Moral and political attitudes, and building the right attitude

The first principle

Attitudes are learnt, so they can also be unlearnt and rebuilt. Moral attitudes decide how we judge right and wrong, and political attitudes decide how we view power, change and the state. A civil servant may hold any moral or political view in private, but the attitude he brings to work must be one that serves every citizen and every elected government alike.

The core

• Moral attitudes are evaluations of conduct as right or wrong, such as attitudes towards honesty, cruelty or caste discrimination. They feel binding and universal to the person who holds them, which is why they are held strongly and change slowly.
• Political attitudes are evaluations of political objects, such as parties, policies, the role of the state and the pace of social change. They are shaped heavily by family, community and media, and they tend to harden with identity.
• Formation: attitudes form through conditioning, observation of others, direct experience, repeated exposure and the norms of our groups.
• Change: they change through new information, persuasion, contact with the other side, new roles and the pressure of dissonance between what we believe and what we do.

Dimensions

• Moral development: Lawrence Kohlberg described moral reasoning maturing from fear of punishment, to conformity with group and law, to reliance on universal principles. Carol Gilligan argued that this scheme undervalued an ethic of care, which looks at relationships and responsibility.
• Political spectrum: political attitudes can be arranged by attitude to change. The labels describe positions rather than rank them, and an officer must be equally fair to all of them.

In practice

• Political neutrality as a duty: the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964 bar government servants from taking part in politics and from being members of any political party (Rule 5), so a political attitude must stay private.
• Positive attitude under the same rules: two officers reading the same rule can reach opposite results. One looks for a lawful way to grant a pension to a widow with incomplete papers, by accepting alternative proof, while the other rejects the claim on the first defect.
• Mission Karmayogi (2020): the national programme for civil service capacity building aims at a citizen centric civil service, built through continuous learning and functional, behavioural and domain competencies.
• Examples: officers who live in a village during training or district attachment often report that the experience changed how they saw the rural poor, which is contact changing an attitude.

Issues and way forward

• Cynicism sets in with experience, because of political pressure, delays and lack of recognition. Mentoring by respected seniors and recognition of good work, such as the Prime Minister's Awards for Excellence in Public Administration, help keep morale up.
• Stress turns attitudes negative, because long hours and crises drain emotional reserves. Emotional intelligence training, reasonable tenure and support systems build resilience.
• Status distance from citizens, because of a colonial inheritance of hierarchy. Citizen feedback, grievance redress and field exposure keep the citizen at the centre.

Common confusions

• Positive attitude and optimism. Optimism expects things to turn out well. A positive attitude takes ownership and looks for a lawful way forward even when things look bad.
• Moral attitude and political attitude. A moral attitude judges conduct as right or wrong. A political attitude judges the use of power and policy, and reasonable people differ on it.
• Neutrality and indifference. Neutrality means not favouring any party. It does not mean being indifferent to the Constitution's values, which a civil servant must actively uphold.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: attitude formation, attitude change, conditioning, observational learning, mere exposure, moral attitude, Kohlberg, post conventional, ethic of care, political attitude, political neutrality, positive attitude, citizen centric, resilience, Mission Karmayogi.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Introduction lines:
  • The Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964 bar officers from political activity, which makes a neutral political attitude a legal duty and not only a virtue.
  • Kohlberg showed that moral reasoning can grow from obeying rules to following principles, which is the growth a civil servant's attitude must make.
• Conclusion lines:
  • Rules set the limits of discretion, but attitude decides whether that discretion helps or hinders the citizen.
  • A civil servant may hold any political view at home, but must carry only a constitutional attitude to the office.