Hi everyone.

I searched the forums but couldn't find a conclusive answer: is the new Pakistan Affairs syllabus (2016 onward) more about current and recent developments and less about 19th century and pre-Partition India?

I would really appreciate if an aspirant could help answer these briefly:

1. How important is studying pre-Partition events in depth? Apart from knowing the timeline roughly, is there any benefit to reading about pre-1947 activity in detail?

2. Is there any use left to the book "Trek to Pakistan" which was highly recommended in the past?

3. In the 2016 and 2017 papers, how well did aspirants do in history-based questions vs. current affairs based questions?

Thank you, and if you have any book recommendations, please let me know!

Well, it depends upon one's capacity that how much he has acquired knowledge about history. There are many aspirants who doesn't have history background so to them they have to study the history to understand the current affairs.

Whereas, syllabus is concerned, "Yes" it is more current affair based, but you can't judge the trend as in CE-2016 some questions were asked from the history, but in 2017 the Pak Affairs paper was totally based on current affairs, it seemed as your are attempting current affairs paper.

Do your SWOT analysis and then chalk-out a plan.

__________________
~~ Khan ~~
Birds born in cage, thinks flying is an illness.

Hi. Kindly keep in mind that this is just my opinion.

Before the new syllabus, people had cracked the paper format. Basically, there would be two questions from pre-1906 era, then 2 from 1906-1947 and then the remaining ones would be about the recent developments and post-partition era. So you see, one could pass this paper by picking 2 eras of their liking and ignoring the remaining one. Now, the syllabus has changed and that whole era thing doesn't really apply. You now cannot do this pick and choose thing.
FPSC presented a PA paper to us that was heavily tilted toward the current developments era but there is no guarantee that in 2018, it would follow the same plan. It can go heavy w.r.t the history or the pre-partition era.
FPSC is also not fond of academies that always claim that they had guessed the paper before the exam was commenced so they deliberately try to outdo that. Keep this in mind as well.

So as per your questions:
1: If you ignore the pre-partition history then you will be missing my previously defined two eras. I would suggest that you at least do the topics that have appeared frequently in the past. Sir Syed, Ali Garh movement, Simla etc etc. Main main questions. Baqi up to you. I would not advise skipping this.

2: I did not read the book so I can't help you. I followed the Concise history of Pakistan published by Oxford press and it was really good.

3: That I have no idea about; depends on the aspirants.

__________________
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And there's nothing I can do.

Thank you, Tehseen and Zainab.

I was worried that the Ikram Rabbani book only lightly covered parts of the syllabus, but I suppose I'll have to read outside the main books to cover each era now.

Thanks again!

Aoa
Brother.

Pakistan affairs is now 80% current affairs of Pakistan and 20% history based.

Pre-partition or early era can help in mcqs

Like previously aspirant got good marks in current affairs based questions ,but if you know a history question v v well then attempt that.

Moreover, don't waste time on extra books. Trek to Pakistan etc. First syllabus then other things.

In short, do not study past events in depth just go through them.

suggestion
Prepare IR and CA your pak affair shall automatically be prepared.

Hope this help
Thanks and regards