How to study Geography for UPSC: Resources, books, PYQs, High Scoring subject in prelims and mains

hi everyone I hope all of you guys are doing well so today I'm going to go ahead and dive into a subject I'm going to tell you how to study what to study when to study how to practice of a subject that I feel is very very important for upsc because number one it has limited sources and limited syllabus so from a limited amount of syllabus you can get high marks because you have to cover less things and secondly that lot of questions that are coming are coming from similar topics so if you master these topics that is a high probability that you will certainly get 80 90 of the questions that are coming from geography correct so this particular subject obviously geography has various aspects I will talk about those aspects but the thing that makes this particular subject interesting is also that this subject is very interdisciplinary subject in the sense that economics is covered in geography because in geography we also study about resources and industries so that is connected to economics then in geography we also study about human geography so it's connected to Human and the anthropological aspect of things then on the other hand it is also connected directly directly to international relations and geopolitics so IR questions that are coming actually are sort of like geography but I have questions at the same time in upsc I will discuss those also very standard questions that come in upsc every year you can always get those right and very interesting because I have always found maps to be something very interesting to study through maps you can decode half of the geography if you know the world map properly if you know the major landforms major oceans major water bodies on the world map well and every content of every continent has only like maybe 10 to 15 major landforms if you know these landforms well half of your geography is done all right so I'm going to discuss all that with you in today's video and hopefully that will help you with your geography section of upsc now before I actually dive into geography for two seconds I want to talk to you about one thing that I've noticed in a lot of aspirants last week one of the aspirants came to me and he was asking me few questions about upsc and what I noticed was even though that aspirant had good knowledge that aspirin did not have the confidence so what I felt was that a lot of times we might have the abilities we might have the knowledge we might have the talent but we don't know the extent of our abilities we are not confident about our own abilities and our own self-worth a lot of times we are very underconfident and we don't realize that if we just push ourselves on that front on the confidence front if we just have this pride in our own abilities in our own talent in our own views we have the confidence to put it across to another person then to be honest upsc preparations become much much easier and anything becomes much much easier so I feel like don't only work on your studies don't only sit with a diary and keep writing answer Writing Practice studying studying studying also focus on your confidence try to build that confidence all right on that I will make a different class altogether but today is the day of geography but I have wanted to kind of throw it out there so that you get a little perspective of things apart from subjects also now as far as geography is concerned first of all I am going to talk about what to study so what are the major sources of geography now let's first structure the how to study geography it is very very important for us to structure the entire subject before we dive into it I did that for Enviro I did that for polity and economics I'm going to do it for geography also geography can be divided into four major parts so I made the notes of this number one is fundamental fundamentals of the physical geography so physical geography is one thing that you have to study physical geography is about landforms about how the Earth came into being as it is today various landforms how they were formed how the oceans were formed so physical geography is one major thing that you have to study in geography lot of questions come from physical geography second thing is human geography the third thing is going to be about the human geography and physical geography and the third thing is about about climatology so from climates how climates are formed how the environment impacts the climate what are the various cycles of climate Etc etcetera those are also there part of the geography but that sometimes people teach that as part of physical geography but I would read that as a little bit of a separate part so physical geography climate human geography and then fourthly I would definitely study mapping mapping is something completely a different part of geography that you want to master all right so these are the four things that you want to definitely definitely divide your geography preparation in now within these four different parts how do you want to now divide your sources and what are the sources for fundamentals or for physical geography the best books are fundamentals of physical geography this is class 12th book of ncert I will post the link you can download it fundamentals of physical geography and then in physical geography obviously there is world geography and then there is India so you want to focus on India also so India physical environment that is the second book I will post the link for that these are both ncert books for our physical geography now for physical geography you can also pick up gochang Leong the book of physical and Human Geography this book I really like but you have to study in addition to ncrt you cannot just study ncrt and or you cannot just study this book first study ncert then read this book what it will do is this book will clarify a lot of things for you that you might not be able to understand in ncrt book so this book also covers the earth the universe the Earth's crust volcanism and earthquakes weathering landforms made by a rivers and made by glaciation so all these different topics are given weather and climate is part two so Clive part two is the climate and the weather part like I told you that is also there in this and various different parts of the world and how their temp how their climates are that is also given here all right so this book is definitely important I would suggest to read it after ncrt and it is a good book I would definitely want you to go through this book and then so fundamentals of physical geography and India physical