The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have jointly warned that the world is dangerously close to the autonomous targeting of humans by machines, renewing an urgent appeal for international regulation of lethal autonomous weapon systems. The statement renews a 2023 call by the UN Secretary General and the ICRC president for specific bans and restrictions on the technology by this year.
Note:Lethal autonomous weapon systems are weapon systems that select targets and apply force without human intervention.
What is the concern, and how has it changed since 2023?
The warning has hardened, not softened: The two bodies stated their fundamental concerns remain unchanged from 2023 but that the underlying risks have intensified since then.
The alarm includes the technology’s own developers: The statement highlights that scientists and engineers involved in developing these weapon systems have themselves raised concerns about the direction the technology is taking.
No confirmed use yet, but the trajectory is the concern: Experts state there has been no confirmed use of fully autonomous weapons to directly target humans so far, and the warning is precautionary rather than a report of an actual deployment.
International Regulation
United Nations: The UN has repeatedly called for international rules governing autonomous weapons.
Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW): Discussions on LAWS have taken place under the CCW framework.
UN Secretary General and ICRC: Both have advocated prohibiting weapons that operate without meaningful human control and imposing strict restrictions on other autonomous weapons.
International Humanitarian Law (IHL): Existing principles such as distinction, proportionality and precaution remain central to assessing autonomous weapons.
India’s Position
India has participated in international discussions on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems under the CCW.
India has generally emphasised the importance of human control, international law and responsible development of emerging military technologies.
For India, the issue is particularly relevant as AI, drones, robotics and autonomous systems become increasingly important in modern warfare.
“[2025, GS2, 15 marks] “The reform process in the United Nations remains unresolved, because of the delicate imbalance of East and West and entanglement of the USA vs. Russo-Chinese alliance.” Examine and critically evaluate the East-West policy confrontations in this regard.”
[2025] Consider the following statements regarding Al Action Summit held in Grand Palais, Paris in February 2025: I. Co-chaired with India, the event builds on the advances made at the Bletchley Park Summit held in 2023 and the Seoul Summit held in 2024. II. Along with other countries, US and UK also signed the declaration on inclusive and sustainable AI. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Genome wide association studies between 2005 and 2025 drew more than 86 per cent of their participants from European ancestry populations, while South Asians accounted for less than 1 per cent. That skew is now being carried into the reference atlases used to train artificial intelligence models in medicine, which converts a historical sampling gap into a bias that reproduces itself at clinical scale across South Asia and the wider low and middle income world.
What is an integrated biobank?
Definition: An integrated biobank is a large repository that stores biological samples from consenting participants alongside linked data about them, and makes both available to researchers.
What it integrates: It combines participants’ genomic information with electronic health records, environmental exposures and lifestyle data, so that genetic variation can be read against real health outcomes.
What is a genome wide association study?
Definition: A genome wide association study (GWAS) scans the genomes of many individuals to find genetic variants that occur more often in people with a particular disease than in people without it.
What it produces: It yields a list of variants statistically associated with a trait or disease, which is the raw material for downstream risk prediction tools.
What is a polygenic risk score?
Definition: A polygenic risk score combines the effects of many genetic variants associated with a disease to estimate a person’s overall genetic risk for it.
Why ancestry matters to it: The score’s weights are derived from the population it was built in, so applying it to a population with a different variant frequency structure changes its accuracy.
What is a single cell atlas?
Definition: A single cell atlas is a reference map that catalogues the gene activity of individual cells across tissues and organs, rather than of a tissue sample as a whole.
What is a low and middle income country?
Definition: Low and middle income countries are the economies classified by the World Bank below the high income threshold on gross national income per capita, a grouping used in global health to identify where disease burden and research funding diverge.
Why the category is used here: The under representation problem is stated at the level of this group, with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as instances inside it rather than as separate cases.
What are potential years of life lost?
Definition: Potential years of life lost is a measure of premature mortality that counts the years a person would have lived had they reached a reference life expectancy.
What it captures that a death count does not: It weights a death at a young age more heavily than a death in old age, which is why it shifts burden sharply towards countries with high early mortality.
