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Ethical Dilemma: 10 Heartbreaking Case Studies

Last updated on April 2, 2024 by Alex Andrews George

In a small village in Maharashtra, a teacher named Ravi and his wife Maya, a nurse, faced a tough choice after an earthquake.

The only hospital in the village was damaged, and they could only save one life with the limited medical supplies: Maya’s critically injured mother or a young and bright boy from Ravi’s school, who also needed urgent surgery.

Choosing between saving Maya’s mother, who meant everything to her, or the young boy, who represented the village’s future, was heartbreakingly difficult.

This story highlights the painful decisions we sometimes must make, where saving one life means losing another, testing our deepest values and principles.

Based on this story, we dive into the complex world of ethical dilemmas and moral conflicts, where choices are never black and white, and every decision carries the weight of unforeseen consequences.

Table of Contents

What is an ethical dilemma?

An ethical dilemma occurs when a person is faced with a situation that requires a choice between two or more conflicting ethical principles or values .

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In such dilemmas, no matter what choice is made, some ethical principle is compromised.

The essence of an ethical dilemma is that it involves a difficult decision-making process where, typically, a clear-cut right or wrong answer doesn’t exist, or if it does, it may carry significant negative consequences for someone involved.

Definition of ethical dilemma

An ethical dilemma is a complex situation that often involves an apparent mental conflict between moral imperatives, in which to obey one would result in transgressing another.

It’s characterized by:

• Conflicting Values: Individuals or organizations must choose between competing ethical principles or values.
• No Perfect Solution: Each choice involves a compromise or violation of an ethical principle.
• Significant Consequences: The choices have significant potential impacts on the well-being or rights of individuals or groups.

5 Cases of Ethical Dilemma

Ethical dilemmas can arise across various fields and situations, reflecting the complexity of moral decisions in real-world scenarios. Here are more examples:

1. Loyalty to the employer vs. the moral obligation to protect the public and the environment

• An employee discovers that their company is engaging in illegal activities, such as dumping toxic waste into a river, which is both environmentally damaging and a serious health hazard to nearby communities.
• The employee faces an ethical dilemma between reporting the misconduct, potentially leading to legal action against the company and safeguarding public and environmental health, and remaining silent to protect their job and the livelihoods of their colleagues.
• Ethical Dilemma: Loyalty to the employer vs. the moral obligation to protect the public and the environment.

2. Upholding academic integrity vs. loyalty to a friend.

• A student witnesses a close friend cheating during an important exam.
• If the friend is reported and found guilty, they could face severe consequences, including failing the course or expulsion, which might ruin their academic career and future prospects.
• The student is torn between reporting the cheating, which is an honest action, and protecting their friend’s future.
• Ethical Dilemma: Upholding academic integrity vs. loyalty to a friend.

3. The safety of passengers vs. the safety of pedestrians

• Programmers of autonomous vehicles face an ethical dilemma in creating algorithms for unavoidable accidents.
• For example, if an accident is inevitable and the choice is between altering the vehicle’s path to avoid hitting a pedestrian, thereby endangering the passengers, or protecting the passengers at the cost of the pedestrian’s life, how should the car be programmed to act?
• Ethical Dilemma: The safety of passengers vs. the safety of pedestrians.

4. The duty to report news truthfully vs. the potential harm to public safety and societal peace

• A journalist obtains exclusive footage of a terrorist group committing an atrocity.
• Publishing the footage could inform the public about the severity of the situation and the threat posed by the terrorist group, but it could also spread fear, possibly lead to public panic, and serve the terrorists’ goal of gaining attention for their cause.
• Dilemma: The duty to report news truthfully vs. the potential harm that such reporting might cause to public safety and societal peace.

5. Upholding the client-lawyer confidentiality vs. the moral responsibility to prevent future crimes.

• A defence attorney knows their client is guilty of a serious crime and intends to commit similar crimes in the future.
• The attorney faces an ethical dilemma between maintaining client confidentiality, a cornerstone of legal ethics, and the moral obligation to prevent future harm.
• Ethical Dilemma: Upholding the client-lawyer confidentiality vs. the moral responsibility to prevent future crimes.

These examples highlight the range and depth of ethical dilemmas that individuals can face, requiring them to weigh competing values and principles against the backdrop of potential consequences for their actions or inactions.

Moral Conflicts

Ethical dilemmas and moral conflicts are closely related concepts that often overlap in discussions of ethics and morality, but they can be distinguished by their context and the nature of the choices they involve.

Ethical Dilemma

An ethical dilemma arises when a person must choose between two or more actions that have ethical implications, making it difficult to decide what is the right or wrong course of action.

Ethical dilemmas often involve a decision-making process where each option violates some ethical principle or value, leading to a situation where no choice is entirely free from ethical fault.

These dilemmas typically occur within a specific professional, societal, or organizational context and involve considering external codes of ethics, laws, or social norms.

Moral Conflict

Moral conflict, on the other hand, refers to a situation where an individual’s values, principles, or beliefs conflict, leading to an internal struggle about the right course of action.

Moral conflicts are deeply personal and subjective, focusing on an individual’s conscience and moral reasoning rather than external rules or codes.

While ethical dilemmas might require an individual to choose between competing external obligations or duties, moral conflicts involve a more introspective struggle with one’s values and beliefs.

