UPSC Mains GS 4 Syllabus: Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude

What General Studies Paper IV Is, and How It Is Marked

Paper V in the Commission's Numbering

The notice prints this as the fourth General Studies paper, and the Commission's own cut-off sheet numbers it Paper-V, because the Essay is Paper I and the General Studies papers are II to V. It carries 250 marks, the same as each of the other three.

It is the last paper written on the second day. Nothing in the scheme marks it as a lesser paper, and its 250 marks are 14.3 per cent of the 1,750 that decide the rank.

Twelve Questions That Become Nineteen Answers

The paper prints twelve questions in two sections, and that is the Commission's own count on the question paper. Section A holds six theory questions, most of them in parts; Section B holds six case studies.

Counted as things a candidate has to write, that is 13 theory parts and six case studies, 19 answers in three hours. This page counts answers rather than questions, because the answer is the unit of work, and it says so wherever a number depends on the choice.

Thirteen Parts at Ten Marks, Six Cases at Twenty

Every theory part carries 10 marks and a 150-word limit. Every case study carries 20 marks and 250 words. That is 130 marks from the theory half and 120 from the case half.

Both figures are printed on the question paper itself against each part, and 13 times 10 plus six times 20 is exactly the 250 the paper carries.

Why the Paper With No Syllabus to Finish Is the Winnable One

No part of this paper assumes specialist knowledge. There is no body of fact that a candidate either has or lacks, which means the spread between two answers is almost entirely method: how the question was read, how the answer was structured, whether a position was taken.

That is the opposite of the other three General Studies papers, where a gap in reading shows up as a blank. Here a gap in practice shows up as a weak answer to a question the candidate fully understood.

The Official GS-IV Syllabus

The Syllabus, as the Commission Prints It

Reproduced from Examination Notice 05/2026, Section III, in the notice's own words. The opening paragraph is not a preamble; it is the instruction the rest of the paper follows.

• Ethics and Human Interface: Essence, determinants and consequences of Ethics in-human actions; dimensions of ethics; ethics - in private and public relationships. Human Values - lessons from the lives and teachings of great leaders, reformers and administrators; role of family society and educational institutions in inculcating values.
• Attitude: Content, structure, function; its influence and relation with thought and behaviour; moral and political attitudes; social influence and persuasion.
• Aptitude and foundational values for Civil Service, integrity, impartiality and non-partisanship, objectivity, dedication to public service, empathy, tolerance and compassion towards the weaker-sections.
• Emotional intelligence-concepts, and their utilities and application in administration and governance.
• Contributions of moral thinkers and philosophers from India and world.
• Public/Civil service values and Ethics in Public administration: Status and problems; ethical concerns and dilemmas in government and private institutions; laws, rules, regulations and conscience as sources of ethical guidance; accountability and ethical governance; strengthening of ethical and moral values in governance; ethical issues in international relations and funding; corporate governance.
• Probity in Governance: Concept of public service; Philosophical basis of governance and probity; Information sharing and transparency in government, Right to Information, Codes of Ethics, Codes of Conduct, Citizen's Charters, Work culture, Quality of service delivery, Utilization of public funds, challenges of corruption.
• Case Studies on above issues.

The Case Study Method Is in the Syllabus Itself

Most syllabus lines name a subject. This one names a method: questions may utilise the case study approach. The Commission has told candidates in advance how it intends to test them, and then given the method its own clause at the end of the list.

That is why the case half is not an add-on to this paper. It is the paper's declared instrument, and it carries 120 of 250 marks.

Which Clause Each Theory Part Came From

Each of the 104 theory parts was read and assigned to the clause its core demand sits in. Case studies are left out of this table because the syllabus gives them a clause of their own, so they are a format rather than a topic, and they are counted separately further down.

Some questions touch two clauses. The rule used, so a reader can apply it themselves: a quotation printed alone goes to the thinkers clause, because interpreting it is the whole task; a quotation used to introduce a question about another clause goes to that clause; otherwise the clause the question's main verb asks about wins.

Twenty-Seven of One Hundred and Four Parts Come From One Clause

Moral thinkers and philosophers is one line of the seven and produces 27 of the 104 theory parts, 26 per cent. It has appeared in every paper in the window and never fewer than 2 times.