What is G6PD deficiency?
Definition: Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency is an inherited enzyme disorder that can cause a form of anaemia when red blood cells break down under oxidative stress from certain drugs, infections or foods.
What is metabolic syndrome?
Definition: Metabolic syndrome is a clustering of obesity, raised blood sugar, abnormal cholesterol and high blood pressure that together raise the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
How large is the ancestry gap in global genomic databases?
The genome wide association study record: The GWAS Catalogue is maintained by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). It records that more than 86 per cent of participants in these studies between 2005 and 2025 were of European ancestry.
The South Asian share: South Asians accounted for less than 1 per cent of participants over that same twenty year period.
The gap at the country income level: Over 90 per cent of the world’s potential years of life lost occurred in low and middle income countries. About 10 per cent of global health research funding addressed the health needs of those countries.
The share of humanity excluded: More than 20 per cent of the world is being neglected in multi modal data integration, and the exclusion denies those populations the opportunity to attain the maximal possible health.
The pattern repeats in newer tools: A study published in Cell Genomics reviewed more than 13,500 samples across three major single cell resources and found a striking and pervasive European over representation alongside under representation of Asian and Latino individuals.
The three resources reviewed: The study covered the Human Cell Atlas, the Human Tumour Atlas Network and the PsychAD Consortium.
South Asians absent from the biobanks too: South Asians remain largely absent from integrated biobanks such as the U.K. Biobank, which are the repositories that transformed biomedical research.
Why does a European skewed dataset produce worse clinical tools for South Asians?
The burden runs the other way: South Asians face higher rates of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and asthma than people of European ancestry, so the tools built on European heavy data are least accurate for the population that needs them most.
The diabetes case: More than one in ten adults globally now live with diabetes, the risk is higher for people of South Asian ancestry and it appears earlier than in many other populations.
India’s projected burden: The number of people with diabetes in India alone is projected to reach 125 million by 2045.
Risk scores lose accuracy across ancestry: A 2023 study found that polygenic risk scores for multiple sclerosis were less accurate when applied to South Asian populations.
Functional predictions are untested: Most predictions about how variants affect gene expression or cell function are inferred from European datasets, and it is not known which of those predictions hold in South Asians.
The consequence for drug discovery: This limits the ability to understand disease mechanisms and to identify drug targets relevant to South Asian populations.
Thresholds themselves need recalibration: Diagnostic thresholds, risk scores and prediction models developed predominantly from European populations require validation and, where necessary, recalibration using South Asian data.
Why can South Asia not be treated as a single genetic block?
One of the most diverse populations on earth: South Asia constitutes one of the most diverse human populations in the world, shaped by thousands of years of migration, cultural diversity, endogamy and consanguineous marriages.
Lumping erases the differences: Much existing research groups South Asians, Southeast Asians, West Asians and other Asian populations together, obscuring important differences between them.
Variation within the region: G6PD deficiency varies considerably across South Asia, with some ethnic groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan carrying the trait at much higher rates than others.
Variation within a single population: A study from Sri Lanka found that cardiometabolic risk did not fit into a single metabolic syndrome profile, and within the same population men and women showed distinct patterns of obesity, blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure.
The scale of Indian variation: The GenomeIndia Project has already identified more than 40 million genetic variants unique to the Indian population.
Who must be sampled: India cannot realistically be treated as one genetic block, and inclusion must extend to distinct endogamous and tribal groups rather than a few urban cohorts, since many of the harmful variants found there are not seen anywhere else.
Why is the data missing in the first place?
Infrastructure followed the money: Research funding, institutions, registries, biobanks and large population cohorts have historically been built and sustained where the money already was.
What that left behind: Low and middle income countries were left with inadequate laboratory infrastructure, inadequate biobanking facilities and too few trained personnel to run comparable studies at scale.
The imbalance is not only financial: It shapes whose problems are studied, whose questions are prioritised and whose evidence informs health policy and practice.
Ancestry classification practice: Where non European participants are recruited, they are frequently pooled into broad continental categories, which means the data collected does not resolve the differences it was collected to capture.
