General Awareness: a management-school current-affairs dossier
General Awareness on IPMAT Rohtak is a management-school paper, so the weight leans towards business, economy and polity alongside static GK and roughly the last twelve months of current affairs: appointments, awards, sport, summits, books, science and government schemes.
Build it in layers
- Economy (highest yield): repo, reverse repo, CRR, SLR and MSF; the RBI Monetary Policy Committee (six members) that sets rates; CPI versus WPI versus core inflation; fiscal versus revenue deficit; FDI routes; the GST Council.
- Flagship publications: IMF - World Economic Outlook and Global Financial Stability Report; World Bank - Global Economic Prospects; WEF - Global Competitiveness Report and Global Risks Report; WTO - World Trade Report.
- Polity: recurring Articles (14, 19, 21, 32, 356, 370) and constitutional versus statutory bodies (ECI and CAG versus NHRC).
- Current affairs: keep a monthly one-page sheet - heads of state and government, central bank governors, Nobel and Booker winners, Olympic and World Cup hosts, G20/BRICS/COP host cities and themes.
- Static: national park–state pairs, classical dance–state pairs, currency–country, capitals.
Worked example
"The World Economic Outlook is published by which organisation?" Eliminate by flagship: the World Bank's is Global Economic Prospects, the WEF's is Global Competitiveness Report, the WTO's is World Trade Report. Only the IMF issues the WEO, twice a year. Answer: the IMF.
Traps
- Look-alike acronyms: WHO versus WTO, IMF versus World Bank, UNEP versus UNFCCC.
- Stale facts - a governor, coach or CEO replaced in the past year.
- Confusing award categories: Nobel Peace versus Literature, Booker versus JCB Prize.
- In "All of the above" items, verify each claim instead of stopping at the first true one.