Social Stratification & Mobility for UPSC Sociology
Stratification and Mobility | Legacy IAS — PSIR Notes Sociology Optional · Paper I · Unit 5 Stratification and Mobility Equality, inequality, hierarchy, exclusion, poverty and deprivation; the functionalist, Marxist and Weberian theories; stratification by class, status, gender, ethnicity and race; and the whole field of social mobility. 📚 Paper I 📌 Unit 5 🧭 […]
Sociological Thinkers for UPSC Sociology Optional
Sociological Thinkers | Legacy IAS — PSIR Notes Sociology Optional · Paper I · Unit 4 Sociological Thinkers The six thinkers the syllabus names — Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, Robert K. Merton and G. H. Mead — with their core concepts and the standard criticisms. 📚 Paper I 📌 Unit 4 […]
Research Methods & Analysis for UPSC Sociology
Research Methods and Analysis | Legacy IAS — PSIR Notes Sociology Optional · Paper I · Unit 3 Research Methods and Analysis Qualitative and quantitative methods, the full range of data-collection techniques from observation to content analysis, and the toolkit of variables, sampling, hypothesis, reliability and validity. 📚 Paper I 📌 Unit 3 🧭 Sections […]
Is Sociology a Science? | UPSC Sociology
Sociology as Science | Legacy IAS — PSIR Notes Sociology Optional · Paper I · Unit 2 Sociology as Science Science and the scientific method and its critique, the major theoretical strands of research methodology, positivism and the attacks on it, and the long argument over fact, value and objectivity. 📚 Paper I 📌 Unit […]
Sociology as a Discipline for UPSC Optional
Sociology Optional · Paper I · Unit 1 Sociology The Discipline Modernity and the social changes in Europe that gave birth to sociology, the scope of the subject and its comparison with history, anthropology, psychology, economics, political science and philosophy, and the break with common sense. 📚 Paper I 📌 Unit 1 🧭 Sections 3 […]
Good Governance: Concept, Application & Indian Practice
Released: 13 August 2026 · Public Administration Optional Good Governance: Concept and Application — Theory, Critique & Indian Practice Governance is the value-neutral process of steering; good governance is the normative and evaluative standard applied to that process; ethical governance is the moral quality of those who govern. The concept was formalised by the World […]
Equality, Liberty & Affirmative Action for UPSC
PSIR Optional · Paper I · Unit I.4 Equality Liberty and Affirmative Action The examiner’s favourite move here is to force you to take a position on whether equality and liberty conflict or reinforce each other. This note fixes the three dimensions of equality, four positions on the equality–liberty question, the full affirmative action debate […]
Rawls Theory of Justice & Communitarian Critique UPSC
PSIR Optional · Paper I · Unit I.3 Justice Rawls and the Communitarian Critique Examiners test the same handful of Rawlsian building blocks — original position, veil of ignorance, two principles, lexical priority — and the same handful of objections. This note fixes six rival conceptions of justice, four communitarian critics, and 14 previous year […]
Theories of the State: 6 Perspectives for UPSC PSIR
PSIR Optional · Paper I · Unit I.2 Theories of the State Six Lenses on One Object Liberal, neo-liberal, Marxist, pluralist, post-colonial and feminist theories all describe the same institution — and disagree completely about whose interest it serves. This note fixes six lenses, their key thinkers, and the master debate of state autonomy versus […]
New Public Management: Hood’s Doctrines & Decline
Released: 13 August 2026 · Public Administration Optional New Public Management: Hood’s Doctrines, Criticism, Decline & Indian Administration New Public Management is the attempt to run government on private-sector management logic — “managerialism plus marketisation”. Christopher Hood coined the term in 1991 and set out its seven doctrines, but the practice began a decade earlier […]