April 14 – GS4/Ethics: 2026 | UPSC Daily Answer Writing Practice PDF Download

(A) Suppose the Government of India is thinking of constructing a dam in a mountain valley bound by forests and inhabited by ethnic communities. What rational policy should it resort to in dealing with unforeseen contingencies? (UPSC MAINS GS4)

Constructing a dam in a mountain valley entails many challenges. A comprehensive rehabilitation policy would ensure that unforeseen contingencies which bug many development projects are avoided. The following points of action should constitute the rational policy in dealing with contingencies.

• Transparent Rehabilitation, Resettlement: Government must implement resettlement packages making the ethnic communities/tribals materially better off to counter the narrative that development and modernization is disastrous for tribals, who cannot cope with the change. Land distribution, compensation for loss of houses, forest produce and grazing land and other such resettlement measures should be implemented thoroughly without prejudice.
• Maintain transparency, ensure economic welfare: The oustees must be provided complete information regarding the dam, submergence and subsequent displacement due to them. Project authorities and state government must rehabilitate the oustees with sustainable non-land based livelihoods where needed. The various problems associated with displacement are compounded several times over for oustees who are also otherwise specially vulnerable, variously by class, caste, gender or age. Such vulnerabilities should factor in rehabilitation packages.
• Public Hearing: From the inception of planning of dam, through various stages of displacement and resettlement, it is to be expected that those likely to be negatively affected by the projects would be consulted and kept informed in such a way (public hearing, social audit) as to enable them to best rebuild their lives. Bureaucratic lassitude and insensitivity should not be tolerated.
• Ensure Tribal welfare: The Forest department must proactively involve the people in the forest villages about possible submergence and displacement. Tribal people share the problems of other rural people but they are even more dependent on forests and common property resources, their documented legal rights on cultivable lands are even more tenuous, their skills for diversified livelihood not based on forests or land are even more rudimentary, and their ability to negotiate with state officials and courts even more weaker.

Topics Covered- Important Things to Be Included in Rational Policy

(B) Explain the process of resolving ethical dilemmas in Public Administration. 

When confronted with the fundamental question what to do and how to act in complex situations, and to the extent that contrasted values or decisional premises could apply in the situation, one is entering the world of ethical dilemmas or that of ‘hard choices’. A dilemma is something wider and more demanding than a problem, however difficult or complex the latter may be.
The reason is that dilemmas, unlike problems, cannot be solved in the terms in which they are initially presented to the decision-maker. An ethical dilemma is a decision that needs a choice among various principles, mostly in difficult and important contexts. Personal self-interest should be secondary to the common good in all situations, especially when such circumstances give rise to conflict of interest. It can lead to ethical dilemma. e.g. Administrative Discretion, Corruption, Nepotism, Administrative Secrecy, Information Leaks, Public Accountability, Policy Dilemmas.
The set of fundamental principles or criteria that integrate and rearrange the process of dealing with ethical dilemmas in public administration are: 

• Democratic accountability of administration, 
• The rule of law and the principle of legality, 
• Professional integrity and 
• Responsiveness to civil society etc. 
• Candidates need to explain these points in detail.

Topics Covered - Ethical Dilemma