environment you want to have these books and the long book that you want to have these are the three books that are very much sufficient for physical geography and even lot of weather climates will get covered into this for Human Geography some part is given here but then you also want to read fundamentals of human geography ncert book again downloadable and India India's people and its economy that is another book that is from the sort of it will give you an idea of India's human geography and it will also give you an idea about various natural resources in India and industries how they are located these are also Class 12 books available for download so now I have covered physical geography for you I have covered Human Geography for you all as well and I have also given you sources for the climate weather Etc now apart from this apart from this you have to realize that the physical geography the entire physical geography is a conceptual based kind of a subject you don't need to memorize it you just need to understand it and then remember a few important things and that way you will become a master of this subject so because this is a physic completely Concepts based subject I would say that first read it from the ncrt books and this book and then you can use pmf is notes pmf is also come out with various notes Etc which I really liked but I don't consider them as a book you cannot start reading from that and expect to become a master of this subject or have a good understanding of the subject so I would suggest start from ncerts develop a good conceptual base do this and then after that come to pmf ifis notes for revision purposes only all right now what happens is a lot of times in geography when I was also preparing I used to face this problem because geography what happens is lot of it is a visual thing you have to experience it or see it through diagrams in order to understand it so for example let's say you are studying geography and we are talking about glaciation and various landforms that are formed by glaciation so like this they have given a diagram here of a mountain and they have told you the names of various various landforms that are formed during glaciation like Moraine crevasses I read now it is hard to understand this just looking at the picture only cookies except maybe little bit you can tell but mostly same so what I wanted to do is I want you to go to YouTube and type this particular concept only various glacial Landscapes formed by glaciation in mountains and then there will be a short video two three minutes even there is a person Amit Singh Gupta he has made phenomenal geography videos so I would suggest you that you can also refer to his geography videos specifically to study these landforms also if you just Google them on YouTube if you just search them on YouTube you will be able to find them easily and a lot of good videos will give you an understanding of that concept so concept has to be studied with the books and with the YouTube videos then only will you be able to clearly have command over this particular Concepts obviously if you are studying in a coaching Institute or something maybe they will also explain it to you but I feel like YouTube videos do a much better job at doing that all right so this is how would I study I told you what to study and how to study I will also now go ahead and talk to about talk to you a little bit about mapping and other things other important topics for mapping pick up or buy the Oxford Atlas Oxford physical Atlas comes political also you can get in physical Atlas the way to study any Atlas is divide the world into small small portions and then Master Those portions so for example in Asia when you studying Asia you cannot study the entire continent at one go you have to divide it into further smaller parts divided into part of like subcontinent Indian subcontinent then Mongolia that you know Russia Mongolia area Chinese area Japan area Pacific side of area you know then southeast Asia like this you divide it into smaller areas even smaller if possible and then study the important landforms there in every continent there are not more than 20 important landforms that actually decide the entire climate the entire other things you know availability of water Etc in that particular continent so I would want you to do that I would want you to divide the entire world map into various regions small small regions segments and then study those segments separately on their own through this Atlas in fact when I was studying the atlas I had mastered the atlas like anything I used to love to first of all go into the maps so I knew Africa May Northern Africa what are different atlas mountains are there so how do they affect the geography how do they affect the climate where are they what countries do do they lie in mostly you know all these things I would know because I would study the entire map properly similarly rivers lakes important ones water bodies winds Etc all of that once you are studying it through the books when you go into the maps you can really get a very good idea so I would really suggest to you buy an adolescent go through that rattles really well normally reverse also I used to study the same way I used to look at the river and see where it is passing from an important landforms it is making or not and this has to be complemented by Google search also you know at the same time book also you cannot he may be able to put around because that is very important in order to learn anything well all right so this is what I wanted to talk about so far now let's now move ahead into note making I personally feel geography you don't need to make extensive notes but however when you're studying it is important to make notes so I would say keywords again keywords cannotes for example you know earthquake is a very very important topic of upsc it has been asked multiple times so you can make important just keyword notes you know earthquakes what is the main definition keywords what are the main facts that you want to know about earthquakes just one pager note will be enough for you and maybe in that you include a diagram that one pager for earthquake is enough that is taking entire 20 pages in this to explain you can explain that in one page but you have to just do it very succinctly and important topics only also pmfis notes are available those that book is in a notes format vision is notes are also in a notes format so you don't really need to make notes separately but you can definitely write on them because a lot of times what happens is we want to write a particular thing we are studying in our own