GS Paper IV 2017

A conflict of interest arises when a private interest could sway, or appear to sway, impartial public duty. The priority is settled: public interest first, official duty as its instrument, personal interest last.

How the conflict in administration is resolved

• Disclose early: Rule 4(3) of the CCS (Conduct) Rules, 1964 bars a Government servant from handling a matter in which his family is interested; he must refer it to his superior.
• Recuse: step away from the file and let a neutral officer decide on record.
• Let rules decide: asset declarations, gift rules, rotation of postings and e-tendering shrink discretion.
• Global benchmark: the UK's Nolan principles ask officials to "declare and resolve any interests and relationships".

The resolution, with examples

• A judicial lesson: in A.K. Kraipak v. Union of India (1969), an acting Chief Conservator of Forests sat on a selection board while himself a candidate. The Supreme Court found "a conflict between his interest and duty" and set the selections aside.
• Daily practice: a district officer on a tender committee finds a relative's firm among the bidders. She records the tie and recuses; a reconstituted panel decides on merit, so the award survives scrutiny.

Integrity is not the absence of private interests but their open resolution; disclosure, recusal and rule-bound systems keep public trust in the office intact.

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Civil servants exercise power that belongs to the people. These five values turn legal authority into legitimate authority.

(a) Transparency: power that can be seen

• Open files: reasons on record and disclosure under the RTI Act, 2005 expose arbitrariness; the Supreme Court has read the right to information into Article 19(1)(a).

(b) Accountability: power that must answer

• Watchdogs: the CAG, the Central Information Commission, the Lokpal and the CVC make officers answer for results, so errors are owned, not buried.

(c) Fairness and justice: power without favour

• Equal treatment: Article 14 guarantees equality before law; an impartial relief list or transfer policy protects the weakest citizen first.

(d) Courage of conviction: power that resists pressure

• Speaking out: Sardar Patel told the Constituent Assembly (1949) that India needs an all-India service with "the independence to speak out its mind". Recording dissent on file or refusing an illegal oral order is that courage today.

(e) Spirit of service: power held in trust

• Selflessness: the UK's Nolan principles ask holders of public office to "act solely in terms of the public interest"; compassion for the last person in the queue keeps outcomes above procedure.

Transparency makes accountability possible, fairness gives decisions legitimacy, and courage and service supply the will to act. Together they turn compliance into the public trust on which the civil service rests.

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Plato warned that the worst penalty for refusing to rule is to be "ruled by one who is worse than himself". When ethical young Indians stay out of politics, that penalty falls on everyone.

Why ethical youth stay away

• Criminalisation: the Vohra Committee reported criminal networks with contacts among officials and politicians; clean entrants fear being co-opted or crushed.
• Money and dynasty: costly campaigns, family control of tickets and abusive politics leave no honourable entry point.

Steps to motivate them to come forward

• Cleaner contests: build on ADR (2002), which made candidates disclose criminal cases and assets so that voters avoid "electing law breakers as law makers", and Lily Thomas (2013), which ended the shield that kept convicted legislators in their seats.
• Open parties: internal elections, transparent candidate selection and real authority for youth wings.
• A first rung: empowered panchayats, municipal bodies and student unions let the young start close to home.
• Civic education: youth parliaments and internships with legislators show politics as learnable public service.
• Role models and safety: mentoring by honest representatives, and protection from harassment and online abuse.

Gandhi listed "Politics without Principle" first among the seven social sins (Young India, 1925). Clean rules, open parties and an honest first rung can draw principled youth in to cure that sin.

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Integrity is wholeness of character, conduct that follows conviction. Its real test comes not in calm times but when yielding would be easy, profitable or safe.

(a) Why complete refusal tests integrity

• Small first steps: compromise begins with a file cleared under pressure or a gift accepted; refusing the first step makes refusal of the big ones credible.
• Reputation as a shield: an officer known to be unbuyable and unafraid receives fewer offers and threats.
• Lawful, not obstinate: integrity says no to wrong, not to inconvenience; the refusal is reasoned and recorded.

