SECTION B
Essay
125 marks
Shelving hard decisions is the least ethical course.
WRITE IN
90 min
1,000–1,200 words
Reading the topic
The topic says that postponing a difficult decision is worse ethically than making it, even imperfectly. Inaction is itself a choice whose costs fall on others, while the decision-maker escapes blame. The examiner expects the essay to examine moral cowardice in individuals, administrators and governments, and to separate cowardly shelving from wise, deliberate waiting.
ThesisShelving a hard decision is often the least ethical course because it shifts the cost of the problem onto others while protecting the decision-maker, though deliberate delay for better information can be justified.
Dimensions to cover
- 1Individual: avoiding a hard conversation with a failing friend or relative can let a crisis grow until it cannot be repaired
- 2Administration: files that circulate without a decision protect officers from audit but deny citizens services and justice
- 3Economy: delaying recognition of bad loans let banking stress grow until a forced clean-up became far costlier
- 4Polity: reforms that every party agrees on in principle but postpones for decades reveal shelving as a political habit
- 5Philosophy: moral traditions insist that duty must be done even when every option has a cost
- 6Nuance: waiting can be ethical when it is time-bound, transparent and used to gather facts, not to avoid responsibility
Counter-view
- Some say a hasty wrong decision does more harm than a delayed one, so caution is responsible. The essay should agree that rashness is also a failure, and argue the real test is whether the delay is purposeful and time-bound or simply evasion
Open and close
- Open: Begin with a district officer who keeps a file on an unsafe school building pending for months to avoid controversy, until the monsoon brings the roof down
- Close: Conclude that ethical courage means owning the cost of a hard choice openly instead of passing it silently to those with less power
Where marks usually go
- Ignoring the difference between evasion and prudent, time-bound deliberation
- Writing only about policy paralysis in government and missing personal and moral dimensions
- Arguing that any decision is better than none, which overlooks the harm of rash choices
Examples that fit
- LiteratureAt Kurukshetra, Arjuna lays down his bow to avoid a painful duty, and Krishna teaches that refusing to act is itself a choice with consequences.Bhagavad Gita, Chapters 1 and 2
- CaseThe Supreme Court ordered police reforms such as fixed tenures and complaint authorities in 2006, but many states have long delayed full compliance.Prakash Singh v. Union of India, Supreme Court (2006)
- CaseThe RBI's Asset Quality Review of 2015 forced banks to recognise loans that had been quietly restructured for years, exposing how delay had deepened the problem.Reserve Bank of India, Financial Stability Report (2016)
- LiteratureDante places the souls who lived without taking sides outside Hell proper, rejected by both Heaven and Hell, as a judgement on moral neutrality.Inferno, Canto III, Dante Alighieri