That squares with the 36 parts that carry a quotation. A clause a candidate can read in an evening is generating a quarter of the half, which makes it the highest return in the paper for the time it costs.

Two Clauses Have Produced Eight Parts Between Them

Attitude and Emotional intelligence are separate named clauses of the syllabus. Together they account for 8 of the 104 theory parts, 8 per cent.

Neither has been asked since 2023. Attitude was last seen in 2022 and emotional intelligence in 2023, so the last three papers have carried neither.

The Clause That Is Growing

Public service values and ethics in administration has gone from 7 parts across 2019 to 2022 to 16 across 2023 to 2026, and it led the last two papers outright at 5 apiece.

It is also the widest clause in the notice, running from status and problems through ethical dilemmas in government and private institutions to accountability, international relations and corporate governance. A paper drifting towards it is drifting towards applied administrative ethics and away from the abstract end.

How This Was Counted, and Over Which Years

One Hundred and Fifty-Two Answerable Parts Across Eight Papers

Every figure on this page is counted from 152 answerable parts in the 8 papers from 2019 to 2026. Every one of those papers ran 13 theory parts and six case studies without exception, which is why the window is comparable year to year.

Why the Count Starts at 2019

Our question bank holds earlier years too, and they are not used here. Those rows came from a third-party compilation whose granularity is inconsistent: a question in one year is a part in another, and several years hold fewer rows than the paper has answers.

Counting them would put noise into every figure above. Excluding them costs some history and buys figures that mean what they say.

Our Numbering Is Not the Commission's

Where this page says part one or part thirteen, that is our numbering of the answers. The Commission numbers twelve questions and lets several of them carry two or three lettered parts.

Both counts are correct about different things. The question count describes the paper as printed; the part count describes the work, and the work is what a three-hour plan is built on.

The Case Half Is Where the Paper Is Decided

Six Questions, 120 of 250 Marks

The six case studies carry 120 marks against 130 from the 13 theory parts. On marks alone the paper looks close to even, with the theory half slightly ahead at 52 per cent.

That evenness is where most preparation stops, and it is the wrong reading of the paper.

And 4.6 Times the Reading

Across the 8 papers, the case half runs 1834 words in an average paper. All 13 theory parts together run 396 words. The case half is therefore 82 per cent of the reading for 48 per cent of the marks.

A single case study runs about ten times the length of a theory part, for two times the marks. That ratio is the most useful number on this page.

What That Does to the Three Hours

Three hours across 19 answers is about 9 minutes each if the paper is treated as even. It is not even. The reading alone in Section B is close to 1834 words before a single line is written.

A workable split gives the theory half rather less than half the clock and the case half rather more, and it treats reading time as writing time that has already been spent.

Why Case Studies Are Practised Last and Should Be First

The common order is theory first because it feels like the syllabus, then case studies if time allows. The measurement above inverts it: the half that carries most of the reading and nearly half the marks is the half that most needs rehearsal under a clock.

An unpractised candidate does not fail a case study on ethics. They fail it on time, having read a thousand words and left themselves too little to write a structured answer.

What the Case Studies Are About

Six Settings That Keep Returning

Counted by keyword across all 48 case studies in the window. A case can sit in two settings at once, a border district with a health crisis being both, so these do not add up to 48 and the table says so.

Border, policing and security leads at 14 of 48, and the top three between them touch most of the section. None of it is exotic: a candidate who has read Paper II and Paper III already knows the institutions these cases run on.

Ten Cases Put You in the Chair, Thirty-Eight Ask You to Judge

Ten of the 48 case studies address the candidate directly: you are the municipal commissioner, you are heading the rescue operation, you are the district magistrate who has rushed to the spot. The other 38 describe someone else and ask what should be done about them.

The difference matters on the page. A case in the second person wants a decision written in the first person and owned. A case in the third person wants an evaluation, and an answer that slips into I would have done differently has changed the question.

Neither 2025 nor 2026 used the second person at all, so the recent drift is towards judging another official rather than being one.

Eight of the Cases Are Not Set in Government

A quiet assumption in most preparation is that every case study is an administrative one. Eight of 48 are not: a marketing vice president at a multinational, the chairman of a missiles company, a biotechnology scientist, a chief executive weighing a product that is legal abroad and harmful at home.

