Differentiate moral attitude, political attitude and social attitude with one Indian example for each. How should a civil servant insulate professional decisions from personal political attitudes?
Subtopic: Section A · Attitude · Moral, political and social attitudes
How to structure your answer
Define: the three attitude domains and their reference objects.
Illustrate: moral (anti-bribery stance of Ashok Khemka), political (party-affiliation of an MLA), social (gender-equity stance during Nirbhaya protests).
Apply: All India Services Conduct Rules 1968 prohibition on political activity; psychological self-distancing.
Conclude: Service-mindedness requires bracketing political preferences without becoming amoral.
Written within the word limit
151 words · target 150 words · 9 min
Definition: Moral attitude evaluates acts as right or wrong; political attitude evaluates power, ideology and party preference; social attitude orients individual responses to groups, identities and customary practices in everyday life.
Illustration: Gandhi's stand against untouchability through the 1932 Yerwada fast illustrates a moral attitude; Ambedkar's preference for constitutional methods over agitational politics reflects a political attitude; the Self-Respect Movement's stance against caste hierarchy in Tamil Nadu reflects a social attitude. A civil servant must insulate professional decisions from personal political attitudes: T.N. Seshan, as Chief Election Commissioner, enforced the Model Code of Conduct uniformly against ruling and opposition parties (1990-96), establishing the convention that constitutional posts demand demonstrable non-partisanship. AIS (Conduct) Rules Rule 5 bars active political association precisely to protect this firewall between personal preference and official action.
Application: The 2nd ARC's Tenth Report recommends mandatory training in cognitive reframing, so officers recognise their own biases before acting on them.
What an examiner expects to see
- Moral attitude — disposition toward right/wrong (universal)
- Political attitude — preference for parties, ideologies, regimes (partisan)
- Social attitude — preference toward groups, customs, identities (community-bound)
- All India Services (Conduct) Rules 1968 Rule 5: no political activity
- Nolan principle of objectivity demands evidence-based decision
- Reflective equilibrium (Rawls) — testing intuitions against principles
Concrete cases, schemes and judgments
- Election Commission's Model Code of Conduct enforcement by ECI under all parties
- U. Sagayam (TN IAS) refusing political directives in Madurai land scam investigation
- Justice Chandrachud's lecture on judicial impartiality, 2024