Key Differences Between Ethical Dilemmas and Moral Conflict

• Context: Ethical dilemmas often involve a choice between actions in a professional or social context, where external codes of conduct or laws must be considered. Moral conflicts are internal struggles over personal values and beliefs.
• Nature of Conflict: Ethical dilemmas typically involve competing ethical principles or obligations, where adhering to one may lead to the violation of another. Moral conflicts are about reconciling conflicting personal morals or values.
• Resolution: Resolving an ethical dilemma often involves choosing the “lesser evil” or the option that upholds the most critical ethical principle in a given context. Solving a moral conflict might require personal reflection, growth, and a deeper understanding of one’s own values.

While they are distinct, ethical dilemmas and moral conflicts can occur simultaneously, complicating the decision-making process further.

A person might face an ethical dilemma at work (e.g., whether to report a colleague’s wrongdoing) that also triggers a moral conflict (e.g., loyalty to a friend versus commitment to honesty).

This interplay underscores the complexity of ethical and moral reasoning in real-world situations.

5 Cases of Moral Conflicts

Moral conflicts arise when individuals face situations requiring them to choose between two or more conflicting moral principles or values. Here are five examples illustrating such conflicts:

1. Honesty vs. Compassion

• Situation: You find out that a close friend has lied on their resume to get a job they desperately need.
• Conflicting Morals: The value of honesty (telling the truth or reporting the lie) conflicts with compassion (understanding your friend’s desperate situation and wanting to support them).

2. Loyalty vs. Justice

• Situation: A family member is involved in a minor legal infraction and asks you to provide them with an alibi to avoid consequences.
• Conflicting Morals: Loyalty to your family member, wishing to protect them, conflicts with your sense of justice and the importance of facing legal consequences for one’s actions.

3. Self-sacrifice vs. Self-preservation

• Situation: During a disaster, you have the opportunity to save others by putting yourself in significant danger, or ensure your own safety, knowing others might not survive.
• Conflicting Morals: The principle of self-sacrifice, putting the needs of others before your own, conflicts with self-preservation, the instinct to protect oneself from harm.

4. Equality vs. Meritocracy

• Situation: In a workplace, you must decide between promoting an employee who has worked longer at the company (seniority) and another who has shown exceptional skill and productivity but has less tenure.
• Conflicting Morals: The value of treating everyone equally and fairly conflicts with meritocracy, where rewards are based on individual achievement and capabilities.

5. Freedom vs. Security

• Situation: In governing a community, you must decide whether to implement strict security measures that infringe on personal freedoms to ensure public safety.
• Conflicting Morals: The importance of individual freedom and autonomy conflicts with the collective need for security and protection from harm.

These examples highlight the complexity of moral conflicts, where deciding in favour of one value inevitably leads to the compromise or negation of another , reflecting the nuanced nature of ethical decision-making.

Also read: Ethical Concerns and Dilemmas In Government And Private Institutions

The moments of ethical dilemmas and moral conflicts challenge us to weigh our values against the harsh realities of our circumstances, pushing us to make decisions that can redefine who we are and what we stand for.

The story of Ravi and Maya, the couple torn between family and community, serves as a poignant reminder of the complex nature of ethical decision-making .

Such dilemmas compel us to question not just our morality but the very essence of what it means to be human.

They remind us that there are no easy answers in the pursuit of doing what is right.

Whether it’s choosing between fairness and loyalty, or the welfare of one versus the greater good, these decisions are laden with the weight of potential regret and the hope for understanding and forgiveness.

In conclusion, ethical dilemmas and moral conflicts are not mere philosophical quandaries to be pondered from afar; they are real, lived experiences that test our integrity , empathy , and courage.

As we tread this precarious path, let us strive for a balance between our duties to others and our commitment to our principles, recognizing that we can confront and navigate these dilemmas that ultimately define our humanity.

The journey through these challenges is arduous and fraught with uncertainty, but it is also a testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit, ever aspiring to a higher standard of morality and justice.

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About Alex Andrews George

Alex Andrews George is a mentor, author, and social entrepreneur. Alex is the founder of ClearIAS and one of the expert Civil Service Exam Trainers in India.

He is the author of many best-seller books like 'Important Judgments that transformed India' and 'Important Acts that transformed India'.

A trusted mentor and pioneer in online training , Alex's guidance, strategies, study-materials, and mock-exams have helped many aspirants to become IAS, IPS, and IFS officers.

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Case Study - 19: Rule of Law vs Social Norms

• 09 Nov 2019

You are the Superintendent of Police (SP) in the district where instances of honour killing are rampant. One day you receive a phone call from a girl informing you of the potential threat to her and her partners’ life from her family as she has decided to marry a boy belonging to a lower caste. Moreover, the local police station is not filing the FIR or granting them protection. You ask her to visit your office but she demands police protection to come out from the hideout as her father’s goons are chasing her.

On further inquiry, you come to know that the girl is the daughter of one of the most powerful Minister of the State and both girl and boy are legally eligible to get married. The family is concerned about the family prestige due to the lower caste of the boy and also of the financial stability of marriage as they both are unemployed. You are under extreme political pressure to charge the boy of kidnapping the girl or else face the consequences.