(a) A real-life example

• Satyendra Dubey: an engineer with the National Highways Authority of India, he exposed corruption in highway contracts in 2002 instead of looking away, and was murdered in 2003.
• His legacy: after his murder, the Supreme Court in 2004 ordered a mechanism for whistle-blowers' complaints; the PIDPI Resolution (April 2004) made the Central Vigilance Commission the agency to receive them.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) asks a company to answer for its effect on workers, communities and nature. Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013 requires larger companies to spend at least 2 per cent of average net profit on it.

(b) How CSR can raise profit and sustainability

• Profit: brand trust wins customers, a fair reputation attracts talent and capital, and good neighbours mean fewer protests and lawsuits.
• Sustainability: care for water, waste and workers secures the social licence to operate, so plants keep running.
• Indian root: Gandhi's trusteeship held that wealth beyond an honourable livelihood "belongs to the community and must be used for the welfare of the community".

(b) Where the claim weakens

• The classic objection: Milton Friedman (1970) wrote that there is "one and only one social responsibility of business": to increase profits within the rules of the game.
• Tick-box CSR: spending unrelated to the core business or local need adds cost and invites the charge of greenwashing.
• Long horizon: returns are slow and hard to measure; CSR used to hide misconduct loses more when exposed.

Integrity is proved under pressure and CSR pays when it is genuine; in both, the lasting return comes from doing right before it is rewarded.

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Napoleon's point is that great ambition is neutral energy. It drives a ruler to great acts, and only the principles behind it decide whether those acts build or destroy.

(a) Rulers who harmed society and country

• Ambition without restraint: Hitler turned a drive for racial supremacy into genocide and world war; Pol Pot's terror and Idi Amin's brutal rule devastated Cambodia and Uganda; Leopold II exploited the Congo for private gain.

(a) Rulers who built society and country

• Ashoka: after Kalinga, his dhamma taught respect for elders, kindness to slaves and servants, and respect for other faiths.
• Akbar and Sher Shah Suri: Akbar's sulh-i kul made room for all creeds; Sher Shah's royal road from the Indus to Bengal later became the Grand Trunk Road.
• Sayajirao Gaekwad III: invested Baroda's revenues in schooling.
• The directing principle: Kautilya taught that "In the happiness of his subjects lies the king's happiness"; ambition harnessed to that idea makes the ruler a trustee, not an owner.

Kalam locates the roots of public honesty in the home and the classroom, where character forms before law is learnt.

(b) Why the father, the mother and the teacher matter

• Habit before law: Aristotle held that "by doing just actions we come to be just"; virtue is learnt by practice, and practice begins in childhood.
• Parents as models: a parent who refuses to pay a bribe for a certificate teaches more than any lecture.
• Teachers as builders of conscience: they train reasoning, fairness and the habit of earning rather than taking.
• Drying the supply: a generation that finds petty corruption unthinkable starves the system of willing recruits.

(b) Limits of the claim

• Institutions also teach: Aristotle added that lawgivers make citizens good "by habituation"; a graduate who must bribe for a job learns a second, worse lesson.
• Shared responsibility: homes and schools mirror society, so strong institutions, honest public role models and certain punishment must back them.

Ambition needs principles to serve the public; those principles are first learnt from parents and teachers, and then held in place by institutions that reward honesty.

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Aristotle observed that anyone can be angry, but to be so "to the right person, in due proportion, at the right time, with a right object, and in the right manner" is not easy. That skill, now called emotional intelligence (EI), is the ability to read and manage one's own and others' emotions.

(a) Applying emotional intelligence in administrative practice

• Self-awareness: knowing my own biases before a hearing, so a rude petitioner does not get a worse order than a polite one.
• Self-regulation: staying calm and fair before an angry crowd, political pressure, or a flood or riot, when one hasty word can inflame.
• Motivation: drawing purpose from public service rather than from postings or praise, which sustains effort through setbacks.
• Empathy: listening at grievance camps so that a widow's pension is decided as a human case, not a file number.
• Social skill: persuading staff, negotiating with agitating groups and building trust across departments.
• Building it: since then, Mission Karmayogi has set out to strengthen civil servants' behavioural, functional and domain competencies.
• Limit: EI works alongside rules and evidence; using it to manipulate people or favour some is its misuse.

