Revision summary
Calling off rescue after an assault would abandon thousands and confirm State flight. The response is to treat the injured, add protection and local faces, speak honestly, and restart relief. Lawful doors are the Disaster Management Act, 2005, NDRF/SDRF, SDRF money and PDS grain on written order. Assault can be prosecuted later; mass revenge on survivors is wrong. Needed qualities: compassion, courage, EQ, impartiality, communication and care for the team.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
You lead rescue in a disaster where homes, food and water are gone, rain has cut the roads, and angry survivors have beaten your team, one of them badly. Some colleagues want to stop. The duty is still the living; the method must also keep the rescuers alive.
Body
Stakeholders
- Survivors without shelter, food, and drinking water.
- Your team, including the severely injured member and those who want to withdraw.
- Local leaders, rumour-spreaders, and the people whose anger is real because delay was real.
- The State disaster machinery: District Magistrate, NDRF, SDRF, police, and health.
- You as incident commander under the Disaster Management Act, 2005.
Ethical issues
- Duty to rescue versus duty of care to one’s own team.
- Public anger that is understandable after delay, and violence that is still a crime.
- Fair allocation of scarce food and water when every hand pulls.
- Values: compassion, courage, perseverance, impartiality, selflessness, and emotional intelligence.
Options
- Option 1: Call off operations and pull everyone out.
- Merit: stops further injury to the team today.
- Demerit: abandons thousands; confirms the rumour that the State fled; more deaths by night.
- Option 2: Order the team to march in without protection or explanation, matching anger with force.
- Merit: looks tough.
- Demerit: more lathis, more injured staff, and a riot on a floodplain.
- Option 3: Freeze until the rain stops and the road is perfect.
- Merit: textbook logistics.
- Demerit: the stem already says delay is the wound; waiting is a second abandonment.
- Option 4: Stay, reconfigure, and continue rescue with security, communication, and care for the injured — the chosen path.
- Merit: both lives: survivors and staff.
- Demerit: residual risk that must be named and mitigated, not denied.
Response (reasoned action)
- Do not call off the operation. Evacuate the severely injured to the nearest working hospital with an escort, and record the assault for later criminal process; do not start a revenge round now.
- Pause only the exposed cluster that was beaten. Pull the team to a defensible edge, not out of the district.
- Ask the District Magistrate and police for a protection ring and for local respected persons — a teacher, a sarpanch, a faith leader — to walk with the next column so the crowd sees neighbours, not only uniforms.
- Speak to the crowd in their language: admit the delay, name the rain and the broken road, announce the next water and food drop time, and ask them to name the sick first. Anger often falls when a list appears.
- Restart supply by whatever lawful means the Disaster Management Act, 2005 allows: air-drop if the State can, porters, boats, and opening PDS or mid-day-meal grain with a written order so that feeding is not a loot.
- Lawful doors: National Disaster Response Force and State Disaster Response Force; the State Disaster Response Fund; the National Disaster Management Authority’s incident-response system; Aapda Mitra volunteers if trained locally; and the public distribution system as emergency food.
- Separate criminal assault from hungry grief. A few who beat rescuers can be identified on video later; mass punishment of the camp is unethical and stupid.
- Rotate exhausted staff; do not shame those who felt fear. Fear named is EQ; fear that empties the field is failure of command, not of the constable who spoke.
- Keep a public board of who got tents and water so that impartiality is visible.
Qualities of a public servant required
- Compassion that stays: the crowd’s anger is data about suffering, not a licence to hate them.
- Courage that is not theatre: walk back in with a plan, not with a speech alone.
- Perseverance when rain and rumour both continue.
- Emotional intelligence: hold one’s own anger after a colleague is hurt; do not let it become a massacre of a camp.
- Decisiveness: a clear order — we continue, with these changes — so the team is not a debate club in a flood.
- Integrity and impartiality in relief lists, including for groups the crowd dislikes.
- Communication: truth about what will arrive at 4 p.m., not a comfort lie.
- Team care: a leader who treats the injured as a duty, not as a nuisance to the mission.
- Coordination: the humility to use NDRF, health, and local volunteers rather than a solo hero file.
