SECTION A
Essay
125 marks
Need brings greed, if greed increases it spoils breed.
WRITE IN
90 min
1,000–1,200 words
Reading the topic
The rhyme traces a chain: genuine need leads to wanting more, and unchecked greed corrupts the 'breed', meaning character, society and future generations. The examiner expects an essay that distinguishes legitimate need from greed, shows how greed degrades individuals, institutions and the environment, and asks where the line lies.
ThesisNeed is natural and drives effort, but when wanting outgrows need it corrupts character, institutions and the planet left to future generations.
Dimensions to cover
- 1Individual: success can turn need into endless craving, eroding contentment and ethics in personal life
- 2Business: corporate frauds show how greed for profit can destroy firms, jobs and investors' trust
- 3Finance: speculative excess built on easy credit has triggered crises that hurt people who never shared the gains
- 4Environment: overconsumption of shared resources degrades commons, damaging the inheritance of future generations
- 5Politics: corruption begins as need for campaign funds and grows into capture of the state
- 6Culture: consumerism blurs need and want, so restraint must be taught as a value
Counter-view
- Some argue greed drives innovation and growth, as markets turn self-interest into public benefit. The essay should accept ambition as healthy but show unchecked greed destroys the trust and resources that markets need
Open and close
- Open: Open with a fisherman who once caught enough for his family, then bought a trawler with fine nets to catch more, until the lagoon emptied and his son had nothing to fish
- Close: End by arguing that a society which teaches enough as a virtue protects both its character and its children's inheritance
Where marks usually go
- Missing the meaning of breed and writing only about greed in general
- Condemning all desire, which ignores the legitimate role of need and ambition
- Writing only about corruption, turning the essay into a GS ethics answer
Examples that fit
- ThinkerThe Isha Upanishad advises enjoying the world through renunciation and not coveting another's wealth, an early ethic of need over greed.Isha Upanishad, verse 1
- ThinkerGarrett Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons' showed how individuals maximising gain from shared resources ruin them for all.Garrett Hardin, Science, 1968
- HistoryThe 2008 global financial crisis, marked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, grew out of reckless lending and speculation.US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report, 2011
- CurrentIndia's Mission LiFE, launched in 2022, promotes mindful consumption as a climate strategy, turning need-not-greed into policy.Mission LiFE, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change
- ThinkerAristotle distinguished household management for needs from unlimited wealth-getting, which he saw as unnatural.Aristotle, Politics, Book I