Q5 · UPPSC PCS Mains 2025 · Essay · 50 marks · ~700 words in the hall · 2 min read

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The issue of ethics in a changing global economy.

Topic: Science, environment, economy and agriculture. Syllabus: Section B — Science, Environment and Technology; Economic sphere; Agriculture, Industry and Trade. Same official PYQ from year-wise 2025 and Science, environment, economy and agriculture.

Essay map

Opening scene

Anecdote

A garment order leaves a Noida shed at a price that cannot buy the worker a bus home. The invoice is global. The ethics are local and unpaid. The changing economy did not abolish the question. It hid it in a supply chain. The invoice is global. The unpaid bus fare is local. Put a name and a wage on the invoice.

Keep this in every paragraph

One stand

Ethics is not CSR photography. It is a living wage, a tax that lands, data that is not harvested as a crop, a climate bill that the poor did not write.

Use once, in a scene — do not dump names

Quotes to earn

  • Gandhi

    Means as ends in the making — a cheap shirt that costs a spine is a bad means.

  • Ambedkar

    Social democracy — the last person on the invoice.

Turn each heading into a full paragraph in the hall

Heading map

Unpack

  • Changing: platforms, sanctions, a chip war, a gig app.
  • Ethics: means, a last person, a truth in the books.

Labour and trade

  • ESG as a passport; a shadow factory as the visa’s lie.
  • WTO, a carbon border — ethics as a new tariff.

Data and finance

  • A payment rail that knows a life. DPDP, a tax haven.
  • Pharma and vaccine IP: global ethics in a pandemic.

The counter

A closed economy can also be cruel. Ethics is not nostalgia for licence-raj. And do not preach ‘values’ to a hungry shed while the brand keeps the margin.

Name on the invoice

  • Platforms, a gig, a shadow factory as the ESG visa’s lie.
  • DPDP, a tax haven, a vaccine IP.
  • Ethics is books, not CSR photography.
  • A closed economy can also be cruel — not licence-raj nostalgia.

Drop one peg where it fits — not a data dump

Value addition

  • DPDP 2023 Data as a fiduciary duty — ethics in the new oil.
  • Art. 23 / labour codes Forced labour and a wage floor — old ethics, new sheds.
  • ESG / CBAM A passport of virtue that must still meet a shadow factory.

Last 8–10 lines in the exam

Last paragraph

A garment order leaves a Noida shed at a price that cannot buy the worker a bus home. The changing global economy hid the ethics in a supply chain; it did not abolish the question. Put a name and a wage on the invoice. ESG as a passport must still meet a shadow factory. Data as a fiduciary, a tax that lands, a climate bill the poor did not write — these are ethics. Do not preach values to a hungry shed while the brand keeps the margin. Close on that invoice. Civic, not anti-trade; not a Davos speech.

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