Ethics: April 2023 UPSC Current Affairs | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly PDF Download

• Being self-aware as an administrator helps us in having a clear picture of our strengths and weaknesses. If people are self-aware, they always know their feelings and how emotions affect the people around them.
• Administrators must self-regulate themselves effectively. A self regulated administrator would not verbally attack others, make rushed or emotional decisions and/or stereotype people or compromise values
• Administrators should constantly motivate themselves and their team members thus consistently working towards their goals. This also helps in maintaining an extremely high standard for the quality of their work.
• Applying empathy in administrative practices is critical to managing a successful team or organization. Administrators with empathy have the ability to put themselves in someone else’s situation.
• By developing social skills administrators would also become great communicators thereby getting their team support and will also be good at managing change and resolving conflicts diplomatically. 
• To summarize emotional skills have gained foothold in the public administration sector and are essential for good administrative practices and customer service.

Question 2: (b) Strength, peace and security are considered to be the pillars of international relations. Elucidate

Ans: Peace is one of the foremost reasons why we engage in and maintain international relations. This is because, after the two World Wars, the appetite for war and violence decreased dramatically across the world. War became unethical behaviour, unfit for civilisation, hazardous for humanity. We needed to establish peace world over and in order to establish peace we need security. A secure and peaceful world allows us to preserve, protect and create newer solutions to our problems. Peace builds communities, expands trade, aids development, helps sustain the environment, and most importantly, helps us claim our socio-political rights.

Security is derived from having strength. Strength in international relations is the ability to successfully negotiate in one’s favour. Strength can be sourced from military power, economic strength, a ‘soft-power’ status etc. An ethical use of strength to negotiate for peace and security is ideally what is required in international relations, but such is not always the case. For example, China has been using its strength to claim territories of other countries in the South China Sea, which is nothing but an unethical use of strength, and as such may not lead to peace and security in the region.

CASE STUDIES1, You are a Public Information Officer (PIO) in a government department. You are aware that the RTI Act 2005 envisages transparency and accountability in administration. The act has functioned as a check on the supposedly arbitrarily administrative behaviour and actions. However, as a PIO you have observed that there are citizens who filed RTI applications not for themselves but on behalf of such stakeholders who purportedly want to have access to information to further their own interests. At the same time there are these RTI activists who routinely file RTI applications and attempt to extort money from the decision makers. This type of RTI activism has affected the functioning of the administration adversely and also possibly jeopardises the genuineness of the applications which are essentially aimed at getting justice.What measures would you suggest to separate genuine and non-genuine applications? Give merits and demerits of your suggestions.Ans: Over the year the RTI act has emerged as a milestone in assuring transparency in administration and governance. It has provided a tool in hands of citizens to bring the best out of the government but in many cases the act has also served as a way to harass government officials and extort money.
To deal with such situations following measures are available –

• Those filing RTI applications may be asked to mention about any connection/interest they have in the concerned department. Applicants might be given options to specify whether information asked serves public purpose or private interest.
• Merit: It might help to identify the persons who indulge in misuse of RTI and other wrong doing.
• Demerit: It makes the process a little cumbersome for the genuine applicants.
• All the previous applications under the RTI could be scrutinized to bring out the trends in asking questions so that genuine applications can be segregated from the non-genuine ones. Habitual offenders can be closely monitored.
• Merit: It will help in creating a robust database of almost all applicants for the future reference of the department and also identify the miscreants.
• Demerit: It will create extra burden on the employees of the department as they might have to take help of other departments and law and order agencies.
• Few changes regarding charges and fees associated with providing information can be made in the law. There should be no changes in the fee for initial filing of the applications. But if they are found to be false or serving the vested interests of someone in later investigations, then a suitable monetary fine may be imposed.
• Merit: It will act as a check on insincere and unscrupulous applicants and hit others economically for wrong doing.
• Demerit: It will create a divide and discrimination between rich and poor people. Economically well off and non genuine applicants will not hesitate to file applications while the poor will be discouraged to do so. 

The above steps will help in segregating genuine applications from the non genuine ones and will help take the effective actions accordingly. However in the given question, there are RTI activists who are attempting to extort money from the decision makers. It indicates the systemic flaws in the government department itself. Besides it points to the fact that decision makers want to hide the information as it might expose the wrongdoings in the governance. Therefore the governance itself should be reformed and transparency and accountability should never be forsaken. The genuine applicants must be provided with the requisite information. Better option would be to play a pro-active role and put most of the information that are not exempted under the act in the public domain for easy accessibility by public.

