Why do you want to be a civil servant? What attributes, do you believe, a civil servant ought to possess?

Civil Services Main Examination

General Studies (Paper - 4) : Model Question & Answers


Civil ServantQuestion: Why do you want to be a civil servant? What attributes, do you believe, a civil servant ought to possess? Justify your answer with illustrations.

Answer: Individual, society and nature are organically related. An individual’s happiness and personal aspirations can never be realized in isolation or at the cost of society or nature. As a civil servant an individual can have access to the resources and wherewithal to empower weaker and marginalized sections of people more efficiently and effectively thereby disseminate service to humanity and thereby attain a life of meaning, substance and contentment.

Some of the important attributes that a civil servant ought to possess are – integrity (honesty and strength of character without having temptation to misuse one’s power), perseverance (despite one’s best intent and effort, desired result may not always be realized at once and thus one is expected to strive continuously), compassion (service to humanity with a sense of love), accountability (ready to account for every act of omission & commission), temperance and courage (self-discipline with self-restraint).

Such an individual alone will have the soul-force and competence to be a Sarathi who can guide the chariot of human development along the right path and can create our State as a Welfare State on the lines of Gandhi’s Sarvodaya.

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