BCS Written Political Science cheat sheet

Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language with approximately 230 million native speakers, making it the sixth most spoken language in the world.

The Charyapada, a collection of 47 mystical Buddhist songs from the 8th–12th centuries, is the earliest known example of Bangla literature.

Michael Madhusudan Dutt introduced the sonnet and blank verse to Bangla; his epic Meghnad Badh Kavya (1861) is a landmark.

Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for Gitanjali; his 1916 novel Ghare-Baire and play Raktakarabi are canonical.

Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poet of Bangladesh, founded the 'Nazrul Giti' genre and wrote the poem 'Bidrohi' (1922).

The Bengali Language Movement (1948–1952) culminated in the shooting of students on 21 February 1952; UNESCO declared that date International Mother Language Day in 1999.

Bangla has two main literary registers: sadhu bhasha (formal, archaic) and cholito bhasha (colloquial, modern); cholito became standard in the 20th century.

Jibanananda Das's Rupasi Bangla (1957) and Shamsur Rahman's post-1947 poetry are central to modern Bangladeshi literature.

The English Renaissance produced Shakespeare's 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and two narrative poems; the First Folio was published in 1623.

The Romantic period (c. 1798–1832) is dated from the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads in 1798.

The Victorian novel is characterized by realism, social critique, and serial publication; key authors include Dickens, Eliot, and Hardy.

Modernism (c. 1910–1945) features stream of consciousness (Joyce, Woolf), fragmentation (Eliot's The Waste Land, 1922), and imagism (Pound).

Postcolonial literature includes Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958), Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981), and Derek Walcott's Omeros (1990).

Standard English grammar distinguishes 8 parts of speech; the passive voice is formed with be + past participle.

Literary devices: metaphor (implicit comparison), simile (explicit comparison using like/as), metonymy (substitution by associated term), synecdoche (part for whole).

The English sonnet has 14 lines in iambic pentameter; the Shakespearean rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, the Petrarchan is ABBAABBA + sestet.

The 1947 Partition created East Pakistan; the Bengali Language Movement began in 1948 when Jinnah declared Urdu the sole state language.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Six-Point Movement (1966) demanded provincial autonomy; the Agartala Conspiracy Case (1968–69) galvanized Bengali nationalism.

The 1970 general election gave the Awami League a majority, but West Pakistani leaders delayed the transfer of power.

On 7 March 1971, Sheikh Mujib delivered his historic speech at the Racecourse Ground, effectively declaring independence.

Operation Searchlight was launched on 25 March 1971; the formal Declaration of Independence was issued on 26 March 1971.

The Liberation War (1971) was fought in 11 sectors; the Mukti Bahini received training and arms from India.

The Pakistani army surrendered on 16 December 1971 at the Racecourse Ground, Dhaka; Bangladesh was recognized by the UN in 1974.

UNESCO World Heritage sites in Bangladesh: the Sundarbans (1997), Somapura Mahavihara at Paharpur (1985), and the Mosque City of Bagerhat (1985).

The United Nations was founded on 24 October 1945; it has 193 member states and six principal organs.

The UN Security Council has five permanent members (China, France, Russia, UK, US) with veto power and ten non-permanent members elected for two-year terms.

Bangladesh joined the UN in 1974, the OIC in 1974, SAARC in 1985, and the WTO in 1995.

The Paris Agreement (2015) aims to limit global warming to well below 2°C, preferably 1.5°C, above pre-industrial levels.

Bangladesh's geography: total area 147,570 km²; borders India to the west, north, and east, Myanmar to the southeast, and the Bay of Bengal to the south.

The Sundarbans is the world's largest mangrove forest, covering about 10,000 km² across Bangladesh and India; it is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a Ramsar wetland.

The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) delta is the world's largest river delta; the Padma, Jamuna, and Meghna are the principal distributaries.

Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to climate change: sea-level rise, cyclones, and salinity intrusion threaten coastal districts.

Aristotle's Politics classifies constitutions into monarchy, aristocracy, and polity (good forms) and tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy (corrupt forms).

Sovereignty, defined by Jean Bodin, is the supreme and absolute power of the state; Austin locates it in the sovereign, while pluralists disperse it.

Max Weber's three types of legitimate authority: traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational.

The Westminster model features parliamentary sovereignty, a fusion of executive and legislature, and a constitutional monarchy or ceremonial head of state.

