Revision summary
Attitude is a stable leaning that shapes how an officer sees the public and the rule. Build a citizen-centric, impartial attitude through family, academy, field, role models and 360 feedback. Unlearn contempt, rank-worship and cynicism. Crisis of conscience is a clash of duties or of duty and fear. Emotional intelligence helps if it names and regulates emotion so the moral stand holds; it harms if charm is used to justify a comfortable wrong.
Model answer
Introduction
Attitude is the leaning of the mind before the file opens. Part (a) asks how to grow one that fits a public servant. Part (b) asks whether emotional intelligence can carry a person through a crisis of conscience without selling the moral stand.
Body
(a) Building a suitable attitude for a public servant
- Attitude is a relatively stable evaluation — of citizens, of rules, of the self — that shapes attention and effort. Allport treated it as a readiness to respond.
- A suitable public-service attitude is citizen-centric, lawful, impartial, and humble before facts. It is not contempt for the poor, not worship of rank, and not cynicism that nothing can change.
- Family and school are the first kiln: a child who sees a parent buy a file learns that the State is a shop.
- Professional socialisation: the academy must reward a lawful yes and a recorded dissent, not only marks and drill.
- Field immersion: attachments in a ration shop, a remand room and a disaster camp beat a lecture on empathy.
- Role models: a Collector who stands in the queue she designed teaches attitude faster than a code on the wall.
- Cognitive route: study of the Constitution, the Second ARC, and cases where bias destroyed a life, so beliefs change, not only slogans.
- Behavioural route: small repeated acts — speaking politely at the counter, publishing a delay reason — become the attitude they express.
- Feedback: 360-degree comments, citizen surveys from the weakest ward, and counselling when an officer’s contempt shows in files.
- Guardrails: transfer from a captured post, punishment for humiliation of a subordinate, and no prestige posting for a communal loudmouth.
- Unsuitable attitudes to unlearn: “the public is a thief”, “the minister is the Constitution”, and “audit is the enemy”.
- Building attitude is therefore education plus example plus systems that make the decent response the easy one.
(b) Emotional intelligence and crisis of conscience
- Crisis of conscience is an inner clash: two duties, or a duty and a powerful fear, with no painless door. Socrates’ daimon and Gandhi’s inner voice name the same pressure.
- Emotional intelligence, as Goleman popularised it, is self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill.
- Help: self-awareness names the fear of transfer, the pull of kin, the anger at a crowd, so they are not mistaken for the voice of duty.
- Help: self-regulation buys time — a written note, a night’s sleep, a second legal opinion — instead of a shouted illegal yes.
- Help: empathy hears the weakest person in the dilemma, not only the person who can ring the Chief Secretary.
- Help: social skill lets the officer explain a no without humiliation, and build a coalition for a lawful path.
- Critical limit: EI can also become a tool of the weak stand. A charming officer can soothe himself into signing a bad pier, a buried flying-squad report, or a dumped food lot “to keep the team happy”.
- EI must serve the ethical stand already chosen — Articles 14 and 21, the Conduct Rules, the professional code — not replace it with comfort.
- Without a prior moral compass, EI is salesmanship. With a compass, EI is how the compass survives panic.
- Conclusion of the examine: yes, EI helps a person pass through a crisis of conscience without changing the moral destination, provided integrity is the master and emotion is the servant.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD ATT[Attitude] --> HOME[Family school] ATT --> ACAD[Academy field example] ATT --> SYS[Feedback and consequence] COC[Crisis of conscience] --> EI[Name fear regulate empathy] EI --> HOLD[Keep ethical stand] CHARM[EI as soothing] --> SELL[Compromised stand]
Conclusion
A public servant’s attitude is grown at home, in the academy, in the field and by example, then locked by feedback and punishment of contempt. Emotional intelligence can carry a crisis of conscience without a sell-out, but only when it regulates fear and does not negotiate away the ethical stand.
Quick related
Students also ask
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(a) Distinguish between laws and rules. Discuss the role of ethics in formulating them (b) A positive attitude is considered to be an essential characteristic of a civil servant who is often required to function under extreme stress. What contributes to a positive attitude in a person?