Those cases still test the same reasoning, and they deny a candidate the usual escape route of quoting a service rule. Preparing only the district administration leaves a real gap.

The Shape Underneath the Settings

The setting changes and the structure does not. Nearly every case sets a duty against a relationship, or a rule against a consequence: an officer who is right and a superior who is senior, a procedure that is lawful and an outcome that is unjust.

Reading five cases for their structure rather than twenty for their subject is the better use of the same hour, because the subject is the part that will be new on the day.

What a Case Study Does Not Ask For

No section, no scheme name, no statute. Nothing in the printed instruction asks for a legal citation, and nothing in the syllabus promises marks for one.

The question asks what should be done and why. An answer that lists the relevant provisions has answered a different question, usually at the cost of the one that was asked.

The Theory Half: Quotations and Thinkers

Thirty-Six of One Hundred and Four Theory Parts Carry a Quotation

36 of the 104 theory parts in the window carry a quoted passage, 35 per cent. In several of them the question is the quotation and nothing else: a line from Thiruvalluvar or William James, printed alone, with a word limit under it.

That is a different task from answering a posed question. There is no verb telling the candidate what to do with it, so the first decision, what the line means, is already part of the answer.

How a Bare Quotation Is Answered

The structure that works is short and always the same, which is why it can be rehearsed until it costs no thinking time on the day.

• Interpret: Say what the line claims, in your own words, in one or two sentences.
• Position: Agree, qualify or disagree, and say so plainly rather than circling.
• Apply: Bring it to administration, because that is the paper this is.
• Close: One sentence that answers the line rather than summarising the essay.

Indian Thinkers Outnumber World Thinkers Eighteen to Six

The syllabus clause reads contributions of moral thinkers and philosophers from India and world. Counted across 8 papers, the paper has named Indian figures 18 times and figures from elsewhere 6 times.

The list is 14 names long over 8 papers, which makes the reading finite. Vivekananda and Gandhi lead it, and a candidate who knows those two properly is better placed than one who has skimmed twenty.

What to Read, and What Not To

A biography is not the unit. What a question can use is a position: what the thinker held, what it rules out, and one episode that shows it in practice.

Four or five such positions, held firmly, will carry more answers than a reading list, because the paper asks candidates to apply a thinker rather than to describe one.

What the 2026 Paper Did That No Paper Before It Did

The Test, and Why It Was Applied by Hand

A theory part counts as situational here when it puts a specific actor in a specific circumstance and asks the candidate to respond, rather than asking about a concept, a quotation or a general proposition. That is our test, not the Commission's.

It was applied to all 104 theory parts by reading them, not by pattern matching. Two mechanical versions were tried first and both failed: a loose one counted the words as a inside ordinary prose, and a strict one threw out questions that are plainly scenarios. With 104 parts in the window, reading is cheaper than a rule that is wrong in both directions, and every call is printed below.

Seven Papers at Zero, Then Six

Every paper from 2019 to 2025 produced no situational theory parts at all. Theory questions asked about concepts, unpacked quotations or tested a general claim, and the scenarios stayed in Section B where the syllabus puts them.

The 2026 paper ran six of its 13. That is not a rise; it is a break.

The 6 Parts, So the Call Can Be Checked

All six are printed here in full rather than summarised, because the whole finding rests on the classification and a reader is entitled to disagree with any one of them.

Each puts a named actor in a circumstance and asks what should follow. None of them can be answered by defining a term, which is what separates them from the other seven parts of the same paper.

One Paper Is Not a Trend

This page will not sell that break as settled. One paper is one observation. The 2025 paper ran none, and so did the seven before it, so nothing here establishes that 2026 is the new shape rather than an experiment.

What it does establish is that the Commission is willing to ask a scenario outside Section B, which a candidate who has only rehearsed abstract theory answers is not ready for. That is worth preparing against whether or not it repeats.

What It Changes About Preparation

Very little, and that is the point. A situational theory part wants the same four moves a case study wants, compressed into 150 words rather than 250.

So practice on the case half now pays twice, and the wall between the two sections of this paper is lower than the printed structure suggests.

