UPSC Mains 2013 GS Paper 4 Q2: model answer

(a)

Five words appear on almost every civil service code. Each one is tested only when it becomes inconvenient.

(i) Integrity

• Being the same person in private and in public: values, words and actions match.
• For an officer it means refusing gifts and favours, declaring assets honestly, and signing only what one has read.
• E. Sreedharan refused political pressure on contracts and still built the Delhi Metro on time.

(ii) Perseverance

• Staying with a task when the system gives up.
• In 2012, Armstrong Pame, then SDM in Manipur's Tamenglong, built a 100-km road with donations and villagers' labour when funds did not come.
• For an officer it means following a grievance until it is closed, not until it is forwarded.

(iii) Spirit of service

• Seeing the job as service to citizens, not as power over them.
• During the 2018 Kerala floods, officers ran camps round the clock and worked with fishermen who rescued thousands.
• It shows in small things too: answering the phone at night, and treating the poorest visitor with the same courtesy as an MLA.

(iv) Commitment

• Steady loyalty to the Constitution and to the goals of an office.
• T.N. Seshan enforced the Model Code of Conduct so firmly that it became part of election culture.
• Commitment outlasts transfers: a good officer finishes what a predecessor started instead of starting afresh for credit.

(v) Courage of conviction

• Acting on what you believe is right despite pressure.
• Ashok Khemka cancelled a powerful land mutation in 2012 and accepted the transfers that followed.
• Courage is not defiance for its own sake; it means recording your dissent in writing and standing by it.

Rules can be taught in a classroom; these five are learnt only on the job, usually under pressure.

(b)

Empathy

• The ability to feel a problem as the citizen feels it.
• A widow waiting months for a pension is not a 'file pending'; she is a person without food. Empathy turns rules into relief, and Article 46 asks the State to care for weaker sections.

Accountability

• Owning one's decisions and answering for them to the public and the law.
• The RTI Act, 2005 and social audits under MGNREGA show that officers who expect to be questioned work more carefully and honestly.

Why these two

Empathy gives an officer a reason to act; accountability makes sure the action is right. One without the other becomes either kind but careless, or correct but cold.