Why is genomic research hard for South Asian countries to prioritise?
Competing immediate needs: For most South Asian countries genomic research is difficult to prioritise against more immediate and pressing public health demands.
Infectious disease: Communicable disease control absorbs public health budgets and personnel that a genomics programme would otherwise draw on.
Maternal and child health: Maternal and child health programmes command prior claim because their outcomes are measurable within a single planning cycle.
Non communicable diseases: Treatment and screening for non communicable diseases compete for the same budget line that genomic infrastructure would need.
The mismatch in horizons: Genomic infrastructure returns value over a decade or more, while the health systems being asked to fund it are assessed on annual outcome indicators.
Why deferring is costly: Every year the region defers, the reference atlases and the models trained on them are built further without it, which raises the cost of correction later.
What genomic cohorts already exist in South Asia and why do they not add up?
GenomeIndia: India’s national population reference cohort.
Phenome India: An Indian longitudinal cohort linking health, lifestyle and clinical measurements across participants.
Longevity India: An Indian cohort focused on ageing and the biological determinants of long life.
Sri Lankan Twin Registry Biobank: A Sri Lankan registry and biobank built around twin pairs, which permits separation of genetic and environmental effects.
Pakistan Genome Resource: A Pakistani national genomic resource built on population sampling.
Why they do not combine: These independent cohorts and biobanks are mostly focused on individual diseases or specific populations, and often use different systems for collecting and storing data, which makes it difficult to bring them together for large genetic studies.
The Indian case specifically: India has several sizeable cohorts, but no harmonised system yet exists that lets researchers within and across borders work across them easily.
What does the U.K. Biobank model demonstrate that South Asian cohorts currently cannot?
United Kingdom, the integrated design: The U.K. Biobank links each participant’s genomic information to electronic health records, environmental exposure data and lifestyle data in a single resource, which is the feature that allows genotype to be read against outcome.
What that integration produced: Repositories of this design accelerated drug development, informed clinical guidelines and shaped public health policy across multiple countries, not only in the country that built them.
The contrast with South Asia: South Asian cohorts are disease specific or population specific and are stored on divergent systems, so no equivalent linkage across genomics, clinical records and exposure exists in the region.
The limit of this comparison: The U.K. Biobank is the single substantive institutional model in the evidence here, so it establishes what an integrated design makes possible, not a ranked set of alternative national models to choose between.
What does the regional proposal recommend?
The authorship: A perspective in the Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia, written by scientists across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, sets out the regional response.
The core warning: The region risks being excluded from the genomic revolution unless it builds the infrastructure itself, rather than waiting for inclusion in datasets built elsewhere.
Regional collaboration between existing assets: The proposal is to build greater collaboration between existing biobanks and cohorts, rather than to construct a new central repository from scratch.
Interoperability: The aim is a system in which existing datasets can speak to each other, which is the specific technical gap that keeps Indian cohorts from being analysed together.
Inclusion of overlooked populations: Populations that have historically been overlooked, including distinct endogamous and tribal groups, are to be brought into the sampling frame.
Retained control over data use: South Asian researchers and institutions are to retain a meaningful role in how their data are used.
Benefit sharing: The researchers generating the data are to share in the scientific benefits, which addresses the extraction pattern rather than only the data gap.
Why does the gap compound rather than stay constant?
The atlases became reference maps: Single cell atlases are now the reference maps for biology and medicine, so an error in the map propagates into everything read against it.
They are now training data: Those same atlases are increasingly used to train the artificial intelligence models that will shape future research and care.
Scale changes the nature of the problem: If the underlying data continues to be skewed, the artificial intelligence models and clinical tools built on top of it will reproduce and repeat those biases at a much larger scale.
From a research gap to a clinical one: A skewed research dataset produced inaccurate studies, a skewed training dataset produces inaccurate bedside tools deployed on populations that were never in the data.
The window is closing but not shut: It is late for the region to build its own infrastructure, and it is still not too late.
