Revision summary
The couple meet age, poverty and prognosis tests but not reserved-community status. Faking criterion (b) is injustice to eligible persons and a breach of integrity. Cold rejection without a second path fails compassion. Rakesh should explain the bar, keep the scheme clean, and route them to lawful health cover, relief funds and hospital charity. He may recommend a future hardship window to government, not invent one on the file.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Rakesh is trusted to apply a closed list of criteria. The couple are poor, local, old and medically deserving, yet they are not from a reserved community. Compassion is real. Forging criterion (b) is not.
Body
Stakeholders
- The old man, the spouse, and their remaining years of pain and work.
- Other eligible persons on the waitlist who meet all four criteria, including reserved-community applicants.
- Rakesh, his seniors, and the government that wrote the scheme.
- The surgeon willing to waive the professional fee.
- The district public, whose trust in a "honest officer" is at stake.
Ethical issues and values
- Compassion and human dignity: untreated obstruction of the intestine is not a paperwork inconvenience.
- Rule of law and equality: stretching "reserved community" for a couple Rakesh pities is a fraud on the scheme and on those for whom reservation was written.
- Justice toward absentees: a silent eligible patient loses if this file jumps the wall.
- Integrity versus the temptation to be a local god who rewrites eligibility.
- Empathy must find a lawful door, not a false caste or tribe certificate.
Options
- Option 1: Reject them at the counter and close the file.
- Merit: literal legality.
- Demerit: zero compassion; an officer who only recites criteria has not yet done the whole duty of a district.
- Option 2: Record them as reserved by "interpretation" or a backdated certificate.
- Merit: the surgery fund might move.
- Demerit: forgery, a stain on reservation, and a habit that will return as a scandal. Rejected.
- Option 3: Pay from Rakesh's pocket or run a private collection as the main path.
- Merit: kind.
- Demerit: not scalable, creates patronage, and may breach conduct rules if it becomes a public show tied to office.
- Option 4: Refuse the scheme lie; keep the couple as a humanitarian case on a lawful second track: other schemes, CM/PM relief, hospital poor fund, and documented recommendation.
- Merit: integrity plus care.
- Demerit: funds may still fall short; that remainder must be chased, not used as an excuse to fake criterion (b).
Action Rakesh should take
- Explain in clear language why this scheme cannot pay: criterion (b) is not met, and he will not cook it.
- Do not humiliate them for being outside reservation. Poverty is not a moral failure.
- Same day, open lawful alternatives: Ayushman Bharat — Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana if eligible; State health insurance; Chief Minister's relief fund; district Red Cross; hospital samaritan or poor-patient fund; any senior-citizen or disability scheme that actually fits.
- Write to the surgeon and the hospital asking for the incidental cost to be billed through charity or instalments, since the professional fee is already waived.
- Put a factual note to the government proposing a hardship window or a separate destitute-senior fund, without quietly amending this scheme at the desk.
- If a waitlist exists, do not bump ineligible names ahead of eligible reserved families.
- Recuse from any private gift that looks like a fee for a favour.
- Follow up until a number is tied to medicines and the bed, because a referral letter that dies in a drawer is theatre.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD APP[Couple miss reserved criterion] --> NOFAKE[Do not fake criterion b] NOFAKE --> ALT[PM-JAY CM relief hospital fund] FAKE[False reserved tag] --> FRAUD[Fraud on scheme and waitlist] ALT --> CARE[Surgery incidentals]
Conclusion
Rakesh should not rewrite reservation to look kind. He should refuse the false fit, and he should work the same day on PM-JAY, relief funds and hospital charity so that the couple are not abandoned at the gate.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Case study. It is a State where prohibition is in force. You are recently appointed as the Superintendent of Police of a district notorious for illicit distillation of liquor. The illicit liquor leads to many death, reported and unreported, and causes a major problem for the district authorities. The approach till now had been to view it as a law and order problem and tackle it accordingly. Raids, arrests, police cases, and criminal trials - all these had only limited impact. The problem remains as serious as ever. Your inspections show that the parts of the district where the distillation flourishes are economically, industrially, and educationally backward. Agriculture is badly affected by poor irrigation facilities. Frequent clashes among communities gave a boost to illicit distillation. No major initiatives had taken place in the past either from the government's side or from social organizations to improve a lot of the people. Which new approach will you adopt to bring the problem under control? (250 words).
Next question on this syllabus topic (2018 · Q9). View answer →
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Is reservation not meant to be flexible for a dying man?
The dying man must be helped through doors that exist. Flexibility that steals another eligible reserved person's slot is not equity.
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May Rakesh order the hospital to treat free because he is the district officer?
He may request, convene charity, and use lawful funds. He may not loot a scheme or bully a private clinical process into a silent illegal subsidy.
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.
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2026 · Q10 · GS IV · 20 marks
Case study. Vikas is a government officer with over a decade of service in public administration. He has recently moved as the District Collector (DC) of Nainipura, a remote hilly district bordering a forest. Due to Nainipura's low levels of economic development, one of his major duties is to ensure proper functioning of the public distribution system (PDS) amongst the economically weaker sections (EWS). During his on-site visits, Vikas was apprised of a typical administrative challenge in operating the PDS. To prevent leakages, all distributors were required to carry out real-time biometric identification of the beneficiaries, whose fingerprints were tallied with identity card records. This was creating problems as the operating system sometimes rejected fingerprint matching in the cases of growing children, manual labourers and senior citizens. The problem was further compounded in periods of low WIFI connectivity. The distributors, in such cases, resorted to personal discretion when they could identify the recipient. Vikas had to address this problem on priority. Strictly adhering to 'government regulations' would ensure fiscal probity but would greatly trouble the proposed beneficiary, i.e., EWS. It may even impinge on their fundamental right to life as per Article 21 of the Constitution. Conversely, leaving the resolution solely to the discretion of the distributors could lead to misuse and leakages. (a) What are the options open to Vikas? How should he balance fiscal probity with empathy towards the designated beneficiaries? (b) Discuss the ethics of using technology as a gatekeeper for welfare schemes. -
2015 · Q10 · GS IV · 20 marks
Case study. There is a disaster-prone State having frequent landslides, forest fires, cloudbursts, flash floods and earthquakes, etc. Some of these are seasonal and often unpredictable. The magnitude of the disaster is always unanticipated. During one of the seasons, a cloudburst caused devastating floods and landslides leading to high casualties. There was major damage to infrastructure like roads, bridges and power generating units. This led to more than 100000 pilgrims, tourists and other locals trapped across different routes and locations. The people trapped in your area of responsibility included senior citizens, patients in hospitals, women and children, hikers, tourists, ruling party's regional president along with his family, additional chief secretary of the neighbouring State and prisoners in jail. As a civil services officer of the State, what would be the order in which you would rescue these people and why? Give justifications.
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