How the Questions Are Framed

The Directives This Paper Uses

Discuss leads at 23 of the 104 theory parts, then examine at 11 and explain at 9. Critically appears 7 times, always attached to another verb rather than standing alone.

What a Hundred and Fifty Words Buys Here

A position, a reason and an application. That is three moves, and the limit will not hold a fourth.

The commonest waste is a definition of a word the examiner also knows. An ethics answer that spends thirty words defining integrity has spent a fifth of its space agreeing with the question.

What Two Hundred and Fifty Words Buys in a Case

Stakeholders, the options actually available, a decision, and the defence of that decision. Four moves, and the fourth is the one most often dropped.

A case answer that lists options and stops has described a dilemma rather than resolved one, which is the single most common way to lose marks in this section.

What This Means for Preparing GS Paper IV

Rehearse the Case Half Against a Clock

The constraint is reading speed under pressure, not ethical reasoning. Practising six full case studies to time will teach more than reading forty-eight of them without writing.

1. Write at least one full case answer a week to the 250-word limit, by hand, timed.
2. Read the case once for the facts and once for who stands to lose, then start writing.
3. Decide before you write, because an answer that decides in its last sentence reads as one that could not.
4. Treat the 150-word theory parts as compressed cases, since the recent papers increasingly are.

Keep the Stock of Thinkers Small

The paper has named 14 figures in 8 years and leans heavily Indian. A candidate who can apply Vivekananda, Gandhi and three others is better placed than one carrying a list of twenty names and no positions.

Our Study Library keeps these under the subjects they belong to rather than under an ethics heading, which is the right shape here: a thinker is easier to find under their own subject than under the abstraction they might illustrate.

Do Not Prepare This as a Theory Subject

There is a large market in ethics terminology, and the paper asks for almost none of it. The marks are for judgement applied to a situation, and terminology is at best the shortest way to name the judgement.

A candidate who can name six schools of moral philosophy and cannot decide what a district magistrate should do on Tuesday morning has prepared the wrong paper.

Where the Other Papers Help, and Where They Do Not

Paper II supplies the institutional detail a case study assumes: who can transfer whom, what a charter commits to, where an appeal goes. Paper III supplies the environment, procurement and security settings that recur here.

Paper I supplies less, and the Essay paper supplies the most transferable thing of all, which is the habit of taking a position and defending it at length.

Common Questions About the GS-IV Syllabus

How many questions are there in UPSC Mains GS Paper 4?

The Commission prints twelve questions in two sections. They resolve into 19 answers: 13 theory parts at 10 marks with a 150-word limit, and six case studies at 20 marks with 250 words, for 250 marks in three hours.

How many marks are the case studies in GS Paper 4?

120 of 250, which is 48 per cent, from six questions. They also carry about 82 per cent of the reading in the paper, which matters more for planning than the marks do.

What is the word limit in the UPSC ethics paper?

150 words for each theory part and 250 words for each case study. Both are printed on the question paper against the part, along with the marks it carries.

Which thinkers are asked in UPSC GS Paper 4?

Across 2019 to 2026 the paper named 14 figures, 9 of them Indian and 5 from elsewhere, 18 mentions against 6. Vivekananda and Gandhi appear most often. The full list is on this page.

Is GS Paper 4 easier than the other General Studies papers?

It assumes no specialist knowledge, which is not the same as being easier. Because nobody arrives with an advantage in material, the marks separate on method, and method is the thing candidates practise least.

Official Sources

• Union Public Service Commission: Examination Notice No. 05/2026-CSE, Civil Services Examination 2026
• Union Public Service Commission: Civil Services Examination 2025, minimum qualifying marks
• Union Public Service Commission: Programme of Examinations and Recruitment Tests 2027
• Union Public Service Commission: 74th Annual Report 2023-24 (Appendix 9, profile of candidates, Civil Services Examination 2022)
• Union Public Service Commission: online registration and application portal
• Department of Personnel and Training: Gazette notifications (the Civil Services Examination Rules are notified here each year)
• Gazette of India: the Civil Services Examination Rules, which set the scheme of the examination, are notified here each year
• National Council of Educational Research and Training: school textbooks, the base reading for the thinkers this paper names
• Wikipedia: Civil Services Examination