Challenges to building a South Asian genomic data infrastructure
Non interoperable data standards: Existing cohorts use different collection, phenotyping and storage systems, so pooling requires retrospective harmonisation that the original consent may not permit. Eg. India’s several sizeable cohorts have no harmonised system that lets researchers work across them.
Consent and benefit sharing for community level data: Genomic data from an endogamous or tribal group carries group level implications that individual consent does not cover. Eg. The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 governs access and benefit sharing for biological resources, and its application to human genomic data drawn from identified communities is unsettled.
Sustained financing beyond donor cycles: Climate and health workforce experience across the region shows that capacity built on project funding disappears when the project ends. Eg. Genomic surveillance capacity expanded rapidly during the pandemic and contracted once the emergency funding lapsed.
Cross border data transfer rules: Regional pooling requires moving identifiable health data across national jurisdictions with differing data protection regimes. Eg. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 permits the Central Government to restrict transfer of personal data to notified countries.
Shortage of trained personnel: Bioinformatics, genetic counselling and biobank management skills are scarce relative to the sequencing capacity being installed. Eg. Genetic counsellors in India number in the low hundreds against a population carrying a large inherited disease burden.
Risk of genetic discrimination: Widening genomic data collection without a statutory bar exposes participants to insurance and employment consequences. Eg. The Delhi High Court in United India Insurance vs Jai Parkash Tayal, 2018 held the exclusion of genetic disorders from health insurance cover unconstitutional, in the absence of any general anti discrimination statute.
Sampling reaching only urban cohorts: Recruitment gravitates to tertiary hospitals and metropolitan volunteers, reproducing inside India the same skew the region objects to globally. Eg. Inclusion of distinct endogamous and tribal groups has been identified as the specific gap in Indian sampling, not the overall sample size.
Conclusion
The under representation of South Asians in global genomic databases is no longer only an equity problem in research, it is becoming an engineering problem in clinical artificial intelligence. With more than 86 per cent of genome wide association study participants of European ancestry and South Asians below 1 per cent, the reference atlases now being used as training data carry that skew forward at scale. The response has shifted from asking for inclusion in datasets built elsewhere to building interoperable regional infrastructure that keeps control and benefit with the researchers generating the data. What remains unresolved is financing, since the region must fund a decade long investment against infectious disease, maternal and child health and non communicable disease needs that compete for the same budget.
“[2026] Which of the following statements with regard to Genome India Project is/are correct?
1. It is a part of the Human Genome Project.
2. The project is funded by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India.
3. Its primary aim is to build a catalogue of genetic diversity of the Indian population.
Palestine has backed India’s bid for a non-permanent UN Security Council seat for 2028-29. The support came during India’s renewed diplomatic engagement with Palestine, including plans for a new India-funded hospital in the West Bank and medical assistance for Gaza.
Non-Permanent Seat of the UNSC
Composition: UNSC has 15 members: 5 permanent members with veto power and 10 non-permanent members.
Election: Elected by the UN General Assembly for a 2-year term with a two-thirds majority.
Distribution: Seats follow equitable geographical representation; India contests from the Asia-Pacific Group.
Rotation: 5 non-permanent seats are elected every year. A retiring member cannot be immediately re-elected.
Significance of Palestine’s Support for India
Palestine supports India’s 2028-29 candidature and has also expressed support for India having a permanent UNSC seat.
It views India’s economic and political weight as important for advancing Palestinian interests.
Palestine expects India to use its relations with Israel to facilitate the peace process.
The endorsement strengthens India’s image as a country capable of engaging both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
India’s Development Assistance to Palestine
West Bank: India is finalising an India-funded hospital.
Vocational training: Support for a vocational training centre.
Gaza: Discussions on artificial limbs for amputees.
Medical equipment: Talks on supplying dialysis machines and other equipment, potentially through Jordan.
India’s Position on Palestine
India has consistently supported:
A negotiated two-state solution.
An independent Palestine coexisting peacefully with Israel.
Development and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people.
The recent visit to Ramallah marked India’s first high-level visit to the affected region since the October 2023 conflict.
