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Mains Prelims

Q3 · UPSC Civil Services Mains 2024 · Essay · 125 marks · 1 min read

← Q2 Q4 →

There is no path to happiness; Happiness is the path.

Topic: Philosophical and ethical quotes. Syllabus: Philosophical and ethical quotes Same official PYQ from year-wise 2024 and Philosophical and ethical quotes.

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Essay map

Opening scene

Anecdote

A clerk counts the years to a promotion as if joy were a station after the last transfer. A gardener on the same campus waters a neem every evening and is already somewhere. The line says the gardener has understood what the clerk has postponed.

Keep this in every paragraph

One stand

Happiness is not a trophy at the end of GDP or rank. It is how the day is lived — if the road has water. Write to refuse both the rat-race and a sermon to the hungry.

Use once, in a scene — do not dump names

Quotes to earn

  • Buddha

    The eightfold *path* — practice, not a stamp of arrival. One line in a scene.

  • Gandhi

    Means are ends in the making — happiness as how we walk, not only where.

Turn each heading into a full paragraph in the hall

Heading map

What the line is asking

  • Path to: happiness as a destination (marks, house, “settled”, Viksit date).
  • Is the path: practice, attention, dharma of the next hour — Buddhist / Gandhian cousin.
  • Stake: hold goals; stop postponing decency until the goal.

Self

  • Comparison is a path that never arrives.
  • Habit, sleep, a walk: cheap path-work. Addiction sells a destination.

Work and education

  • Coaching as only-destination turns a young mind into a war.
  • Craft, teaching, nursing: the work is the meaning if the wage is just.

Society and faith

  • Festival as performance vs festival as shared time.
  • Santosh is not dullness; it is not being owned by the next thing.

State

  • Welfare, parks, clean air, a bus that comes: public goods that make a path livable.
  • A growth target that excuses today’s queue is the clerk’s error at national scale.

The counter

Hunger, a waiting list for surgery, a delayed FIR — these are destinations that must arrive in a lifetime. Do not tell the landless that happiness is the path while the path has no water. The line rebukes obsession, not justice.

Drop one peg where it fits — not a data dump

Value addition

  • Bhutan GNH A reminder that GDP is not the only scoreboard — use once, do not romanticise a kingdom.
  • Public goods Parks, primary health, a reliable bus: the path made walkable.
  • Art. 21 Life with dignity — a legal destination that must still be a daily path.

Last 8–10 lines in the exam

Last paragraph

  • Close: name the shrine, and still pack water for today. Gandhi’s means-as-ends is the civic translation. Expand each heading; this page is only the map.

Quick related

Students also ask

  • The doubter is a true man of Science.

    Next question on this syllabus topic (2024 · Q4). View answer →

  • Is this the full essay?

    No. It is a map. One paragraph must protect those for whom the path is currently unlivable.

  • Tone?

    Warm, not poster-philosophy. Avoid “enjoy the process” as advice to the hungry.

Same topic · past papers

UPSC has asked this before

These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.

  1. 2023 · Q1 · Essay · 125 marks

    Thinking is like a game, it does not begin unless there is an opposite team.

    View answer →

  2. 2021 · Q8 · Essay · 125 marks

    There are better practices to "best practices"

    View answer →

  3. 2020 · Q6 · Essay · 125 marks

    There can be no social justice without economic prosperity but economic prosperity without social justice is meaningless.

    View answer →

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