UPSC Ethics Simplified: Can development come at the cost of safety?
Public complaints about the quality of National Highways have risen by over 60 per cent compared with the previous year, according to data tabled in the Rajya Sabha. Against this backdrop, our ethicist examines safety not merely as a regulatory requirement, but as an ethical responsibility.
Ultimately, the purpose of development is not merely to build more roads, bridges, airports or buildings. It is to make human life safer, freer and more dignified. (Image is AI generated) (UPSC Ethics Simplified is a special series under UPSC Essentials by The Indian Express that examines ethical concepts relevant to the Civil Services Examination. In today’s article, against the backdrop of a steep rise in public complaints about the quality of National Highways, our ethicist examines the conflict between development and safety through the lens of ethics.)
Robert Frost famously wrote about two roads that “diverged in a wood” and how choosing the “one less traveled by” made all the difference. He was right in reminding us that a journey is ultimately about choices, and that those choices can make all the difference in a traveller’s life. Perhaps, at its heart, a journey is also an expression of the hope of living. But is it not true that the world around us has become deeply insecure at its very core?
A world recovering from unending economic crises and wars could hardly have imagined that modes of travel would become increasingly terrifying, or that an aeroplane journey might prove to be someone’s final journey. Even if one survives such dangers, the very bridge or road meant to carry life forward might collapse. It does not stop there. It is deeply troubling to see great highways crumble like a house of cards, slowing the pace of our country’s development journey. At the same time, the crumbling of roads and bridges comes at a heavy cost to every citizen: first through taxes and public expenditure, and then through the loss of lives, livelihoods, happiness and the pace of development.
Isaac Newton reminds us that we build too many walls and not enough bridges. Yet even if one manages to breathe safely, a road may crack or an entire city can easily succumb to rainwater. Even as people protected by vaccination run, play or exercise, they are confronted with data suggesting that anyone’s heart could stop beating at any age. How, then, does one confront such uncertainty?
Life does not stand still. Imagine the plight of a passenger whose maiden flight lands somewhere between a flight of life and a flight of death, especially at a time when air travel is being expanded to connect smaller cities and bring mobility to the general public. How can the safety of a human being be taken lightly by anyone? What about those who tremble every time they cross a highway or a bridge? Are turbulence, accidents, infrastructure failures and bridge collapses becoming the new normal? Will the cycle of death continue unabated, sidelining the value of safety under the guise of philosophies such as “life is about moving forward”?
This raises a fundamental ethical question: When development, efficiency, profitability or targets come into conflict with human safety, what should an ethical institution choose?
When development comes at the cost of safety
The answer should be clear. Human life cannot become the price of development. Safety is not merely a technical requirement or an administrative formality. It is an ethical obligation arising from the value we attach to human life and dignity.
Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy offers a useful lens here. His idea that human beings must always be treated as ends in themselves, and never merely as means, places intrinsic value on human beings. If a company compromises safety to meet revenue targets, if an agency ignores structural warnings to meet a deadline, or if an institution conceals risks to protect its reputation, human beings are effectively being reduced to instruments of an economic or administrative objective.
This is where the ethical dilemmas begin: speed versus safety, profit versus welfare, development versus precaution, and individual convenience versus collective responsibility.
A company may lose money by cancelling several flights, but can financial loss justify compromising safety? A project may be delayed by an independent quality audit, but can a deadline justify exposing citizens to risk? A factory may incur additional costs by enforcing safety equipment, but can profitability take precedence over a worker’s life?
These are not merely managerial questions. They are questions of duty, responsibility, justice and moral courage.
The principle of precaution becomes important here. Institutions should not wait for a disaster before taking preventive action. If there is a reasonable possibility of serious harm, the absence of complete certainty cannot become an excuse for inaction. Ethical governance is therefore not simply about responding to disasters; it is about anticipating risks and preventing avoidable harm.
Safety is an ethical obligation, not just compliance
The time has come for institutions to elevate safety to the status of a paramount value, especially in an era when there is immense pressure to generate profits, meet targets and boost revenue. While the increasing number of highways and the growing connectivity between cities and airports are visible symbols of development, it is far more critical to ensure that safety standards are strictly adhered to.
