UPSC Prelims 2024 Exam Analysis

The UPSC Civil Services Preliminary exam, the first stage for future IAS, IPS, and IFS officers, took place on June 16, 2024. This exam was split into two sessions. The first session, General Studies (GS) Paper 1, was held from 9:30 am to 11:30 am, followed by the second session, GS Paper 2, also known as the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT), from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm. Now that the exam is over, candidates and their mentors are evaluating the difficulty level and the types of questions asked.

In the 2024 Prelims, the Indian Economy section featured 18 questions. Out of these, 7 questions were on Banking and Finance, 3 were related to Government schemes, and the rest covered various topics such as Taxation and Infrastructure. Approximately 12 of these questions ranged from easy to moderate in difficulty.

The Economy section met expectations in terms of the number of questions (18) and the emphasis on Banking and Finance. Most questions focused on static or core topics, with only a few addressing current affairs.

Within the Banking and Finance theme, there was a noticeable shift in focus from Monetary Policy to the Capital Market/Money Market. UPSC maintained its pattern of including questions on Schemes (e.g., Digital India, PM-SYM, Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan), Core Concepts (e.g., sectors of Economy, Types of Physical Capital), and significant Economic Developments in other countries (e.g., Venezuela Crisis, US Debt Crisis).

Most questions required students to identify "which statements are correct?" rather than "how many statements are correct?" This allowed an average well-read student to correctly answer around 10-12 out of the 18 questions using the elimination method.