- Accountability: a night log that a later inquiry can read, because disasters attract blame as surely as they attract cameras.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD CAL[Calamity and assault] --> NO[Do not abandon] NO --> CARE[Evacuate injured] NO --> SEC[Protection and local leaders] SEC --> REL[Food water shelter] REL --> PDS[PDS NDRF SDRF] ANGER[Crowd anger] --> TALK[Truth and relief list]
Conclusion
Do not abandon the field. Protect and treat the injured, add a security and local-leader ring, tell the truth about delay, and restart food, water and shelter through NDRF, SDRF, SDRF funds and PDS. The qualities required are compassion, courage, EQ, impartiality and perseverance — duty to survivors without sacrificing the team as a second casualty.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Case study. Honesty and uprightness are the hallmarks of a civil servant. Civil servants possessing these qualities are considered as the backbone of any strong organization. In the line of duty, they take various decisions, at times some become bonafide mistakes. As long as such decisions are not taken intentionally and do not benefit personally, the officer cannot be said to be guilty. Though such decisions may, at times, lead to unforeseen adverse consequences in the long term. In the recent past, a few instances have surfaced wherein civil servants have been implicated for bonafide mistakes. They have often been prosecuted and even imprisoned. The instances have greatly rattled the moral fiber of the civil servants. How does this trend affect the functioning of civil services? What measures can be taken to ensure the honest civil servants are not implicated for the bonafide mistakes on their part? Justify your answer.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2019 · Q12). View answer →
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If the team’s life is at risk, is withdrawal still forbidden?
A tactical pull-back of an exposed group is allowed. Leaving the district because of fear, while thousands remain without water, is not.
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Should you fire on the crowd that beat your colleague?
No. Isolate assailants later by evidence. A relief camp is not a battlefield, and your next water tanker still has to enter that crowd.
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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2025 · Q7 · GS IV · 20 marks
Case study. Vijay was Deputy Commissioner of remote district of Hilly Northern State of the country for the last two years. In the month of August heavy rains lashed the complete state followed by cloud burst in the upper reaches of the said district. The damage was very heavy in the complete state especially in the affected district. The complete road network and telecommunication were disrupted and the buildings were damaged extensively. People's houses have been destroyed and they were forced to stay in open. More than 200 people have been killed and about 5000 were badly injured. The Civil Administration under Vijay got activated and started conducting rescue and relief operations. Temporary shelter camps and hospitals were established to provide shelter and medical facilities to the homeless and injured people. Helicopter services were pressed in, for evacuating sick and old people from remote areas. Vijay got a message from his hometown in Kerala that his mother was seriously sick. After two days Vijay received the unfortunate message that his mother has expired. Vijay has no close relative except one elder sister who was US citizen and staying there for last several years. In the meantime, the situation in the affected district deteriorated further due to resumption of heavy rains after a gap of five days. At the same time, continuous messages were coming on his mobile from his hometown to reach at the earliest for performing last rites of his mother. (a) What are the options available with Vijay?(b) What are the ethical dilemma being faced by Vijay?(c) Critically evaluate and examine each of these options identified by Vijay.(d) Which of the options, do you think, would be most appropriate for Vijay to adopt and why? -
2023 · Q8 · GS IV · 20 marks
Case study. A landslide occurred in the middle of the night on 20thJuly, 2023 in a remote mountain hamlet, approximately 60 kilometres from Uttarkashi. The landslide was caused by torrential rains and has resulted in large-scale destruction of property and life. You, as District Magistrate of that area, have rushed to the spot with a team of doctors, NGOs, media and police along with numerous support staff to oversee the rescue operations. A man came running to you with a request for urgent medical help for his pregnant wife who is in labour and is losing blood. You directed your medical team to examine his wife. They return and convey to you that this woman needs blood transfusion immediately. Upon enquiry, you come to know that a few blood collection bags and blood group test kits are available in the ambulance accompanying your team. Few people of your team have already volunteered to donate blood. Being a physician who has graduated from AIIMS, you know that blood for transfusion needs to be procured only through a recognized blood bank. Your team members are divided on this issue; some favour transfusion, while some others oppose it. The doctors in the team are ready to facilitate the delivery provided they are not penalized for transfusion. Now you are in a dilemma. Your professional training emphasizes on prioritising service to humanity and saving lives of individuals.
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