This is Questions Set #3, under our new segment ‘Clear IAS Mains High Value Answer Writing Test Series’. Mains High Value Answer Writing is a UPSC mains oriented program from ClearIAS.com that consists of 5 questions in each post, published around 8 pm every day. Each of the 5 questions are selected from 5 papers mentioned in UPSC Mains syllabus namely Essay, GS1, GS2, GS3 and GS4 (ethics). Selected questions of high probability to be asked UPSC mains are included in each of these mini tests. Aspirants can choose any question they wish to answer in the comment space provided below, specifying the question number and question topic.
Archives of Clear IAS Mains High Value Answer Writing Test Series
You can access archives of Clear IAS Mains High Value Answer Writing Test Series from the hyperlink. Aspirants are advised to check the model answers and feedback given for previous entries to write better answers.
Questions for Answer Writing – Selections for today:
- Essay Paper: Increasing Juvenile Crimes (1500 words)
- GS 1 Paper: [Indian Society] – Should India promote Hindi as a link language at the age of globalization? Analyze. Link language is not an absolute necessity for Indian nationalism. Critically evaluate. (200 words)
- GS 2 Paper: [G8/Russia] – Trace the reasons that led to the expulsion of Russia from G8? Does G8 truly represent the the most powerful economies of the world. Analyze (200 words)
- GS 3 Paper: [Indian Economy] – Though reduction of interest rates is necessary to revive the industrial sector, RBI is hesitant to bring a major change soon. Analyse the monitory policy justifications for the same.(200 words)
- GS 4 Paper: [Ethics case study] – 2013 Question: You are working as an Executive Engineer in the construction cell of a Municipal Corporation and arepresentlyin-chargeofthe construction of a flyover. There are two Junior Engineersunderyouwhohavethe responsibility of day-to-day inspection of the site and are reporting to you, while you are finally reporting to the Chief Engineer who heads the cell. While the construction is heading towards completion, the Junior Engineers have been regularly reporting that all construction is taking place as per design specifications. However, in one of your surprise inspections, you have noticed some serious deviations and lacunae which, in your opinion, are likely to affect the safety of the flyover. Rectification of these lacunae atthisstagewouldrequire a substantial amount of demolition and rework which will cause a tangible loss to the contractor and will also delay completion. There is a lot of public pressure on the Corporation to get this construction completed because of heavy traffic congestion in the area. When you brought this matter to the notice of the Chief Engineer, he advised you that in his opinion it is not a veryseriouslapseandmay be ignored. He advised for further expediting the project for completion in time. However,youare convinced that this was a serious matter which might affectpublicsafetyandshould not be left unaddressed.What will you do in such a situation? Some of the options are given below. Evaluate the merits and demerits of each of these options and finally suggest what course of action you would like to take, giving reasons. (250 words)
- Follow the advice of the Chief Engineer and go ahead.
- Make an exhaustive report of the situation bringing out all facts and analysis along with your own viewpoints stated clearly and seek for written orders from the chief Engineer.
- Call for explanation from the Junior Engineers and issue orders to the contractor for necessary correction within targeted time.
- Highlight the issue so that it reaches superiors above the Chief Engineer.
- Considering the rigid attitude of the Chief Engineer, seek transfer from the project or report sick.
Rules and Regulations: Clear IAS Mains High Value Answer Writing
Clear IAS Mains High Value Answer Writing is a free program from ClearIAS.com. Any UPSC aspirant, interested to polish his/her writing skills or to learn the art of writing high value answers to boost the score in UPSC Civil Services Mains can participate in it. The official team from ClearIAS.com may review selected answers, and guide aspirants to improve the answer structure. Fellow aspirants, experienced candidates or toppers can also comment and suggest improvements for each of the answers. The platform is free and open to public with a view of better sharing and learning. You can read more about the Clear IAS Mains High Value Answer Writing Test Series objectives and rules in the hyperlink.
PS: Aspirants can select any question they wish to answer in the comment space provided below specifying the question number and question topic. Answering 3-4 questions, does not take much of your time. But for those who engage regularly in answer writing, the resultant score improvement in actual UPSC exam would be exponential.
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Loaded Questions by UPSC - How should you answer them?
GS 1 :
The debate of Hindi as national language belongs to post independence era. Though at that time this debate was settled by reaching to three language formula accepted by all the states. Recently, this topic is again in limelight in the wake of UPSC aspirants’ protests for removing English. There is no doubt that a nation should respect its mother language. But making it compulsory when it doesn’t even represent the will of all the states(Southern states are against this) is unfair. Moreover, in the age of globalization, when most of the literary works, technological works, and service works are done in english, when english has become a common thread all over the world, its hard to stay aloof from english. An instance of our dependence is shown by service sector which largelly relies on our language capabilities. We Indians are good at grasping new skills that has already proven by our vast diaspora, we need to maintain it.
