Revision summary
Statement (a) notes a real cost to families; it does not justify unfair means, which also ruin careers later. Statement (b) ignores that one clean file, one model junior and one court paper are already a difference. Statement (c) confuses speed of a photo with development that can stand a collapse inquiry. Statement (d) mistakes a gift for efficiency; Conduct Rules treat it as a hook. An honest officer names the pressures and still refuses all four permissions.
Model answer
Introduction
Four common excuses visit every honest officer. Each has a grain of social observation. None of them is a permission to join the rot.
Body
Stakeholders
- You, your family, and juniors who will copy your file.
- Citizens who need a clean licence, school and road.
- Colleagues who use unfair means and those who do not.
- The service and the Constitution, which hired you as a trustee, not as a careerist.
Values
- Integrity, courage, justice, and a spirit of service.
- Empathy for family fear, without making the family a veto on the Constitution.
- Accountability: a career built on unfair means is still a public wrong.
(a) Ethics brings trouble; unfair means help the career
- Merit of the observation: transfers, isolation and delayed promotions do happen to officers who block a contract. Families feel that cost. Unfair networks sometimes look "successful" on a posting chart.
- Demerit as a guide: a career is not the purpose of the post. Article 14 and the Conduct Rules do not yield because a spouse is anxious.
- Unfair means also destroy careers — a trap case, a later government, a media pile. The "help" is a loan from the next scandal.
- Ethical conduct can still be a long career if one is competent, documents reasons, and uses lawful forums against a mala fide transfer.
- Duty: refuse the premise that the family must be fed by a dirty file. Use welfare, honesty and skill; do not use the child as an argument for a bribe.
(b) A small ethical minority makes no difference
- Merit: one clean clerk cannot clean a whole directorate in a week. Collective action problems are real.
- Demerit: this is the bystander logic that keeps a massacre and a scam going. Difference is not only a revolution; it is a licence that was not sold today.
- A minority creates a file that a court can use, a junior who has a model, and a statistic that the next reformer can cite.
- If the statement were true, every reform from RTI to direct benefit transfer would have been impossible. They began as minorities.
- Duty: stay ethical, join other clean officers, and use systems that multiply one person's no — e-procurement, published queues.
(c) Ethical means harm larger development
- Merit: a delayed environmental hearing or a cancelled illegal contract can slow a ribbon-cutting. Some politicians call that anti-development.
- Demerit: a flyover that falls, a dam that silts a village without consent, or a fake skill-mission is not development. It is a photo.
- Ethical means are how development lasts: true bills, true soil tests, true beneficiaries. The Second Administrative Reforms Commission treated integrity as a development input, not as a luxury.
- "Larger goals" that need a false muster are not larger; they are a private goal wearing a public flag.
- Duty: be efficient and ethical. Cut delay that is laziness; do not cut the hearing that is justice.
(d) Small gifts make the system efficient
- Merit: in a clogged office, a box of sweets can feel like oil, and a culture may call it manners.
- Demerit: the small gift is how a large capture begins. It creates a debt. The next ask is a file, not a sweet.
- The Conduct Rules restrict gifts from persons with official dealings precisely because "efficiency" is the usual story.
- A system that needs gifts to move is inefficient by design. The reform is process, not petty corruption as lubrication.
- Even if one avoids large crimes, the small gift trains the citizen that the State is a shop and trains the officer that a price is normal.
- Duty: refuse, record if pressed, and fix the delay through supervision and e-service, not through a private tariff.
What you should do
- Treat all four as social diagnoses, not as moral permissions.
- Protect the family with honesty about risk, lawful savings, and a refusal to hide a corrupt lifestyle as "the children's future".
- Seek postings and work methods that reduce lonely heroism: teams, digital trails, and written orders.
- Report large and small capture through vigilance channels when you have evidence; do not become a public accuser without a file.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD A[Ethics hurts career] --> REJ1[Career is not the telos] B[Minority is useless] --> REJ2[Today's clean file still matters] C[Ethics blocks development] --> REJ3[Fake development is not development] D[Small gifts oil the system] --> REJ4[Gifts create debt] REJ1 --> DUTY[Stay honest and competent] REJ2 --> DUTY REJ3 --> DUTY REJ4 --> DUTY
Conclusion
The four statements describe real pressures. They fail as ethics. Trouble is not a licence; a minority still matters; development that needs a lie is not development; a small gift is not oil, it is a hook.
Quick related
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Next question in the 2017 paper (Q11). View answer →
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If my child's school seat depends on a 'donation', have I not already lost?
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More from this paper
Q1 · UPSC Mains 2017 · GS IV · 10 marks
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Q2 · UPSC Mains 2017 · GS IV · 10 marks
Examine the relevance of the following in the context of civil service: (150 Words, 10) (a) Transparency (b) Accountability (c) Fairness and justice (d) Courage of conviction (e) Spirit of service.
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Q3 · UPSC Mains 2017 · GS IV · 10 marks
Young people with ethical conduct are not willing to come forward to join active politics. Suggest steps to motivate them to come forward. (150 Words, 10).
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