Attitude

Three thinkers from three traditions locate strength inside the person: composure in adversity, the power to change one's attitude, and a character that makes law almost unnecessary.

(a) Thiruvalluvar: staying untroubled in trouble

• Meaning: one who stays calm in trouble turns trouble back on itself. Panic multiplies a crisis; equanimity keeps judgement clear and finds the way out.
• Indian echo: the Gita's sthitaprajna, the sage of steady wisdom, is one "whose mind is not shaken by adversity" (2.56).
• Present context, governance: before Cyclone Biparjoy (June 2023), Gujarat acted on IMD's advance warnings with comprehensive preparedness alongside national agencies. Calm planning, not panic, protects lives.
• Present context, individuals: an exam failure, a lost job or an online smear campaign tests the same capacity. Resilience and emotional intelligence can be learnt, and both are core competencies of public service.
• Caution: composure is not indifference; it is the steadiness that lets compassion act effectively.

(b) William James: change the attitude, change the life

• Meaning: attitudes, our settled ways of thinking and feeling, drive behaviour, and they can be changed. A failure read as feedback becomes a lesson.
• James's own psychology: in his account of habit, the ethical question is which habits we choose to develop, and when; repeated choices harden into character.
• Present context, policy: the Economic Survey 2018-19 showed that Swachh Bharat Mission and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao "successfully employed behavioural insights": they nudged behaviour instead of relying on rules alone.
• Present context, individuals: a growth mindset in learners; recovery from addiction begins with a changed self-view; an officer who treats a hard posting as an opportunity transforms it.
• Limit: attitude cannot replace structural change; poverty is not a state of mind.

(c) Vivekananda: morality, not law, as a society's strength

• Meaning: laws set the minimum and work only when most people obey them willingly; a society held together by enforcement alone is brittle.
• His view of ethics: in a passage quoted by the 2nd ARC in Ethics in Governance, he calls unselfishness "the foundation of morality".
• Present context: dowry and child marriage persist despite laws against both; tax compliance, road safety and waste segregation depend on voluntary conduct that no inspector can police; corruption survives where citizens tolerate it.
• Rights and duties: the Fundamental Duties remind citizens that rights need reciprocal morality.
• Implication: build character alongside statutes, through value education, role models and community participation, so that law and morality reinforce each other.

Composure keeps judgement clear, attitude turns setbacks into growth, and character makes laws self-enforcing. A public servant who embodies all three governs by example, the surest way to make a society strong from within.

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In D.S. Nakara (1982) the Supreme Court held that the "discernible purpose" of a pension scheme "must inform the interpretative process". The same rulebook thus yields service or obstruction, depending on the mind that reads it.

(a) How attitude decides the reading of the same rules

• Purpose versus loophole: a positive-minded officer asks what a rule is for and finds the enabling clause; a negative-minded one hunts for the ground to refuse.
• Illustration: a widow lacks one document. One officer accepts an affidavit and field verification and sanctions her pension within the week; another returns her thrice. Nakara's call for a "liberal construction" backs the first.
• Roots of the gap: self-belief, initiative and a problem-solving habit on one side; fear of audit, rigidity and file-pushing on the other. The negative officer often protects himself, not the rule.
• Judgement: for Aristotle, practical wisdom "cannot be acquired solely by learning general rules"; it is the skill of applying them well to the case.
• Limit: 'in favour of the case' means the citizen's legitimate need, never a private favour. Bending a rule for a contractor is corruption, not positivity.

(b) What ethics seeks to promote in human life

• Dignity: Kant's Humanity Formula asks us to treat every person "as an end in itself", never "as a means only".
• Well-being and justice: fair shares, care for the weak, and trust that lets people cooperate; harmony between private good and common good, even where law is silent.

How ethical values resolve day-to-day conflicts

• Conflict of interest: integrity settles it by disclosure and recusal; the CCS (Conduct) Rules, 1964 require government servants to "declare any private interests" and resolve conflicts to protect the public interest.
• Role conflict: a superior's wish against a citizen's right; honesty decides, with dissent recorded on file.
• Between persons: impartiality gives a test both sides accept, so the decision breeds no resentment.
• Compassion versus rule: empathy within the law chooses the least harm: relief first, recovery of a wrong payment later.
• Smooth functioning: values held in advance make decisions consistent, curb misuse of discretion and lower friction.

