PSIR: Political Science and International Relations PYQPs with Topic-wise

The PSIR problem most aspirants don’t talk about

Ask a PSIR aspirant a few months into preparation how they use previous year questions. They won’t say they ignore them. They will say one of three things:

“I have the last five papers saved somewhere. I have never seen what UPSC asked on Gramsci or Rawls before that.”

“I know Paper II Section B runs on current affairs. I don’t know which relationships UPSC actually keeps coming back to.”

“I read the 2025 paper at home. I have never sat a full paper against the clock.”

None of that is a discipline problem. The questions are public — UPSC prints them every year. What is missing is the questions arranged: every unit’s history on one page, every paper complete with its marks, and the pattern worked out for you.

That is what this book is.

Why PYQs decide PSIR more than most optionals

PSIR is 500 marks: two papers of 250, eight questions each, with Q1 and Q5 compulsory and five 10-mark answers inside each of them. The examiner has a fixed syllabus of 40 units and a long memory.

• UPSC repeats itself. “Resurgence of political theory” was set in 2019 and again in 2026. “Post-colonial theory of the state” was set in 2020 and again in 2026.
• Most units never go quiet. 21 of the 40 units were asked in every one of the last ten papers. There is no safe skip.
• The weight is uneven. India and South Asia alone drew 30 questions and 380 marks between 2017 and 2026. Paper II Section B accounts for 147 of the ten-year questions.

The same material pays twice. Paper I Section B is GS Paper II polity with the debates put back in; Paper II is GS Paper II international relations at optional depth. The bottleneck is not finding the questions. It is seeing them in order.

What’s inside — 194 pages

📚 Topic-wise questions, 1991–2026 — 1,470 questions in 40 units

Every question sorted into its syllabus unit, newest first:

• Paper I, Section A (10 units) — political theory and its approaches, theories of the state, justice, equality and liberty, rights, democracy, power, ideologies, Indian political thought, Western political thought
• Paper I, Section B (11 units) — Indian nationalism, making of the Constitution, salient features, the principal organs of government, grassroots democracy, statutory institutions, federalism, planning, caste, religion and ethnicity, the party system, social movements
• Paper II, Section A (11 units) — comparative politics, the state in comparative perspective, representation and participation, globalisation, IR approaches, key concepts, the changing international order, the international economic system, the UN, regionalisation, global concerns
• Paper II, Section B (8 units) — Indian foreign policy, NAM, South Asia, the Global South, the global centres of power, the UN system, the nuclear question, recent developments

Each unit opens with its ten-year count, the marks it carried, how many of the ten years it was asked, and a year-by-year bar chart. Questions are tagged with the thinker or relationship they test — Plato, Kautilya, Ambedkar, India–Bangladesh, SAARC.

What makes this different from a folder of downloaded papers: every topic-wise question from 2013 onwards has been matched to its actual paper, question number and marks. While building this edition, questions filed under the wrong year were corrected and questions missing from the unit lists were added.

📝 Year-wise papers, 2013–2026 — 14 years, 28 papers

Paper I and Paper II for every year from 2026 back to 2013, section by section, with the marks for every sub-part. Sit them against the clock: three hours, five questions.

📊 Ten-year pattern analysis, 2017–2026 — five charts

560 questions and 8,000 printed marks, worked out unit by unit:

• Unit weightage — questions and marks from each unit, both papers on one scale
• Year-by-year heat map — which units UPSC asks every year and which come and go
• Rising and cooling units — 2017–2021 against 2022–2026
• Unit scorecard — questions since 1991, years asked, first asked, average marks a year
• Question size — which units come as 10-markers and which as 15- and 20-markers

📖 The official syllabus, unit by unit

The full UPSC syllabus for both papers, with the unit codes used throughout the book, so every question traces back to the clause it tests.

The aspirant who buys this

First-time aspirants — Start every unit by reading its questions, newest first. You will know what UPSC wants from a topic before you read a page of notes on it.

Repeaters — You have the content. Use the heat map and the rising units to find where your preparation and UPSC’s attention have drifted apart, then sit full papers to fix your timing.

Aspirants already using notes — Whatever notes you follow, this is the checklist to test them against: 40 units, 1,470 questions, nothing left unmapped.

Aspirants with a different optional — Paper I Section B and Paper II Section B overlap heavily with GS Paper II. The unit lists show how UPSC frames polity and IR at depth.

Self-study aspirants outside Delhi, Prayagraj and Jaipur — No coaching test series needed to see the pattern. The analysis is already done.

Working professionals — Twenty minutes on one unit’s questions is a complete study session. Printable, offline, on any device.

Why not just use the free papers?

UPSC publishes every question paper, and year-wise PDFs are shared everywhere. If you only need last year’s paper, you do not need this.

The difference is not the questions — it is the arrangement. Thirty-six years of questions sorted into the 40 syllabus units. Marks against every question since 2013. The pattern charted across ten papers. Years checked against the actual papers. Doing that yourself is weeks of work that most aspirants start and never finish.

If you have the time to build your own topic-wise bank from scattered papers, you may not need this. If you want it built — open it and start with any unit — this is what it is for.

₹59 — about 4 paise a question

1,470 topic-wise questions, 14 full papers and five pattern charts for ₹59. The same book comes free inside PSIR Optional Complete Notes (₹1,180, regular ₹2,000) — take that instead if you want the notes for all four sections as well.

• One-time payment. No subscription. No recurring charge.
• The download link is emailed the moment payment clears — check your spam folder if it is not in the inbox.
• Unlimited downloads; the link does not expire.
• Medium: English · Format: PDF · Pages: 194

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