How to Prepare General Awareness for RBI Grade B 2023 and NABARD Grade A: We know how soul sucking General Awareness in banking exams have become in recent years and when we talk about RBI and NABARD, it becomes more tedious as the weightage is high not only in Prelim but also in Mains exam and without having command on General Awareness it becomes difficult to clear this exam.
Through this article, I'm sharing you my secret to cover General Awareness for RBI Grade B, NABARD Grade A, SEBI Grade A and Other Banking Exams.
In RBI Grade B 2021 and 2022, 60% of Phase 1 current affairs questions and almost 100% of Phase 2 current affairs questions were from 4 sources:
- PIB releases
- RBI press release
- SEBI press release
- Reports and Indices.
In simple terms you need to understand that GA in phase I is not GA, its basically 40-50% Economic and Social Issue and 20% Finance of RBI Grade B Phase II syllabus, same applies in NABARD Grade A as in that exam too, Economics and Social Issue, Agriculture and Rural Development, apart from General Awareness contains many questions from above four sections. These are high "Return on investment" (ROI) current affairs.
The rest of the current affairs is the Low ROI current affairs, and we will call it SSC here onwards (SSC= Soul-sucking current affairs).
Examples of SSC:
- States in the news, Conferences, Appointments, Books and Authors, Important days etc.
Why is it "Soul-sucking"?
- Because it can actually suck the soul out of anyone! When you read about RBI-related developments, it feels worthwhile. But life feels depressing when you are forced to remember which insurance company launched the " Savdhaan Rahein. Safe Rahein" campaign.
SSC is not just depressing; it's also low ROI.
General Awareness in RBI Grade B Include:
I. Banking and Economy Affairs (In phase I questions from Banking, corporate, economy anything can be asked but in mains mainly questions from RBI, SEBI and Few economy related questions are generally asked)
II. Programs and Policies (Yes they asked in '21 and 22, around 8-10 questions)
III. Important Reports and their highlights (Only 2-3 Q in I but in Phase II, its most important)
IV. Static Awareness (Based on current affairs),
V. General Current affairs (National, International, MoU, Summits, States, Appointments etc)
Current Affairs Preparation for Phase I & II Simultaneously
Important: First thing first, you need to understand that, in Phase II only 50 Marks objective can be asked i.e. 20-2 makers and 10 - 1 marker questions, which means only 30 questions will be asked and RBI try to touch various dimension such as Reports, Banking news including RBI and Programs & Policies. So you need to learn to eliminate redundant info based on the latest pattern.
Your focus should be to cover I, II & III religiously on regular basis and either leave IV/V for after notification or you can prepare notes of it to revise before exams, specially for those who are not so good in QRE, as they will need to time to do that too.
Point I. For Phase I, all the banking, business, corporate, economy news are important but for Phase II, RBI News/Circulars/Reports, SEBI News/Policies, Newly launched Apps and Programs by Banks etc. are significantly very important.
Point II. No need to cover all the old programs but, you need to cover all the old programs motioned in last 6 months PIB articles. For new programs, you need to cover all the programs launched b/w Budget to Budget.
Point III. Reports from only selected National & International Institutions are important. International - UN Organizations like UNDP, UNCTAD, UNESCO, WHO, FAO; Financial Organization - World Bank, IMF, ADB; Trade Body - WTO and Others - OECD. National Institutions - NITI Aayog (Only reports which related to our syllabus), RBI, Ministries reports (Only reports which related to our syllabus)
Point IV. No need to remember all the currency & capitals, national parks etc. Just focus on those which were in news in last 4-5 months, In Affairs cloud PDF they exclusively mention this thing, or you can try to make note of it by yourself.
Point V. There are several hundreds of news related to it, which is theoretically impossible to remember, so either you can leave it for after notification or just make online short notes out of it so that you can revise it after notification.
How to Prepare General Awareness Notes
If you read 6 months of current affairs, you will come across more than 700 news related to Banking products. You keep mugging up various apps, campaigns, MoUs, insurance deals etc., for every bank. But when the question comes in your exam, " Which bank launched XYZ", you get confused whether it was HDFC or ICICI. Congratulations :)
The human brain loves Patterns; let's give it what it wants:
When you feed information to your brain in a random and chaotic manner, it gets messy. The human brain loves patterns. Organize your information around various structures and themes; your brain will thank you. Like RBI in News, SEBI in News, PSBs in News, Private Banks in News etc.
For example, all the news related to SBI is given in one single place. Similarly, there is one separate section for all the major banks. Having everything compiled in one place will reduce exam-time confusion.
Sources to follow
— PIB (Use separate coverage, although Affairs cloud covers most of the news, but they miss lots of schemes in news related updates, so you need a separate coverage means PIB Summary PDF. You can do it by yourself by going through each and every article or by any compilation PDF.
— Banking and Economy (Try to read Daily Newspaper mostly Mint or Business Line or Business Standard) and after from that follow AC Compilation on it.
— Reports and Indices (Note down the report name from AC and search google using upsc upfront, for example world development report upsc, you will get summary from some UPSC related websites, as AC (Affairs Cloud) doesn't cover it significantly its needed, you can copy report from Affairs cloud PDF)
— RBI Reports and Circulars (Affairs cloud is sufficient)
— For rest others: Use any magazine doesn't matter, everyone post similar thing, or you can use Affairs cloud.
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