UPSC Aspirant 2025-26

$$ For Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude paper Values are formed when a particular belief or attitude becomes an inseparable part of the person’s outlook on life = values are difficult to change.

(Upendra Baxi) 👉 “Although the platforms are global businesses, they do not appear to apply their policies consistently across all geographical areas or to uphold human rights in all jurisdictions to the same extent”. 👉 Disinformation “endangers the right to freedom of opinion and expression”. It “poses a threat not only to the safety of journalists but also to the media ecosystem in which they operate” and forces the “legacy media to divert precious resources from reporting to dispelling and debunking lies”. 👉 (Imp*) “Disinformation” is “false information disseminated intentionally to cause serious social harm”. Misinformation consists in “the dissemination of false information unknowingly”. 👉 (Imp*) Disinformation is not the “cause but the consequence of societal crises and the breakdown of public trust in institutions”. Strategies to “address disinformation” will succeed only when these underlying factors are tackled. 👉 Some “authoritarian countries like Russia, China and Iran capitalised on coronavirus disinformation to amplify anti-democratic narratives designed to undermine trust in health officials and government administrators”. 👉 Reactive content moderation efforts are simply inadequate without a “serious review of the business model that underpins much of the drivers of disinformation and misinformation”.  https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/human-rights-supreme-court-of-india-free-speech-unhrc-7350022/lite/

Imp* Amartya Sen has clearly shown that we cannot study deprivation and inequality without challenging the fundamental premises of utilitarianism. An individual’s ‘capability set’ (i.e. the set of functionings an individual can access) as an embodiment of her freedom to choose how ‘to do or to be’ is a conceptual innovation that has far-reaching consequences. Sen's definition of development as expansion of human capabilities has firmly taken root in development thinking. In the harsh Machiavellian world that we live in, politics appears far too murky to come close to the normative ideal of liberal democracy. Catastrophic events like famine have largely disappeared from independent India because of active media attention which is expected in a functioning democracy. Most problems of injustice tend to be chronic rather than episodic, and rooted in conflicts of interest and ideology. Discussions and conversations are, more often than not, dominated by asymmetries of power. Identifying a perfect institution is neither necessary nor adequate to address various injustices in societies. Well-constructed institutions can often channel even self-interested behaviour in a way that aids or abets public interests. Sen’s stress on the individual as an argumentative and deliberative person with an active agency comes perhaps from an optimism that rejects possibilities of intransigence. We live in what political theorist Chantal Mouffe characterises as a ‘populist moment’, in which politics has become impassioned and vengeful. The key characteristic of this populism, or all populism for that matter, as Mouffe argues, is the identification of a ‘people’ who are pitted against some kind of adversary. The common adversaries are immigrants, linguistic and other minorities, liberal media, socialist intellectuals, and so on – all of whom can be freely accused of harming ‘the people’. https://m.thewire.in/article/books/book-review-how-to-read-amartya-sen-lawrence-hamilton/amp

"From India’s engagement with its Quad partners in the Indo-Pacific to its burgeoning ties with the West, we are witnessing unprecedented activism in the Indian foreign policy posture that tells a story about India’s rise that is quite distinct from the doom and gloom often portrayed in the Indian domestic landscape. As India engages the world more confidently, the world is reaching out to India more substantively as well. India’s presence at the G-7 is a tribute to the inherent strength of the country that should not be underestimated despite the occasional challenges that the nation may face," writes Harsh V Pant. https://t.me/iv?url=https://www.orfonline.org/research/as-global-power-shifts-the-g-7-beckons-for-india/&rhash=e36df4d42d3427