PSIR QEP and Mentorship 2027

Paper I, Part A

• Democracy: classical and contemporary theories; representative, participatory and deliberative models.
• Power: hegemony, ideology and legitimacy.
• Political ideologies: Liberalism, Socialism, Marxism, Fascism, Gandhism and Feminism.
• Indian political thought: Dharmashastra, Arthashastra and Buddhist traditions; Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Sri Aurobindo, M. K. Gandhi and B. R. Ambedkar.
• Western political thought: Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, John S. Mill, Marx, Gramsci and Hannah Arendt.

Paper I, Part A

• Political theory: meaning and approaches.
• Theories of the state: Liberal, Neo-liberal, Marxist, Pluralist, Post-colonial and Feminist.
• Justice: conceptions of justice, Rawls’s theory and its communitarian critiques.
• Equality: social, political and economic equality; its relationship with freedom; affirmative action.
• Rights: meaning, theories, different kinds of rights and human rights.

Paper I, Part B

• Political strategies of India’s freedom struggle: constitutionalism, mass Satyagraha, Non-cooperation, Civil Disobedience, militant and revolutionary movements, and peasant and workers’ movements.
• Perspectives on the Indian national movement: Liberal, Socialist, Marxist, Radical Humanist and Dalit.
• Making of the Indian Constitution: legacies of British rule and different social and political perspectives.
• Constitutional features: Preamble, Fundamental Rights and Duties, Directive Principles and parliamentary system.
• Union government: the envisaged role and actual working of the Executive, Legislature and Supreme Court.
• State government: the envisaged role and actual working of the Executive, Legislature and High Courts.
• Grassroots democracy: Panchayati Raj, municipal government, the 73rd and 74th Amendments, and grassroots movements.

Paper I, Part B

• Institutions and commissions: Election Commission, CAG, Finance Commission, UPSC, National Commissions for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Women, Minorities and Backward Classes, and the National Human Rights Commission.
• Federalism: constitutional provisions, changing centre-state relations, integrationist tendencies, regional aspirations and inter-state disputes.

Paper II, Part A

• Comparative politics: nature, major approaches, political economy, political sociology and limitations of the comparative method.
• The state in comparative perspective: capitalist and socialist economies; advanced industrial and developing societies.
• Representation and participation: political parties, pressure groups and social movements in advanced industrial and developing societies.
• Globalisation: responses from developed and developing societies.
• Approaches to International Relations: Idealist, Realist, Marxist, Functionalist and Systems theory.
• IR concepts: national interest, security and power, balance of power and deterrence, transnational actors, collective security, world capitalist economy and globalisation.

Paper II, Part A

• Changing international political order: rise of superpowers, strategic and ideological bipolarity, arms race, Cold War and nuclear threat.
• Non-Aligned Movement: aims and achievements; collapse of the Soviet Union, unipolarity, American hegemony and the contemporary relevance of non-alignment.
• International economic system: Bretton Woods to WTO, socialist economies and CMEA, and the Third World demand for a new international economic order.
• United Nations: envisaged role and actual record, specialised agencies and UN reform.
• Regionalisation of world politics: EU, ASEAN, APEC, SAARC and NAFTA.
• Contemporary global concerns: democracy, human rights, environment, gender justice, terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

Paper II, Part B

• Indian foreign policy: determinants, policy-making institutions, continuity and change.
• India’s contribution to the Non-Aligned Movement: phases and current role.
• India and South Asia: SAARC, a South Asian free-trade area and the Look East policy.
• Impediments to regional cooperation: river-water disputes, illegal cross-border migration, ethnic conflicts, insurgencies and border disputes.
• India and the Global South: Africa, Latin America, leadership in the demand for NIEO and WTO negotiations.

Paper II, Part B

• India and global centres of power: USA, EU, Japan, China and Russia.
• India and the UN system: peacekeeping and the demand for a permanent seat on the Security Council.
• India and the nuclear question: changing perceptions and policy.
• Recent foreign-policy developments: Afghanistan, Iraq and West Asia; relations with the US and Israel; and a vision of a new world order.