Kautilya gave the simplest test for any reading of a rule: whatever pleases his subjects the ruler "shall consider as good". An officer who reads rules for the citizen's welfare, within the law, turns the same rulebook into an instrument of service.

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"We become just by doing just acts," wrote Aristotle: character grows from habit. Attitude, a learned readiness to respond to people and situations, can likewise be built, and emotional intelligence decides whether it holds under pressure.

(a) How to build a suitable attitude for a public servant

• Right content: the belief that the citizen is the principal (cognitive), respect and empathy (affective), courtesy and listening (behavioural); service-oriented, not procedure-bound.
• Learning by doing: field attachments in villages, slums and tribal areas, case studies and role-play; habits formed early become attitude.
• Role-based training: Mission Karmayogi (2020) seeks a transition from "Rules based" to "Roles based" HR, matching competencies to the post.
• Role models: seniors who model courtesy and integrity; attitudes are caught more than taught.
• Reinforcement: citizen and 360-degree feedback in appraisals, recognition of empathy, and early correction of arrogance.
• Self-work: reflection, contact with civil society, and a guard against the cynicism that sets in after early postings.

(b) Does emotional intelligence help overcome a crisis of conscience?

• The crisis: an instruction clashes with what one believes right, such as an order to divert relief to a favoured village.
• The toolkit: Daniel Goleman (1995) named five components of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-control, self-motivation, empathy and social skills.

• Right measure: Aristotle observed that anyone can get angry, but to do so "to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time" is not easy; emotional intelligence is that measure.
• Exemplar: after the violence at Chauri Chaura in February 1922, Gandhi called off the Non-Cooperation Movement altogether. He halted a mass movement rather than dilute non-violence: composure in action, firmness in principle.

(b) Its limits, and a verdict

• Limits: emotional intelligence is a competence, not a compass. A manipulator can score high on it, and it can dress up compliance as keeping the peace.
• Verdict: it does not decide what is right; conscience, law and values do. It helps carry that decision through calmly, without breaking relationships or the moral stand.

Attitude tells a public servant what is right; emotional intelligence lets her act on it without losing composure. Training should build both, so that conscience is never left alone at the moment of crisis.

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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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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 places the source of good conduct inside the person: an examined mind (Socrates), disciplined thought (Gandhi) and a righteous heart (Kalam). For a public servant, character is the first institution.

(a) 'An unexamined life is not worth living': what it means to me

• Context: in Plato's Apology, Socrates tells his jurors that daily talk of virtue, examining himself and others, is man's greatest good, for the unexamined life is not worth living.
• Meaning: a life run on habit, borrowed opinion and unexamined desire is lived by accident; self-examination gives direction, humility and moral growth.
• Danger of thoughtlessness: Hannah Arendt traced Eichmann's crimes less to hatred than to "thoughtlessness", an inability to see from another's point of view.
• For a public servant: examine motives before deciding, test orders against law and conscience, and review outcomes honestly. An officer who asks whether a 'routine' eviction serves any public purpose is examining his official life.
• Limit: examination must end in action; doubt that becomes paralysis is its own failure.

(b) 'A man is but a product of his thoughts': what it means to me

• Meaning: thought shapes attitude, attitude shapes action, repeated action becomes habit, and habit hardens into character. What we dwell on, we become.
• Ancient echo: the Buddha's Dhammapada opens with the same insight: "All that we are is the result of what we have thought."
• In office: an officer who sees citizens as a nuisance grows curt and obstructive; one who sees them as the purpose of his post grows patient and fair.
• Seeds of vice: prejudice nursed in thought becomes bias in judgment, and greed nursed in thought becomes corruption.
• Training: ethical formation starts with what one reads, whom one admires and what one tells oneself about the work; attitude is integrity's first layer.

(c) From righteousness in the heart to peace in the world: what it means to me

• Meaning: peace grows from the inside out; no shortcut to social order bypasses personal virtue.
• Confucian parallel: the Great Learning traces the same chain: persons cultivated, families regulated, states rightly governed, and the whole kingdom tranquil.
• For public life: families and schools are the first schools of ethics. An upright officer steadies the office he leads, and institutions full of such people give a nation order without coercion.
• Caveat: the chain needs support. Laws, institutions and justice must protect personal virtue, since a good heart inside a bad system needs protection, not just intention.