In such circumstances, point out the ethical dilemma faced by you and options available to you. Also, chalk out the course of action you would prefer to follow. (250 words)

Ethical dilemmas

• Personal v/s professional ethics: Adhering to the demands of political leaders by not providing protection to the couple or following legal duty to provide safety and security to the couple.
• Following social norms v/s ethical norms: Accepting inter-caste marriage is not socially acceptable but moral standards suggest to allow the couple to exercise their free will.

Options available

Option (2) should be the correct approach to handle the situation.

Course of action

Measures to deal with the crisis

• Initiate steps for attitudinal change to reduce caste prejudices, abolish untouchability and spread the values of liberty, equality, fraternity, etc in the society.
• Utilizing Dr Ambedkar scheme for social integration through inter-caste marriages to extend financial incentive to the couple to enable them to settle down in the initial phase of their married life.
• The SP must show spirit of service and conviction to ensure justice to the couple. He must ensure that a safe and secure environment is created in the district so that no one should fear of moral policing.
• Taking confidence building measures to regain the trust of people on the administration.

The false notions of honour and pride are so deep rooted that people even forget the social bonds of love and emotions with their own children. Thus, the attitudinal change programmes must target the revival of social bonds and realizing them about need to give respect to human lives and compassion.

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Home » Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude » Ethics and Human Interface » Ethics, Morals and Values » Ethics and Values: Indian Context

Ethics and Values: Indian Context ( We will discuss this aspect in detail in the section of Indian Moral thinkers)

In the Indian context, there is a rich heritage of religious influences on ethics and moral values. The ancient texts have emphasized the importance of ethics and moral values in governance. In ancient India there are two broad sources of ethical exhortations in the Indian tradition – Veda texts and the epic texts (Ramayana and the Mahabharata). Both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata contain explicit instances elaborating on right conduct for civil servants.

Chiefly ministers ought to be honest, faithful, intelligent and well versed in secular and sacred law, willing to offer advice, bold, free of jealousies towards each other and allied to their political masters (i.e. King). Maharishi Valmiki has underscored a very basic principle of governance in simple words – Yatha Raja Tatha Praja (As the ruler does, so do the citizens of his country) . The general erosion in values, ethics, morality or integrity that is seen in a society only mirrors the character of those who run the affairs of that society.

Bhagwad Gita

Summary of the ethics of action in the Bhagwad Gita is as follows :

• Performance of all actions requires right intention , without prejudice to the good consequences (fame, wealth) that come from those actions.
• Actions in short are the product of work motivated by duty.
• The preference for actions independent of desires for “worldly” benefits has important implications for the concepts of efficiency and effectiveness.

Kautilya’s’ Arthashastra

Evidence of the modern administrative character of the Arthashastra comes most through Kautilyas’ expressions of efficiency, described in a unique imagery of corrupt officials improperly eating the wealth of the state.

• Kautilyas’ concept of efficiency – It depends on an extensive elaboration of efficiency-guaranteeing techniques. Kautilya makes quite clear the link between civil service malfeasance and the reduction in wealth. Contravening the standards of efficiency was among the highest ills that a civil servant could commit in Kautilyas’ state.
• Kautilya believed that “men are naturally fickle minded” and are comparable to “ horses at work who exhibit constant change in their temper”. This means that honesty is not a virtue that would remain consistent life long and the temptation to make easy gains through corrupt means can override the trait of honesty any time. Similarly, he compared the process of generation and collection of revenue by officials with honey or poison on the tip of the tongue, which becomes impossible, not to taste.
• Vigilance and Transparency – He prescribed a strict vigil even over the superintendents of government departments in relation to the modus operandi of work. Kautilya reflected serious concerns about opacity in the operations of the world of the corrupt. Illegal transactions were so shrouded in mist that he compared embezzlers to fish moving under water and the virtual impossibility of detecting when exactly the fish is drinking water . He also noted that while it is possible to ascertain the movements of bird flying in the sky, it is difficult to gauge the corrupt activities of government officials.
• 40 kinds of embezzlement – In all these cases, the concerned functionaries such as the treasurer, the receiver, the payer, the person who caused the payment and the ministerial servants were to be separately interrogated. In case any of these officials were to lie, their punishment was to be enhanced to the level meted out to the chief officer mainly responsible for the crime. After the enquiry, a public proclamation was to be made asking the common people to claim compensation in case they were aggrieved and suffered from the embezzlement.
• Corruption in the judicial administration – He prescribed the imposition of varying degrees of fines on judges – trying to proceed with a trial without evidence, unjustly maintaining silence, threatening, defaming and abusing the complainants, arbitrarily dismissing responses provided to questions raised by the judge himself, unnecessarily delaying the trial and giving unjust punishments.
• Whistleblowing – Any informant who provided details about financial wrong-doing was entitled to an award of one-sixth of the amount in question . If the informant happened to be a government servant , he was to be given only one twelfth of the total amount as it was considered to be the duty of the government servant to strive towards corruption free society.

We have learnt the relationship of ethics with other domains such as, Law, Religion and Value system in detail. These concepts are very important from exam point of view. Readers are requested to understand the concept clearly with repeated reading. Now we will figure who subject matter of ethics changes with its interaction with Human Interface;

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Article Contents

Introduction, covid-19 in india, ethics and community development: theoretical position of community workers, methodological engagement, ethical challenges for community workers during the pandemic, acknowledgements, author biographies.

