SECTION B
Essay
125 marks
Crisis faced in India – moral or economic.
WRITE IN
90 min
1,000–1,200 words
Reading the topic
The topic asks whether India's problems are mainly moral, such as corruption and loss of public ethics, or economic, such as poverty and unemployment. The examiner expects an argument that the two are intertwined: moral failures cause economic losses, and economic distress erodes ethics.
ThesisIndia's economic crises often have moral roots, and its moral crises have economic causes, so the two must be solved together.
Dimensions to cover
- 1Corruption: scams have cost the exchequer and investor trust, showing moral failure becoming economic crisis
- 2Banking: wilful defaults and frauds created bad loans that slowed credit and growth
- 3Poverty: economic deprivation pushes people towards survival compromises and exploitation
- 4Public life: declining ethics in politics weakens institutions that the economy depends on
- 5Society: caste and gender discrimination are moral failures with economic costs
- 6Reform: laws and institutions work only when backed by public ethics
Counter-view
- Some argue India's real problem is economic, and growth will reduce moral failures. The essay should accept growth's role but show that unethical growth produces inequality and crises
Open and close
- Open: Open with a bank manager who sanctions a large loan under political pressure, knowing it will never be repaid, and the farmer denied credit the same day
- Close: Conclude that India's economic recovery and moral renewal must go together, since each sustains the other
Where marks usually go
- Choosing moral or economic outright without showing how each crisis feeds the other
- Listing scams as a catalogue instead of tracing their economic cost
- Moralising about values while ignoring jobs, poverty and bad loans
Examples that fit
- CaseIn 2012 the Supreme Court cancelled 122 telecom licences in the 2G case, and in 2014 it cancelled 214 coal block allocations.Supreme Court of India, Centre for PIL v Union of India, 2012; Manohar Lal Sharma v Union of India, 2014
- CaseThe Punjab National Bank fraud linked to Nirav Modi, revealed in 2018, exposed failures of ethics and oversight in banking.Reserve Bank of India; CBI statements, 2018
- CaseThe Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 was enacted to resolve bad loans and discipline defaulters.Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016
- ThinkerAdam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments before The Wealth of Nations, showing that markets rest on moral foundations.Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
- ThinkerAmartya Sen argued that separating ethics from economics impoverished both.Amartya Sen, On Ethics and Economics (1987)