States seek peace, yet peace among sovereign States has no external guarantor. Strength and security give it a foundation.

(b) Strength, peace and security as pillars

• Strength: economic, military and technological capacity lets a State deter aggression and bargain rather than plead; security policy seeks to prevent war (deterrence) and to limit it (defence).
• Peace: the condition for trade, development and cooperation; the UN Charter names maintaining international peace and security as the first purpose of the United Nations.
• Security: protection of sovereignty and citizens; non-traditional threats such as terrorism or pandemics need cooperation more than force.

(b) How the pillars hold each other up

• Strength with restraint: India's nuclear doctrine of credible minimum deterrence professes "no first use": strong enough to deter, restrained enough to reassure.
• Peace needs preparedness: Panchsheel (1954) set out five principles of peaceful coexistence with China, but the border was long guarded only by para-military forces; goodwill without strength invited pressure.

Emotional intelligence makes administration humane and effective; in the same way, a State that pairs strength with restraint keeps the peace it seeks, using power to make conflict unnecessary.

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Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, commerce without morality: these are among the seven social sins Gandhi listed in Young India (1925). Each is a good life measured only in money and comfort.

(a) How the narrow view breeds the crisis of values

• Ethics as a cost: when success means possessions and rank, honesty, restraint and duty look like handicaps; bribes and adulteration become rational.
• Every sphere infected: profit above patients or safety in business, office as a source of rent, relationships valued for their use.
• Nature and neighbours: nature becomes raw material and others become rivals, hence environmental damage and a loneliness that wealth has not cured.

(a) The wider good life, and the way back

• Flourishing, not accumulation: Aristotle saw the good life as virtue in action; the Indian four aims keep artha and kama within dharma; a popular saying holds that the earth meets every need but not every greed.
• Freedom to be and do: Amartya Sen's capability approach judges well-being by what people are able to do and to be, not by what they own.
• Repair: value education at home and school, simple living, service, and institutions that reward the honest rather than the merely successful.

The charge in (b) is that growth built islands of prosperity while the majority bore its costs; the evidence supports it.

(b) Evidence of enclaves of prosperity

• Uneven gains: the NCEUS reported (2007) that at the end of 2004-05 about 836 million people, 77 per cent of the population, lived below Rs 20 a day, making up most of the informal economy.
• Costs on the majority: tribal and village communities displaced for dams and mines; insecure work without social protection; health and schooling that depend on ability to pay.
• A constitutional promise unmet: Article 39(c) directs the State to prevent concentration of wealth to the common detriment.
• The ethical test: Rawls's difference principle allows inequality only if it helps the least advantaged, and Gandhi's talisman asks whether a step helps the poorest; enclaves fail both.

(b) Since then, and the way forward

• Progress, unfinished: multidimensional poverty fell from 29.17 per cent (2013-14) to 11.28 per cent (2022-23), about 24.82 crore people escaping it (NITI Aayog, via PIB, 2024). Universal health and schooling, secure work and fair resettlement must carry this further.

A broader idea of the good life and growth that reaches the last person are two halves of one repair: a society that values only wealth will also share it badly.

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Discipline is the habit of following orders; shared moral values are the habit of doing right when no one orders it. An organisation needs the first, but neither it nor a society can run on it alone.

(a) Why discipline matters

• Order and speed: hierarchy and obedience give coordination and accountability; the police, armed forces and civil service could not act in a crisis without them.

(a) How obedience becomes counter-productive

• Silenced warnings: subordinates stop reporting bad news. In the Challenger disaster of 1986, engineers' warnings were overridden, with fatal results.
• Letter over purpose: rules are followed while their aim is lost; files move but problems do not.
• Obedience to wrong: the Nuremberg trials held that 'following orders' excuses no unlawful act; Hannah Arendt, reporting on the Eichmann trial, coined the term banality of evil.
• Dissent as indiscipline: it drives out the talent and conscience an organisation needs most.