As far as question of nationalism is concerned, Hindi is not the common thread of whole India, then how can it bind people together? Language is one of the feature to bind people together apart from culture, religion and creed. But its not an necessity to rely on only one of dimensions. With changing times, there are more common values attached to nationalism – like growth and development of nation. To conclude, India is a society with unity in diversity. We don’t need to abolish this diversity.
Good effort Random. You have presented a balanced answer. You can add more points to substantiate your statements and include examples of countries which do not have a link language.
@Random : we can write about A-350 /343 of Indian constitution
overall gud Attempt
@Clear IAS team :
can we have a tab on website “Clear IAS Mains High Value Answer Question writing” to get all archives under one roof ?
can we have a compiled pdf of all questions after every week/half month ?(else we have to do copy paste of questions /gud answers)
Thank you team for the selfless efforts
Dear Raman, Good suggestions! As of now we have included the same under two previously existing categories ie. https://www.clearias.com/category/civil-services-exam/mains-mock-tests/ and https://www.clearias.com/category/civil-services-exam/mains/. You can get the archives from there. We shall take into consideration your other suggestions as well. Thanks 🙂
GS2:
Russia was facing various economic and military sanctions from West in wake of Ukraine crisis where Russia was held reponsible for sending troops and itnerfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine. After the annexation of Crimea, Russia was expelled from G8 so as to send the message of intolerance due to its activities. G8 is the group of most powerful economies of World formed after world war. But in current context, it holds little relevance. Its composition doesn’t represent the most powerful economies- America, Britan, Canada, France, Russia, Japan, Italy, Germany. It has many inclusion and exclusion errors. Canada, Italy are out of the race from powerful economy. Recent Euro crisis is a testimony to this fact, Further new emerging countries like India, China has no place in it. Thus the significance of G8 is also reducing with time, and many new groups like G20, ASEAN, Asia-pacific are emerging.
Cool. Your answers are to the point. The improvement we suggest, is on the depth, of-course within the time constraints 🙂
Q. Though reduction of interest rates is necessary to revive the industrial sector, RBI is hesitant to bring a major change soon. Analyse the monitory policy justifications for the same.(200 words)
Ans. The interest rate plays a major role in maintaining liquidity in the market for industrial growth. The higher the interest rate the less liquidity in the market and the lower the interest rate the higher the liquidity in the market.
Interest rate has direct relationship with the Industrial sector because, the more liquidity in the market the faster Industrial growth.
It is the RBI which is mandated to control the interest rate though its monetary policies, reviewed every 3 months now against 2 months earlier. Although the Industrial sector is desperately looking for money to revive itself, as it’s growth rate is decreasing for the last 02 years, but the RBI has been hesitant to reduce interest rate drastically in its monetary policy. This is meant to control the inflation. As likely impact of lowering Interest rate the inflation, which is already on a high, will rise further. In first six months the interest rate was kept constant and thereafter it has been reduced slightly.
You have mentioned the inflation and liquidity aspect. Good! To rate it among the high value answers you need to add few more relevant points. You can also give justification of RBI stand by quoting high values of WPI and CPI. You can also present the dangers of high inflation, citing examples of Latin American countries. Keep writing 🙂
Thx ClearIAS. It was my second Answer(1st still under moderation Challenge1Q2/3).Your right feedback has set the tempo for me and energised me.
in question ke ans kaha upload kare ki check ho or feed back mile ans hindi me b likh sakte h kya
Sorry, Nitesh, though we wish to do, but we don’t have enough resources to give feedback in all languages permitted by UPSC (around 23). The official feedback from ClearIAS Team would be in English, though you might get feedback from fellow aspirants/veternans in Hindi or other languages.
The RBI’s monetary policy regulates the money supply in the economy through the regulation of key interest rates like cash reserve ratio, statutory liquidity ratio, bank rate, etc. A reduction in interest rates would be a boost for the industrial sector as they would be motivated to borrow more and contribute to increased investment in the country.
But over the last few months, RBI has maintained a tight monetary policy by not decreasing interest rates due to surging inflation in the country. Supply side constraints and high demand of goods and services is a major cause of inflation due to which RBI is forced to curtail money supply in the economy by increasing interest rates which reduces the borrowing power.
Thus the solution lies in increasing the supply of goods and services by increased production, controlling black marketing and hoarding, etc. so that RBI can ease the interest rates in its future bi-monthly review of monetary policy which will promote industrial sector to invest in production facilities and infrastructure development and increase GDP of the country and also help RBI meet its inflation target of 8% by the end of the fiscal year.
Garima…good attempt, but we felt you could add more key points to the monitory policy justification part. Keep writing.
Sir, if possible, please provide an option to upload scanned copy of handwritten answers. It would save a lot of time and many more candidates will participate due to the ease of uploading the answers, rather than typing. An app called CamScanner can be used to scan the answers and save it in pdf/jpeg and then upload it on ClearIAS for review. I thank you for this wonderful initiative because here we are getting paper wise and topic wise compendium of questions from both dynamic and conventional areas of the syllabus. The selection of topics is really good and highly exam-oriented and needless to say, the style of framing of questions is very similar to UPSC paper setters. Many thanks!
