Literature As 'Optional' Gaining Traction Among UPSC Aspirants

What makes the exams highly competitive is the vast syllabus and the comprehensiveness of the subjects covered. According to experts, one of the secrets of success in the UPSC is the selection of subjects (out of 48 on offer) for the second level of the main exams.

Rajeev Choudhary, an acclaimed instructor who provides tuition to UPSC aspirants, says, “We help students to choose subjects with great diligence, as their choices reflect upon their ability to take informed decisions as a civil servant.”

He added, “We guide students in selecting optional subjects for the main exam, even before they qualify in the prelims. Mostly, we give them an option of a set of subjects, based on the success rates of candidates in previous years, and ask them to identify one according to their liking."

Literature As Optional

Chaudhary further said, "While subjects like Sociology, Public Administration, Geography, and History are extremely popular among aspirants, Literature is not among the most preferred options. But, in the past, there have been toppers with Literature as the optional, for example, Nandini K R, who topped in 2016 with Kannada Literature."

There are 23 Literature options on offer, including Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, and English.  

According to UPSC data for the past five years, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Gujarati are Literature subjects that are popular among aspirants, with over 100 aspirants taking these as their optional in the mains.

Success rates vary, with nearly 8 per cent for Gujarati, followed by Malayalam (7.2 per cent), Hindi (7.1 per cent), Tamil (nearly 5 per cent), and Kannada (3.5 per cent).

Advantages & Disadvantages Of Literature As Optional

Experts feel that with a relatively smaller number of aspirants opting for Literature, the competition is less intense. They also say reading literature while prepping has also been found to be a stress buster, and that it offers aspirants the full scope to express their creativity while writing answers. Last of all, Literature is a domain whose syllabi don’t change much, they added.

However, they contended that this option, too, comes with a set of disadvantages. Since answers are subjective, evaluation is often unpredictable — if the aspirant’s view does not match that of the evaluator, they could receive fewer marks, the experts said.

Overall Trends In Selecting Optionals

Durgesh Nandan, who runs his own coaching classes in New Delhi, is an engineer. Nandan told The Secretariat that when he sat for the civil services exam, he had opted for Geography as his optional in the mains.

He said, “For aspirants, Political Science and International Relations (PSIR) remains the most preferred optional subjects, followed by Anthropology and Sociology.” He added, “As far as academic backgrounds of successful candidates are concerned, 60.4 per cent are from Engineering, followed by Humanities (25.1 per cent), Sciences (8.6 per cent) and Medical Sciences (5.9 per cent).”

Nandan, however, said that over 80 per cent of optional subjects among successful candidates were from Humanities (including Literature), followed by Sciences (12.2 per cent), Engineering (3.7 per cent) and Medical Science (3.3 per cent).

He further said, “Data shows most of the candidates make a cross-domain shift from their academic stream to the Humanities, especially students of Engineering and Medical Science.”

From Technical Education To Humanities, Social Sciences

According to Choudhary, most aspirants from the Sciences take Geography as their optional for the mains, as they find a lot of simple physics, chemistry and mathematics in it.

A senior professor of Geography at Delhi University, who preferred to remain anonymous, told The Secretariat that what also helps students decide their optional subject is the size of the syllabus and availability of study material.

Moreover, many aspirants believe that exposure to the Humanities is important for aspiring administrators, as subjects like Political Science and International Relations (PSIR), Public Administration, History and Philosophy give them a sense of the art of administration and an understanding of the human mind, which plays a pivotal role in the process.

Choudhary said, “Several students of Engineering and Medicine come to me for guidance, after selecting Public Administration as their optional. They chose it as the study material relating to it carries 400 marks in the General Studies paper, and forms the bedrock of their training modules at the academy after qualification.”

With an increasing number of candidates shifting from technical backgrounds to the Humanities and Social Sciences, this pattern underscores the evolving nature of the preparation for the civil service exams.