Attitude, Aptitude & Civil Service Values
GS Paper: GS Paper IV | Subject: Ethics, Integrity & Aptitude | Last updated: 2026-07-22
Prelims
(Key facts, data, schemes, laws, organizations — MCQ-ready points)
(No entries yet)
Mains
(Analysis, dimensions, significance, critique, policy angles — for 10/15 mark answers)
- Obedience to an unlawful order — the standing framework (concept anchor, not a news item). Full treatment in
lec09. The three causes of destructive obedience (transfer of responsibility · visible badge · gradual escalation, from Milgram, Yale 1961 — psychiatrists predicted ~0.1% would go to maximum, 65% actually did) map onto three institutional remedies, each with a real Indian hook:
- Exposure to disobedient models → statutory protection for those who refuse or report. Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014 — covers public servants and PSUs, allows reporting of corruption, wilful misuse of power/discretion and criminal offences; widely criticised as under-operationalised (the 2015 amendment bill diluting it has long been pending, and no rules were notified for years). A durable critique-point for any probity answer.
- Making the officer own the harm → personal culpability regardless of orders. "I was only following orders" is expressly no defence under Nuremberg Principle IV (the Eichmann/superior-orders defence). This is the reasoning behind the service-rules practice of insisting on written orders for a doubtful instruction.
- Encouraging people to question authority's expertise and motives → an administrative culture in which a subordinate may contest an instruction without career risk.
- India's own case of destructive obedience: Jallianwala Bagh (1919). (Sourced from Pathak Sir Class 9, 21-07-2026; Milgram/Eichmann figures web-verified — see the CLARIFICATION boxes in the note, as the class version of these figures was inaccurate.)
- Reciprocity as a probity rule. Dr. Kalam: a public administrator must never accept gifts from anyone, even when offered with altruistic intentions — because accepting creates a psychological pressure to reciprocate, and the giver eventually extracts something far more substantial. Combined with the foot-in-the-door technique (begin with a small request, escalate once granted), this is the cleanest available explanation of how corruption is normalised incrementally rather than chosen in a single decision — i.e. why conduct rules police small gifts. (Pathak Sir, Class 9.)