Q1 · UPSC Civil Services Mains 2018 · Essay · 125 marks · 1 min read

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Alternative technologies for a climate change resilient India.

Topic: Philosophical and ethical quotes. Syllabus: Philosophical and ethical quotes Same official PYQ from year-wise 2018 and Philosophical and ethical quotes.

Essay map

Opening scene

Anecdote

A farmer in Bundelkhand keeps a diesel pump and a rumour of solar. The monsoon is late again. ‘Alternative technology’ is not a pavilion in Delhi. It is whether the field drinks next week without breaking the household.

Keep this in every paragraph

One stand

  • Climate-resilient means a buffer: seed, water, power, a house that does not wash away. Alternative means a path that is not only more coal. Write use, repair, a public grid.

Use once, in a scene — do not dump names

Quotes to earn

  • Schumacher

    Intermediate technology — one nod: tools people can own.

  • Gandhi

    Production by the masses — a pump that does not exile the village.

Turn each heading into a full paragraph in the hall

Heading map

What the line is asking

  • Alternative: solar, a drip, a millet, a cooler roof — not only a new coal plant.
  • Climate change resilient India: heat, flood, a failed monsoon, a coast.
  • Technology as a social object: who owns it, who mends it.

Farm

  • Seed, a weather SMS, a solar pump that is not a new debt trap.
  • Crop insurance as a cousin of technology — a file that pays.

Water / energy

  • Micro-irrigation, a recharge well, a rooftop that is actually net-metered.
  • Storage: the missing brick in ‘renewable India’.

Coast / city

  • A mangrove, a drainage that was not concreted shut, a heat-action plan.

The counter

A solar panel on a poor roof with a loan is not resilience; it is a new EMI. And ‘traditional’ is not always kind (a floodplain hut). Technology without a right to repair and a public science is a catalogue.

Drop one peg where it fits — not a data dump

Value addition

  • NDC / NAPCC India’s climate file — peg once, then the field.
  • PM-KUSUM / drip Solar and water as farm tools — check the EMI.
  • Heat action / CRZ City and coast as technology of rules, not only gadgets.

Last 8–10 lines in the exam

Last paragraph

  • Close: one machine the last person can mend. Expand — this is only the map.

Quick related

Students also ask

  • A good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

    Next question on this syllabus topic (2018 · Q2). View answer →

  • Is this the full essay?

    No. It is a map. In the exam, each heading becomes a paragraph with one Indian case.

  • Tone?

    Grounded. One farm, one city. Not a list of ten missions.

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