Is it conceivable for a company to cancel consecutive flights rather than compromise on any safety standard? Can a factory enforce a rule that no one, from management to the last worker, enters without appropriate safety equipment? What about regular and independent quality audits of roads and bridges?
These are valid questions. After all, why does talk of reform so often surface only after a disaster has occurred? Why has safety not become an integral part of social behaviour?
The answer lies partly in the difference between compliance and culture.
A worker who wears a helmet because a supervisor is watching is complying with a rule. A worker who wears it because he understands the value of his own life and that of his colleagues represents a safety culture.
Hale and Hovden’s work on the evolution of safety thinking is useful here. The “third age” of safety moves beyond a narrow focus on technical and organisational measures towards recognising safety culture and human behaviour as integral to safety. Thus, safety cannot remain confined to manuals, checklists and regulatory inspections. It must become part of institutional behaviour.
This requires organisations to encourage employees to report risks, protect whistleblowers, learn from near-misses, conduct regular audits and ensure that officials do not fear consequences for flagging genuine safety concerns.
Safety is also a question of justice. The consequences of unsafe infrastructure are not distributed equally. Pedestrians, workers, children, elderly persons, persons with disabilities and economically vulnerable citizens often have fewer alternatives when public systems fail. An ethical state must therefore ask not only whether infrastructure exists, but for whom it is safe.
| JUST FYI
Citizens, too, have an ethical responsibility. Wearing a helmet, following traffic rules, not overloading vehicles, reporting dangerous infrastructure and refusing to bypass safety requirements through bribery are not merely acts of legal compliance. They are expressions of civic responsibility. A safety culture emerges when citizens stop seeing rules as restrictions and start seeing them as expressions of collective responsibility. |
From accountability after disaster to prevention before it
This also brings us to accountability.
Responsibility asks: Who was expected to act?
Accountability asks: Who must answer when that responsibility is neglected?
Heavy rain triggered a landslide at the Missing Link tunnel project, disrupting connectivity and prompting restoration work. (Express Photo by Narendra Vaskar)
If a bridge collapses, accountability cannot begin with the person who happens to be standing beneath it. It must travel through the chain of design, approval, construction, inspection, maintenance and certification. Accountability before a disaster is preventive governance; accountability after a disaster is often merely corrective.
Why, then, does institutional attention so often intensify only after lives are lost?
The answer requires a shift from a reactive to a preventive approach. Institutions must identify risks before they become disasters, conduct independent safety audits, maintain infrastructure regularly and create mechanisms through which warnings can reach decision-makers without fear or suppression.
We must therefore look beyond superficial frameworks and focus on foundational structures, strengthening the very bedrock of our society. Among the fundamental pillars of an independent India are ethics, virtues, values and the safety of the common person in everyday life.
The right to life is a fundamental right. But recognising it requires more than legal protection. It requires institutions and citizens to accept a moral duty to prevent avoidable harm.
This is also a responsibility towards future generations. Roads, bridges, buildings and other infrastructure are not merely monuments to present development; they are promises made to those who will inherit them. Development that creates avoidable risks cannot be called sustainable development.
The civil servant and the moral choice
For a civil servant, safety should become part of ethical decision-making. An ethical administrator must have the courage to flag risks even when doing so is inconvenient; prioritise human life over short-term targets; insist on independent audits; ensure transparency; protect those who report violations; and build systems that learn from failure rather than merely assign blame after it occurs.
The bureaucracy must safeguard India’s growth story not only from accidents but also from the fatalistic mindset that treats them as inevitable. When values are instilled during an individual’s upbringing, morality manifests itself through behaviour. But when institutions and society fail to prioritise citizen safety, ethics can be reduced to mere compliance with rules.
What, then, is fairness in justice? What is morality? And what is the relevance of human conscience to the story of development?
Perhaps Frost’s roads offer us a deeper lesson. Every road represents a choice. For a civil servant, the ethical choice may not always be the fastest road, the cheapest road or the politically convenient road. It is the road that takes society forward without compromising human dignity.
Ultimately, the purpose of development is not merely to build more roads, bridges, airports or buildings. It is to make human life safer, freer and more dignified.
Frost spoke of choosing a road and finding that it made all the difference. Perhaps the ethical journey of governance is much the same. The road we choose should not merely determine how quickly we reach the destination. It should determine whether everyone reaches it safely.
(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), National Judicial Academy, 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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