UPSC Mains 2014 GS Paper 4 Q1b: model answer
What does ethics seek to promote in human life? Why is it all the more important in public administration?
What the question wants
Explain what ethics tries to promote in human life and why it is even more important in public administration.
How to structure it
Promotes, then why more in admin.
- What ethics promotes
- Special reasons in public administration
How to think it through
Promotes: harmony, trust, justice, dignity, self-discipline, cooperation, well-being, meaning. In admin: public trust, discretion, power over citizens, public money, vulnerable people depend, role model, legitimacy, Nolan principles, 2nd ARC Ethics in Governance report 2007.
Model answer
Ethics helps people live together without fear. It turns a crowd into a community.
What ethics seeks to promote in human life
- Trust between people.
- Justice and fairness in how we treat each other.
- Respect for dignity, whatever a person's caste, gender or wealth.
- Self-discipline over greed, anger and the urge to take shortcuts.
- Cooperation for shared goals, from a village pond to a national mission.
- Peace of mind from living by one's values.
Why it matters more in public administration
- Power: an officer's decision can change thousands of lives.
- Discretion: rules leave gaps that only ethics can fill fairly.
- Public money: every rupee belongs to taxpayers, including the poorest.
- The vulnerable depend on it: a widow seeking pension cannot buy her way through the system.
- Trust in the state: one corrupt officer damages faith in the whole government.
- Role model: citizens copy what officials do.
- The 2nd ARC's report on Ethics in Governance (2007) called ethics the bedrock of good governance.
In private life, a lapse hurts a few; in public office, it hurts a whole district.
Draw: Two columns: 'ethics in personal life' and 'ethics in public office', with a magnifier over the second.
Keywords, cases and data to drop in
trust, justice, dignity, self-discipline, discretion, public money, vulnerable citizens, role model, 2nd ARC Ethics in Governance 2007.
Where most answers lose marks
- Answering only the first part and not explaining why public administration needs more ethics.
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Fresh examples from current affairs
Supreme Court: no prior approval under Section 17A needed to probe a bribe demand
In a judgment of 16 October 2026, a Supreme Court Bench of Justices S.V.N. Bhatti and N.V. Anjaria held that investigating a bribe demand by a public servant does not need prior approval under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Asking for a bribe, the court said, is not part of discharging official duties.
UPSC angle: Prelims: Sections 7, 7A, 17A and 19 of the PC Act. · Mains GS-II/GS-IV: honest officers versus accountability.
19 Oct 2026Learn the concept
Question text as printed in the official UPSC Civil Services (Main) question paper. The model answer is original Battle IAS work; use it to learn structure, not to memorise.
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