The Complete PSIR Booklist for UPSC — and What NOT to Read
Every PSIR aspirant eventually meets the same disease: book hoarding. Fourteen recommendations from four toppers, three sets of coaching notes, two "must-read" IR titles — and no second reading of anything. This page is the cure: the complete PSIR booklist as one sequenced stack — what to read, in what order, and just as deliberately, what not to read. The principle behind it: in PSIR, marks come from the third revision of one stack, never from the first reading of three.
Paper I-A · Political Theory & Thought
- O.P. Gauba — An Introduction to Political Theory. The spine for concepts: justice, liberty, equality, rights, democracy, power. Read chapters mapped to the syllabus, not cover to cover.
- A standard Western Political Thought text (Brian Nelson, or Bhagwan & Bhushan) for the thinker chapters — one, not both.
- V.P. Varma / Bidyut Chakrabarty — Modern Indian Political Thought for the Indian thinkers, read alongside the class handouts.
Paper I-B · Indian Government & Politics
- NCERT Class XII — Politics in India Since Independence. The most underrated book in the stack: read it first, it gives Paper I-B its storyline.
- B.L. Fadia — Indian Government & Politics or D.D. Basu — Introduction to the Constitution as the reference shelf — consult by topic, don't attempt a linear read.
Paper II-A · Comparative Politics & IR Theory
- Andrew Heywood — Global Politics. The single most useful book in PSIR: theory made readable, with the vocabulary examiners reward.
- Rod Hague & Martin Harrop — Comparative Government and Politics for Section A's comparative chapters, topic-mapped.
Paper II-B · India & the World
- Rajiv Sikri — Challenge and Strategy for the foreign-policy logic, and David Malone — Does the Elephant Dance? as the single supplementary read.
- After these: current affairs does the heavy lifting — see the Saptang monthly system.
The course layer
- Arihant Q-Beat Series — PSIR Chapterwise Solved (2016–2025), Papers I & II, by Swetank Pandey: fifteen years of PYQs with model answers, the same spine the PYQ Map is built on.
- Lecture handouts, the scholar compendium and the WPT booklet replace self-made notes for revision.
What NOT to read
- Multiple coaching notes in parallel. Two versions of the same topic double your revision load and halve your recall — pick one ecosystem and stay loyal.
- Original classics cover-to-cover (Republic, Leviathan, Das Kapital). Admirable; not an exam strategy. You need each thinker's doctrines, critiques and applications — the classroom's job.
- A second IR theory book after Heywood. The marginal return is near zero; put those hours into answer writing.
- Random "IR current affairs" compilations. Unsequenced PDFs create the illusion of coverage. One fortnightly system, deployed by syllabus topic, beats them all.
The test of a booklist is not whether it impresses — it's whether you can finish it three times before Mains. This one is built to be finished. If you want it as the pre-sequenced, PYQ-mapped reading of the Foundation Batch, that is exactly what the course is.
Teaches the 115-session PSIR Foundation at Karol Bagh, Delhi; marks 450 answers per mentorship student against a 6-part rubric.
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Foundation 2026–27 · Answer-Writing Mentorship · 13-Test Series — taught and marked by Swetank Pandey at ALS IAS, Karol Bagh.