Public administration's POSDCORB (Gulick and Urwick) stands for Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting, and Budgeting.

New Public Management (NPM) emphasizes market mechanisms, performance measurement, and citizen choice; New Public Service emphasizes democratic citizenship and service.

Good governance indicators (World Bank): voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption.

Bangladesh's civil service is structured into cadres; the Bangladesh Public Service Commission (BPSC) conducts the BCS examination.

The Constitution of Bangladesh was adopted on 4 November 1972 and came into force on 16 December 1972.

The Constitution originally had 4 fundamental principles: nationalism, socialism, democracy, and secularism; secularism was removed in 1977 and restored in 2011.

The Constitution provides for a parliamentary system with a President as ceremonial head of state and a Prime Minister as head of government.

Article 7 declares the Constitution supreme; Article 26 protects fundamental rights; Articles 27–44 enumerate fundamental rights.

The Supreme Court of Bangladesh consists of the Appellate Division and the High Court Division; the Appellate Division is the final court of appeal.

Judicial review is exercised under Articles 102 and 44; the High Court Division can issue writs of habeas corpus, mandamus, certiorari, prohibition, and quo warranto.

Administrative law principles: natural justice (audi alteram partem, nemo judex in causa sua), ultra vires, legitimate expectation, and proportionality.

The Bangladesh Public Service Commission is established under Article 137 of the Constitution; the Comptroller and Auditor General under Article 127.

GDP (gross domestic product) measures the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period.

The GDP deflator = (nominal GDP / real GDP) × 100; inflation is measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

The Human Development Index (HDI) combines life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling), and GNI per capita.

The Gini coefficient measures income inequality on a scale of 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality).

Bangladesh's economy is driven by RMG exports (about 80% of total exports), remittances, and agriculture.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) consist of 17 goals and 169 targets, adopted by the UN in 2015 with a 2030 deadline.

The Phillips curve shows an inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment in the short run.

Comparative advantage (David Ricardo) states that countries gain from trade by specializing in goods with lower opportunity cost.

Newton's three laws: inertia; F = ma; action and reaction are equal and opposite.

The speed of light in vacuum is approximately 3 × 10⁸ m/s; the SI unit of force is the newton (N).

The periodic table has 118 elements; atomic number equals the number of protons; groups are vertical columns, periods are horizontal rows.

Photosynthesis: 6CO₂ + 6H₂O + light → C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂, occurring in chloroplasts.

DNA is a double helix of nucleotides with adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine base pairing; RNA contains uracil instead of thymine.

The Pythagorean theorem: a² + b² = c² for right triangles; the area of a circle is πr²; the volume of a sphere is (4/3)πr³.

The quadratic formula: x = [−b ± √(b² − 4ac)] / 2a; the discriminant b² − 4ac determines the nature of the roots.

The binary system uses base 2; 1 byte = 8 bits; 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes.

Ethics is the systematic study of moral principles; morality refers to the standards of right and wrong conduct.

Kant's categorical imperative: act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill) holds that actions are right insofar as they promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Rawls's theory of justice: principles chosen behind a 'veil of ignorance' ensure fairness and protect the least advantaged.

Good governance principles: accountability, transparency, rule of law, participation, responsiveness, equity, and effectiveness.

Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain; Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries on perceived public-sector corruption.

The Bangladesh Constitution's Article 21 imposes a duty on citizens to observe the Constitution and law and to perform public duties.

Ethical decision-making frameworks: consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, and care ethics.

A standard essay structure: introduction (thesis statement), body paragraphs (topic sentence + evidence + analysis), and conclusion (restatement + implications).

A thesis statement must be specific, arguable, and supportable; it usually appears at the end of the introduction.

Paragraph unity requires one central idea per paragraph; coherence is achieved through transitions and logical ordering.

Analytical writing distinguishes fact from opinion, identifies assumptions, and evaluates evidence for relevance and reliability.

Common logical fallacies: ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, slippery slope, circular reasoning, and post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Argument mapping: claim → grounds (evidence) → warrant (link) → backing → qualifier → rebuttal (Toulmin model).

Academic writing uses formal register, third-person perspective (usually), precise vocabulary, and citation of sources.

Bangladesh Civil Service essay papers require structured argumentation on national and international issues within a fixed word limit.