Q2(b) · UPSC Civil Services Mains 2024 · GS IV · 10 marks · 3 min read

← Q2 Q3 →

Global warming and climate change are the outcomes of human greed in the name of development, indicating the direction in which extinction of organisms including human beings is heading towards loss of life on Earth. How do you put an end to this to protect life and bring equilibrium between the society and the environment? (Life).

Topic: Ethics and Human Interface. Syllabus: Ethics and Human Interface: Essence, determinants and consequences of Ethics in-human actions; dimensions of ethics; ethics — in private and public relationships. Human Values — lessons from the lives and teachings of great leaders, reformers and administrators; role of family, society and educational institutions in inculcating values. Same official PYQ from year-wise 2024 and Ethics and Human Interface.

Revision summary

The peace quote moves from speech to belief to costly work; a weapons industry that earns from continuation of war sits against that work. Powerful nations owe a duty not to sell into atrocity, to own civilian harm, and to prefer reconstruction when a settlement exists. Climate change is largely luxury and extractive greed billed as development. Protection of life needs real carbon budgets, just transition, commons care and honest files, not posters. Equilibrium is dignity without vanity: livelihood with a living river.

Model answer

Introduction

The paper gives a peace sentence and a heat sentence. Part (a) is Eleanor Roosevelt’s ladder: talk, believe, act — set against weapon factories that earn when a war does not end. Part (b) is the same greed in another dress: development that cooks the poor first. A civil servant of a nuclear, warming republic cannot treat these as foreign-affairs essays only.

Body

(a) Peace: talk, belief, work — and the arms trade

Talk is a UN speech. Belief is a budget that does not rise when a ceasefire is possible. Work is mediation, humanitarian corridors, and stopping the shipment. The quote is a rebuke to performative peace.

The ethical wound of developed-nation weapon industries is a conflict of interest at civilisational scale. If profit needs continuation of a war, the firm has an incentive against Roosevelt’s third step. Eisenhower named the military-industrial complex. Today’s theatres — Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, the Red Sea — are not identical, but they share civilian harm and supply chains. Just-war ethics (jus ad bellum: just cause, last resort, right authority; jus in bello: distinction, proportionality) does not vanish because a factory is legal at home.

Ethical considerations of powerful nations. Do not sell into atrocity (Arms Trade Treaty spirit, even where ratification is thin). Own the civilian dead your platforms enable. Stop using a poor country’s soil as a proxy board. Keep nuclear taboo. Fund reconstruction more than munitions when a political settlement exists. Climate and food are also peace: a grain blockade is a weapon. Gandhi rejected the means-ends split; a democracy that lectures on human rights while invoicing both sides fails integrity. India’s own dharma here is not sainthood. It is strategic autonomy without becoming a merchant of chaos, and voice for the UN Charter’s ban on aggressive force (Article 2(4)) without empty talk.

Powerful nations stop conflicts when their interest is rewritten to include reputation, refugee costs, and a livable planet. Ethics is the argument that self-interest honestly counted already includes those. Work, not a summit photograph, is the test.

(b) Global warming, greed, and equilibrium

The stem is harsh and mostly fair. Luxury emissions and extractive growth are not the same as a landless labourer’s cooking fire, yet both sit under “development” in a lazy speech. IPCC science is not a moral opinion: habitats collapse, heat kills, and the unborn cannot vote. Leopold’s land ethic, Buddhist ahimsa toward future beings, and intergenerational justice (Rawls’s savings principle, in a climate key) all say the same thing: the atmosphere is a commons, not a dump.

How to put an end to the spiral is not a sermon to “want less” while a coal plant has no substitute. It is a stack of duties. State: carbon budgets that are real, a just transition for mine belts, CBDR so the poor are not asked to freeze first, LiFE as habit not only a logo, protect commons and FRA forests, price pollution, and stop green theatre in EIA. Firm: science-based targets, not net-zero posters over a rising 2023 curve. Citizen: waste, diet, and the vote. Society–environment equilibrium is enough for dignity, not enough for vanity: public transport over a fifth car, restoration of a river over a concrete “beauty”. The Gita’s aparigraha-adjacent restraint is public ethics here, not a private diet cult.

  • The civil servant’s file is specific: a heat-action plan, a groundwater order, a plant that cannot drink a river dry, and an honest compensatory forest. Equilibrium is stewardship plus livelihood, not a television fight between job and tree.

Flow diagram

flowchart TD
  T[Talk believe act] --> P[Peace work]
  W[Weapon profit] --> C[Conflict continues]
  P --> STOP[Stop atrocity sales]
  G[Greed as development] --> H[Heat extinction]
  S[Stewardship livelihood] --> EQ[Society-environment balance]

Conclusion

Peace is work, not a communique, and weapon profits that need a war to last fail that work. Climate harm is greed wearing a development badge; life is protected when States, firms and citizens cut luxury harm without making the poor pay first.