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Everyday ethical challenges for Indian community development practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic

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Ajeet Kumar Pankaj, Shiv Kumar Yadav, Everyday ethical challenges for Indian community development practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic, Community Development Journal , Volume 58, Issue 1, January 2023, Pages 19–34, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsac032

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Drawing upon empirical evidence and using Sarah Banks’s concept ‘ethics work’ as a conceptual approach, the article examines the ethical dilemmas facing community development practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article attempts to understand the everyday experience of community development practitioners working with Dalits, women, and labour migrants in India. Further, given these communities’ social and economic vulnerabilities, the article tries to comprehend how practitioners’ engagement with these communities during the COVID-19 response exposed them to various ethical dilemmas. The article also traces negotiation and navigation strategies for dealing with ethical dilemmas and delivering services in the community during the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that promote human dignity.

It was an extremely painful situation when someone died in the community, particularly young people. In those circumstances, I did not want to visit the family of COVID-19 patients, but it was our duty and compulsion to console them and provide psycho-social support to help them overcome trauma. My involvement with them was also necessary because I was engaged in the community for a long time. Therefore, suddenly, I could not withdraw myself from community work engagement during COVID-19, when the community was in dire need of us… my own father also died in second wave of COVID-19… It was hard to decide whether I needed to console myself or the family of the person who died from COVID, but somehow, I had to console the family.

This comment was made by Madhulika [not her real name], a young woman who has been engaged in community work during COVID-19. Grief, pain, mental trauma, psycho-social suffering, and the ethical dilemmas expressed by Madhulika signify the importance of ethics in community work during a pandemic. Madhulika’s work circumstances create a difficulty for her in deciding whether to continue community work. Banks et al. (2020a , p. 2), in their research with social workers during COVID-19, use the term ‘ethical challenges’ to refer to: ‘Situations that give you cause for concern, or when it is difficult to decide what is the right action to take’. Social workers (including those practising community development work) from across the globe experienced multiple and complex ethical challenges during the pandemic, with many finding the first part of 2020 an ‘ethical nightmare’ ( Truell and Banks, 2021 , p. 11). COVID-19 did not bring merely a health crisis, but also socio-economic and political crises that exacerbated the existing vulnerabilities, oppression, poverty, risk, exclusion, and anxiety among various communities ( Jha and Pankaj, 2021 , pp. 177–180).

Along with the health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic brought one of the biggest social, economic, and human crises across the globe ( Gururaja and Ranjitha, 2021 , p. 1). Whereas the pandemic affected everyone, in India, Dalits (the ex-untouchable caste group of India), women, and migrants were particularly impacted ( Sengupta and Jha, 2020 , 2021 ; Shome, 2021 , p. 320) because of their poor socio-economic conditions and social identities. India, the second-most populous country, with widespread poverty, densely populated habitat, poor social indicators, and very poor health facilities, experienced a large number of COVID-19 infections ( Chakrabarty et al. , 2021 , p. 796), which severally disrupted the everyday functioning of society. India also does not perform well in income distribution, health, education, hunger, nutrition, and gender equality indicators. The recent report of Oxfam India showed the existing social, economic, and health inequality and reported that ‘Reliance on private medical care risks the exclusion of socially marginalised groups from accessing healthcare, thereby exacerbating existing health inequalities’ ( Oxfam India, 2022 , p. 20). The market-driven health sector is a deliberate attempt of the state to influence the choice of health care access and create demand for the profitability of providers. Therefore, people with poor purchasing power, such as Dalits and tribal people, are excluded from health care. The deplorable health conditions of India have existed for many decades, and these were relentlessly exposed by the catastrophic pandemic during which the country’s health system collapsed, and innumerable deaths have been recorded. However, the pandemic did not merely paralyze the health system, but also exposed everyday economic misery, livelihood issues, poverty, hunger, malnutrition, social exclusion, domestic violence, and psycho-social issues of communities across India.

The pandemic accelerated the discrimination towards Dalits, the suffering of women, and the distressed condition of labour migrants ( Dixit and Chavan, 2020 , p. 13; Pankaj, 2020 , p. 2; Parmar, 2020 ; Sengupta and Jha, 2020 , p. 198). The COVID-19 outbreak regenerated caste prejudices through the practice of social distancing and quarantine. Separate seating and living arrangements in quarantine centres and denial of giving/receiving of food and water touched by the hands of Dalits ( Mondal and Karmakar, 2021 , p. 3) – the old practice of ‘untouchability’ – were still experienced in COVID-19. The social vulnerability of Dalits and structural biases in Indian society resulted in them experiencing livelihood insecurities, as the pandemic amplified their marginalization ( Naskar, 2020 , p. 47). Women’s subjugation and marginalization in the patriarchal male-dominated Indian society are historical phenomena, but COVID-19 has triggered their vulnerability to physical and mental abuse ( Doley and Padhan, 2021 , p. 474). This is exacerbated for Dalit women as they are subject to multi-layered oppression from the patriarchal Dalit community, non-Dalit women and Dalit men ( Patil, 2021 ). Dalit women are more prone to discrimination based on caste and gender, physical and sexual violence, and socio-economic marginalization ( Rahman, 2020 , pp. 282–283; Shewli, 2008 , p. 163).

