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Mains Prelims

Q1 · UPPSC PCS Mains 2024 · Essay · 50 marks · ~700 words in the hall · 1 min read

Q2 →
English हिंदी

Human values and literature.

Topic: Literature, culture, society and polity. Syllabus: Section A — Literature and Culture; the Social sphere; the Political sphere. Same official PYQ from year-wise 2024 and Literature, culture, society and polity.

Get your copy evaluated Free · English or Hindi · ~1 min Try UPSC Mains Evaluation →

Essay map

Opening scene

Anecdote

A government-school cupboard in Sitapur still holds a story that makes a child look at a hunger the family jokes about. Human values are that look practiced. Literature is the form that trained it. The pair is the topic — not a moral DVD. A value that never disturbs a private joke is a festival. Literature is the form that can still disturb.

Keep this in every paragraph

One stand

  • Values: dignity, a truth-method, a restraint. Literature: Premchand, a folk, a banned line. Ambedkar if the value is equality.

Use once, in a scene — do not dump names

Quotes to earn

  • Premchand

    Hunger seen, not joked.

  • Ambedkar

    Equality as a human value that may sting a custom.

Turn each heading into a full paragraph in the hall

Heading map

What the line is asking

  • Human values: public oughts, not only a festival.
  • Literature: carrier and critic of those oughts.

Page / market

  • A bestseller that sells a stereotype. A poem that names a well.

The counter

Didactic ‘value education’ that bores. And a cruelty that calls itself culture.

Disturbing page

  • Practiced ought: dignity, a truth-method, a restraint.
  • A cupboard story vs a bestseller stereotype.
  • Value police that kills the page; a cruelty that calls itself culture.
  • Keep the gym of seeing.

Drop one peg where it fits — not a data dump

Value addition

  • Art. 19 / 21 A page as speech and dignity.
  • NCERT / board Which values enter the cupboard.
  • Sahitya Akademi A public of letters.

Last 8–10 lines in the exam

Last paragraph

Human values and literature meet in a Sitapur cupboard that still holds a story about a hunger the family jokes about. Values are that look practiced in a queue. Literature is the form that trained it. A moral DVD without a page bores; a page that sells a cruelty as style is also a value — a bad one. Do not appoint a police to kill the book, and do not call every sting an insult to culture. In the last eight or ten lines, keep the disturbing page. Let it remain answerable. That is a human value with a craft.

Quick related

Students also ask

  • Imagination of the 'New Woman' in India: A Myth.

    Next question in the 2024 paper (Q2). View answer →

  • Full 700-word essay?

    No. Map only. In the hall, grow each heading; write in English or Hindi, not both.

  • Tone?

    Literary-civic. One cupboard. Not a moral-science chapter.

Same topic · past papers

UPPSC has asked this before

These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.

  1. 2023 · Q8 · UPESS · 50 marks

    Melting glaciers: danger for human beings.

    View answer →

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