Revision summary
Social re-engineering through welfare needs hard thinking about targeting and exclusion, inside a frame of dignity. Portal worship without a humane override can starve a rights-holder. Mahavira taught ahimsa, satya, aparigraha and anekantavada — non-violence, truth, non-possessiveness and many-sidedness. Those ideas check hate speech, corruption, ecological harm and one-sided files. Examples from PDS, MGNREGA and forest housing show the mix of reason and ethics.
Model answer
Introduction
A welfare scheme can starve the right household with a wrong list, or humiliate the right household with a wrong tone. Part (a) says the officer must think inside an ethical frame. Part (b) asks what Mahavira still teaches a noisy republic.
Body
(a) Reason and critical thinking in an ethical frame
Reason is: Does this DBT reach the widow? Is the Aadhaar failure an exclusion error? Is the quarry a false work? Ethics is: Do not treat the beneficiary as a thief by default; do not leak her data; do not take a cut from the contractor. Critical thinking is: a dashboard can lie; a field visit is a moral act.
- Examples. PDS after NFSA: biometric failure that turns a hungry person away is a rights failure, not a tech glitch. An officer who only “follows the portal” without a manual override with record has abandoned both reason and compassion. MGNREGA: a fake muster is a crime; delaying a genuine wage is also a justice failure. Housing: clearing a forest without FRA to show a “makan” target is unethical social engineering. Scholarship: a caste certificate mill is fraud; a harassing verification of a Dalit student is another wrong.
- Kant: treat persons as ends. Rawls: design the scheme as if you might be the least advantaged. The Gita’s nishkama is not laziness; it is not farming a photo as the fruit.
(b) Teachings of Mahavira and today
Ahimsa is non-violence of act, word and even intent. Today: communal speech, custodial cruelty, and ecological violence. Satya is truth: an honest FIR, an honest EIA. Aparigraha is non-possessiveness: against corruption and consumer greed. Anekantavada is many-sidedness of truth: the administrative gold against echo chambers and against a file that sees only the ministry’s side. Syadvada (conditional predication) trains intellectual humility. Brahmacharya in a public sense is self-restraint.
- Relevance: a polarised feed needs anekantavada; a climate crisis needs ahimsa toward the future person; a scam needs aparigraha. Jain thought is not only a diet. It is a discipline of harm-reduction and many-sided seeing — exactly what a district in conflict requires.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD R[Reason and field truth] --> W[Welfare] E[Dignity Kant Rawls] --> W M[Mahavira: ahimsa anekanta] --> R
Conclusion
Welfare without critical, ethical reason becomes either leak or cruelty. Mahavira’s non-violence, truth, non-greed and many-sided truth still train that reason for a civil servant.
Quick related
Students also ask
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(a) "One who is devoted to one's duty attains highest perfection in life." Analyse this statement with reference to sense of responsibility and personal fulfilment as a civil servant. (b) To achieve holistic development goal, a civil servant acts as an enabler and active facilitator of growth rather than a regulator. What specific measures will you suggest to achieve this goal?
Next question in the 2025 paper (Q5). View answer →
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Is critical thinking the same as disobeying a lawful order?
No. It is testing facts and harm. Unlawful orders may be refused; lawful foolish orders should be reasoned up the file.
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Must a civil servant be Jain?
No. The paper asks for the teaching’s public use, not a conversion.
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(a) In the present digital age, social media has revolutionised our way of communication and interaction. However, it has raised several ethical issues and challenges. Describe the key ethical dilemmas in this regard. (b) "Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment but a product of civil education and adherence of the rule of law." Examine the significance of constitutional morality for public servant highlighting the role in promoting good governance and ensuring accountability in public administration.
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Social media speeds speech and also rumour, hate, privacy harm and blurred official voice. The ethical knots are truth versus virality, privacy versus publicity, and freedom versus incitement. Constitutional morality, as Ambedkar taught, is learned respect for constitutional forms, not a natural feeling. For a civil servant it means equality, dignity, reasoned process and files that can face a court. Good governance and accountability rest on that habit when popular anger or a minister wants a shortcut.
Q2 · UPSC Mains 2025 · GS IV · 10 marks
(a) Carl von Clausewitz once said, "War is a diplomacy by other means." Critically analyse the above statement in the present context of contemporary geo-political conflict. (b) Keeping the national security in mind, examine the ethical dilemmas related to controversies over environmental clearance of development projects in ecologically sensitive border areas in the country.
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Clausewitz is right that wars have political aims; he is incomplete because civilians, nuclear weapons and non-state actors change the moral math. Just-war rules and Gandhi’s stress on means still bind a democracy. Border projects pit delay-as-threat against forest, landslide and tribal consent. The ethical path is necessity with least harm, not a fake choice between soldier and tree. Integrity is a file that records both the threat and the ecology.
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(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.
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