UPSC Mains 2013 GS Paper 4 Q8: model answer
It is often said that 'politics' and 'ethics' do not go together. What is your opinion in this regard? Justify your answer with illustrations.
What the question wants
Give your opinion on whether politics and ethics can go together, with illustrations.
How to structure it
Popular view, counter-examples, opinion.
- Why people think they don't
- Evidence they can
- Opinion and reforms
How to think it through
Cynicism: criminalisation (ADR: 46% of Lok Sabha MPs in 2024 declared criminal cases), money power, defections, Machiavelli. Counter: Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned after Ariyalur train accident 1956, Vajpayee, Nehru? Shastri fine; Kautilya rajadharma; Ambedkar. Opinion: they must go together; reforms: state funding, internal party democracy, anti-defection strengthening, ethics committees, ethical voters.
Model answer
In 1956, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned as Railway Minister after a train accident at Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu. He was not personally at fault; he resigned because he felt responsible. Many people today would call such conduct naïve politics. I think it was simply ethical politics.
Why people feel politics and ethics do not mix
- Criminalisation: the ADR found that about 46% of Lok Sabha MPs elected in 2024 declared criminal cases.
- Money power in elections.
- Defections and broken promises.
- Machiavelli wrote that a ruler must learn 'how not to be good'.
Why they can and must go together
- Gandhi made politics a moral struggle for truth and non-violence.
- Kautilya spoke of rajadharma, the ruler's duty to his people's welfare.
- Leaders who keep promises and clean records do get re-elected.
- Democracy itself rests on trust; without ethics, it becomes a contest of force.
My opinion and what helps
- Politics without ethics is power without purpose.
- Reforms: transparent party funding, inner-party democracy, faster trials of tainted legislators, and ethics committees that act.
- Voters must reward integrity.
Politics is the art of the possible; ethics decides which possibilities are worth pursuing.
Draw: A see-saw with power on one side and principle on the other, balanced by 'accountability'.
Keywords, cases and data to drop in
Lal Bahadur Shastri 1956 Ariyalur, ADR 2024 (46% MPs), criminalisation, money power, Machiavelli, Gandhi, Kautilya rajadharma, ethics committees.
Where most answers lose marks
- Giving a cynical opinion without justification, or an idealistic one without illustrations.
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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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