Quick related

Students also ask

PYQ trend

When UPSC asked this

Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.

  1. 2025 · Q4 · GS IV · 10 marks

    (a) "For any kind of social re-engineering by successfully implementing welfare schemes, a civil servant must use reason and critical thinking in an ethical framework." Justify this statement with suitable examples. (b) What are the major teachings of Mahavir? Explain their relevance in the contemporary world.

    View answer →

  2. 2024 · Q2(a) · GS IV · 10 marks

    "It is not enough to talk about peace, one must believe in it; and it is not enough to believe in it, one must act upon it." In the present context, the major weapon industries of the developed nations are adversely influencing continuation of number of wars for their own self-interest, all around the world. What are the ethical considerations of the powerful nations in today's international arena to stop continuation of ongoing conflicts?

    View answer →

  3. 2024 · Q3(b) · GS IV · 10 marks

    "Faith is of no avail in the absence of strength. Faith and strength, both are essential to accomplish any great work." - Sardar Patel

    View answer →

  4. 2024 · Q3(c) · GS IV · 10 marks

    "In law, a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics, he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so." - Immanuel Kant.

    View answer →

  5. 2024 · Q4(a) · GS IV · 10 marks

    "The concept of Just and Unjust is contextual. What was just a year back, may turn out to be unjust in today's context. Changing context should be constantly under scrutiny to prevent miscarriage of justice." Examine the above statement with suitable examples

    View answer →

  6. 2024 · Q4(b) · GS IV · 10 marks

    "Mindless addiction to Form, ignoring the Substance of the matter, results in rendering of injustice. A perceptive civil servant is one who ignores such literalness and carries out true intent." Examine the above statement with suitable illustrations.

    View answer →

  7. 2023 · Q4 · GS IV · 10 marks

    (a) "What really matters for success, character, happiness, and lifelong achievements is a definite set of emotional skills -your EQ- not just purely cognitive abilities that are measured by conventional IQ tests." Do you agree with the view? Give reasons in support of your answer. (b) Differentiate 'moral intuition" from 'moral reasoning' with suitable examples.

    View answer →

  8. 2023 · Q6 · GS IV · 10 marks

    (a) What were the major teachings of Guru Nanak? Explain their relevance in the contemporary world. (b) Explain the term social capital. How does it enhance good governance?

    View answer →

More from this paper

Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2024 · GS IV · 10 marks

The application of Artificial Intelligence as a dependable source of input for administrative rational decision-making is a debatable issue. Critically examine the statement from the ethical point of view

Probity in Governance

AI can speed pattern-finding in administration, but it is ethically unsafe as an unreviewed verdict. Bias, opacity, privacy harm and an accountability gap mean the officer remains answerable. A dependable use is explainable input plus human review of high-stakes harm. Ethics that shapes action includes duty, consequence, virtue, rights, role and care. A professional framework turns those dimensions into stakeholders, reasons, records and appeal.

Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2024 · GS IV · 10 marks

"Ethics encompasses several key dimensions that are crucial in guiding individuals and organizations towards morally responsible behaviour." Explain the key dimensions of ethics that influence human actions. Discuss how these dimensions shape ethical decision-making in the professional context.

Probity in Governance

AI can speed pattern-finding in administration, but it is ethically unsafe as an unreviewed verdict. Bias, opacity, privacy harm and an accountability gap mean the officer remains answerable. A dependable use is explainable input plus human review of high-stakes harm. Ethics that shapes action includes duty, consequence, virtue, rights, role and care. A professional framework turns those dimensions into stakeholders, reasons, records and appeal.

Q2(a) · UPSC Mains 2024 · GS IV · 10 marks

"It is not enough to talk about peace, one must believe in it; and it is not enough to believe in it, one must act upon it." In the present context, the major weapon industries of the developed nations are adversely influencing continuation of number of wars for their own self-interest, all around the world. What are the ethical considerations of the powerful nations in today's international arena to stop continuation of ongoing conflicts?

Ethics and Human Interface

The peace quote moves from speech to belief to costly work; a weapons industry that earns from continuation of war sits against that work. Powerful nations owe a duty not to sell into atrocity, to own civilian harm, and to prefer reconstruction when a settlement exists. Climate change is largely luxury and extractive greed billed as development. Protection of life needs real carbon budgets, just transition, commons care and honest files, not posters. Equilibrium is dignity without vanity: livelihood with a living river.

Toppers' copies

Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.