words or in our own way so that you can do on the top of these notes only so that way you can save a lot of time now let's go to human and economic geography that is very very important I feel like there are one one source is very good for Human Geography it is solanki Maps classes that are there online on YouTube for free they are uploaded or I think on Bruno lecture but you can search them we will find her unless lectures are also good you can refer to them very very clear and they will give you a good idea about human geography in human geography you need to really study these things resources climate regions industry how that impacts human life obviously human development and population so these topics are covered in these lectures and also to some extent here and to some extent in the ncrd book I would say for this kind of subjects focus on p y cues whatever is coming in pyqs those do those topics enter inside out all right mapping I told you about one of the things I also wanted to tell you is that for mapping you have to be very aware about the international relations lot of times upsc is asking mapping related questions that are related to international relations or domestic relations so in that you want to for example recently there have been questions many questions from the Mediterranean region location of countries right so you want to know that because it is coming from international relations so for that PT 365 or ir365 for vision that is coming out is very very good from there you can get an idea what to study in the maps once you are studying the maps all right so now finally I will discuss with you is few questions from upsc that came in this year only and I will show you how if you follow my strategy you can pretty much solve all these questions the first question is consider the following countries 61 question number 61 Bulgaria Czech Republic Hungary Latvia Lithuania and Romania how many of the above men mentioned countries share a land border with Ukraine if you are not doing this question that means you have not taken your upsc studies seriously enough Ukraine is in news so you are supposed to know the bordering countries of Ukraine it's a very very well expected question so you can easily answer this by understanding the maps like I said IRC related geography with reference to Earth's atmosphere which one of the following statements is correct the total amount of insulation received at equator is roughly about 10 times that of received from the poles so like this the question is asked about the waves infrared waves and the insulation now this question is also given in the ncrt book you can easily get it correct two questions out of two you can get correct here let's move on to the next question consider following statements statement one the soil in tropical rainforest is rich in nutrients statement number two is high temperature and moisture of tropical rain forests causes the dead organic matter in the soil to decompose quickly now this is also coming from ncrt book even here it is given in fact this is more of an environment question but it is also related to geography but this question is there in the materials I have read this question I remembered when I read this question I remembered the first one is not correct D statement is correct but if you go through your normal material properly this question is very well given number four statement one the temperature contrast between continent and oceans is greater during the summer than in winter the specific heat of water is more than that of land surface again expected question geography question little bit of science also there because you have they have asked about about specific heat basically how quickly water heats and cools down as compared to land and land Heats quickly and so water is a good conductor of heat land is not land Heats quickly and then cools down quickly so both the statements are correct and statement two is the correct explanation of one so this also from the materials it is given in the books ncert books four questions directly then next question is about p waves and S waves in seismograph p waves are recorded earlier than S waves which of them are correct question again ncert question you should get this correct so like this so far five questions five of out of five you can get correct so to be honest students saying that this was not doable people yes lot of questions were harder but it is doable to some extent questions so then the next question is again IR related area of conflict is mentioned and Country where it is located you have to match kachin and Tigre these are the three reasons Syria Ethiopia Northern yes again expected y because a conflict quality areas are a news definitely you can get correct because they are given and you are supposed to read about them sorry yes why were there in news again geography related sort of sort of because can you not get these questions right of course you can get these questions right so so far these are the questions that I sought directly from or related to geography may have maybe I have missed some questions because normally questions but if I have missed any questions then there may be an overlap of environment also so overall very very doable questions from geography and international relations related geography came in upsc this year so I would expect you to master this particular subject I would expect you to go through like I told you how to study when to study what to study when to study basically one of the important subjects so I would start after environment economy polity I would do geography along with the maps so fourth subject fourth is the order of importance it will take you approximately one and a half two months to do this per subject definitely along with the international relation part along with the current of s along with the p by queues because definitely relatively easy obviously when you're studying eight hours a day you can do it all right so this is the overall plan I wanted to give for geography there is no special sauce There Is No Secret Sauce it is all about the hard work about confidence about having a very clear aim in your life I hope that you are able to get some clarity today if you have some questions let me know in the comments more than happy to answer them all right so take care have a good day bye

Channel: Manuj Jindal IAS

Views: 180,997

Keywords: how to study geography for upsc, manuj jindal ias, manuj jindal, geography for upsc, prelims upsc, how to prepare upsc

Id: HBR8sCcPVPg

Length: 20min 58sec (1258 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2023