Preparing for the Indian Economic Service (IES)   exam is a little like setting out to climb a mountain you’ve only seen in photographs. From the base, it looks clear and manageable. A few weeks later, you realise the trail is steeper, longer, and strangely different from what you imagined. Most students begin full of energy. The first few chapters feel easy. Then the details start piling up—models, graphs, equations, policy terms—and suddenly the path looks endless. At that