(Sample Material) Study Kit on Current Affairs for UPSC Mains Examination
Ethics & Integrity: Changing Administrative Values in India V. Subramaniam
Introduction
The Term value denotes one’s deep basic preferences, belief and general assumptions about what is good or beneficial and these are expected to govern one’s decision and behaviour. But while it is easy enough to connect one’s aversion to tobacco as value with actual non-smoking as behaviour, the connecting line between very general values and mundane practical behaviour as a civil servant can be very fuzzy. Quite often non-Indian academics have tried to work out involved chains leading from belief in Karma or cyclical yugas to Indian administrative behaviour and the result is far fetched. The chain is rarely straight and more often there are a hundred intervening variables. Nevertheless, a study of the value of a society and specific administration-oriented values is an important contribution to the understanding of public administration in that society. We interpret administrative values to mean not only the value held by the administrators but also those held by society in regard to administration as these are interactive.
India’s Inheritance of Politico-Administrative Values
Hindu Values: Kautilya’s “Arthashastra”
There is much misunderstanding about the administrative heritage of the Hindu period among Western as well as Indian scholars. Earlier Western scholarship based mostly on arrogant presumptions tended to deny any political achievement to ancient Hindus and refused initially to recognize the discoveries (even from Greek source) about republican organisations in ancient India and the authenticity of Kautilya’s Arthashastra years after its discovery. Some Indian scholars reacted to this not unnaturally by treating Kautilya’s work as an actual ‘description’ of public administration over the centuries instead of being ‘prescriptive’ for his contemporary Mauryan empire. This interpretation was later accepted by several Western scholars.