Swati Sharma Ethics Notes , resources and Strategy

ICS -

In my opinion, GS Paper 4 is the most comprehensive and inclusive paper among all GS papers. There is a lot of scope to show your 'ethical personality' along with the morals that you hold in personal life while writing Ethics paper.

Resources that you can refer-

1- Lexicon Ethics

2- Forum IAS Red Book

3- Ethics, Integrity, Aptitude by G Subba Rao

Please refer only one source, do not run after covering each book. It will be of no use to refer to multiple books for same section.

Apart from the book, I advise to refer to PYQs for making notes and TOPPER COPIES to understand the demand & structure of different answers.

NOTE MAKING for ETHICS-

* Follow the syllabus very carefully. Try to have some basic points (such as definition of the topic, applications in personal & professional life, challenges) on each of topic mentioned in syllabus.

* You should have 1-2 pager notes (final notes) for each topic. Which dimensions to be included? - use PYQ.

* Try to incorporate 2 situational examples and 3-4 real life examples wherever possible.

* You can use definitions by international organisations such as Amnesty, WB, etc to provide validation to the answers.

* For the Quote based questions, rather than covering each philosopher present in the world, try to use PYQ to know the major personalities such as J Nehru, M K Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, etc.

QUESTION PAPER ATTEMPTING STRATEGY-

SECTION A- deals with 10M (2 pages for each) with subparts of each question. Try to complete this in 1 hour 10 minutes at max.

I used to attempt this section first, except the quote based questions. You can use flowcharts, schematics, diagrams in this section to elaborate your answers.

SECTION B- Case studies- this section takes a lot of time, as you need to be very specific while finding out ethical issues/dilemmas. Sometimes this section can be lengthy when questions can have more than 3 subparts. Devote good amount of time in understanding the core of case study-

You can start this by writing a Introduction (detailing on the case study), then start answering the subparts. Write a conclusion in case study also.

QUOTE BASED QUESTIONS- I used to attempt the 3 questions based on quotes at the end (max 15 min).

* You can show relevance & importance of the quote.

* Try to write examples in such questions.

* Give a balanced opinion.

NEWSPAPERS FOR EXAMPLES-

You can try to add examples from newspapers.

Add them in your digital notes or your static notes wherever you have made notes of so and so topic.

You may also use topper copies to note down examples for ethics.