Besides the precarity of Dalits and women, the abandonment of labourers by the state was made visible by migrant workers trekking hundreds of kilometres to escape the city lockdowns and reach home towns and villages ( Dandekar and Ghai, 2020 , p. 28; Datta-Ray, 2020 , p. 472). In such a severe humanitarian crisis, community development practitioners were at the forefront – providing relief material (food grains, medicine, etc.) and psycho-social support in the community to mitigate the immediate effects of the pandemic. Many community development practitioners had to navigate multiple ethical dilemmas in the process of community work during COVID-19. The increasing influence of social and economic vulnerabilities in society often brings various constraints to community-based professionals responding to human crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this article is an attempt to explore and examine the everyday ethical concerns and dilemmas of community development practitioners in providing relief and response to Dalits, women, and labour migrants in a pandemic.

Ethics refers to people’s treatment of each other and the ecosystem, which covers matters of rights, responsibility, and well-being ( Banks, 2015 , p. 782). Social work ethics, which would apply to community development workers in India, deal with discipline-specific professional ethics that focus on professional social workers’ ‘conduct, character, and responsibility’ (ibid). Such profession-based ethics shape and guide the behaviours of professionals. Banks (2019 ) stresses that community development ethics are concerned with ‘respecting and promoting rights and responsibilities, distribution of harms and benefits, and cultivation of virtues leading to human and ecological flourishing’ (p. 8). She argues that ethical issues are embedded in everyday practice in community work. Banks (2016) introduces the concept of ‘ethics work’ [everyday ethics], described as ‘the effort people put into seeing ethically salient aspects of situations, developing themselves as good practitioners, working out the right course of action and justifying who they are and what they have done’ ( Banks, 2016 , p. 35). We are using Banks’s (2015 ; 2016 ) concept of ‘ethics work’ to examine the ethical challenges faced by community development practitioners during the COVID-19 response. Banks (2016 , pp. 37–38) identified seven elements of ethics work, of which two are particularly relevant to this article:

Framing work – identifying and focusing on the ethically salient features of a situation; placing oneself and the situations encountered in political and social contexts (reflexivity and criticality); and

Emotion work – being caring, compassionate, empathic, managing emotions.

Whereas social and community development practitioners engage in ‘ethics work’ on a continuous basis, it is more consciously deployed when practitioners face ethical dilemmas, that is, situations in which practitioners have to make difficult choices, which have no easy solution and present a conflict of ‘rights, needs, and interest of different parties’ ( Banks, 2015 , p. 788). Drawing on narrative interviews, we highlight the uncertainty, chaos, limited resources, existing socio-economic vulnerabilities, and fear of personal security that brought numerous ethical dilemmas for community development practitioners in responding to the pandemic.

Empirical research was conducted with selected community development practitioners who engaged in response to the effect of the COVID-19 first and second waves. Fifteen narrative interviews were conducted with practitioners in five north-Indian states – Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Haryana. These states were selected because migration and poverty are prevalent ( Deshingkar, 2010 , pp. 3–4; Salve, 2009 , p. 8; Bhagat et al. , 2020, p. 6; Bhagat and Jones, 2013 , pp. 10–11; Bhagat, 2018 , p. 11; De-Haan, 2011 , pp. 389–380), and so too are issues of caste-based discrimination and exclusion ( Pankaj, 2016 , p. 203, Pankaj, 2019 , p. 142–143), which was even visible in community quarantine ( Agoramoorthy and Hsu, 2021 , p. 3).

According to Kartch (2017 , p. 1072), ‘narrative interviewing is a method of qualitative data collection whereby a story is generated through the interview’. This presented an initial challenge for participants in being able to frame their experiences as stories, and the much longer interviews also necessitated a smaller number of participants for the study ( Anderson and Kirkpatrick, 2016 ). At the same time, it has the advantages of being ‘flexible, less structured, and more [in-depth] conversational in format’ ( Field-Springer, 2017 , p. 800).

We conducted face-to-face narrative interview with participants of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana in June–July 2021, taking appropriate COVID-19 precautions. However, the strict guidelines and restrictions on travelling in August to September 2021 meant that participants of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh were interviewed by telephone. We used a ‘snowball’ sampling method to recruit the participants because of the limited numbers of participants and organizations working directly with communities during COVID-19. Many participants were reluctant to make an appointment time, citing time constraints and lack of permission from organizations, which was demoralizing and challenging for the research team.

However, having direct referrals from other participants increased the likelihood of participants responding. One of us was also engaged in direct intervention in the community with women’s self-help groups in Haryana, which provided an opportunity for direct observation of practice.

The narrative interviews were conducted through a series of open-ended questions, with discussion around themes relating to practitioners’ engagement in the community in response to COVID-19, such as issues, challenges (personal security and resources), and ethical concerns (professional code of conduct and principles). Thematic analysis was carried out, which was triangulated with literature, articles, books, policy papers, newspaper reports, policy practice documents, and survey reports to comprehensively analyse and substantiate the empirical evidence.

In this section, we offer examples of ethical challenges faced by community development workers, based on the interviews we conducted. Names of participants and organizations have been changed to maintain confidentiality.

