Exam Topper

(1) Personal vs Professional : The offer of the Minister will improve my economic status, bring good living standards, open new avenues for my children, but it will surely lead to loss for farmers. This deal will lead to displacement of farmers from their own land and hence force them to restart their lives from a scratch.  (2) Transparency vs Confidentiality: It is known that transparency is very important for the good governance. But at times, non-disclosing about the details of a project before the commencement of work is deriable. It serves the interest of the society better as everyone will get equal chance to reap the benefits of the coming projects.  (3) Our interest vs financial burden on the Government: Minister’s proposal will indeed serve his purpose and give me economic gains but it will have a heavy burden on government finances. This money could be used for other welfare programmes for the betterment of the poor and marginalized section of the society.  (...

It has been recognized the world over that good governance is essential for sustainable development, both economic and social. The three essential aspects emphasized in good governance are transparency, accountability and responsiveness of the administration. The “Citizen’s Charter initiative” is a response to the quest for solving the problems which a citizen encounters, day-in and day-out, while dealing with organisations providing public services.  The concept of Citizen’s Charter enshrines the trust between the service provider and its users. The concept was first articulated and implemented in the United Kingdom by the Conservative Government of John Major in 1991 as a national programme with a simple aim: to continuously improve the quality of public services for the people of the country so that these services respond to the needs and wishes of the users.  Principles: The basic objective of the Citizen’s Charter is to empower the citizen in relation to public service d...

Morality as we know is individual’s sense of right and wrong. Hence, constitutional morality is broadly a metric of what the constitution deems to be right or wrong. The values of any country’s constitution depends upon its tradition, its social and cultural movements, the vision of its founding fathers, etc. In case of India, the national freedom movement, socio-cultural reform movements, traditions of thousand years, the progressive radical outlook of constituent assembly went into defining what our constitutional morality would be.  Very briefly, our constitution believes that inequality is not right (Article 14), injustice is wrong (Preamble), deprivation of human dignity is not right (Article 21), etc. It doesn’t deem right deprivation of some fundamental rights of individuals in the name of culture (Article 14). It doesn’t allow state to intervene into cultural practices, if they don’t infringe upon basic rights (Article 29/30). So, these are some ideals our constitution give...

The Importance of Efficient use of Public Resources Effective utilization of public resources is critical to meeting development goals. Key programs in education and health are overwhelmingly conducted within the public sector. And although private provision of infrastructure has expanded in areas like telecommunications and energy, private investors remain wary of socially-oriented sectors, such as water and sanitation, and also show little willingness to invest in the poorest countries. At present, though, research indicates that increases in public spending are only weakly correlated with the achievement of development outcomes in most developing countries. Government ineffectiveness — in the form of waste, inefficiency and corruption — is largely responsible.  Reasons for under-utilization and mis-utilizations of funds:  • Corruption: The large sum of money earmarked from public activities are taken away by officials as well as politicians in form of bribes. This results i...

Recently, the government has sought action against ‘The Hindu’ newspaper and news agency ANI under Official Secrets Act, 1923 for publishing documents related to India’s deal to buy 36 Rafael jets from France. Judiciary however made it crystal clear and dispelled the doubts many of us have regarding Officials Secrets Act being an obstacle in effective implementation of Right to Information Act.  Following are the provisions that clarify what happens when OSA and RTI Act come into interaction and have conflict:  •Whenever there is a conflict between the two laws, the provisions of the RTI Act override those of the OSA.  •Section 22 of the RTI Act states that its provisions will have effect notwithstanding anything that is inconsistent with them in the OSA.  •Similarly, under Section 8(2) of the RTI Act, a public authority may allow access to information covered under the OSA, “if the public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to the protected interests”.  •...

“In order to have anything like a complete theory of human rationality, we have to understand what role emotion plays in it.” – (Herbert Simon, American Nobel Laureate scientist) At the point of decision, emotions are very important for choosing. In fact, even with what we believe are logical decisions, the very point of choice is arguably always based on emotion. As Dr. Simon and others have pointed out, emotions influence, skew or sometimes completely determine the outcome of a large number of decisions we are confronted within a day.  Therefore, it is important for all of us who want to make the best, most objective decisions to know all we can about emotions and their effect on our decision-making. People, who are emotionally intelligent, don’t remove all emotions from their decision-making. They remove emotions that have nothing to do with the decision. The secret to making smarter decisions that aren’t swayed by your current emotions, particularly when your emotions are unrel...

A public servant is a person employed in the public sector on behalf of a government department or agency. In other words, public servant is person who works for the government (Centre, State, and Local), such as a teacher, IAS officer, police officers, Judge, etc. to serve the interests of citizens. A public servant is someone who values public good over his/her personal interests in his official capacity. They have to deal with the management of resources that are publicly owned in a way that enhances public interest. Further, the individuals carrying out the task are publicly accountable for their actions.  Public interest means allocation of resources in a way that further collective well-being and is consistent with ethical and constitutional norms, thereby helping individuals develop fully into citizens. A public servant while performing his role should exercise certain values like accountability, integrity, honesty, commitment to public service, effective implementation of p...

The quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency can be understood as probity. But there’s a slight difference. Whereas on one hand honesty is about being truthful and transparent, not hiding facts and not lying, probity on the other hand is when there comes an outwards orientation to it, when one attempts to appear to be honest, when one makes sure that people get to know that one is not dishonest or simply it is the evidence of ethical behavior in a particular process.  Probity in governance is an essential requirement for efficient and effective delivery of socio-economic development and governance through strict adherence to code of ethics based on honesty, integrity and impartiality, confidentiality and transparency. An important requisite for ensuring probity in governance is absence of corruption.  The other requirements are effective laws, rules and regulations governing every aspect of public life and, more important, an effective and fair implementa...