GS Paper IV 2020

Comprehensive National Power (CNP) adds up a nation's economic, military, human and cultural strengths; ethics and values decide whether that strength is productive, trusted and cohesive. Education is how a nation passes those values on, which is the test NEP 2020 must meet.

(a) How ethics and values enhance human capital, soft power and social harmony

• Human capital: skills create value only when joined to honesty and discipline. Gandhi's Young India (1925) printed knowledge without character among seven social sins; integrity in schools, clinics and offices turns public spending into real capability.
• Soft power through culture: culture attracts when it is shared, not imposed. India proposed the International Day of Yoga, which the UN proclaimed in 2014 after a record 175 member states endorsed the draft.
• Soft power through policies: credibility comes from consistency. Panchsheel (1954), the five principles of peaceful coexistence, shaped India's image as a non-aggressive power; double standards at home erode influence abroad.
• Social harmony: the Preamble's fraternity and the duty in Article 51A(e) to promote harmony "transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities" are values before they are laws; impartial officers and tolerant citizens keep diversity from turning into division.

(b) NEP 2020: education as a pervasive tool, not an injunction

• All-round development: NEP 2020 wants education to develop "good human beings capable of rational thought and action, possessing compassion and empathy, courage and resilience", with sound ethical moorings; the 5+3+3+4 structure, foundational literacy and numeracy, and the mother tongue in early years lay that base.
• Choice, not command: learners may choose their own paths, with no hard separations between arts and sciences, curricular and extra-curricular activities, or vocational and academic streams; multidisciplinary higher education extends this freedom.
• Social transformation: it aims at citizens for "an equitable, inclusive, and plural society"; a Gender Inclusion Fund, and ethics, constitutional values and service in the curriculum, carry that aim into classrooms.
• Where delivery may fall short: public spending on education is about 4.43% of GDP, below the 6% envisaged since the 1968 policy; teacher shortages, the digital divide, language politics and centralisation in a Concurrent List subject could hollow out the vision.

Ethics multiplies every element of national power, and education is how a nation passes it on. If public spending finally reaches the 6% of GDP promised since 1968, and teachers model the values they teach, NEP 2020 can become the pervasive, transformative tool the statement describes.

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"Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased," says the Dhammapada. Hatred first blinds the individual and then divides the nation; emotional intelligence is the learnable skill that arrests that slide.

(a) Does hatred destroy wisdom, conscience and a nation's spirit? I agree

• Wisdom clouded: hatred filters every fact through prejudice and confirmation bias. Aristotle held that anger should never reach the point where it undermines reason; hatred is anger that has crossed that point and settled.
• Conscience dulled: hatred dehumanises its target, so cruelty stops registering as wrong and a mob calls murder justice.
• A nation's spirit poisoned: collective hatred produced the killings of Partition. In Tehseen Poonawalla v Union of India (2018) the Supreme Court warned that "horrendous acts of mobocracy cannot be permitted to inundate the law of the land" and must not become "the new normal".
• Fraternity attacked: hatred negates the Preamble's fraternity and the citizen's duty under Article 51A(e) to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood.
• The qualification: anger at injustice can fuel reform; the poison lies in hating persons or communities rather than wrongs.
• Remedies: firm action on hate speech, education for tolerance, inter-community dialogue, and leaders who model restraint.

(b) The components of emotional intelligence, and whether they can be learned

• Two models: Goleman's five components above; Salovey and Mayer describe the same ability as perceiving, using, understanding and managing emotions.
• Largely learnable: unlike IQ, EI grows with practice. Aristotle saw ethical virtue as a disposition "induced by our habits, to have appropriate feelings". Reflection and feedback build self-awareness; mindfulness and a pause before reacting build regulation; listening builds empathy; role-play and mentoring build social skill.
• The limit: temperament sets the starting point, not the ceiling.
• In the civil service: Mission Karmayogi (2020) aims to let every civil servant "continuously build and strengthen" behavioural competencies. An officer who reads the fear behind a crowd's anger can calm a riot before it starts.