Next question on this syllabus topic (2020 · Q4). View answer →
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Can attitude be changed after twenty years in service?
It is harder, not impossible. A new boss, a public inquiry, counselling and removal from a captured desk can still shift what the officer rewards in himself.
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If EI says the team will break unless you sign, should you sign?
No. That is EI captured by belonging. Record dissent, seek a third-party audit, and accept that a dishonest team peace is not ethics.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
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2025 · Q3 · GS IV · 10 marks
(a) "Those who in trouble untroubled are, Will trouble trouble itself." - Thiruvalluvar. (b) "The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes." - William James. (c) "The strength of a society is not in its laws, but in the morality of its people." - Swami Vivekananda. -
2020 · Q4 · GS IV · 10 marks
(a) Distinguish between laws and rules. Discuss the role of ethics in formulating them (b) A positive attitude is considered to be an essential characteristic of a civil servant who is often required to function under extreme stress. What contributes to a positive attitude in a person? -
2016 · Q6 · GS IV · 12 marks
Our attitudes towards life, work, other people and society are generally shaped unconsciously by the family and the social surroundings in which we grow up. Some of these unconsciously acquired attitudes and values are often undesirable in the citizens of a modern democratic and egalitarian society. (a) Discuss such undesirable values prevalent in Today's educated Indians. (b) How can such undesirable attitudes be changed and socio-ethical values considered necessary in public services be cultivated in the aspiring and serving civil servants? -
2015 · Q5 · GS IV · 12 marks
Two different kinds of attitudes exhibited by public servants towards their work have been identified as bureaucratic attitude and the democratic attitude. (10 Marks) (a) Distinguish between these two terms and write their merits and demerits. (b) Is it possible to balance the two to create a better administration for the faster development of our country?
More from this topic
Q3 · UPSC Mains 2025 · GS IV · 10 marks
(a) "Those who in trouble untroubled are, Will trouble trouble itself." - Thiruvalluvar. (b) "The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes." - William James. (c) "The strength of a society is not in its laws, but in the morality of its people." - Swami Vivekananda.
Attitude
Thiruvalluvar’s line is about equanimity: a calm officer can master a crisis that a panicked one worsens. William James argued that changing attention and attitude can change a life; for an officer that means seva, not cynicism, without blaming the poor. Vivekananda held that a society’s real strength is the people’s morality, not the thickness of the statute book. Laws still matter; they work when character supports them. Together the quotes train inner weather, professional will and social ethics.
Q4 · UPSC Mains 2020 · GS IV · 10 marks
(a) Distinguish between laws and rules. Discuss the role of ethics in formulating them (b) A positive attitude is considered to be an essential characteristic of a civil servant who is often required to function under extreme stress. What contributes to a positive attitude in a person?
Attitude
Laws are general norms from the Constitution or legislature; rules are usually subordinate procedure under a parent Act. Rules cannot lawfully eat the Act; ethics forbids hiding policy in fine print that the poor cannot meet. Drafting ethics is equality, consultation, non-retrospectivity of pain, and proportionate means. Positive attitude under stress is realistic, duty-centred energy, not denial. It grows from character, EI, drills, team support and institutions that do not punish honesty.
Q6 · UPSC Mains 2016 · GS IV · 12 marks
Our attitudes towards life, work, other people and society are generally shaped unconsciously by the family and the social surroundings in which we grow up. Some of these unconsciously acquired attitudes and values are often undesirable in the citizens of a modern democratic and egalitarian society. (a) Discuss such undesirable values prevalent in Today's educated Indians. (b) How can such undesirable attitudes be changed and socio-ethical values considered necessary in public services be cultivated in the aspiring and serving civil servants?
Attitude
Attitudes are first learned at home and often survive a degree. Undesirable patterns include status contempt, kin and caste preference, gender hierarchy, queue-jumping as cleverness, civic indifference and communal stereotype. Public service needs integrity, impartiality, empathy, objectivity and constitutional morality. Cultivate them through hard selection, case-based academies, upright mentors, mixed living, RTI and e-systems, mid-career ethics, and leadership example. Slogans and cultural excuses do not delete the old software.
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