Revision summary
Corruption is the sale of public trust, from a pension cut to a collusive tender. Moral bases are trusteeship, constitutional morality, Kantian duty, justice to the worst-off, virtue, and nishkama role-dharma. They need inner courage and institutions: Conduct Rules, PCA, RTI, social audit, and cleaner payment pipes. Example: a delayed widow pension is a dignity failure, not a local custom. Sermons fail if whistle-blowers are punished and due process is replaced by a mob.
Model answer
Introduction
Corruption is the sale of a public trust. The challenge is not only a missing rupee; it is a citizen who learns that the desk is a shop. Moral bases are the inner and public reasons that make that shop illegitimate, even when the law is slow.
Body
The present challenge
- Corruption today is petty delay at a counter, collusive tender, political funding opacity, and digital leakage that looks clean on a dashboard.
- It is also a culture: a gift as “custom,” a transfer as punishment for honesty, and a young officer told that the file will not move without oil.
- Example: a widow’s pension sitting until a cut is paid is not a small local habit; it is a daily denial of Article 21 dignity.
Moral bases
- Public office as trusteeship: the stamp and the budget belong to the people, as Kautilya’s concern with the treasury and Gandhi’s trusteeship both insist in different tongues.
- Constitutional morality: Articles 14 and 21 forbid selling equality and livelihood; Ambedkar’s warning was that forms without morality become a mask.
- Kantian duty: the officer must not use the citizen as a means to a private purse; a bribe fails the test of a rule that could be universal.
- Justice to the worst-off: Rawls’s difference principle, in administrative form, says leakage from a ration or a scholarship hits the person who cannot buy a shortcut.
- Virtue: integrity, courage, and temperance are character habits; a code without them is a poster.
- Dharma of the role: nishkama work means the officer does the right file without pricing the fruit; sakama work turns the same file into a personal harvest.
- Democratic reciprocity: the taxpayer and the voter are principals; secrecy that hides a cut breaks that pact.
How these bases meet the challenge
- Inner control: conscience and example of a senior who refuses a festival envelope, as T. N. Seshan’s public neutrality showed that one office can reset a norm.
- Institutional ethics: Conduct Rules, the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, Lokpal, CVC, RTI, social audit, and e-procurement turn a sermon into a file that can punish.
- Social ethics: a public that stops treating a bribe as a fee, and a media that names the system not only the scapegoat clerk.
- Example: Direct Benefit Transfer and geo-tagged assets do not make a person honest, but they shrink the moral opportunity of the middleman.
Limits
- Moral bases fail if whistle-blowers are transferred and the big fish is never charged.
- Moral outrage without due process can become a mob, which is another corruption of justice.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD T[Trusteeship] --> M[Moral bases] C[Constitutional morality] --> M M --> I[Inner courage] M --> L[Law audit RTI] I --> H[Honest desk] L --> H
Conclusion
Corruption is a theft of trust. The moral bases are trusteeship, constitutional morality, duty, justice to the weak, virtue, and role-dharma. They work when law, audit, and a public that refuses to pay a fee for a right stand with the honest officer.
Quick related
Students also ask
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What should be the nature of civil service values for a public administrator? How can he create a balance between these values in his personal and public life? Explain.
Next question in the 2024 paper (Q12). View answer →
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Is a small festival gift morally different from a tender kickback?
Scale differs; the moral basis is the same if the gift buys a file. Conduct Rules treat both as integrity risks.
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Can technology replace moral bases?
It can shrink opportunity. A dishonest owner of the password still steals; ethics remains the owner of the order.
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A moral code of conduct binds integrity, impartiality and duty through Conduct Rules and Nolan-type public-life standards. The Second ARC wanted values named and conduct enforced, not a wall slogan. Work culture is the office’s real habit of time, truth and courtesy. Culture can confirm or hollow the code, because juniors copy seniors. Flood-relief lists, e-office and heard grievances are tests of both.
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How far are the views of Swami Vivekananda successful in developing the core ideals and values of morality in human behaviour? Discuss.
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Vivekananda placed dignity, fearlessness and service of the poor at the centre of morality. Man-making education and harmony of faiths still feed public-service values. They work as inner motive when no inspector is watching. They do not replace Conduct Rules, audit or equality before law. Success is high as ideals, partial as a full machine of behaviour without institutions.
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Rule of law needs equal application, not mood or patronage. Skills include plain-language legal literacy, consistent hearings, speaking orders, RTI-style visibility, and facilitation that cuts touts. Enforcement must be firm without humiliation. The officer’s own clean file is the strongest lesson. UP examples include fair FIR, equal challan and recorded hearings before demolition.
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