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Journalism of Courage
The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) appears to be aligning its examination themes with current national discourse, often drawing from issues in the headlines or matters directly impacting the roles and responsibilities of civil servants.
A question in the UPSC Civil Services Mains Ethics paper for 2025 notably reflected this trend, appearing to draw inspiration from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to civil servants earlier that year. The question read: “To achieve holistic development goals, a civil servant acts as an enabler and active facilitator of growth rather than a regulator. What specific measures will you suggest to achieve this goal?”
During the 17th Civil Services Day held at Vigyan Bhavan in April 2025, Prime Minister Modi urged bureaucrats to shift their approach—from being mere enforcers of rules to becoming proactive facilitators of growth. Emphasizing the rapid global changes underway, he highlighted the need for India’s administrative machinery to evolve accordingly.
Reflecting on the past, PM Modi noted that the bureaucracy traditionally functioned as a regulator, often slowing down industrialization and entrepreneurship. However, he asserted that India has now moved beyond that mindset. The focus, he said, is on creating an enabling environment—one that supports enterprise, empowers citizens, and helps them navigate and overcome systemic barriers.
The context of administrative ethics has been discussed at length regarding the maintenance of ethical conduct through internal and external controls. Any bureaucrat has to work under the ethical framework of those controls. Both internal and external controls are aimed to maintain integrity. While external controls comprise compliance of laws, regulations and administrative standards and can be of regulatory and audit nature, the internal mechanism is guided by virtues, values, and deontological ethics that elevate the means over ends to achieve a task, and even teleological ethics, which tends to elevate the ends over means. Kant has always advocated for his ideas of order and duty in governance, feeling that all higher-order rules concerned with achieving these ends must be guided by lower-order rules that dictate or govern the means.
Through the above argument, it can be deduced that a civil servant can act as an enabler and active facilitator rather than a regulator, and that irrespective of any situation. Deviating from that balancing act of means and ends can take things out of control, as we have witnessed through those visuals from Gen Z protests in Nepal. Through those internal factors, any kind of turmoil and the incipient panic of government officials on the road could have been avoided.
On the other hand, administrative evil looms large over decision-making when external control, apart from code and conduct rules, starts wielding its power on any bureaucrat. In other words, where a bureaucrat follows the rules and hierarchy of authority but fails to read the social and moral effects of their actions or decision-making. Policy decisions need to be executed with utmost sincerity and without bias or scorn, while addressing the larger cause of welfare in a democracy. Dennis F. Thompson, the political scientist, has argued that both an ethic of neutrality (decisions from politics) and an ethic of structure (decisions from higher up) obviate public-service ethics. That is because they don’t hold the legitimacy of administrative and professional discretion.
How can administrators be enablers and active facilitators? According to the 2015 World Public Sector Report titled ‘Responsive and Accountable Public Governance’, responsiveness and accountability as two fundamental principles of governance which are key, cross-cutting enablers of development. They lead to a collective vision of sustainable development. Responsiveness to people needs an approach to identify present necessities. They also need to foresee future needs, and to plan policies accordingly. Accountability should be seen as the obligation of a government or organization to account for one’s activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner. Participation is another important of governance. Citizens, as well as civil society organizations, need to be involved in the formulation, design and evaluation of public policies, programs, legislation and services related to administration. All the above suggestions will only be effectively carried out if the internal control and will is strong, ethical and civil servants adapt to new challenges and be solution oriented.
In a technology-driven world, human judgement and human values still hold a very important place especially in civil services. Hence, civil servants must always listen to people’s voices and should be aware of their needs. Only coming up with policies and implementation of them won’t suffice. Being an active enabler means that the policies on ground should be solution oriented serving the needs of the beneficiaries on priority. The scheme should reach the people and should have a real impact in their lives. This will ensure quality in governance.
A civil servant can only act as an enabler if the internal and external controls are well balanced, ethics as conduct facilitates the dictum of compliance, and decision-making doesn’t find those influencers in the form of personality biases. To put it in Max Weber’s phrase: sine ira et studio (without bias or contempt).
Responsiveness and accountability as two fundamental principles of governance which are key, cross-cutting enablers of development. Discuss.
(The writer is the author of ‘Being Good’, ‘Aaiye, Insaan Banaen’, ‘Kyon’ and ‘Ethikos: Stories Searching Happiness’. He teaches courses on and offers training in ethics, values and behaviour. He has been the expert/consultant to UPSC, SAARC countries, Civil services Academy, National Centre for Good Governance, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Competition Commission of India (CCI), etc. He has PhD in two disciplines and has been a Doctoral Fellow in Gandhian Studies from ICSSR. His second PhD is from IIT Delhi on Ethical Decision Making among Indian Bureaucrats. He writes for the UPSC Ethics Simplified (concepts and caselets) fortnightly.)
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