Books For NABARD Assistant Manager Exam

Updated on 16.06.2017

This post only discusses Books For NABARD – Phase 1. It has been updated as per the new NABARD notification in 2017. NABARD has issued advertisement for recruitment of Managers (Grade B) in the Rural Development Banking Service (RDBS). 

First Understand NABARD Exam Pattern

It is important that you first check the paper pattern, because only then would you be in a position to look for books. As you would be aware, the exam pattern has been completely revamped.

1. The exam will now be conducted in the online mode.
2. Also, now there is a greater emphasis on testing candidates on knowledge would be important for someone working with NABARD
3. The number of questions continues to be 200 and the time available to attempt them will be 120 minutes.

The paper pattern has been covered in detail in this post.

Important Points To Avoid Confusion

As you would have seen, in Phase 1 we have two new sections — Economic & Social Issues and Agriculture & Rural Development (incorporated last year). The majority of the candidates are now in a state of shock as to how will they prepare for these topics. I find this ridiculous. These topics were already there in Phase 2 of the exam! If you understand the points below and work accordingly, you will have a big advantage over everybody else.

1. Everyone has the same amount of time. So spend it on actually working (studying), not on worrying.
2. The paper earlier used to have 200 questions. Even now it will have 200 questions. The new sections only account for 25% in the new pattern. This is not a big deal
3. So even if you have zero knowledge in the new sections. Don’t worry. Prepare the conventional sections first. The questions in the new sections will be knowledge based, not practiced based – this is a good thing.

Books For NABARD Recruitment

There is no set syllabus for most of the sections. You get some idea about Economic & Social Issues and Agriculture & Rural development because these topics are also asked in Phase 2 of the exam (the official notification has given information on Phase 2 syllabus). As you would have read in the paper pattern post, NABARD being an elite organization, the level of questions in the preliminary paper would be moderate to difficult. Plus the competition is HUGE! So I’ll advise that you prepare as per Bank PO level. Once you have thoroughly understood the exam pattern, and the points above then comes the next important question. Which books should you refer to for preparation of NABARD recruitment drive? Let’s take each section one by one.

Books For Test Of Reasoning Section

In terms of marks, this is one of the most important sections in Phase 1 of the selection process. The reasoning section is just like maths, all you need is some logic + practice and you can score good marks. Especially, if you compare with knowledge-based sections where you have to read so many topics and still can’t be sure if you have covered all syllabus 😀 So practice as many different types of questions as you can. The more variety of questions you practice before the exam, higher are your chances of getting a great score. For this section, you can use any of the following books:

Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning by R S Aggarwal (English)	Buy on Amazon	Buy on Flipkart
New Approach to Reasoning Verbal, Non-Verbal & Analytical by B S Sijwali, Indu Sijwali	Buy on Amazon	Buy on Flipkart
Tricky Approach To Competitive Reasoning Verbal & Non-Verbal (Fully Solved) by Kiran Publications (Hindi)	Buy on Amazon	Buy on Flipkart

Books For NABARD English Language Section

English section in NABARD Phase 1 has typical questions as asked in competitive exams. I think the level is also very manageable. All you need is a little exposure to different types of questions which are asked in the paper. If you are confident about your English and all you need is practice, I’ll suggest that you only use previous year’s papers to practice exam pattern questions. However, If you need to work on your English, the only book I’ll recommend is

Book	Flipkart	Amazon
Objective General English by S P Bakshi (Arihant)	Buy	Buy

Study Material For Computer Knowledge Section

If you go by the previous year’s question papers, the computer awareness questions are really basic. Asked from topics like operating system, the internet, input/output devices and so on. I doubt if you would need books for this section. If you have been using a windows based computer with office applications like Word/Excel/Powerpoint, then I think the following study material from NIOS would be more than sufficient for you.

• Only download Basic Computing Skills PDF files 
• Download Computer and Office Applications material 
• Some more night time reading material 
• And the 

However, if you have not used a computer and would prefer buying a book, many options are available on these links — Amazon and Flipkart. Use any one.

Books For General Awareness Section

I think this section (along with the newly introduced sections in Phase 1) will be the real reason for people failing in Phase 1. Want to know why? Because a large number of candidates will keep on worrying that ‘syllabus kitna zyada hai’ (the syllabus is huge). General awareness weightage has been reduced to half of what it used to be. This should actually be a good news. Now you can focus more on the other sections. So don’t spend a huge amount of time here.

1. The most important stuff to cover in this section is to read on important people and places over the past one year related to the economic news in the country.
2. NABARD has a habit of asking questions related to their own area of work, RBI policies and RBI updates.
3. Of course, I do not mean to give an impression that NABARD will not ask weird questions. But you can’t base your preparation on this fear.