Helplessness in the face of lack of resources

Vijay, a 39-year-old community worker, shared his experience of an ethical dilemma in an interview as follows:

During the second wave of COVID-19, we used to receive numerous calls from people for oxygen, medicine, hospital beds... Sometimes I had to accompany the poor patient to the hospital for admission, but because of lack of beds and oxygen, the hospital authority denied admission... unavailability of oxygen, beds, and paramedical staff made us helpless, and such situations were really traumatising because I had never felt such helplessness in my entire life.

The narrative of Vijay is not merely exposing the collapse of the community’s health system in India, but also the helplessness and traumatization of community workers. The narrative highlights the ethical challenges community workers had to experience in attempting to provide relief and support to the community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Professionally Vijay seeks to follow the ‘Ethical Principles’ of the National Association of Professional Social Workers in India (NAPSWI). Social Justice is one of the ethical principles of NAPSWI that entail that social workers have the responsibility to promote social justice – ‘challenging negative discrimination, recognizing diversity, distributing resources equitably, challenging unjust policies and practice, and working in solidarity’ (NAPSWI, 2015, p.13). The helplessness and scarcity of resources in Vijay’s narrative show his contradictory situation, as the deplorable health system restrains him from performing his duty.

Balancing personal and professional life

Similar to Vijay, Sunita, a 42-year-old community worker, shared a dilemma she faced while working in the community during the pandemic:

I was working in [organisation] of Madhya Pradesh, and since the first wave of COVID-19, I have been engaged in relief work for people affected by COVID-19. This entire period was utterly chaotic in our personal life. During the whole period of relief work, I did not go home and stayed in a rented house because my parents were old, and I was anxious and worried that I was contacting many people in community work … I used to get scolded by my mother as she was worried about my safety from the virus. But I convinced her that I am working with all the precautions ... In all these family issues, I make sure that my younger brother stays at home and takes care of my parents and other household activities. Without his support, I could not have performed my professional duty. It was a difficult time to balance my personal and professional life.

The above narrative of Sunita emphasizes community workers’ difficulties in terms of balancing personal and professional life. The working situation of Sunita highlights the ‘conflict of choice’. On the one hand, she has a professional commitment to the community, and, on the other hand, she has a personal responsibility to her family. While Sunita made a choice to stay away from home during the entire period of COVID-19 relief work, she was left with residual feelings of regret and guilt – which is characteristic of action in the face of an ethical dilemma ( Banks and von Köppen, 2021 , pp. 334–335). The narrative unveiled a community development practitioner’s experience of personal emotional trajectories, which resonate with Banks’s concept of e motion work – being caring, compassionate, empathic, managing emotions ( Banks, 2015 , p. 37). Sunita chose to prioritize her professional responsibility and manage the responsibility to her parents in a difficult time with the help of her younger brother, which suggests her commitment to her profession by controlling emotion and showing a sense of ‘empathy’ in the crisis ( Banks, 2018 , pp. 9–10).

Migrants facing stigma and discrimination

Another community worker, Arun, who is 37 years old, shared his experiences:

I was working as an outreach worker in BXZ organisation in Uttar Pradesh, where I was looking after migrant workers who were returning to their villages from different cities. When they arrived in villages, they were put under community quarantine, but when labour migrants were placed in quarantine centres, cooks or staff at quarantine centres avoided meeting or interacting with them, and labour migrants were forced to serve the food by themselves, which appeared very inhuman treatment. This happened because cooks and supporting staff treated labour migrants as a possible medium of spreading the virus in the community ... Community members also used to discriminate and treat labour migrants as untouchable. I tried to help the cook, other supporting staff of a particular quarantine centre, and community people, understand that they should not practise discrimination in the name of social distancing. But I failed because they were not ready to listen to me. At this place, I felt that I [was] incapable of maintaining the ethics and principles of social work, which affirm the importance of maintaining the dignity of an individual.

The narrative of Arun exemplifies the everyday challenges of community workers during the pandemic in their role of providing support in the community. The challenges were not merely to enhance institutional support to the community for safe and secure quarantine facilities, but also to maintain the ethics of the social work profession. The narrative explains that social distancing became another prominent tool for discrimination in the community. Social distancing norms do not merely create a risk for migrants of loss of social solidarity, but also exacerbate more profound structural inequalities ( Rahman, 2020 , p. 134). Though social distancing norms are intended to reduce the spread of the virus, they also serve to generate a sense of ‘individualism’ and ‘othering’ ( Bhardwaj, 2021 , p. 3), and this was particularly the case for the labour migrants. The sentiment uttered in the last sentence in the above quotation denotes a deep sense of ‘ethical regret’ by Arun at his failure to protect individuals against discriminatory practice in the community. Such discriminatory practice is not merely perceived on the basis of ‘social distancing’ or ‘migrants as the career of the virus’, but on the basis of caste as well.

During the first and second waves of COVID-19, there were various news and media reports about the persisting caste discrimination with Dalits and Dalit migrants in quarantine centres ( The Indian Express, 2020 ; The Times Now, 2020 ; Santha, 2020 ). The National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights – a civil social organization known for advocacy of Dalit rights – reported ninety-two cases of atrocities with Dalits between April 2020 and May 2020 ( NCDHR, 2020 ). The nature and pattern of atrocities included the practice of untouchability in quarantine centres, caste atrocities, physical abuse, violence, and assault against Dalit women. Home quarantine and community quarantine were introduced for public health reasons in COVID-19, but these have become new places for caste, untouchability, and social exclusion. The practice of untouchability and caste-based exclusion in these quarantine centres prevailed in multiple forms, including rejecting food cooked by Dalit cooks ( Mondal and Karmakar, 2021 , p. 3). Such prevalence of caste discrimination in quarantine centres was reported across the country during the pandemic, distracting community workers and professionals from their response to the catastrophic health effects of the pandemic.