Hatred narrows the circle of concern; emotional intelligence widens it. Training self-awareness and empathy in schools and in the services is the practical way to secure the fraternity the Preamble promises.

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By Buddhist tradition, the Buddha's last words were "Be lamps unto yourselves", a call to reason and self-effort. The same discipline of the self, applied to states, is the question of whether the will to power can be tamed.

(a) Which teachings of the Buddha are most relevant today, and why

• Suffering and its cure: craving causes suffering, and the Eightfold Path, from right views and right speech to right livelihood and right mindfulness, is a practical cure; mindfulness now informs medicine and management.
• Middle Path: moderation between indulgence and self-denial. India's LiFE idea, introduced since then at COP26, echoes it by urging "mindful and deliberate utilisation" instead of "mindless and wasteful consumption".
• Ahimsa, karuna and maitri: non-violence, compassion and goodwill answer terrorism, war and online hate.
• Reason over authority: in the Kalama Sutta he advises against accepting a claim merely on report, tradition or scripture, and asks people to know for themselves: a ready rule against fake news.
• Equality: his rejection of birth-based hierarchy still speaks against caste discrimination; Ambedkar, who led the anti-caste movement, adopted Buddhism in 1956.

(b) Can the will to power be tamed by rationality and moral duty in international relations?

• The realist claim: in the Melian Dialogue the Athenians equate right with might; Morgenthau traced conflict to animus dominandi, an insatiable desire to dominate. Arms races and great-power rivalry seem to confirm it.
• Tamed by moral duty, India's example: after the Kalinga war, in which a hundred thousand were killed, Asoka recorded his repentance and turned to Dhamma; Panchsheel (1954) and India's no-first-use doctrine carry that restraint forward.
• Tamed by rationality: deterrence, arms-control treaties and trade interdependence exist because unlimited power-seeking is self-defeating. Kant argued that where the citizens who would pay for a war decide on it, states become very hesitant to fight.
• Tamed by rules: Article 2(4) of the UN Charter obliges members to refrain from "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state".
• The limits: veto politics, selective enforcement and power asymmetry show the will to power surviving; ethics restrains it only when backed by institutions, reciprocity and public opinion.

Power cannot be abolished, but it can be disciplined, as Asoka's turn from conquest to Dhamma first showed. A rules-based order resting on reciprocity and restraint is the Buddha's middle path applied to statecraft.

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Article 13(3)(a) of the Constitution counts any "rule, regulation, notification" as law when testing fundamental rights; yet laws and rules differ in source, scope and flexibility, and ethics must shape both. A positive attitude is what lets an officer apply them steadily under stress.

(a) Laws and rules distinguished

• Hierarchy: a rule must stay within its parent Act or courts strike it down as ultra vires; and both must respect fundamental rights.
• Reach: laws bind everyone; many rules bind a class, such as the conduct rules for government servants.

The role of ethics in formulating them

• Purpose: Martin Luther King Jr. called a just law one that "squares with the moral law" and an unjust law one "out of harmony with the moral law"; justice, equality and public interest, not the convenience of the powerful, must be the reason for a rule.
• Constitutional morality: in Navtej Singh Johar (2018) the Supreme Court held that fidelity to constitutional morality "must not be equated with the popular sentiment prevalent at a particular point of time"; law-makers must hold to constitutional values, not the mood of the moment.
• Process: consultation, clarity and reasoned debate, so that the letter of a rule serves its spirit.
• Effect: care for the vulnerable and review of unfair results; where a rule is silent or unjust, conscience guides the officer and turns compliance into service.

(b) What contributes to a positive attitude in a person

• Upbringing and role models: security, encouragement and values at home and school form the early belief that problems can be solved.
• Habit and experience: Aristotle described ethical virtue as a disposition "induced by our habits, to have appropriate feelings"; success met with humility and failure treated as learning build resilience.
• Emotional intelligence and mindset: self-awareness, optimism grounded in realism and a growth mindset, sustained by reflection, exercise and gratitude.
• Purpose: seeing the citizen behind each file gives meaning that outlasts pressure.
• Institutional support: fair workload, recognition, supportive seniors and training. Mission Karmayogi (2020) aims to make the civil servant "more creative, constructive, imaginative, innovative, proactive".