Thanks Twilight for the comment and suggestions.
GS 2 Paper: [G8/Russia] – Trace the reasons that led to the expulsion of Russia from G8? Does G8 truly represent the the most powerful economies of the world. Analyze (200 words)
the ciris in ukraine and the subsequent annexation of crimea served as the main reason behind expulsion of RUSSIA from G 8 . the crisis emerged on the issue of ukraine joing Europian Union . G8 , the group of industralised democracies , is an informal group . formed in 1975 as G 7 , it got expanded into G 8 in 1997 with the inclusion of Russia in it . this was to ensure the east west cooperation in the world affairs . this group does include powerful economies of the world but the global economic scenario has changed especially after the global recession . the global economy is getting more integrated and emerging economies making their edge .
GS 4 Paper: [Ethics case study] – 2013 Question: You are working as an Executive Engineer in the construction cell of a Municipal Corporation and are presently in-charge of the construction of a flyover. There are two Junior Engineers under you who have the responsibility of day-to-day inspection of the site and are reporting to you, while you are finally reporting to the Chief Engineer who heads the cell. While the construction is heading towards completion, the Junior Engineers have been regularly reporting that all construction is taking place as per design specifications. However, in one of your surprise inspections, you have noticed some serious deviations and lacunae which, in your opinion, are likely to affect the safety of the flyover. Rectification of these lacunae at this stage would require a substantial amount of demolition and rework which will cause a tangible loss to the contractor and will also delay completion. There is a lot of public pressure on the Corporation to get this construction completed because of heavy traffic congestion in the area. When you brought this matter to the notice of the Chief Engineer, he advised you that in his opinion it is not a very serious lapse and may be ignored. He advised for further expediting the project for completion in time. However,you are convinced that this was a serious matter which might affect public safety and should not be left unaddressed.What will you do in such a situation?
Some of the options are given below. Evaluate the merits and demerits of each of these options and finally suggest what course of action you would like to take, giving reasons. (250 words)
1. Follow the advice of the Chief Engineer and go ahead.
2.Make an exhaustive report of the situation bringing out all facts and analysis along with your own viewpoints stated clearly and seek for written orders from the chief Engineer.
3. Call for explanation from the Junior Engineers and issue orders to the contractor for necessary correction within targeted time.
4. Highlight the issue so that it reaches superiors above the Chief Engineer.
5. Considering the rigid attitude of the Chief Engineer, seek transfer from the project or report sick
Ans. Option 1. Merit; 1. Everyone will be happy, Juniors, Contractor, Public. 2. No cost overrun for the government. 3 Good image for government.
Demerit. 1. If concerns were genuine, the safety is in danger and risk is even bigger as congestion area is in discussion. 2. Juniors will understand that “Do as Boss says”. Accountability is not fixed.
Option 2.
Merit: 1. Everything is being put on record and duly written order is being obtained from CE.
2. CE may have better clarity on the issue when seeing in detailed written form and
agree to the concerns raised by me.
3. In the event of any accident due to poor construction, the blame can’t be put on me.
4. Work may be completed on time, payment of contractor will be released.
Demerit: 1.CE may get offended, as to why his junior is insisting on written order.
2. Movement of files may delay the construction work further
3. Discussion with subordinates could have also been done.
4. If the concern raise is really true and CE sign the file in haste, the accident could not be avoided and there may be loss of life/property etc and prestige of government works.
Option 3.
Merit: 1.Concern’s will be reasoned out and analyzed further.
2. Subordinate will feel the accountability
3. Possible accident could be avoided.
Demerit: 1. Work will be delayed.
2.Cost overrun.
3. Subordinates/CE may feel offended.
4. Public image may be hampered.
Option 4.
Merit: 1. Superiors of CE may understand the issue and give correct orders/guidance
2. Possible accident , if concerns are genuine, could be avoided.
Demerit: 1. CE may feel offended for not following proper channel.
2. Work may get delayed for which both CE and his superior scold me.
3. Public pressure will increase.
4.Cost overrun
Option 5.
Merit. 1. I may be safe and not to be blamed for any accident in future for poor construction.
2. CE himself may approve and swift completion may be done.
Demerit. 1. I am running out of y responsibility. 2. Setting bad example to my juniors. 3. CE will understand my avoiding attitude bad for my career.
The second option is good because-
CE may understand the gravity of the concern raised. If he is convinced and event hen clears it, I will also understand his point of view and it will be a learning for me. If CE understands and stops the task, safety will be ensured, cost overrun even if it happens is not valuable than safety. Learning for juniors. However, if the work is stopped, notice may be published for the delay, to make people aware.
Marks 11/20. Some suggestions: Club the options along with analysis together to save time. Bring concepts like utilitarian, deontology etc. into the case study answers, if there is scope for it.