Ethics Theory, GS 4, TLP-UPSC Mains Answer Writing
1. What sort of political attitude should a civil servant have? Why? Substantiate your views. (10 Marks)
एक सिविल सेवक का किस प्रकार का राजनीतिक दृष्टिकोण होना चाहिए? क्यों? अपने विचारों की पुष्टि करें।
Approach-
Candidates need to write about political attitude and simply explain political attitude required for civil servant to run the bureaucracy highlight your views.
Introduction
Political attitude refers to the opinions and values individuals hold about political issues, events, and personalities. The civil servants are the backbone of our country and are expected to be partners who work and carry out the policies of the government. It is a combination of lay politician and politically neutral and permanent civil servants.
Body
- Civil servants are Selected impartially and given orientation to be politically neutral with the people, and are expected to evince a spirit of service to the community.
- The power is exercised through elected representatives who hold ministers accountable and in turn, civil servants are accountable to Ministers.
- The restrictions placed on civil servants in relation to politics and political activity are designed to ensure that a civil servant does not do anything that could give rise to a perception that his or her official actions are in any way influenced or capable of being influenced by party political motives.
The civil servant should possess a political attitude such as which helps him in the following:
- To uphold constitutional values – like empathy and compassion towards weak, respect for women, protection of environment.
- Practice civil service values – Objectivity – A secretary who has negative attitude towards reservation if asked to prepare a report on the same must be able to do it objectively.
- Responsive – Civil servants are accused of showing resistance to power sharing and decentralization. They must change their attitude to respond to aspirations of people.
- Bureaucracy should be neutral in terms of ideology and politics. So that there will not be an affinity to a particular class or ideology. Even in the post-retirement period, public officials could make significant interventions for more noble purposes underlying the good society even without joining a particular brand of formal politics.
If bureaucracy won’t be neutral then it cannot lend its whole-hearted support to the existing political system, and to the economic and political system if any radical changes are introduced.
- Neutrality depicts that public officials are not slaves to either the politicians or any other authority other than the moral authority of the Constitution.
- Without neutrality, there can be a close nexus between bureaucracy and large-scale enterprises which could further lead to crony capitalism.
- The role of civil servant is to effectively implement the policies irrespective of rightist, centrist or leftist government and whether it is NREGA or Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan.
- If he is too vocal about his views, he may not be able to implement the policies of the party he does not favour with the same level of zeal and motivation.
Conclusion
The civil servant has a critical role to play in the development of the society. In that sense, he has a lot of responsibility and accountability towards public for which people should have trust in civil servants. Attitude and emotional intelligence are two very important qualities of a civil servant which helps him to remain neutral in all matters, which is required for the healthy functioning of a democracy.