Laws and rules tell an officer what to do and ethics tells why; a positive attitude, built by habit and backed by the institution, supplies the steadiness to do it when a flood, a riot or a deadline tests the system.

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India ranked 112th in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2020. The causes are social before they are legal, which is why reformers such as Savitribai Phule began with the school, and why the internet's new values matter so much today.

(a) The main factors responsible for gender inequality in India

• Patriarchy and son preference: these decide who eats, studies and inherits; the child sex ratio fell to 919 girls per thousand boys (Census 2011).
• Economic exclusion: unpaid care work, low workforce participation and weak control over land and property; the same report rates economic opportunities for women in India "extremely limited" (35.4%).
• Education, health and early marriage: lower schooling, poorer nutrition and early marriage carry disadvantage across generations.
• Weak voice, weak enforcement: under-representation in decision-making and uneven enforcement of laws on dowry and domestic violence.
• Custom and culture: stereotypes and community sanction; Article 51A(e) itself asks citizens to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women.

Savitribai Phule's contribution

• Education as liberation: with Jyotirao Phule she opened a girls' school in Pune in 1848 and taught despite hostility, becoming one of India's first women teachers.
• Caste and gender together: schools for Dalit children, a shelter for widows and their infants, and campaigns against child marriage.
• Service to the end: she died in 1897 nursing plague patients; her life showed that education, not charity, is the lever of equality.

(b) How internet-driven values conflict with traditional values

• The conflict: parents and children now inhabit different moral worlds, and the generation gap widens.
• Gains: information and voice for women, Dalits and small towns; exposure that questions dowry and other harmful customs.
• Harms: cyber-bullying, addiction, misinformation, organised hate, and a consumerism that erodes contentment.
• The balance: Gandhi wanted "the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible" but refused "to be blown off my feet by any". Keep dignity, family bonds and compassion, drop harmful customs, and build digital literacy at home and in school.

Savitribai used the school to loosen custom's grip; digital literacy can now do the same at scale, provided girls get equal access to the screen as well as the classroom, so that values change by reasoned choice rather than by imposition.

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Each quotation sets a standard of conduct: humility in judging others (Vivekananda), selflessness in service (Gandhi) and reason as the ground of morality (Socrates). Together they describe the temperament a public servant needs.

(a) Vivekananda: condemn none, help where you can

• Meaning: people err and struggle for reasons we rarely see, so our first duty is help, not judgment; where help is beyond us, we still owe goodwill and non-interference. It mirrors his practical spirituality: he founded the Ramakrishna Mission to join spiritual practice with social service.
• For a civil servant: serve the beneficiary, the offender and the critic without contempt; correct a subordinate without humiliating him; treat dissent as a right. The CCS (Conduct) Rules require central government servants to act with fairness and impartiality and not discriminate against anyone, "particularly the poor and the under-privileged sections of society".
• Its limit: condemning none is not ignoring wrongdoing; the law must act, but without hatred.

(b) Gandhi: find yourself in the service of others

• Meaning: the self is found not by looking inward in isolation but in what we do for others; service loosens the ego and gives work a purpose larger than reward.
• Gandhi's own life: he spent much of 1917 in Champaran seeking security of tenure for peasants oppressed by indigo planters. His talisman, meant for when "the self becomes too much with you", asks whether a step will help "the poorest and the weakest man" one has seen: losing the self in another's need is how one finds it.
• A living example: Kailash Satyarthi's struggle against the suppression of children won him a share of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.
• For public service: an officer who measures success by children immunised rather than by postings stays motivated and incorruptible. Service done for applause is self-advertisement, not self-loss.

