UPSC 2023 Essay · 125 marks

A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.

What a top answer must contain

These are the checkable specifics from the marking standard for this topic — the actual case, committee, datum or thinker, not an instruction to “give examples”.

  • Conceptual distinction to open with: justice as entitlement vs charity as discretion — Rawls's justice as fairness; Amartya Sen's capability approach
  • Constitutional: DPSPs as the Indian state's justice project; Art 39, 41; right-based turn — MGNREGA, RTE, NFSA, RTI
  • Ambedkar's register: annihilation of caste as justice over philanthropy; contrast with Gandhian trusteeship — the essay's central Indian tension
  • Economic evidence: Nordic welfare states' low private philanthropy vs US model; Oxfam inequality data on India
  • Where charity still has a place: disasters, gaps in state capacity, the ethics of dāna and zakat — a top essay refuses the false binary
  • Philosophical: Nietzsche and Žižek's critique of charity as conscience-laundering; Anand Giridharadas's Winners Take All

The band thresholds and the pre-scored sample answers behind this standard stay private — they are the calibration your copy is placed against.

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