2. Edward Snowden, a computer expert and former CIA administrator, released confidential Government documents to the press about the existence of Government surveillance programmes. According to many legal experts and the US Government, his action violated the Espionage act of 1971, which identified the leak of State secret as an act of treason. Yet, despite the fact that he broke the law, Snowden argued that he had a moral obligation to act. He gave a justification for his “whistle blowing” by stating that he had a duty “to inform the public as to that which is done in there name and that which is done against them.”
According to Snowden, the Government’s violation of privacy had to be exposed regardless of legality since more substantive issues of social action and public morality were involved here. Many agreed with Snowden. Few argued that he broke the law and compromised national security, for which he should be held accountable.
Do you agree that Snowden’s actions were ethically justified even if legally prohibited? Why or why not? Make an argument by weighing the competing values in this case. 
Ans: Individual freedom and rights at one hand and larger interest of society or the nation on the other are perennial source of conflict. The given situation also highlights the very same fact. There are times when two competing values create dilemma. Here the competing values are (1) morality and legality and (2) individual liberty (privacy) and national security.
Morality vs Legality
These both values are closely related as both seek to regulate human behavior and actions. But actions which may be legally correct may not be morally correct or vice-versa. It is an eternal dilemma which will occur in the future as well. Law is necessary to maintain order and minimum co-ordination in the society. Morality is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are distinguished as proper and those that are improper. Both seek justice in different ways and help attaining stability in the society. Establishing precedence of one over other would not be a wise option. In this case, Edward Snowden has legally violated the Espionage Act, 1917, but his act must be looked with his intentions to serve the larger public good.
Individual Liberty vs National Security
Individual liberty (privacy) seeks to provide individual space to humans. This value respects the intricate relations of a person, personal feelings of people etc., which are essential because we are humans. National security seeks protection of society from all kinds of threats and it is the duty of the state to protect its citizens, boundaries, economy etc. No nation becomes great by dwarfing its own individual. The surveillance programme was a gross violation of its own mandate. Snowden’s act in this case should not be considered as threat to national security.
In the above mentioned conditions, it should be understood that all these values cannot propagate mutually exclusive to each other. There must be certain limitations or domain under which national security and individual liberty should operate. Legality and morality come to one’s conscience. Conscience can be a compass in difficult demanding conditions. In the mentioned case, Snowden was in a dilemma and surveillance was a gross violation in the name of national security, so he was right in exposing the government.

3. In recent times, there has been an increasing concern in India to develop effective civil service ethics, code of conduct, transparency measures, ethics and integrity systems and anti-corruption agencies. In view of this, there is a need being felt to focus on three specific areas, which are directly relevant to the problems of internalizing integrity and ethics in the civil services. These are as follows:
Anticipating specific threats to ethical standards and integrity in the civil services, 
Strengthening the ethical competence of civil servant and
Developing administrative processes and practices which promote ethical values and integrity in civil services.
Suggest institutional measures to address the above three issues.
Ans: In recent times, there is an increasing expectation from ordinary citizens, business leaders and Civil Society for higher standards of ethical behaviour and integrity in the Civil Services. To promote this, various methods like Code of Conduct, Citizen Charters, etc have been developed. However, the focus should also be on internalizing professional ethics and integrity in civil services to make it more citizen-friendly.

• Values involved in the case
• Ethical integrity of civil servants.
• Probity in governance.
• Moral aptitude of civil servants.
• Accountability and responsibility.
• Transparency and citizen participation.
• Specific focus issues and measures to address them
• Anticipating specific threats to ethical standards and integrity in the civil services.
• Red-tapism: Unnecessary administrative complexities to effective service delivery should be identified and removed.
• Culture of Secrecy: Decisions made by civil servants and public officials should be made as transparent and open as possible. Reasons must be given for official decisions.
• Inadequate grievance redressal System: Effective mechanisms should be put in place to ensure timely resolution of public complaints and appropriate feedback provided to the public organisations. Grievance redressal processes should be monitored so as to ensure that systems are reviewed and performance is improved.
• Biasedness and Partisan Attitude: Implementation of conduct rules and code of ethics in order to create a professional and non-partisan civil service hierarchy.
• Elitism of civil servants: Public orientation in Civil servants is crucial to increase public participation and improve public service delivery. Civil servants should be given proper training to ensure citizen-friendly behaviour.
• Strengthening the ethical competence of civil servant.
• Training and performance appraisal: This would incentivise the honest civil servants and make them role models for others to emulate.
• Reward and honours: It will infuse competition in the civil services to perform better and develop innovative solutions for public service.
• Promotion of inclusive work culture: Diluting strict hierarchy to increase the cooperation among public officials to increase the effectiveness of services.
• Social and cultural competence: This would help the civil servant to understand the diverse Indian society and perform as per the high aspirations of the public.
• Developing administrative processes and practices which promote ethical values and integrity in civil services.
• Promoting accountability: Effective laws which require civil servants to give reasons for their official decisions. For eg. RTI act.
• Reducing Corruption: Punitive provision like Prevention of Corruption Act and Whistleblower Protection act, technological Interventions in the form of e-governance to remove discretion, promotion of Social Auditing etc to ensure accountability of the administrative work.
• Human Resource management strategies: Performance-based pay, Lateral Entry, Multi-Phase training will increase the efficiency and quality of public service delivery.
• Internal and External Committees: To ensure redressal of complaints and grievances of civil servants and public. This improves the work culture and aligns the behaviour of public servants to the desired civil services values.
• Code of Conduct Rules: It ensures appropriate behaviour from public servants that should be unbiased and non-partisan.

Promotion of ethical behaviour and integrity in civil servants, and revamping the public administration is critical to ensure that the policies of social welfare are implemented in true spirit. It would improve the responsiveness of public servants towards the common citizenry. Also, public trust would increase in the government setup. Greater social capital can in turn help in the promotion of ethical governance.