- Read head lines, Major world events, policy statements of PM,, Finance Minister, Commerce Minister, Law minister.
- Avoid political news.
- Leave out local, district, state level news unless it has all India importance. There may be some national or international personalities visiting state, those important events plus some places, events in the state which will be of all India importance- for example - about Kudankulam Project, Tanjore temple 1000 year function,
- News national, international where the currency of the news item will last more than a year in matters of social, political, scientific, economical, Defence, Space, educational and constitutional etc. Development activities in space, medicine, technology, agriculture. All the various government programs have to be studied in depth.
- In the sports news at least one should be able to identify the player with his / her game.
- Major land marks in the prominent sports and events should be gathered.
- PM, FM, RBI governor, Deputy Chairman of Planning commission speeches should be closely followed as they are policy statements.
- Give due importance to Business and Industry page as the Govt. is fully tuned to market economy. Weekly once CRL Narasiman writes on current economic topics and they are really good. Articles by Surya Narayana on International trade is also good. We must also go through all the various international trade agreements, WTO meet, G20 meet, various international conferences and the outcome of it.
- One should gather news like an administrator of the country if he is put on job what all important for his working knowledge on the subject.
- Read articles by Sainath, M.S Swaminathan.
- On the whole the aspirant has to develop a discriminative attitude, as what needs in depth analysis/ study and what needs cursory glance. All the Government priority items in the ruling agenda like RTI, RTE, Food security, Financial inclusion, Women's reservation, environment Bio Diversity.-all these need in depth study.
- Hindu gives weekly a page on Science- that needs lots of attention. The everyday Science questions come from here. There are some articles on Agriculture also.
- Read Editorial-But if an editorial is totally political we can avoid reading. In editorial the catchy idioms and phrases come, all that can be noted down, as it will help to have a good command over the language. In fact many of the humanities subjects as optional papers require good command over the language.