(c) Socrates: a morality of mere feeling is an illusion

• Meaning: morality built on shifting feelings, or on what pleases the crowd, has no foundation; a right act must be defensible by reason. Socrates spent his life questioning beliefs because "the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being".
• History's proof: feeling and habit once accepted untouchability; the Constitution abolished it (Article 17) on grounds of reason and dignity.
• Constitutional echo: in Navtej Singh Johar (2018) the Supreme Court held that constitutional morality "must not be equated with the popular sentiment prevalent at a particular point of time".
• For administration: decide by constitutional values, not by personal sympathy or a mob's mood; a Collector who yields to a crowd has abandoned morality, not applied it.
• Caution: emotions such as compassion do inform ethics, but they must pass the test of reason before they guide action.

Read together, the three describe a public servant humane in judging, selfless in serving and firm in principle. Gandhi's talisman joins them in a single habit: a reasoned test, applied with compassion, for the poorest citizen affected by each decision.

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The General Financial Rules allow re-appropriation only between units within the same grant. Moving ₹6,000 crore from housing for the weaker sections to an SEZ and a gas plant therefore tests legality as much as fairness.

Stakeholders

• NHS beneficiaries; SEZ exporters; the PSU and the MNC; Parliament and taxpayers; seniors and Rajesh Kumar.

(a) Ethical issues in re-appropriating welfare funds to development projects

• Distributive justice: the poorest lose homes so that commercial and strategic projects gain. Rawls's difference principle asks that inequalities work "to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society".
• Legality: NHS sits in another ministry's grant, and slow drawal by June is not a saving; the shift needs Parliament, not a file note.
• Accountability: a scheme publicised in rallies would be quietly emptied, dodging Parliament.
• Conflict of duties: an international payment and energy security against a welfare promise, and political urgency against due process.
• The officer's code: the CCS (Conduct) Rules, the standard for central government servants, demand responsiveness "particularly to the weaker section" and use of public resources "efficiently, effectively and economically".

(b) Options before Rajesh Kumar

• The alternatives: fund the December payment and the SEZ's immediate need in phases; meet urgency by an advance from the Contingency Fund (Article 267), regularised by a supplementary grant under Article 115; protect NHS's committed spending.
• Put pressure on record: in T.S.R. Subramanian (2013) the Supreme Court held that civil servants "cannot function on the basis of verbal or oral instructions"; seniors' urgency belongs on file.

Is resigning a worthy option?

• Not here. Resignation is the last resort against an order to act illegally; a disagreement calls for recorded dissent: fearless advice first, then loyal implementation of a lawful decision.

Systemic fix

• Realistic phasing of large projects, early supplementary demands, and no unrecorded raids on welfare allocations.

Rajesh Kumar serves the poor, the nation's commitments and Parliament best by staying and dissenting on record. The money can move, but only lawfully and openly, so that the least advantaged are not the first to pay for growth.

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In February 2020 India set a target of $5 billion in defence exports within five years, after exports worth ₹17,000 crore in the previous two. For BML's Chairman the opportunity has a moral weight: a weapon's harm outlives the sale.

Stakeholders

• BML and its workforce; the Ministry of Defence; the buyer state and its people; India's neighbours; taxpayers who funded the research.

(a) Ethical issues in arms trade for a responsible nation

• Harm to life: missiles may be used against civilians or in internal repression. Kant's rule to treat humanity "always as an end in itself" forbids writing off victims as a cost of business.
• Escalation: sales may feed arms races or prolong wars, against India's tradition of restraint.
• Diversion: re-export or leakage to terrorists, possibly against India's own forces.
• Profit against principle: revenue pulls toward every sale, and opaque deals invite middlemen; Gandhi's Young India (1925) counted commerce without morality among seven social sins.
• Consistency: the Minister's claim that all arms-producing nations have clean trade records must be tested, not assumed.

(b) Five ethical factors in deciding a sale

• 1. End use and end user: verified certificates and a no-re-transfer undertaking.
• 2. The buyer's human-rights record: its likely use of the weapon against its own people.
• 3. Regional peace and India's security: the buyer's conflicts and its ties with hostile powers.
• 4. Legality: a government export licence, UN embargoes, and, as a global benchmark, the Arms Trade Treaty's Article 7 test of whether a sale would undermine peace or facilitate serious violations of humanitarian law.
• 5. Diversion and terrorism: as a Wassenaar Arrangement member since 2017, India shares its aim that transfers are not diverted to destabilising ends and that terrorists do not acquire such items.