(a) Toward intelligent discipline

• Orders on record: under the CCS (Conduct) Rules, a Government servant given an oral direction must seek its confirmation in writing, and the superior must confirm it; responsibility stays with the order-giver.
• Reasoned obedience: explain the purpose of orders, protect channels for dissent, and owe obedience only to lawful, ethical orders.

(b) What the statement means

• Voluntary compliance: law, democracy and markets are systems of rules, but most people obey rules because honesty and fairness are shared; enforcement alone is too costly and always late.
• Ambedkar's warning: "Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated," he told the Constituent Assembly in 1948.

(b) Illustrations from contemporary times

• Law: tax and traffic rules work where honesty prevails; where evasion is normal, courts and police are overwhelmed.
• Democracy: elections need tolerance of opponents and restraint by the powerful; money, muscle, fake news and hate speech turn institutions into tools of manipulation.
• Market: the Satyam fraud (2009) falsified accounts for years; Volkswagen fitted about 5.9 lakh diesel cars sold in the US with software to cheat emission tests (US EPA). Even regulated markets fail when firms abandon honesty.

Organisations need discipline that thinks, and societies need values that are lived, not merely legislated; law, democracy and markets are only as strong as the conscience of those who work them.

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Each statement is a familiar excuse for compromise, and each starts from a true observation: honesty has costs in an imperfect system. The task is to separate the grain of truth from the false conclusion.

Stakeholders

• The officer and family; colleagues who shape office culture; citizens who pay for corruption in money, delay and injustice; and the rule of law itself.

(a) "Honesty hurts, unfair means pay"

• Merit: honest officers do face inconvenient transfers, hostility and strain on the family.
• Demerit: unfair gains carry the risk of exposure, prosecution and lost self-respect; integrity earns a trust no transfer can remove, and the family shares the officer's name, good or bad.

(b) "A few honest people make no difference"

• Merit: one honest officer in a compromised office can feel isolated and powerless.
• Demerit: Kant's test asks whether my maxim could "become a universal law"; "everyone does it" fails that test. Every reform began with a few, and RTI, vigilance and e-governance multiply an honest officer's effect.

(c) "Ethics slows development"

• Merit: due process does slow projects, and impatience with delay is understandable.
• Demerit: shortcuts bring poor quality, litigation and cost overruns. The cure is simpler procedure: Madhya Pradesh enacted the Public Services Guarantee Act in 2010 to curb corruption through time-bound public services.

(d) "Small gifts oil the machine"

• Merit: a gift can look like harmless courtesy and seem to speed a file.
• Demerit: petty bribery is corruption in retail. It favours those who can pay, burdens the poor most and breeds the very delay it claims to cure; the Nolan principles bar officials from placing themselves "under any obligation" to those who may seek influence.

How I would respond

• Hold the line: follow the rules, record reasons, document pressure and seek support from superiors and vigilance when threatened.
• Remove the excuse: time-limited services, online file tracking and citizen charters take away the discretion that gifts buy.
• Personal test: would I be at ease if the decision were public, and can I defend it to the citizen it affects?

Honesty may cost something in the short run, but only ethical means build the trust on which both development and a career worth having rest.

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The situation sets a duty to save two lives against a once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity. Both matter, but they do not weigh the same.

Stakeholders

• The injured mother and child; my family and theirs; the interview board and other candidates; bystanders, the hospital and the police; and I, as a would-be public servant.

The ethical dilemma

• Care against ambition: compassion and a duty of care towards relatives in danger, set against years of preparation.
• Time as the constraint: a delayed response may cost a life; a delayed arrival may cost the interview.

Options, with merits and demerits

What I would do

• Act at once: give first aid, call an ambulance and the police, and enlist bystanders; if help is late, take the injured to the nearest hospital in any vehicle.
• Hand over: inform their family so that someone takes charge at the hospital.
• Be honest with the board: call the UPSC office, explain the emergency truthfully and request a later slot; reach the venue once the injured are safe.