India’s De-hyphenated Israel-Palestine Policy
India follows a de-hyphenated approach, treating relations with Israel and Palestine independently.
Full diplomatic relations with Israel were established in 1992.
India has deepened strategic cooperation with Israel while continuing to support Palestinian statehood.
India has continued supporting Palestinian-related resolutions at the UN.
This balancing gives India diplomatic credibility and leverage with both sides.
“[2009] The Security Council of UN consists of 5 permanent members, and the remaining 10 members are elected by the General Assembly for a term of
Question (2025, GS2): “What are the challenges before the Indian economy when the world is moving away from free trade and multilateralism to protectionism and bilateralism? How can these challenges be met? Linkage: This is the most direct parallel. The US tariffs on China and the subsequent report accusing India of “enabling” evasion are prime examples of the move toward protectionism and the resulting challenges for India’s trade policy.
Mentor Comment
A recent White House report naming around 40 countries places India among the top enablers of China’s evasion of United States tariffs. The charge lands at the moment when the composition of India’s imports from China is shifting from finished products to intermediate goods, which points to genuine domestic assembly rather than cosmetic relabelling. India’s record of granting tariff concessions ahead of negotiations is what makes the accusation consequential.
What is the tariff evasion India is accused of enabling?
The alleged route: The accusation is that India and the other named countries import Chinese goods, make minor modifications to them, and re-export them to the United States.
The gain being alleged: Goods routed this way enter the United States at lower tariffs than Chinese origin goods would have faced.
Why origin matters: A minor modification does not change the country of origin of a good, so the practice is treated as circumvention rather than manufacturing.
Status of the charge: The United States has not yet announced punitive action on the basis of this assessment.
What are intermediate goods?
Definition:Intermediate goods are inputs, parts and components bought by a producer and used up in making a finished good, rather than sold directly to the final consumer.
What their share signals: A rising share of intermediate goods in imports indicates that the assembly and manufacturing stages are happening domestically, since the buyer is importing parts and not products.
What is the e-commerce inventory model?
Definition: Under the inventory model, an online retail platform owns the stock it sells and sells it directly to consumers, in contrast to the marketplace model where the platform only connects third party sellers to buyers.
The Indian restriction: Foreign direct investment in the inventory based model of e-commerce was long barred in India, and that restriction was diluted recently.
What does the White House report allege, and how wide is its net?
Scale of the exercise: The report names around 40 countries in all, so the finding is a global mapping of tariff circumvention rather than a charge framed against India alone.
India’s placement: India is placed among the top enablers of Chinese evasion of United States tariffs within that list.
The economic stake: The accusation has the potential to be the most harmful to the Indian economy among the recent charges levelled, because it targets export access rather than a single product line.
Escalation risk: Punitive action based on the assessment is a conceivable next step, and the absence of action so far is not an assurance.
Why does the changing composition of India’s imports from China cut against the accusation?
The dependence is not disputed: Chinese imports form a significant pillar of Indian manufacturing, and the government itself has admitted they are an important part of the Make in India story.
The composition has shifted: India is moving away from importing finished products, making cosmetic changes and selling them.
What is rising instead: The share of intermediate goods in Indian imports from China has been steadily rising.
What that means in practice: India is doing much of its own assembly and manufacturing in several sectors, relying on China and other countries only for the parts required.
Direction of travel: This shift is a step towards full scale manufacturing in India, which is the opposite of the relabelling the report describes.
What does India’s record of tariff concessions to the United States show?
High end motorcycles, first cut: After criticism of India’s tariffs during the first term of the United States President, India cut these tariffs to 50 percent in 2018 from the earlier band of 60 percent to 75 percent.
High end motorcycles, second cut: India cut the same tariff further to 40 percent in February 2025, before trade deal talks had even started.
Shrimp feed: Import duties on shrimp feed and its components were slashed in the February 2024 Budget, a key ask of the United States.
Poultry: Tariffs on frozen duck and turkey were reduced in the same way.
E-commerce: Allowing foreign direct investment in the inventory model of e-commerce met a demand that a large American platform had lobbied for over a decade, and diluted a long held Indian position.