My stand as Chairman

• Export only under government authorisation, to stable and friendly states; set up an internal ethics-and-compliance review before any bid; decline a sale where misuse is likely, even at a cost to revenue.

Self-reliance in defence is a legitimate national goal, and exports help fund it. But a responsible nation sells arms as it would want them used: under licence, in daylight, and never to those who would turn them on the defenceless.

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Article 24 bars any child below fourteen from "hazardous employment", yet Rampura's minor girls pick Bt cotton in another state while welfare schemes and NGOs fail them. As Collector my first duty is to the children, my second to the poverty that sends them away.

Stakeholders

• The girls and their families; contractors and farm owners; the receiving state; NGOs; gram sabhas; the district administration.

Ethical issues

• Child labour and lost childhood: hazardous work and lost schooling violate Article 24 and the right to education under Article 21A.
• Exploitation: contractors value the girls only for their "soft fingers", and parents persuaded by poverty do not consent freely; Kant forbids treating humanity "as a means only".
• Failed duty of care: targeted welfare has not reached the tribal poor, and compromised NGOs have abandoned their watchdog role.
• Structural injustice: tiny holdings and no industry force families to choose between hunger and their daughters' health.

Steps for the minor girls

• Rescue: coordinate with the cotton-growing state's Collector, police and labour department; produce the girls before the Child Welfare Committee under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 for care, treatment and repatriation.
• Prosecution and compensation: cases against contractors and farm owners; following M.C. Mehta v State of Tamil Nadu (1996), recover ₹20,000 per child from the employer for a Child Labour Rehabilitation-cum-Welfare Fund.
• Back to school: Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas and Eklavya Model Residential Schools, with bridge courses, scholarships and health follow-up.
• Prevention: village child-protection committees, a register of migrating families, and action against unlicensed contractors under the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979.

Steps for the district economy

• Converge and measure: adopt the Aspirational Districts Programme method of convergence of schemes, collaboration with state nodal officers and ranking on outcomes.
• Work near home: MGNREGS with a district shelf of works; watershed, check-dams and small irrigation; horticulture and millets.
• Forest livelihoods: Van Dhan centres for minor forest produce, women's SHGs and market links.
• Skills and clean delivery: skilling tied to real jobs; audit and replace compromised NGOs; track girls enrolled and household income.

Rescue meets today's emergency, but only a livelihood at home ends it; Rampura's progress should be measured in one number: girls in classrooms rather than in cotton fields.

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Four labourers, two of them minors, died because approvals were bent and inspections looked away. The Supreme Court has said civil servants must be shielded from "wrongful and arbitrary pressure"; this enquiry is where that shield must hold.

Stakeholders

• Victims' families; the builder and the minister; the former commissioner and municipal staff; colleagues; the public.

Ethical issues

• Life before profit: poor material, an illegal basement and encroachment on a green belt and slip road traded safety for gain; minors on site compound the wrong.
• Corruption and nexus: inspectors and officials colluded; the builder's offer to buy the enquiry is an offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
• Conflict of interest: the approving officer is my senior and friend; the conduct rules (CCS for central servants, AIS Rule 3(2B) for an IAS officer) require me to declare private interests and resolve conflicts "in a way that protects the public interest".
• Pressure and intimidation: colleagues' go-slow advice, a minister's shadow and a threatened false POSH complaint test courage.

Options

My course of action

• Disclose first: record my friendship and seek the government's direction; A.K. Kraipak (1969) held it "against all canons of justice to make a man judge in his own cause", and a friend's cause is close to one's own.
• Secure evidence: seal the site, seize approval and inspection files, order independent structural tests.
• Report the bribe and the threat to the vigilance authority and police in writing; the Nolan principle of integrity bars any obligation to those "that might try inappropriately to influence them".
• POSH threat: the Internal Committee handles any complaint; the Act allows action against malicious ones.
• Fix responsibility on the builder, inspectors and approving officers, my friend included if evidence warrants, and ensure compensation for the victims.

Systemic fix

• Third-party structural audits, randomised inspections, digital approval trails and protection for honest inspectors.

