UPSC Mains 2026 GS4 Q6b: model answer
Some moral philosophers argue that spending some of your resources—without significantly affecting your financial stability—to help other people who badly suffer is our moral duty and not merely a matter of charity. Justify this claim by explaining the distinction between duty and charity.
What the question wants
Explain duty vs charity (obligatory vs supererogatory), then justify the claim using Singer and Indian traditions.
How to structure it
Intro: the claim (Peter Singer). Body: distinction; justification; examples. Conclusion.
- 1Distinction
- 2Justification
- 3Examples
Model answer
The claim comes from Peter Singer's essay Famine, Affluence and Morality (1972).
Duty vs charity
- Duty is obligatory: failing it is wrong. Not saving a drowning child when you easily could is a moral failure.
- Charity is supererogatory: praiseworthy if done, not blameworthy if skipped.
Why helping is a duty
- Singer's argument: if we can prevent something very bad without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought to. Distance does not change the moral facts.
- Capacity creates responsibility: the cost to the giver is small, the benefit to the sufferer is life-changing.
- Indian traditions: daan as dharma; Sikh dasvandh (a tenth of income); zakat as an obligation in Islam; Gandhi's trusteeship.
- Institutional echo: India's mandatory CSR (2% of profits) turns corporate giving into a legal duty.
Limits: the duty applies only when it does not threaten one's own stability, as the claim says.
Seeing help as duty removes condescension: the poor are owed help, not favoured with it.
Keywords, cases and data to drop in
supererogatory Peter Singer daan zakat dasvandh CSR
Where most answers lose marks
- Not explaining the distinction
- No philosopher or tradition cited
Question text as printed in the official UPSC question paper: https://www.upsc.gov.in/sites/default/files/QP-CSM-26-010926-GENERAL-STUDIES-PAPER-IV.pdf The model answer is original Battle IAS work; use it to learn structure, not to memorise.