Answer: Policing is essential for maintaining law and order and smooth functioning of the society. However, police officers in day to day life often face various ethical challenges as follows:

• Conflict between means and ends: Police officers often face the dilemma of whether to use wrong means to achieve good ends in policing. For instance, taking recourse to encounters of criminals to ensure greater peace in the society or using excessive force against a public protest to maintain law and order.
• Conflict between obedience and legality: In day to day life, police officers often face ethical challenges of whether to follow state directives despite it being illegal or uphold professional integrity and legality of law. For example, state surveillance of opposition leaders through phone tapping by the police undermining the privacy rights enshrined in the Constitution.
• Acting impartially: Police officers may be limited in their ability to uphold the law by following specific procedures. For example, when an officer is aware of domestic violence but has no court-acceptable evidence to pursue the case.

Reasons behind police corruption.

• Misuse of power and discretion: Police personnel wield wide powers and discretion while discharging their functions and those driven by selfish motives can misuse it to accumulate private gains such as receiving free drinks, meals, and other gratuities.
• Ineffective enforcement of legislations: Ambiguities in legislations and administrative delays coupled with the police discretion “to act or not to act” in respect of certain offenses give ample opportunities to the personnel to resort to corrupt practices.
• Criminalization of politics: Nexus between the politicians and mafia operators prompt many police personnel to collude with such forces.
• Vicious cycle of bribery: Policemen who have paid their way through, try to recover the amount as soon as possible and corruption becomes a tool for getting better return on investment.
• Other factors: Low salary structures, nature and hours of duty, poor training, accommodation problems etc. also perpetuate police personnel to indulge in corruption.

Thus, there is a need to ensure greater police accountability, better service conditions etc. to abate police corruption in India. Further, implementation of the Supreme Court directions on police reforms under the Prakash Singh case, 2006 enforcing transparent postings and appointments, political neutrality etc. can go a long way in ensuring ethics in police functioning.

Answer: Emotional Intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to identify one’s own emotions and those of others, harness and apply them to tasks, and to regulate and manage them. El is an essential asset for a public servant as it helps in:

• Motivating workforce: A public servant must win the trust of his staff and keep them motivated. He can neither be a dictator nor be a people-pleaser. He has to connect with the staff emotionally in order for them to comply with his orders.
• Managing family and work life: A public servant with a balanced family and work life can contribute more to the system due to a relaxed state of mind owing to El.
• Effective conflict resolution: It can reconcile the differences among co-workers or different factions of people and can resolve problems in a more constructive and effective manner.
• Better decision making: Being aware of one’s wants and fears can help the public servant in being neutral and impartial while dealing with issues pertaining to conflict of interests.
• Better policy making and implementation: El helps in better understanding of ground realities. It can further help in suggesting better policies, and implementing them even more effectively.
• Repose trust in the system: By listening attentively to the problems of people, empathizing with their situation and bringing positive change in the work ethics of the bureaucracy, El can help in making the system more trustworthy in the eyes of citizens. However, a public servant with high El can also use it as a tool for his private gains:
• Manipulating others: Evidence shows that when people hone their emotional skills, they become better at manipulating others. They can tug at their heartstrings and motivate others to act against their own best interests. Especially when they have self-serving interests, EI becomes a weapon for manipulating others. For example, often the ill-motivated people use glaring socio-economic disparity to inculcate hatred between two communities and derive political gains.
• Distorts reasoning: When a leader gives an inspiring speech filled with emotion, the audience becomes less likely to scrutinize the message. It robs them of their capacity to reason. For example, Hitler’s persuasive impact came from his ability to strategically express emotions.
• Tactical emotional expression: Emotional intelligence helps people disguise one set of emotions while expressing another for personal gain. Emotionally intelligent people “intentionally shape their emotions to fabricate favorable impressions of themselves”. For example, persons having criminal backgrounds often use emotional pitch to win trust and vote in the elections.

Thus, El is not always virtuous and can be used as a tool for negative ends as well. However, public servants are the trustees of public interest and therefore, they need to be high on El in order to be firm in their approach, and be agents of good change.

Answer: Corporate Governance represents the value framework, the ethical framework and the moral framework under which business decisions are taken. In other words, the investors want to be sure that not only their capital is handled effectively and adds to the creation of wealth, but the business decisions are also taken in a manner which is not illegal or does not involve moral hazards. In recent years, corporate governance has received increased attention because of high profile scandals involving abuse of corporate power in some cases, like the IL&FS, Satyam Fraud, Kingfisher Airlines Fraud etc. As a part of ethical corporate governance, it must uphold the rule of law, transparency, accountability and protection of public interest in the management of a company’s affairs in the prevailing global and competitive market milieu. Ethical governance necessitates not only structure but also the right spirit:

• Ethical governance does not only relate to how the board is constituted and how it performs its role. It encompasses issues of board composition and structure, the board’s remit and the spirit in how it was carried out and the framework of the board’s accountability to its stakeholders. The spirit also includes how credible the appointed board is in drawing inspiration from the company and stakeholders. The ethics of the board members, or the managing director, directly channels into the governance of the company.
• An effective corporate governance regime not only includes structural provisions for civil or criminal prosecution of individuals who conduct unethical or illegal acts in the name of organizations, but also the spirit, which lies in how quickly action is initiated and processes are invoked for unbiased enquiries and necessary curative measures taken.
• A right combination of spirit and structure would include ensuring that a code of ethics is not only developed but also endorsed by the board of directors. Most Corporate Governance codes must provide guidance on the process of adopting ethical governance, what parameters decide ethical performances, outline processes and protocols to be followed, guidelines related to kickbacks etc. For instance, the most comprehensive recommendations on the ethics of governance are to be found in the Narayana Murthy Committee report on Corporate Governance.
• In making ethics work in an organization, it is important that there is synergy between vision statements, mission statements, core values, general business principles and code of conduct. An effective ethics programme requires continual reinforcement of strong values through corresponding structures in an organization.

Thus, the questions of ethics, or the right way to run a business, are inherent in all aspects of corporate governance. Ethical choices are relevant within the core business strategies that the boards pursue and the way that directs the business as a whole to achieve them.