Q3 · UPSC Civil Services Mains 2019 · Essay · 125 marks · 1 min read

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Best for an individual is not necessarily best for the society.

Topic: Philosophical and ethical quotes. Syllabus: Philosophical and ethical quotes Same official PYQ from year-wise 2019 and Philosophical and ethical quotes.

Essay map

Opening scene

Anecdote

A man burns stubble because it is cheapest for his field this week. The city chokes. Best for him; not for the child’s lungs. The topic is that fork — individual reason that does not add up to a common life.

Keep this in every paragraph

One stand

Neither saint nor selfishness as destiny. Mill’s harm, Gandhi’s trusteeship, a GST that funds a hospital: write the seam. Keep the counter: a crushing ‘society’ that eats the person.

Use once, in a scene — do not dump names

Quotes to earn

  • Mill

    Harm to others — the classic seam of private and public.

  • Gandhi

    Trusteeship — my surplus is not only mine.

  • Ambedkar

    The individual against a crushing ‘social best’.

Turn each heading into a full paragraph in the hall

Heading map

What the line is asking

  • Individual best: income, a match, a shortcut.
  • Society: air, trust, a road, a language of fairness.
  • Not always a clash — a vaccine is both. Name when it is a clash.

Market

  • Plastic, groundwater, a fake degree. Private gain, public bill.

Speech / digital

  • A rumour that helps my side. Best for the poster; poison for the street.

State

  • Tax, a helmet, a lockdown: the common written as a rule.
  • Land acquisition: society’s project that can erase a household.

Ecology

  • A river as a sewer because my drain is convenient.

The counter

A society that is ‘best’ by crushing a minority, a woman, a dissenter, is not society — it is a crowd. Ambedkar: the individual is not a gift to the village. The line forbids both the stubble fire and the mob.

Drop one peg where it fits — not a data dump

Value addition

  • Art. 19 / 21 Speech and lungs — two publics that can collide.
  • GRAP / CAQM Delhi air as the public bill of a private fire.

Last 8–10 lines in the exam

Last paragraph

  • Close: ask if the shortcut can be everyone’s. Expand — this is only the map.

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