 Hello everyone, my name is Basim Ahmad Bhatt, I have secured all India rank of 7 in CSE 2022. Today, I am going to talk about the mains answer writing and how to approach it. So, mains answer writing is the crux of mains and mains is the crux of this exam, ultimately. If you can write a very good answer, that would fetch you very good marks in mains and ultimately it would help you in getting a good rank. So, how do we approach mains answer writing? Obviously, all of us know that every answer has to have some sort of an introduction, a body and a conclusion. But to write that, you have to first read a lot. So, your resources, as I have said multiple times, it should be very, very clear that what resources you are using. For me personally, this time I use the model test series answers of the last 3 years. So, for every subject, let us say history, I would read the 3 year model answers and that would form my content for the answer writing because my basics were clear. Till prelims, every one of us has some notes, we read from those notes, so basics are clear. After prelims, you can read the model answers that would put your mind into an answer writing format. Otherwise, you would read a book and you would keep reading it without remembering much. So, that is what I did, those were the resources, the model answers. Then after that, what I used to do, I took test series. I would write test every 4, 5 days. Before prelims, I wrote the sectionals in the test series. After prelims, I wrote the full length. In test series, what needs to be done is one thing you have to be very clear is for every subject, there will be a sectional, let us say 2, 3 sectionals will be there. For polity, there will be 2, 3 tests. So, when you write the first test, it has to be some sort of the worst test that you write because after that, you have to take that review seriously and you have to write the second test taking into consideration what you got in the first test. Otherwise, you will write the 3 tests very separately and then there is no point of writing over time. So, that is the one thing that I did this time was for example, if I would write ethics test, take into consideration the review that I am getting in the first test. In the second test, I would implement that also and I would get better marks and better reviews. And after that, the journey will go on. That is one of the things that you have to write which is test series. And beyond that, I think the most important thing is previous year questions. Every day, I would write for 1 hours the previous year questions and for like 20, 30 minutes, I would evaluate those by myself and also give it to my friend who also evaluated them. And what happens because of that is, I think the self-evaluation in this exam at the end is the ultimate thing that you can do because you know your strengths, your weaknesses. When you look at your answer, you feel like, okay, you had read this thing, but you did not write it in the paper. So, next time you will write that thing. But the examiner, if it's some person who checks your let's say copy, test series copy, they don't know what you have read. They will check it from their own vantage point. So, you have to look at your own resources and own things that you have read. From that point, how good an answer you wrote. So, every answer like the next day should be a better answer than you wrote yesterday. That is the ultimate goal. And I felt like when I did this for two, three months at even one month, I felt like I had done a lot of, it was a big journey from the first answer that I had wrote. And after three months, I was very good at writing answers. Even if I did not know exactly about a particular question, I could still write a very good answer from other knowledge, from other subjects and all. So, I think that is the thing that you need to do. And then the particular answer writing which is how to write introduction, body and conclusion that I will talk about. For example, if you take introduction, now there are two, three approach. One is that you can write the definition of the particular thing that is being asked. But if the question is like a high level analytical question, then writing a definition would make it seem like you are writing a childish sort of answer. So, what needs to be done is you have to evaluate each and every question, what sort of an introduction can be good. In some analytical questions, you can use some statistics from some report or something that summarizes that whole thing. Let us say there is a question about water scarcity or water stress in India. Then you can quote Niti Aayog report that they have said that these many STs will face zero day in the coming years. Once you write that, you are actually showing that you know about the subject of water scarcity. Then you come to the body part. Now, in body part, there are two ways again of writing the answers. One is the paragraph format which is like free flow format. Another is the point format. For me, point format worked better because it would help me in writing more. And I could also like write point wise exactly what I meant. In paragraph, what usually happened with me and happens with any of the people is that you keep on writing and then at the end you feel like you have only written one idea. So, you should ensure whether you write in point format or paragraph format, it is your choice, but at then you should also ensure that you are writing from multi-dimensional perspective. Every answer should be like that. Once you write the arguments, there should be also examples and facts to substantiate each thing. Let us say there was a question this year that why did Indian Rajas fail to defeat British even though they had more arms and something like that. So, once you write, for example, you write that there was some sort of treachery, let us say. And then you write the example of Meer Jaafar in Battle of Palasi. That will show that actually, no, you are not only writing it just for the sake of writing it. You actually know that there was some sort of thing that had happened because of which you wrote that. So, examples, facts, statistics are very important to substantiate your arguments. Without them, you will get very less marks. Then in the conclusion, when you come to the conclusion, the conclusion should be a positive one. It should show that what either, for example, the social issues that you are facing in the body itself, you can write a lot of issues that it is because of this, it is because of this. But what is the point of all that? The point of all that is you as a civil servant have to help in at least alleviating that problem. So, in the conclusion itself, you have to write some sort of positive thing. Either some committee has said something that can be done or probably the government has come up with schemes or different SDGs and all. So, in every answer, you have to do these things. Obviously, it has to be tweaked according to the subjects. This time what I did was I prepared this shorthand thing for like polity. What sort of conclusion do I need? What sort of an introduction do I need? So, in polity, for example, introduction would usually start either with an article or with some sort of a judgment or something. Then in the body, I would face the demand of the question and in the conclusion, I would write some committee or something. So, for every subject, you make these sort of notes and then you keep in mind every time you are writing that answer, you should include those points. So, I think if you do this and over time, you practice a lot, you will definitely come to realize that answer writing at the end of the day is also a skill that needs to be acquired. It cannot be acquired in one day and there has to be content. So, it's both a science as well as an art. So, I hope you take this advice probably seriously. Whatever is relevant to you, you take that part of it seriously and sometimes other things can also work for you. So, have a personalized sort of approach to this exam and also to the answer writing. I wish you all the best in your main exam. Thank you.