Similarly, Vinay, a 47-year-old community worker, shared his observation of caste during his engagement in the community during the pandemic, commenting:

I worked with Dalits and marginalised communities during the pandemic to provide relief material. During the return of labour migrants, they were put in community quarantine, but I observed that the poor and labour class only used to stay in quarantine. Upper caste migrants used to remain in quarantine centres for a while and go to their homes because they did not want to share the space, food, and water with Dalits ... because of their caste arrogance, they used to do so ... Our fellow community workers also found that upper caste in quarantine centres refused to eat the food cooked by Dalit cook ... We were helpless to prevent such behaviours of the upper caste because of local dynamics and the dominance of the upper caste.

The above narrative illustrates the everyday caste discrimination against Dalits in pandemics. Upper caste and privileged migrants prefer to escape community quarantine because they do not want to share similar social space with Dalits and they want to avoid physical contact with them, which indeed invokes prejudice and the notion of ‘purity’ and ‘impurity’. The narrative strongly emphasizes that community quarantine centres emerged as new places to reproduce the practice of untouchability and caste discrimination whereby professionals working in a community were caught in difficult situations. Their professional commitment was at stake as they were helpless to prevent caste-based discrimination, exclusion, and prejudices in the community, which is against the very fundamental principles and values of the social work profession ( Amadasun, 2020 , p. 754). The ‘helplessness situation’ because of caste discrimination with quarantined Dalits and service provider Dalit cooks expressed in the narrative is reminiscent of the findings from Banks et al. (2020b ) that during the pandemic, there was evidence of ‘societal racism towards social workers and service users from minority ethnic backgrounds, which generated both anger and stress’ (p. 18). The failure of community development practitioners to prevent the discriminatory actions of the upper caste became a ‘medium of difficulty’ or ‘social hindrance to perform duty’ under the professional code of ethics and became challenging for practitioners’ professional integrity. The last point of the narrative illustrates the compulsion of the community workers to avoid further tension in the community. The community development practitioner in this narrative explains his ‘situational inability’ to prevent discrimination and violation of human rights.

Similar issues of situational inability of practitioners and circumstantial violation of the professional code of ethics during response of COVID-19 have been reported worldwide where social workers find it difficult to prevent injustice, discrimination, and violation of human rights with marginalized social groups, including ethnic and religious minorities. For instance, Amadasun (2020 , p. 754) mentioned that because of COVID-19, social work professional values were undermined and overturned in several cases, and as a profession, social work was hurt by the pandemic. Schalatek (2020) noted that ‘viruses don’t discriminate, societies and systems do’, which emphasized the existing discriminatory conduct of people against vulnerable and marginalized communities. However, despite numerous ethical dilemmas and challenges, social work professionals and service providers have pursued innovative means to negotiate and navigate through such dilemmas during pandemics (see Acim, 2021 ).

Negotiating dignity

Praveen is a 38-year-old community development practitioner who looks after the socio-economic, educational, and livelihood concerns of the population living in the slum of Patna, Bihar. His responsibility became challenging when COVID-19 started and the lockdown was imposed in the city. However, he did not merely reach out to those in need of counselling, material relief, and domestic violence intervention, but also navigated ethical challenges relating to maintaining people’s dignity. He narrated his experiences as follows:

There is around more than fifteen slums in Patna where our organisation was working and assisting people by providing relief material – food grains, biscuits, and everyday household essentials; and psycho-social support to the people in distress particularly those who had lost their livelihoods, or whose family members had died due to COVID-19. Our roles and responsibilities often changed during COVID-19 as per the needs of the community. During the lockdown, many had lost their employment. Thus, it was hard for them to maintain the household expenditure, which resulted in women’s verbal and physical abuse, and domestic violence became a rampant phenomenon. Due to the lockdown and changing government regulations for mobility, our movement was limited and restricted in the community; therefore, our response to the COVID-19 catastrophy often got interrupted. But amid chaos and uncertainty, we found our way to expand outreach activities in the community to mitigate the effect of COVID-19 in the community’s socio-economic issues. We used to interact with the children and engage them in various learning activities and sports to keep them busy and prevent the effect of COVID-19 on their psycho-social and cognitive development. As part of these activities, we assigned them to use the phone of their parents or household and make a video of their locality, which covered stories related to their studies, storytelling, and poem reciting. We selected the best video, distributed a prize, posted that video on YouTube and shared the link with them. Watching themselves on Youtube, the children were happy, and they developed an interest in studying.

