ETHICS OF A CIVIL SERVANT: ETHICS, INTEGRITY AND APTITUDE

The creation of an ethical thought, ethical person, ethical society, ethical nation or an ethical world depend on two things. The first thing is the kind of knowledge or education we have to learn. And the second thing is the kind of people we have to guide our conduct. For thousands of years, we had Vedas as the knowledge to learn and Lord Ram acted as the guide of the conscience of every Indian. But with the coming of Macaulay's minute, Indian knowledge or education system started to change and so the understanding of Vedas. E.g. In Ancient times, Atharva Veda had enough knowledge to help Charaka in the development of a medicinal way like Ayurveda but under modern knowledge pattern, it became a Veda with some charms and spells. While Ram toiled to build a society based on Dharma through the help of the same saptarishis (barring Jamadagni) who are credited with the creation of Rig Veda but he became a mythological person, as having a person with his qualities or principles seems impossible under modern education pattern. Therefore, to correct the historical wrongs and impart the true meaning of dharma/ethics, the book is written with as many examples and quotes we can have from the rich Indian heritage of knowledge. That doesn't mean that we have neglected the Western ideas on ethics or modern-day examples or situations faced by the people. While the practical wisdom of ancient India is the binding glue, the book follows an interactive mode of learning and attempts are made to give the best of examples, quotes and situations from the real-life. To make the book more interactive and engage the readers with the learnings the book is made part of the innovative platform of www.myarsu.com. The readers can register on the platform using link (https://www.myarsu.com/ppr/) , to get the free soft copy of all future updates, ask for missing topics, detailed idea on a covered or loss end topic (like apathy) , additional topics required, raise queries on covered topics and get questions or exercises on the ethics subject material from exam perspective. If the case studies of CSE-2017 were slightly twisted from the old patterns, the marks scored by students suggest that UPSC has started to have strict checking on the ethics subject. We hope that under such circumstances the integration of the book with modern day technology will be helpful towards the creation of a learning ecosystem.