How to Prepare for NABARD Grade A Questions You Have Never Seen?

Every year, NABARD releases its official notification for the Grade A examination. Every year, countless aspirants fill out the NABARD Grade A application form, and every year, it takes not days or weeks, but months of preparation just to reach the examination hall with the hope of clearing it.

This process remains largely the same throughout each recruitment cycle, but despite this consistency, aspirants find the question paper reasonably unpredictable.

And this reaction seems natural since it can be surprising to see a NABARD Grade A paper that makes even well-prepared candidates feel unprepared.

This situation raises an important question: “Are we not preparing enough or is the NABARD Grade A paper not aligned with the syllabus?”. Well this is the question I am going to explore and try to resolve in as simple a way as possible.

Why do NABARD Grade A Questions feel unpredictable?

I once came across a framework that says “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”

It means if you spend time defining the issue properly, the solution becomes clear itself along the way. So before deciding whether the gap lies in preparation or in the NABARD Grade A question paper itself, let us first understand the problem through a hypothetical scenario.

Click on the link above given and visit our previous year’s question paper page to know the importance of analyzing past year papers along with the right way of analyzing them.

We will follow an aspirant’s journey from preparation to examination day and see if the answer becomes clearer by the end of the scenario.

The Problem With Preparing Only From NABARD’s Previous Year Questions

Let’s take an aspirant who had just enrolled in the NABARD Grade A examination. He decided to dedicate himself to the examination, so he began with the basics.

He went through the syllabus, divided the subjects, studied each topic that aligned with the NABARD exam, solved previous year questions and regularly revised whatever he had already covered.

By the time this aspirant was eight months into NABARD Grade A preparation, he had already covered the entire syllabus, attempted hundreds of mock tests and memorized countless previous year questions.

Take Inflation, a chapter inside Economic and Social Issues. By the time the aspirant is done with it, every question anyone has ever asked about the topic has been covered.

• • What is inflation, and how is CPI different from WPI?
  • What is core inflation, as opposed to headline inflation?
  • What causes inflation, demand-pull versus cost-push?
  • What is the RBI’s inflation target, and what does a repo rate change do to it?
  • What is the RBI’s role in controlling inflation?

Every previous year question and every mock question on this list has been solved more than once. According to him, answering all the questions of a chapter is considered finishing the chapter.

He had all the questions that had been asked or could be asked, learned by heart, not just for inflation or ESI but for every subject, just like any serious candidate would.

He was ready for the examination.

There are many do’s and don’ts that an aspirant needs to follow before actually sitting in the exam hall, such as carrying important documents. To know all the details regarding those documents, you may click here.

The NABARD Exam Day

The examination begins, and for the first few questions, everything goes almost exactly as expected. There are questions from familiar areas, several concepts he has revised more than once, and even a few questions that resemble those he solved during his mock tests. The preparation seems to be paying off.

Then he reaches the ESI section.

The question is from Inflation, the same chapter he had covered from every possible angle during his preparation. He reads it once, then again.

A prolonged rise in food prices is increasing the cost of cultivation for farmers. If the RBI raises the repo rate to contain inflation, explain why this measure may not directly solve the farmers’ underlying problem.

Even after covering the multiple questions about –

• • inflation
  • demand-pull and cost-push inflation
  • RBI’s inflation target
  • repo rate
  • RBI’s role in controlling inflation

Yet, he could not answer the question, and the same pattern goes for the rest of the section and eventually the whole paper.

To understand the complete nature of time when you actually writing answers, you need to know every detail of the exam pattern, such as given time, total marks, number of questions, etc. Visit the NABARD Grade A Exam Pattern to get a comprehensive guide of the exam structure.

How can NABARD ask the same concept in different ways?

That is exactly how a candidate who is dedicated prepares, and that is exactly how preparation feels in an exam centre.

But if we analyze the situation thoroughly, the error and the answer lie in plain sight.

The NABARD Grade A question paper asked: “A prolonged rise in food prices is increasing the cost of cultivation for farmers. If the RBI raises the repo rate to contain inflation, explain why this measure may not directly solve the farmers’ underlying problem.”

The aspirant did know the answers of questions related to inflation, as he had learnt all of it without missing a day. But this is where the mistake goes unseen, “had learnt all of it.”

Imagine even if he had learnt this question, then NABARD could still have asked the same chapter in:

• • ESI, Objective – An objective question may directly test the relationship between inflation and the repo rate: “Which monetary policy instrument does the RBI primarily use to influence inflation through changes in the cost of borrowing?”
  • ARD – The question may now involve the relationship between: “How can a sustained rise in input prices affect agricultural production and the income of farmers?”
  • Phase 2, Descriptive – “Discuss the effectiveness and limitations of monetary policy in controlling inflation.”
  • Interview – The interviewer could ask: “If inflation is caused by a poor monsoon, why should RBI increase interest rates?”

This might feel like NABARD deliberately asks tricky questions, or even out of syllabus at times, that make the exam seem unpredictable. But if you see closely, NABARD is not trying to assess your knowledge of the question bank, in fact, it is testing your complete understanding of the subject.

Since they all may look very different but all of them are based on the same chapter, it clearly means if anyone had the complete conceptual understanding of the chapter, every question based on it can be solved.

Our aspirant, like most aspirants, prepared for the questions he expected the paper to contain. But the objective of the paper is to test his understanding of the subject, not his ability to memorize questions.

So with this example we understood that NABARD certainly is aligned with its syllabus.

You may now know the importance of understanding the subjects, but for that you need to have a proper understanding of the syllabus. Click here to go through the updated NABARD Grade A syllabus, including interview questions.

What to do when you see a completely new question on the NABARD exam?

Even if NABARD is aligned with its syllabus, it does not automatically mean the aspirants are not prepared enough. But the effort in preparing enough is not the only requirement; it is preparing in the right direction as well.

Our aspirant had covered the syllabus, solved previous year questions, attempted mock tests, and revised repeatedly. Yet he still struggled when the same concept appeared in an unfamiliar form.

The problem was that he was measuring his preparation by the number of questions he could answer, rather than by how well he understood the concepts behind them.

A new question does not necessarily require new preparation. If the underlying concept is understood properly, the candidate can use that knowledge even when the question is unfamiliar and even the “Questions You Have Never Seen”.

So with this example, we understood that it is not that aspirants are not prepared enough, it is that they are not prepared in the right direction.

Since we are discussing preparation in the right direction, I have attached a guide that contains a free day-wise study plan for both phases, a study sequence, and many more to save you some of your time. So you must visit NABARD Grade A Preparation guide to avoid the mistakes many do.