If at all you think you need a book, following two are obvious choices. But please do a very selective study.

Manorama Yearbook 2017 (English)	Buy on Amazon	Buy on Flipkart
Manorama Yearbook 2017 (Hindi)	Buy on Amazon	Buy on Flipkart
India 2017 (English)	Buy on Amazon	Buy on Flipkart
India 2017 (Hindi)	Buy on Amazon	Buy on Flipkart (Not available)

Quantitative aptitude section has also been reduced. Earlier NABARD used to ask 50 marks questions from this section, now they will only ask for 30 marks. Traditionally, data interpretation questions (line graph, pie chart, table, caselet etc.) used to account for about half of this section. With the other questions asked from typical topics – time and work, percentage, mensuration etc. For data interpretation, I’ll suggest that you cover Chapters 1-4 of NCERT Class 11 Statistics book – available at this link. For the other topics, you can practice questions from any of the following booksBooks For Quantitative Aptitude Section

What’s Your Level	Book Recommended	Flipkart	Amazon
Superb fundas and need little practice	NCERT books	Download NCERT books
Okay fundas and need to practice	Quantitative Aptitude for Competitive Examinations (R S Aggarwal) OR	Buy	Buy
	Arihant’s Fast Track Objective Arithmetic	Buy	Buy
Need help with fundas	Magical Book On Quicker Maths	Buy	Buy

Books For NABARD – Economic & Social Issues Section

From here onwards, you need to pay a little more attention. This section and the next section are important not only for Phase 1 but also for Phase 2 and Interview. Having said that, you also need to understand very clearly that in spite of the huge syllabus, the questions are expected to be direct knowledge based questions. This is because graduates and post graduates from different fields would be appearing for the paper. This at least would be true for the first Phase 1, maybe the questions would be of a little higher standard during Phase 2.

So don’t get bogged down. Finish one topic at a time. In every topic just read the basics and brush up on the related current affairs. As a bonus, this will also be helpful for your general awareness preparation. Once you have finished reading all the topics, do a quick round of revision (or more if you can). To be fair, it would be difficult to cover all topics properly unless you want to buy 10 books which I think would be a waste of time, money and space. So better use these two books for this section. They will also be helpful during the remaining stages of the exam.

Books	Amazon	Flipkart
Indian Economy by Ramesh Singh	Buy	Buy
Social Problems in India by Ram Ahuja	Buy	Buy

PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU ARE NOT PREPARING FOR UPSC. So don’t go too deep. Cover the syllabus related stuff up to basic level. Do it fast. And revise

Books For NABARD – Agriculture & Rural Development

The advice given in the previous section applies here as well. Most of the candidates appearing for the exam would certainly not have taken up an academic course on these topics. So your level of preparation should be up to a basic level. You have two options either you buy some simple book which covers the entire syllabus, or you Google just about everything and study from the internet. The second option sounds simple (and free) but you will be wasting a lot of time searching material and would not really be sure if you have found the right website. And I am not even going to talk about how you will waste your time on Facebook and Youtube. I would rather suggest you buy a book. The one mentioned below is just a suggestion. It seems to cover the major part of the syllabus, for the remaining portion I have suggested links from the web and other books. Free feel to do your own research.

Books	Amazon	Flipkart
Agriculture at a Glance: Enhanced Competition Explorer	Buy	Buy

For the “Ecology And Climate Change” part –  for study material For “Rural Development” I have not been able to find a single book which does justice to the syllabus. Here are some links you may like to check.

• Study material from NIOS – 
• video lectures from Delhi University – 

If you want to go deeper, you can also do a selective study from the following books:

Books	Amazon	Flipkart
India 2017	Buy	Buy
Economic Survey 2016-17	Download Volume 1

Books For NABARD – Computer Knowledge

Objective Computer Awareness by Arihant Publications (English )	Buy on Amazon	Buy on Flipkart
Computer Jaagrukta (Hindi) by Arihant Publications	Buy on Amazon	Buy on Flipkart(Not Available)

Solved Papers & Practice Papers For NABARD Manager Exam

At the time of writing this post, no books in the market provide practice papers as per the new format. If you are looking for old solved papers you may consider one of these – here and here. Though, I would suggest you avoid them. I better idea would be to use previous year papers of bank PO (or similar) exams for practice. Also, please stay away from ‘Made For NABARD’ books. First of all, they don’t cover the complete syllabus and also whatever little syllabus they do cover, they cover it poorly. It makes more sense to invest in subject books like the ones suggested above because they have some level of quality, and would also be useful for other exams. Obviously, I am only making suggestions, which author you buy is your decision.

Final Words

I know many of you would be in a fix since the timeline is so close. But don’t worry, you have the same amount of time as everybody else! If you have any questions, ask them in the comments below.