Why this course is right

• Life before career: a lost interview can be recovered; a lost life cannot.
• Care ethics: it finds moral weight in relationships and dependencies; a mother and child who depend on me now have the first claim.
• No legal excuse: the Supreme Court in Save Life Foundation (2016) endorsed guidelines under which a good Samaritan shall not be liable for any civil and criminal liability; since then, Section 134A of the Motor Vehicles Act has given such rescuers statutory protection.
• The aptitude being tested: compassion, presence of mind and honesty are what the interview seeks; abandoning the injured would betray them.

I would save life first and then face the board honestly. A career can be rebuilt, a life cannot, and an officer who cannot act with compassion in a crisis is not the officer the service needs.

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The case pits the company's alcohol rule against a bereaved family's need and the workforce's anger. The HR head must find a course that is lawful, humane and sustainable.

Stakeholders

• The dependants; striking workers and their union; management, board and shareholders; supervisors on duty that day; labour and safety authorities; customers hit by the stoppage.

Ethical issues and facts to establish

• Compassion against consistency: fairness to an innocent family versus even-handed enforcement of the alcohol rule.
• Shared responsibility: a drunk worker was allowed on duty, so supervision failed too.
• The law: the Employee's Compensation Act, 1923, then in force, exempted the employer for drink-related accidents only where the injury did not result in death or permanent total disablement; a death on duty remained compensable.

Options, with merits and demerits

My recommendation to the management

• Pay promptly: settle the statutory compensation and add humane support: a job for a dependant, help with the children's education and insurance claims.
• Talk, not confront: share the investigation with workers' representatives and end the strike on the strength of this settlement, not under pressure.
• Enforce the rule for the living: breath checks at the gate, counselling and de-addiction support, graded penalties, and accountability of the supervisors who let him work.
• Why: it obeys the law, honours the family's dignity and restores trust, while still protecting safety; a rule is upheld by prevention, not by punishing a widow.

Systemic fix

• Prevention by design: a joint safety committee with worker members, regular safety training, a written fitness-for-duty protocol and a standing welfare fund.
• New law: since 21 November 2025, four Labour Codes, including the Code on Social Security, 2020, have replaced 29 older central labour statutes; HR policy must be realigned to them.

Portia's plea that earthly power shows "likest God's When mercy seasons justice" fits this case: here law and compassion point the same way, so settle the dues, close the safety gaps and enforce the alcohol rule before the shift, not after the funeral.

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As the sole eyewitness, I hold the fact that decides both a stranger's justice and my company's most important deal. Truth and law pull one way; loyalty and gratitude pull the other.

Stakeholders

• The injured motorcyclist and his family; the manager of company B; my company and its staff; the police and courts; other road users.

The dilemmas I face

• Honesty against loyalty: a truthful statement may cost the deal my company depends on; a false one may save it.
• Gratitude against justice: my host of the evening faces prosecution on my word, while a stranger's relief rests on it.
• Career against conscience: a softened account, 'I did not notice the speed', looks harmless but makes me party to a cover-up.

Options

My response

• Victim first: call an ambulance and the police, give first aid and stay; the driver's own duties under Section 134 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 remain his.
• A truthful statement: Section 161 CrPC binds a person examined by the police to answer truly. I would state the facts, including the speed, without exaggeration; which offence it amounts to is for the police and court.
• Little cost to honesty: the Supreme Court's Save Life Foundation guidelines (2016) let a helper who is also an eyewitness be examined on a single occasion, without harassment.
• Candour all round: tell the manager my account will not change and urge him to pay for the victim's treatment; report everything to my superiors and pursue the deal on merit.

Why

• Kant's test: he treated the duty not to make lying promises as a perfect duty; a lie told for gain cannot become a universal law.
• The business case: a deal built on a lie is a liability; if exposed, the company loses both deal and name, and a partner who wants one lie will want more.
• Integrity is indivisible: courage to tell the truth under pressure is what my company should want in its negotiator.

I would put the injured man's life and the truth first; a deal lost honestly can be won back, while a lie, once told, keeps costing.

