Mains Practice Questions

Introduction:

Public service is rooted in serving citizens with empathy while upholding objectivity. As Kautilya noted in the Arthashastra, “The king shall look to the welfare of his subjects as a father looks after his children.” 

• This calls for compassion i.e., empathizing with people’s suffering and acting to ease it balanced with detachment, which ensures impartiality by keeping emotions and biases in check.

Body :

Compassion in Public Service:

• Provides Bottom Up Perspective: Compassion enables administrators to understand lived realities of the poor and marginalized.
• Ensures Moral Accountability: Compassion ensures moral accountability and sense of service. 
  • During disasters such as the Uttarakhand floods, civil servants displayed compassion through proactive rescue and rehabilitation.
• Building Trust and Legitimacy: By showing genuine care, public servants foster trust between the government and the people, particularly marginalized communities. 
  • Citizens are more likely to cooperate when they perceive fairness and empathy in administration.
  • Policy level intervention to ensure compassion, eg. Welfare schemes like PM Garib Kalyan Yojana demand empathetic outreach to ensure inclusion.
• Promoting Social Equity: A compassionate approach prioritizes welfare and addresses inequalities, ensuring that developmental programs reach the needy effectively rather than being applied mechanically.

Detachment in Public Service:

• Guarding Against Personal Biases: Detachment ensures that administrators do not allow personal likes, dislikes, or relationships to influence official decisions. 
• Balancing Compassion with Objectivity: While compassion drives empathy, detachment ensures that actions remain fair and principled, avoiding partiality or emotional excess. 
  • For instance, in ration distribution, eligibility norms must be applied uniformly despite individual appeals.
• Maintaining Professional Resilience: Detachment helps officials handle stress, criticism, or challenging situations calmly, enabling sustained effectiveness in public service.

Dangers of Imbalance 

• Excessive Compassion: risk of favoritism, policy dilution, and fiscal imprudence. E.g. Indiscriminate loan waivers may strain the economy.
• Excessive Detachment: bureaucratic apathy, erosion of public trust, and alienation. E.g.  rigid eviction drives without rehabilitation can deepen social unrest.

Conclusion:

A civil servant must strike a fine balance—avoiding excessive compassion that leads to favoritism and excessive detachment that results in bureaucratic indifference. Leaders like Lal Bahadur Shastri exemplified this equilibrium by empathizing with farmers while ensuring disciplined food management during shortages. Ultimately, as Gandhiji reminded us to “recall the face of the poorest,” compassion must guide decisions, while constitutional duty ensures necessary detachment and impartial governance.