Revision summary
Tolerance is restrained respect for disliked difference within Mill’s harm limit. Compassion is active lessening of pain, as in karuna or daya. Attitude is a settled feeling-belief-action lean; aptitude is potential skill for the role. Kindness without file-skill, or skill with a communal lean, both fail. Office needs fair attitudes and the aptitude to turn them into lawful acts.
Model answer
Introduction
Tolerance restrains the hand against a difference one dislikes. Compassion moves the hand against a pain one has understood. Attitude is a settled preference; aptitude is the capacity that can carry a public role.
Body
(a) Tolerance and compassion
- Tolerance is self-restraint toward a belief, identity, or practice one does not share, so long as it does not destroy another’s equal liberty — Mill’s harm principle is the usual limit.
- Compassion (karuna; the Gita’s daya) is active concern to lessen suffering: the widow’s queue, the disaster camp, the bonded labourer.
- Tolerance can be cold: I let you speak and still refuse to help you eat. Compassion can be blind: I help my caste first and call it kindness.
- A civil servant needs tolerance in a communal rumour and a lawful minority procession; compassion at a drought kitchen and a disability desk.
- Rawls’s least advantaged and Gandhi’s talisman pull compassion toward the weak; Voltaire’s defence of speech pulls tolerance toward the disliked.
(b) Attitude and aptitude
- Attitude (Allport) is a relatively enduring organisation of feeling, belief, and action-tendency toward an object — a clerk’s scorn for a particular mohalla is an attitude.
- Aptitude is a potential for skill: numerical, verbal, spatial, or, in service ethics, a trainable bent toward integrity and calm under load.
- Attitude answers ‘how do I lean?’; aptitude answers ‘can I do the work the lean requires?’
- A dedicated attitude without aptitude still loses the widow’s file; high aptitude with a communal attitude weaponises the same file.
- Katz’s functions explain why attitudes persist (knowledge, utility, ego, value-expression); training changes aptitude faster than it changes a hardened attitude, which is why postings and example still matter.
Pairing for office
- Tolerance is an attitude of restrained respect; compassion is an attitude of active care. Aptitude is whether the officer can convert both into a lawful, competent act.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD T[Tolerance] --> R[Restrain against difference] K[Compassion] --> S[Act against suffering] AT[Attitude] --> L[How the mind leans] AP[Aptitude] --> C[Capacity to perform]
Conclusion
Tolerance is restrained respect for difference; compassion is action against suffering. Attitude is the lean of the mind; aptitude is the capacity to do the job that lean demands. The chair needs a fair lean and a usable skill, together.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
How do the values of tolerance and compassion get manifested in public service towards the weaker sections? Explain with suitable examples.
Next question in the 2020 paper (Q9). View answer →
-
Is compassion a reason to break impartiality?
No. Compassion sees the person; impartiality applies the statutory help. Breaking the criterion for a favourite is not compassion.
-
Can aptitude tests measure integrity?
They measure some cognitive and situational skill. Integrity still shows in the file after joining; tests are a screen, not a halo.
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.
-
2018 · Q11 · UPGS4 · 12 marks
Differentiate between ethics and morality and explain the determinants of ethical actions. -
2022 · Q1 · UPGS4 · 8 marks
Differentiate between democratic attitude and bureaucratic attitude of public servants. -
2022 · Q10 · UPGS4 · 8 marks
Differentiate between (a) Code of ethics and code of conduct (b) Tolerance and compassion. -
2021 · Q10 · UPGS4 · 8 marks
Differentiate between: (i) Objectivity and Dedication (ii) Structure and Functions of Attitudes. -
2019 · Q6 · UPGS4 · 8 marks
Differentiate between democratic attitude and bureaucratic attitude of public servants.
More from this paper
Q1 · UPSC Mains 2020 · UPGS4 · 8 marks · Solution
Discuss the role of family, society and educational institutions in inculcating values.
Civil Service aptitude and values
Family plants trust, empathy, and honour through daily example, and can also plant prejudice. Society rewards or punishes those habits in the street, the market, and the media. School adds public reason so a value can be justified beyond the clan. Nai Talim, mid-day meals, and civic assemblies practise equality the lecture cannot. Office ethics overlay these maps; they do not replace them.
Q2 · UPSC Mains 2020 · UPGS4 · 8 marks · Solution
Discuss the role of the 'Right to Information' for transparency in governance.
Probity in Governance
RTI converts the citizen’s wish to see the file into a legal claim. Section 4 suo motu disclosure is the ethical heart; applications are the backstop. Second ARC treated RTI as a master key to good governance. Social audits of wages, rations, and contracts rest on that key. Exemptions must stay narrow, and the applicant must be safe, or transparency dies in practice.
Q3 · UPSC Mains 2020 · UPGS4 · 8 marks · Solution
"The requirement of government sanction for prosecuting dishonest officials is a protective shield for corruption." Examine the statement.
Probity in Governance
Prior sanction was meant to protect bona fide official acts from motivated FIRs. Section 197 CrPC and Section 19 of the PC Act are the usual locks. Endless delay, not the lock itself, is the shield for corruption. Second ARC and CVC lines wanted a clock and a reasoned order, including deemed sanction. Reform the timeline and the speaking order; do not abolish every filter.