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In 2014, an 11-storey apartment tower under construction on Chennai's outskirts collapsed, killing 61 people, mainly labourers. Such tragedies are not accidents but the last link in a chain of illegal building, official neglect and weak deterrence.

Stakeholders and ethical issues

• Stakeholders: the dead and injured migrants and their families far away; the builder, contractors and buyers; municipal engineers and inspectors; the state government.
• Ethical issues: greed placed above life; regulators turned partners of the violator; and workers used as mere means, against Kant's rule to treat humanity always as an end in itself.

Reasons for such incidents across the country

• Collusion: builders pay officials to ignore deviations, and illegal floors are later regularised for a fee, which rewards the violation.
• Weak enforcement: rare inspections, outdated bye-laws, small penalties, slow trials and demolition orders never executed.
• Cost-cutting: high land prices push builders to add floors on foundations meant for fewer, with substandard material and no structural engineer.
• Invisible workers: migrants are unregistered and their welfare money idle; in 2018 the Supreme Court noted that over Rs 37,400 crore of construction-workers' cess had been collected but only about Rs 9,500 crore used.

Measures to prevent their occurrence

• Accountability: fix liability on sanctioning and inspecting officials as well as the builder, through suspension, prosecution and recovery of damages; no regularisation of unsafe floors.
• Systems: online permits with geo-tagged, stage-wise inspection; third-party structural audit before occupancy; strict use of the National Building Code; RERA, 2016 for transparency.
• Workers: registration, insurance and safety training under the Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996 (since folded into the Labour Codes), with the cess actually spent. Since then, e-Shram, with 31.89 crore registrations, shares construction workers' data with state welfare boards.
• Citizens: a public map of sanctioned plans, an easy complaint channel and protection for site engineers who blow the whistle.
• Relief as a right: compensation and rehabilitation recovered from the builder, not offered as charity.

Cash relief and an arrest are the state's admission that prevention failed. Collapses will stop only when every builder and official knows that an illegal floor will be seen, stopped and punished.

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The RTI Act, 2005 lets every citizen seek information without stating reasons (Section 6(2)), and the Supreme Court has read the right to information into Article 19(1)(a). A PIO cannot judge motives; the task is to curb abuse while keeping the right intact.

Stakeholders

• Genuine applicants and whistle-blowers; proxy applicants and extortionists; harassed officers; the PIO and the public authority; Information Commissions; the public interest in transparency.

Ethical issues

• Transparency against harassment: a few bad cases must not dilute a hard-won right or make every applicant a suspect.
• Duty against loyalty: the PIO owes fair treatment to the applicant, not protection to colleagues.

Measures, with merits and demerits

• Proactive disclosure (Section 4): publish tenders, file notings and frequently sought records online. Merit: removes the market extortionists trade on and cuts repeat requests. Demerit: needs staff, digitisation and regular updating.
• The Act's own filters: exemptions under Section 8, the third-party procedure, and Section 7(9), which allows a different form of information where the form sought would disproportionately divert resources. Merit: lawful and appealable. Demerit: a temptation to over-refuse; every denial must be reasoned.
• Specific requests: the RTI Rules, 2012 ask that an application ordinarily stay within 500 words, though none may be rejected on that ground alone; help desks can sharpen vague queries. Merit: faster replies. Demerit: complex genuine queries may be discouraged.
• Evidence on abuse: keep a register of repeat and bulk applications, and refer any demand for money to the police or vigilance as extortion, a crime rather than an RTI matter. Merit: targets real abuse. Demerit: may profile persistent but genuine activists, so act on conduct, not volume.
• Protect the core: reply on time, treat proxy applications on merit, and shield whistle-blowers. Merit: keeps the Act's purpose. Demerit: demands discipline.

Striking the balance

• In CBSE v. Aditya Bandopadhyay (2011), the Supreme Court warned against "a scenario where 75% of the staff of public authorities spends 75% of their time" furnishing information, and against using RTI to intimidate honest officials, while upholding transparency.

Openness by default, firm action against extortion as a crime, and respect for every applicant's right can keep RTI both strong and clean.

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