Integrity means following the evidence wherever it leads, to a friend or a minister's relative; exposing what Young India (1925) called politics without principle and commerce without morality is the truest memorial to the four labourers.

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Gandhi's trusteeship formula gave "the present owning class a chance of reforming itself" by holding wealth for society. APW's story in Noora comes close to that ideal; a critical reading also shows what it omits.

Stakeholders

• Anil and APW; Noora's workers and villagers; the state government; the rest of Parmal; the environment.

Critical analysis of APW's story

• Strengths: staff trained before production, labour drawn wholly from Noora, and every employee paid through the lockdown while planting trees.
• Lapses: excess electricity was a legal breach and a fire hazard, found only after an accident; compliance should be proactive, not reactive.
• Silences: nothing on wages, hours, unions, environmental clearance or plastic waste, so the ethical audit is incomplete.
• Dependence: benefits rest on one owner's goodwill; liaison with the MLA for buses shows access others lack.

Ethical issues

• CSR as floor, not ceiling: Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013 asks companies to prefer "the local area and areas around it"; APW went beyond money to skills and care.
• Stakeholder over shareholder: workers and village treated as partners, the opposite of what Young India (1925) called commerce without morality.
• Legality and stewardship: compliance is a duty, and a plastics unit owes care to its environment.
• Paternalism and equity: a village dependent on one firm, and a district left behind.

Is APW a role model for backward areas? Partly

• Yes, for the method: an anchor industry with local skilling, local hiring and community investment, helped by the 10-year tax holiday and Amria's skill centres, made a rocky, poorly connected area productive.
• Not yet a full model: it needs strict compliance, worker rights and grievance systems, benefits spread across Parmal, and public rail, road and power links.
• Scale through the State: the Aspirational Districts Programme's convergence of schemes and collaboration with District Collectors can multiply such private effort across a district.

APW is trusteeship in practice, and the trusteeship formula itself "does not exclude legislative regulation" of wealth. Responsible enterprise, joined to a State that regulates, connects and spreads the gains, is the model backward districts need.

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The 2020 lockdown made visible a workforce that policy had seldom counted. Left without wages, food or transport, migrants walked home, asking what a state owes its mobile poor.

Stakeholders

• Migrant workers and families; employers and contractors; host and home states; district administrations; civil society.

Ethical issues in the migrant crisis

• Life, livelihood and dignity: a sudden lockdown removed work, food and shelter overnight for the poorest; many set out on foot.
• Invisibility as injustice: those who built the cities had no registry, local ration card or shelter where they worked.
• Conflicting values: public health required stopping movement; liberty and welfare required safe passage home; the burden fell on those least able to bear it.
• Failed duties: unpaid wages, vanished contractors, patchy food and shelter en route, and rumours that bred fear.
• Mental agony: fear of starvation and an unharvested rabi crop.

What an ethical care-giving state means

• Care as a duty, not charity: Joan Tronto's four elements of care, shown above, are its test; Gandhi's talisman is its method: ask whether a step helps "the poorest and the weakest".
• In 2020: free grain for 80 crore people under the PM Garib Kalyan package, Shramik trains that, the Supreme Court recorded, charged workers no fare and gave food and water, and its direction to record migrants at "village level, block level and the district level".
• Portability: from 1 August 2020, One Nation One Ration Card let ration cards work across a cluster of 24 States/UTs.

How civil society can mitigate migrants' suffering

• Immediate relief: community kitchens, ration kits, water and footwear along highways, medical camps, coordinated with the district control room.
• Information and voice: helplines in local languages, registration of stranded workers and rumour control.
• Rights: legal aid for unpaid wages, help in claiming rations and cash, and trauma counselling.
• Reintegration: linking returnees to MGNREGS and skilling, and a migrant database with panchayats.
• Lessons for my relief force: a migrant register, stocked shelters, coordination with neighbouring districts and trained volunteers.

Attentiveness must come before the crisis: a migrant counted, with portable entitlements, need not walk home. Building that register with panchayats and civil society is the lasting lesson of 2020.

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