect to answers is something that always confused me.

Looking at my previous paper 2 scores (123, 106) I realised that focused effort in this paper might help me get better marks. This year during the preparation I was aiming for 150+ in this paper but, of course, aiming and expecting are two different things in this exam. 🙂 I got 166 this time. I was quite satisfied after paper 2 and felt that I could implement most of the things I was working for.

I’ll detail below how I tried changing my approach to this paper.

While for paper 1 the major change in my approach was re-orienting my preparation and adding new sources, for paper 2 the major changes I made were on the following lines :

1. Focusing my GS preparation. Due to the huge overlap of paper 2 with GS syllabus, strong GS preparation becomes a pre requisite in this paper. My GS preparation in previous mains was scattered and plenty, I needed to direct it akin to a laser beam. Short, concise, crisp notes with relevant facts and data – multiple revisions (I’ll detail it in a short post that I’ll be writing for GS). But as I mentioned in one of my posts right after Mains, by revision I mean – you should know where the full-stops and commas are in your notes, where your ink is dark and where it fades – your notes should be imprinted in your memory. So much so that that when you write an answer you recall exactly what is needed.
2. Bring geography into my paper 2 answers. This statement is the most confusing one. I remember reading such statements and being confused as to the way to attempt Geography paper 2 answers. I tried formulating my own method here, which seems to have worked, at least this year. I’ll elaborate on this later in this article.

2 units of paper 2 have already been detailed by me in previous posts – Settlements, Population and Map Work.

Sources :

1. Shabbir Sir class notes
2. India a comprehensive geography – D.R.Khullar
3. NCERT Books for Geography
4. I used the current data from the Economic Survey and the NITI Aayog 3 year Action Plan.

My sources, as is evident, were very limited.

1. Physical Setting : Sir class notes and Khullar. In topics like monsoon, tropical cyclones, western disturbances, floods and droughts I added some latest data from latest reports etc to my notes to give it the geography focus.

2. Resources : Largely focused on class notes and internet research.

3. Agriculture : class notes for all and then as specified below :

• Infrastructure : economic survey ( I had prepared the background of this topic from Dutt & Sundaram economy book)
• Institutional factors, Green Revolution: Dutt & Sundaram for historical data, Bipan Chandra India After Independence – chapters on Land Reforms, economic survey, recent reports on the need for re-look at institutional reforms, current affairs (evergreen revolution, rainbow revolution). I made a timeline for such questions on institutional and technological reforms in agriculture which I used in various answers on these topics. The aim of using the timeline was that before addressing the crux of the question, in very little space and using very less words I could give an overview of reforms in Indian Agriculture. I also memorised statistics here, eg yield of what/rice pre and post Green Revolution, productivity comparison in cereals, pulses etc of India and the world, landholding sizes and their comparison, impact of institutional reforms in percentage terms etc.
• Livestock resources etc : economic survey and current affairs.

4. Industry : I started this topic with Majid Hussain (Indian geography) but finally did it from class notes, NCERT and Khullar. Practised using maps, flowcharts showing the shift in the locational pattern of industries, location of raw material etc. I also feel the knowledge of Weberian locational theory should be used in answers in this topic.

5. Transport, Communication and Trade : NCERT, Class notes, economic survey, current affairs.

6. Cultural Setting: Majid Hussain (human geography), class notes.

8. Regional Development and Planning : Dutt & Sundaram, class notes and current issues.

9. Political Aspects : Bipan Chandra, Internet, current issues.

This is by and large the book list I used for this paper.

How did I change my approach to include a geographical angle to the answers? I’ll list down what I did different this time in this paper :

1. I specifically prepared data : on agriculture, monsoon, population, census data, trade, transport, and prepared specific points. So the answers were specific rather than generic. For e.g. a question was asked in Mains 2017 regarding solar energy in India not being developed to the desired level even though it has high potential. My approach to answering this question was highlighting the potential of solar energy in India – geographically and statistically and then talking about the reasons why it has not been developed – specific reasons with data e.g. if I talk about high cost of installation I had a data to support it and then in very very brief I talked about how it can be developed.
2. I tried adding paper 1 linkages where I could. I would like to highlight someone else’s example here because I feel that was so wonderfully used in the answer. There was a question on concentration of minorities in the border states of India and someone on ForumIAS had mentioned in the post mains discussion that he referred to the Boundary-Frontier concept here. That’s a wonderful way to link paper 1 and paper 2.
3. I used maps, flowcharts and data tables wherever I could.
4. Standard topics should be thoroughly well prepared. For e.g. classification of Indian towns, bases of industrial regionalisation, Agro climatic regionalisation etc. They should be very well prepared so that if any question is asked on these topics, apart from writing the standard answer one must be able to innovate a bit too in the presentation.