Ethics, Values and Responsible Citizenship
Ethics, values and citizenship deal with the principles that guide behaviour and the duties that come with being a member of a society. The exam tests definitions, the distinction between values and ethics, and India's constitutional duties.
Core concepts
- Values are beliefs about what is desirable (honesty, respect). Ethics are principles guiding right conduct in a situation. Morals are personal standards of right and wrong. Values say what matters; ethics tells you what to do.
- Integrity is consistency between values and behaviour - doing the right thing when nobody is watching.
- Fundamental Rights (Part III of the Constitution) protect the individual; Fundamental Duties are in Article 51A (Part IVA), added by the 42nd Amendment, 1976. There are now eleven duties - the eleventh, on the education of children aged 6–14, was added by the 86th Amendment, 2002.
- Duties include respecting the Constitution and national symbols, cherishing the ideals of the freedom struggle, protecting sovereignty, defending the country, promoting harmony, renouncing practices demeaning to women, preserving heritage, protecting the environment and public property, developing scientific temper, avoiding violence, and sending children to school.
- Responsible citizenship also means obeying laws, paying taxes, voting, road safety, digital ethics and refusing corruption.
Worked example
You find a wallet with ₹2,000 and an ID card in a school corridor. Reasoning: keeping it satisfies a want but violates honesty and the law, and the owner loses documents as well as money. The ethical action is to hand it to the office with a written record. This is integrity: the value of honesty matched by action, with no audience to impress.
Traps
- Interchanging Fundamental Rights and Fundamental Duties.
- Saying ethics and law are identical - some unethical acts are legal.
- Forgetting the number of duties (eleven) or the amending Acts.