Codes of conduct govern an officer from the outside; these three thinkers govern from the inside, where integrity actually begins. An examined mind, disciplined thought and an upright heart make officers worthy of trust and a society at peace.

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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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"Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated," Ambedkar told the Constituent Assembly. Attitudes absorbed silently from family and neighbourhood often lag behind the Constitution, even among the highly educated.

(a) Undesirable values prevalent among today's educated Indians

• Caste and communal prejudice: social distance in marriage, housing, hiring and food survives university degrees.
• Patriarchy: son preference, dowry treated as custom, control over women's mobility and work; the sex ratio at birth was only 929 girls per 1,000 boys in NFHS-5 (2019-21).
• 'Chalta hai' civic laxity: tolerance of petty corruption, queue-jumping, littering and a VIP culture that expects exemption from rules.
• Double standards: demanding honesty from the State while evading tax, paying bribes for convenience and using influence for admissions or postings.
• Status over dignity of labour: contempt for manual work and those who do it; consumption as the measure of worth.
• Apathy: not voting, not reporting wrongdoing, silence at harassment in public.
• Why education missed them: schools taught facts, not reflection on values, so private prejudice coexists with public degrees.

(b) Changing such attitudes and cultivating public-service values

• Society at large: contact across caste, faith and region dissolves stereotypes; campaigns that make the desired act the social norm; laws that are actually enforced; families and schools that reward honesty, not marks alone.
• Start young: the 2nd ARC's 10th Report notes the view that grooming for public service should begin early, since late entrants bring "a 'baggage' of entrenched mindsets".
• Aspiring civil servants: an ethics paper and interviews that probe attitudes; case studies, village stays and district attachments that build empathy for the poor.
• Training with a purpose: official training aims at "right attitudinal orientation", not only skills; ethics should run through every phase, not one lecture.
• Serving officers: Mission Karmayogi (since 2020) moves capacity building from 'rules based' to 'roles based' management; mid-career ethics modules and mentoring by exemplary seniors reinforce it.
• Institutional culture: appraisal that records integrity and empathy, prompt action on misconduct and protection for the honest; subordinates copy what leaders tolerate.

Ambedkar warned that democracy in India was "only a top-dressing on an Indian soil". Family, school, law and civil-service training together can turn constitutional morality into a habit, starting with those who govern.

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"Anger leads to clouding of judgment," says the Bhagavad Gita, and when the intellect is destroyed, "one is ruined". Anger is a natural response to threat or injustice; uncontrolled, it damages the person and everyone around.

(a) How anger leads to negative emotions and undesirable behaviour

• The inner chain: the Gita traces anger to desire, and its fruit to confused memory and a destroyed intellect: a chain that ends in the loss of reason.
• Breeding other emotions: anger held in hardens into resentment, hostility and hatred; anger let out brings guilt, shame and anxiety; the other side's retaliation restarts the cycle.
• Undesirable behaviour: shouting, abuse, bullying, sulking, road rage and domestic violence; the body pays through stress, poor sleep and high blood pressure.
• Personal life: repeated outbursts frighten children and silence a spouse; people manage an angry person instead of trusting him, so he grows isolated and more resentful.
• Work life: an angry officer humiliates staff, so bad news stops reaching him; files stall, teams fracture and citizens at the counter are treated as adversaries.

(b) How anger can be managed and controlled

• Self-awareness: know the triggers and early signs, a raised voice or a clenched jaw, and name the emotion as it rises; this self-awareness is the base of emotional intelligence.
• Pause before acting: breathe, count, step away; never send a reply, sign an order or decide while angry.
• Reframe with empathy: see the situation from the other side, separate the person from the problem, and ask what outcome is actually wanted.
• Assertive expression: state the concern calmly and specifically; use humour to defuse and forgiveness to let go.
• Daily discipline: exercise, yoga, meditation and adequate sleep; counselling where anger is chronic; workplaces that settle conflict early.
• Old wisdom: Kautilya counted anger among the six enemies a ruler must shed to master his senses; Aristotle held that anger must never undermine reason, and that people must learn to feel it in the right way at the right times.

Aristotle did not ask us never to be angry, only never to let anger rule reason. Anger at injustice, mastered, becomes steady energy for fair action, the mark of an emotionally mature citizen and public servant.

Written by Minimalist IAS from facts checked at source (how we verify) — a little fuller than exam length, so every part of the question is covered; in the hall, keep the structure and trim the detail. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.