Revision summary
Result-contingent karma values the fruit: targets, postings, and praise. Result-non-contingent karma values duty without clinging, as in the Gita, without becoming laziness. Ethical performance is nishkama motive plus audited public results. A cooked vaccination ranking is sakama vice; an honest inconvenient enquiry is nishkama virtue. Indifference dressed as nishkama, and cruelty dressed as a target, both fail the citizen.
Model answer
Introduction
Governance is judged by a school that opened and by a file that was fair. The Gita’s two karmas name that split: work tied to fruit, and work tied to duty. The moral basis of performance is to do the right action as nishkama karma, while still owning results as a public trustee, not as a private harvest.
Body
Result-contingent karma
- Result-contingent or sakama karma is action whose worth is the fruit: a target, a medal, a posting, or a vote.
- In office it looks like a dashboard that counts toilets without water, or a demolition before a visit so that the camera finds a “clean” street.
- It can mobilise energy; a deadline for flood relief that actually moves grain is sakama energy put to a public fruit.
- Its moral vice is that the person, the process, and the truth become instruments of the fruit.
- Example: a vaccination camp that inflates numbers to win a ranking is result-contingent work that falsifies the very result.
Result-non-contingent karma
- Result-non-contingent or nishkama karma is action offered as duty without clinging to personal fruit, as the Gita asks of the sthitaprajna.
- In governance it is the speaking order, the honest estimate, and the refused illegal oral direction, even if the review is bitter.
- It is not laziness: the Gita praises yoga of action, not escape from the field.
- Example: an enquiry officer who records both convenient and inconvenient witnesses, knowing the report may stall a career, is nishkama performance.
Moral basis of work performance
- The citizen needs both: duty without attachment, and results that can be audited.
- The moral basis is therefore nishkama motive plus public consequence: do the lawful, fair act; then measure whether the widow was paid, not whether the officer was praised.
- Result-contingent work is ethical when the fruit is a shared public good and the means stay inside law and dignity.
- Result-contingent work is unethical when the fruit is private — a cut, a headline, or a cooked chart.
- Nishkama work is unethical if it becomes indifference: “I did my note” while a child still waits for a mid-day meal.
- Harmonisation: treat results as feedback for the next duty, not as a personal score; treat duty as the floor that results may not buy their way around.
- Second ARC and citizen charters try this in modern dress: publish the standard, then own the delay.
Governance implication
- Targets are tools; they are not the dharma of the State.
- A republic ranks a clean process that missed a cosmetic date above a cruel success.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD S[Sakama fruit] --> R[Target headline] N[Nishkama duty] --> D[Lawful fair act] D --> P[Public result as feedback] R --> X[Cooked chart risk] P --> G[Ethical performance]
Conclusion
Sakama karma chases fruit; nishkama karma does duty without clinging. In governance the moral basis is nishkama motive with public results as trustee-feedback. Cooked targets fail both; idle purity that never delivers fails the citizen.
Quick related
Students also ask
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In the process of policy making by public administrators, whether priority should be given to moral transparency or the effectiveness of consequences/results? Elucidate.
Next question in the 2024 paper (Q14). View answer →
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Does nishkama karma mean ignoring targets?
No. It means not selling process and truth for a personal fruit. Public targets remain a trustee’s feedback.
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Is a good result enough to justify a harsh means?
No. A cruel success is sakama ethics. Dignity and law are the floor results may not buy around.
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