Revision summary
The first duty is to protect records, tell workers the truth, and stop further theft. Arrears must reach real job-seekers while ghosts, fake works and siphoned funds go to vigilance and the police. Job cards should be re-verified without stripping genuine households. The predecessor deserves due process, not a media hanging or a cover-up. Social audit, geotagging and a public dashboard keep the repair from rotting again.
Model answer
Introduction
You take charge of a district and find that MGNREGA, a right to work, has been turned into a trough: money not paid to workers, ghost names, fake works, job cards as favours. Your predecessor built that trough. Your ethics are justice for labour, due process for the accused, and restoration of a law that is the rural poor’s floor.
Body
(a) Reaction and restoration
The right reaction is neither a press conference of rage nor a quiet burial. It is shock that becomes a plan. Freeze doubtful payments, protect records, inform the State rural-development secretary and the CVO/Vigilance, do not destroy the predecessor’s laptop, and tell workers the truth in a jan sunwai: the scheme is yours by law, this office failed you, we will rebuild. Restoration means fresh job-card verification, DBT that actually hits Aadhaar-seeded accounts of living workers, works that exist on the ground (geotag), and a helpdesk for those who were never paid.
(b) Actions on the listed issues
(i) Money not disbursed to job-seekers: trace PFMS, pay arrears with priority, fix the block officer. (ii) Muster rolls: reconstruct from attendance apps, photos, and village memory; end paper ghosts. (iii) Mismatch of work and pay: measurement books versus site; recover from implementing agency. (iv) Fictitious persons: FIR, Aadhaar de-duplication, social audit. (v) Job cards without need: re-verify households; a job card is a right of a rural household willing to work, not a caste gift, but it is also not a trader’s pad. (vi) Siphoning: criminal case, attachment, departmental inquiry. (vii) Non-existent works: site inspection, black-list, recovery. Technical sanction from you now must be earned by a visit, not a signature culture.
(c) How to deal with the whole situation
Use law, not vendetta. The predecessor gets a charge sheet and a chance to reply. Staff who cooperated get a path to turn approver. Do not punish genuine workers for a sarpanch’s crime by closing the panchayat’s entire shelf. Bring Ombudsperson, social audit unit, and geo-MGNREGA to stay. Publish a monthly dashboard. Your personal integrity is the message: this scheme is Gandhi’s employment as right, not a MLA’s cash. Aristotle’s justice is giving each their due — wages to the worker, punishment to the thief, and a functioning office to the village.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD F[Fraud list] --> FR[Freeze records] FR --> P[Pay real workers] FR --> V[Vigilance FIR] S[Social audit geotag] --> REST[Restore right to work]
Conclusion
Name the fraud, freeze the leak, pay the real worker, and prosecute with due process. Restore MGNREGA as a right, not as a revenge play against a predecessor and not as a silence that protects him.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Case study. Ashok is Divisional Commissioner of one of the border districts of the North East State. A few years back, Military has taken over the neighbouring country after overthrowing the elected civil government. Civil war situation is prevailing in the country especially in last two years. However, internal situation further deteriorated due to rebel groups taking over control of certain populated areas near own border. Due to intense fight between military and rebel groups, civilian casualties has increased manifold in recent past. In the meantime, in one night Ashok got information from the local police guarding the border check post that there are about 200-250 people mainly women and children trying to cross over to our side of the border. There are also about 10 soldiers with their weapons in military uniform part of this group who wants to cross over. Women and Children are also crying and begging for help. A few of them are injured and bleeding profusely need immediate medical care. Ashok tried to contact Home Secretary of the State but failed to do so due to poor connectivity mainly due to inclement weather. (a) What are the options available with Ashok to cope with the situation?(b) What are the ethical and legal dilemmas being faced by Ashok?(c) Which of the options, do you think would be more appropriate for Ashok to adopt and why?(d) In the present situation, what are the extra precautionary measures to be taken by the Border Guarding Police in dealing with soldiers in uniform?
Next question in the 2025 paper (Q12). View answer →
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Should you suspend the whole panchayat’s MGNREGA?
Suspend the crooked works, not the hungry household’s right, unless the law forces a pause while you rebuild the muster.
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What if the predecessor is now a powerful posting?
Still write the facts. Fear of a lobby is the second fraud.
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More from this paper
Q1 · UPSC Mains 2025 · GS IV · 10 marks
(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.
Ethics in Public Administration
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.
Ethics in Public Administration
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.
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.
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