[YouTube Initiative] IASbaba’s Brainstorming On Ethics And Essay (BEE) by Sunil Oberoi Sir (Retd. IAS)

Hello Everyone,

What scares you the most about civil services preparation? Which subjects give you sleepless nights? What makes you stressed about the Main examination? Well, we know that for a majority of you, Essay and Ethics, the innocuous-looking papers are the most troubling, isn’t it? After all, the papers appear to be in your reach, with the concepts of Ethics being quite familiar and the notion of the essay being a license to pour your ideas freely on the answer booklet. However, Ethics and Essay aren’t about filling the pages of your answer booklet. They require a nuanced understanding of a range of issues and a lot of practice to excel. If you ignore these aspects, your preparation bandwagon will get derailed easily. 

Let us delve into statistics a bit. You must be aware of the concept of standard deviation. It measures the dispersion of a dataset relative to its mean. If the marks scored by the UPSC aspirants in Essay and Ethics papers from this set, you will find that a lot of candidates are located far away from the mean. For example, if the average number of marks scored in the Ethics paper is 95, you will find students having scores as low as 50 and as high as 135. The same goes with the Essay. It simply means you have high chances of sabotaging your papers as well as coming out with flying colors, depending upon the path you choose. 

The path you choose is important indeed. Imagine scoring a 95 rather than a 130 in Essay – your chances of qualifying the Mains stage goes for a toss. On the other hand, imagine scoring a 120, a couple of notch above the mean of 95 – you will end up getting the service or cadre of your choice. The point we are trying to make here is that the stakes are really high in Essay and Ethics. You simply can’t afford to perform badly or below average in these two papers, simply because you don’t have the luxury to make up for your low scores elsewhere. The 3 GS papers don’t give you the room to increase your score beyond a threshold. Therefore, you NEED to invest your time and energy in Essay and Ethics.

We realize that a lot of certainties have built up around the UPSC cycle due to COVID. With the Main examination a few months away, you can really utilize this time to build and upgrade your skills in Essay and Ethics Paper. Therefore, we have decided to launch a free online initiative, exclusively for Essay and Ethics. IASbaba’s renowned faculty member, Shri Sunil Oberoi Sir (former IAS Officer) will take exclusive online sessions for Essay and Ethics. 

Sunil Oberoi Sir has worked on Civil Services Reforms in India with UNDP and DoPT. He was a government nominee in interview boards and Examiner in various govt. exams. He was also associated with induction training of new entrants of Civil Services and In-Service training of Senior Civil Servants.

Each week, Oberoi Sir will take 3 sessions, two for Essay and one for Ethics. The two sessions earmarked for Essay will have a topic-based discussion where he will discuss the approach to write issue-based and philosophical essays. The topics will be picked from previous year question papers of UPSC and TLP initiative of IASbaba.

In the Ethics session, there will be two parts. In the first half, there will be a discussion on the theoretical aspects and in the other, Sir will take a case study related to the theory just discussed to explain ways to approach case studies. 

We are planning this initiative for a duration of 3 months. The sessions will follow a fixed schedule to ensure that you are able to get your command in a systemic and organized manner. Imagine more than 40 sessions by an authority on Essay and Ethics – you can’t miss it! 

We have kept the initiative free during these testing times. We are hopeful that you will take maximum benefit from the initiative. 

Download the schedule: Click Here

All the Best 

IASbaba Team