Further, we encouraged them to report about their house, neighbourhood, and locality, which covered household issues, community issues, and issues of an individual nature such as domestic violence, lack of household essentials, scarcity of food, etc. In this way, we got to know which household had food scarcity, which household had domestic violence, where the sick person was, and the needs of each household in the slum. Many families were not comfortable to directly ask for food grains or any other essential, which we offered freely …. But through this way, we got to know the needs of the people and accordingly we used to offer medicine, food grains, and household essentials. Besides that, we also provided counselling to the family affected by domestic violence and food scarcity. Many families were going through shock and trauma because COVID-19 had greatly affected their socio-economic and psychological well-being. In this way, we almost covered all the slums of Patna and provided our services to reduce the effect of the pandemic in the community. With the help of the children’s video, we could create safety awareness and motivation to adopt appropriate COVID-19 behaviour in the community. Those videos also helped us to inform people about the everyday changing rules, regulations, and guidelines of government related to COVID-19 prevention and movement in the areas.

Praveen recounts the everyday issues and innovative methods to ensure professional engagement of community development practitioners in the community and the avoidance of ethical dilemmas. People’s hesitancy to seek assistance from community development practitioners because of their concern for their own dignity or fear of being judged were the most challenging issues for community development practitioners in the COVID-19 response. The resource scarcity and constraint imposed by the government in the form of lockdown and control measures that restricted mobility ( Sengupta and Jha, 2020 , p. 153) reduced the chance for community development practitioners and civil society members to respond effectively to humanitarian crises caused by the pandemic.

The narrative of Praveen disclosed the understanding and ethical conscience of community development practitioners, which signify their contribution to maintaining the dignity of the people they served, by recognizing ‘who they are and the situation they are in’ ( Schmidt et al. , 2020 , p. 952). The narrative helps us to explain community development practitioners’ sensitivity towards their clients and service receivers, which highlights how the social work code of ethics equipped professional community workers with ‘empathetic’ values and ethics. The idea of engaging children to shoot videos and provide reports of their neighbourhood accords with the Banks’s notion of ‘framing work’. This is one of the major components of ‘ethics work’, which entails ‘identifying and focusing on the ethically salient features of a situation; placing oneself and the situations encountered in political and social contexts (reflexivity and criticality)’ ( Banks, 2016 , p. 40). Innovation by community development practitioners (as described by Praveen) seems inspired by ‘reflexivity and criticality’ to navigate and negotiate the ethical concerns in the community development response to the crisis. The innovative ideas of community development practitioners not only prevented further damage to people, but also engaged children in learning and fun to help in their cognitive and psycho-social development.

Domestic violence was one of the most prevalent phenomena during COVID-19 across the world ( Cortis et al. , 2021 , pp. 1781–1782), including India ( Nadkarni et al. , 2020 , p. 2). Community development practitioners tried to intervene to prevent further escalation by providing psycho-social support and conducting counselling sessions with families. The problem with domestic violence is that most of the time, it is unreported ( Gracia, 2004 , p. 536). But as Praveen’s narrative suggests, innovative ideas helped community development practitioners stay informed about domestic violence and enabled them to provide timely intervention through provision of counsellors and other services. The narrative also highlights the importance of technology such as smartphones in response to social issues that arise due to COVID-19 ( David and Roberts, 2021 , pp. 5–6). In the final sentence of the narrative, there is reference to the role of the children’s video using a smartphone to create a video to disseminate information related to COVID-19 in the community. Therefore, it seems the innovative ideas of community development tend to be not merely tools for negotiating ethical challenges and dilemmas but also tools for creating ‘community awareness’.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected millions of people’s lives and has triggered the demand for humanitarian services, to which community development practitioners of India have responded. But in doing so, they have had to experience enormous pain, guilt, regret, and ethical challenges and dilemmas. Though such dilemmas could not prevent community development practitioners from offering their services to people, including Dalits, women, and labour migrants, they did cause substantial difficulties for practitioners to maintain their professional ethics. They continued to provide essential services to the communities. Ethical concerns and dilemmas are not merely challenging for community development workers, they also expose the professional unpreparedness for such humanitarian and well-being crises.

Nevertheless, community development practitioners rapidly invented and adopted innovative methods to negotiate and navigate the ethical concerns and dilemmas experienced in response to the COVID-19 catastrophe. The use of smartphones and engaging children in creative activities does not merely provide an approach to negotiate ethical dilemmas and provide service delivery in a more dignified manner, but also helps children in learning. Though community development practitioners of India responded to this unprecedented humanitarian crisis beyond their capacity, their immense efforts posed two challenges for the profession: the well-being of community development practitioners; and safeguarding ethical concerns in service delivery to Dalits, women, labour migrants, and other socially vulnerable groups. This needs to be addressed by national and global community development and social work associations on a priority basis to support community development practitioners and protect their professional integrity.

The authors wish to thank to the various participants who had shared their experiences of working with communities during COVID-19.

We did not receive any funding to conduct research for this article.

Ajeet Kumar Pankaj is assistant professor in Department of Social Work, Indira Gandhi National Tribal University, Regional Campus Manipur, India. His research interests cover caste, migration, exclusion, social policy, and community development. He has published several articles in national and international journals. He is also Co-project Investigator and Collaborated with two Universities (TISS, Mumbai and Kashmir University) in India for a joint research project entitled ‘Migrant Workers and Urbanization in Politically Sensitive Area: A Study in Kashmir & Manipur’ funded by ICSSR, New Delhi, India.

Shiv Kumar Yadav is a community development practitioner. He has been working in development sectors for more than six years. His work expertise is in rural livelihoods, women’s empowerment, and education.

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