World at a Glance and International Organisations

Every country is described by a few standard labels: its capital, its currency and the name of its parliament. The examiner simply mixes these labels, so your job is to learn them as small sets. Learn the neighbourhood first (South Asia), then Asia, then the rest of the world. Notice that many names carry a story: the Japanese Diet means an assembly, the Russian Duma comes from 'to think', the Israeli Knesset simply means 'gathering'.

Parliament names fall into families. 'Majlis' is Arabic/Persian for a council or assembly: Iran, Maldives, Pakistan (Majlis-e-Shoora), Saudi Arabia, Oman. 'Sejm' is Poland. 'Sansad' is Sanskrit-based and used in India and Nepal. A bicameral parliament has two houses; the lower house is usually directly elected.

After two world wars that killed tens of millions, countries decided that talking should replace fighting. The League of Nations (1920, Geneva) tried this and failed, because the USA never joined and powerful states ignored it. The United Nations was built to fix those mistakes. It was formed on 24 October 1945, when the Charter signed at San Francisco on 26 June 1945 came into force, with 51 original members including India. Today it has 193 members, the newest being South Sudan (2011), and its headquarters is in New York.

The UN works through six principal organs. Think of them as six departments of one big house: one debates (General Assembly), one acts on peace and security (Security Council), one looks after economy and society (ECOSOC), one supervises dependent territories (Trusteeship Council, now inactive), one judges disputes between states (International Court of Justice) and one does the office work (Secretariat).

The UN is not just the six organs. Around it sits a large family: specialised agencies (independent bodies linked to the UN by agreement, each with its own membership and budget), programmes and funds (such as UNICEF and UNDP) and many other international organisations that have nothing to do with the UN, such as the ICC or Interpol. Exams ask three things again and again: the headquarters city, the year of founding and the job of each body. Learn them city by city, because a single city often hosts a whole bunch of bodies.

Specialised agencies are independent bodies with their own membership; the IMF, for example, has members that decide by weighted voting (more money, more votes). The IAEA and the WTO are 'related organisations' that work with the UN but are not formally specialised agencies. For exam purposes, treat both as part of the UN family.

Countries that live close to each other, or share a trade route, a security worry or a development goal, often form a regional grouping. The reasons differ, so the groupings differ: SAARC and ASEAN are about neighbours, BRICS and G20 are about economies, NATO is about defence, OPEC is about one commodity. The examiner asks four things: full form, year, headquarters and members (especially 'which one is NOT a member'). Learn each grouping as a small card with exactly these four items.

Why SAARC stalled and BIMSTEC grew: SAARC works by consensus, so a deep India-Pakistan dispute can block everything, and trade within South Asia stays small. BIMSTEC leaves Pakistan out and adds Southeast Asian partners, so India can push projects such as connectivity and energy grids more easily. This is why you will see BIMSTEC in news more often.

Every year a few organisations publish a report or an index that ranks countries: happiness, hunger, peace, corruption, innovation, human development. The newspaper headline says 'India ranks 118th' but the exam asks the simpler thing: who publishes it? This is a pure matching topic. Study it as a two-column list: index on the left, publisher on the right, and notice that the publisher usually matches the subject (a hunger index from a food-aid body, a corruption index from an anti-corruption NGO).

A nickname is a country's or a city's reputation in two words. The 'Land of the Rising Sun' is Japan because it lies at the eastern edge of Asia, where the sun appears first for the continent. 'Land of the Midnight Sun' is Norway because in summer, north of the Arctic Circle, the sun does not set for weeks. When a nickname has a reason, it is much easier to remember. The same goes for famous lines on the map: each is named after the person who drew it or the latitude it follows.

Now the famous lines. A line on the map is almost always one of three things: a political boundary named after the man who drew it (Radcliffe, Durand, McMahon), a line of latitude that became a ceasefire or partition line (38th and 49th parallel), or a military line that became a symbol (Maginot, Hindenburg). Study the table with the pair 'line - countries it separates'.