How did the punitive tariffs reshape India’s oil sourcing?
The instrument:Punitive United States tariffs of 50 percent were imposed on India, and the pressure pushed India to diversify away from Russian oil.
The measured shift:Russia’s share in India’s oil imports fell below 20 percent in January 2026, from nearly double that level when the tariffs were imposed six months earlier.
What was set aside: The shift happened despite India’s strident claims of energy sovereignty and despite the discount it was receiving on Russian crude.
A prior instance: The same pattern had played out with Venezuelan oil in 2019.
The partial reversal: The West Asia crisis and a temporary United States reprieve are what turned India back towards Russian oil, not a change in the underlying pressure.
Why does each concession make the next demand more likely?
The concessions were rational in isolation: The United States can wield immense pressure, which makes each individual concession understandable on its own terms.
The cumulative effect runs the other way: That record of accommodation has emboldened the United States to make increasing demands.
Pre-emptive timing compounds it: Cutting motorcycle tariffs before trade talks had started surrendered a bargaining chip without obtaining anything in exchange.
The present charge is the test: A charge aimed at India’s manufacturing imports would, if conceded, hit the input base of Indian industry rather than a single tariff line.
The required break: India needs to start pushing back, since resisting on this issue is what stops the sequence of concessions from continuing.
Challenges to India resisting United States trade pressure
Export market concentration: The United States is India’s largest single export destination, so retaliation carries asymmetric cost. e.g. gems and jewellery and textile exporters in Surat and Tiruppur face immediate order cancellations when tariffs move.
Input dependence on China: Resisting the transshipment charge while deepening reliance on Chinese parts is politically difficult. e.g. solar cell and module assembly in India still draws heavily on imported Chinese cells and wafers.
Weak rules of origin enforcement: Establishing that value addition is genuine requires documentation Indian exporters often cannot produce. e.g. the Customs (Administration of Rules of Origin under Trade Agreements) Rules, 2020 were introduced precisely because origin claims under trade agreements were being made without supporting cost data.
Energy exposure: Oil sourcing decisions can be reversed by sanctions pressure faster than supply contracts can be rewritten. e.g. Russia’s share of India’s oil imports fell below 20 percent by January 2026 within six months of the punitive tariffs.
Limited retaliation capacity: India’s counter tariff options are small relative to the size of the American market. e.g. India’s retaliatory duties on American apples and almonds were eventually withdrawn as part of a dispute settlement.
Multilateral fallback weakened: The dispute settlement route is unavailable while the appellate mechanism remains non functional. e.g. the World Trade Organization Appellate Body has been without a quorum since December 2019.
Investment signalling: A public trade confrontation can deter the foreign investment India is simultaneously courting for manufacturing. e.g. electronics assembly investment decisions track tariff certainty as closely as they track incentive outlays.
Conclusion
The transshipment charge misreads a real change in India’s trade with China, since the rising share of intermediate goods shows domestic assembly rather than cosmetic modification of finished Chinese products. The deeper problem is India’s record of conceding on motorcycles, shrimp feed, poultry, e-commerce and oil sourcing ahead of or under pressure, which has invited larger demands each time. Conceding on manufacturing inputs would strike at the base of domestic production itself, and that is where the pattern has to stop.
Foundational Context: India United States Trade
Scale of the relationship: The United States is India’s largest trading partner in goods and its single largest export destination, and India has run a goods trade surplus with it for many years.
Composition: India’s exports are concentrated in engineering goods, gems and jewellery, pharmaceuticals, textiles and petroleum products, while imports are led by crude oil, aircraft, machinery and defence equipment.
Services and remittances: The relationship extends beyond goods into information technology services exports and the largest single source of inward remittances to India.
Preference withdrawal: India was removed from the United States Generalised System of Preferences in 2019, ending duty free access for a set of Indian exports.
Structural asymmetry: India’s dependence on the American market for demand is larger than the American economy’s dependence on Indian supply, which sets the bargaining balance.
Laws and Rules Governing India’s Trade Policy and Origin Rules
Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992: Empowers the Central government to make provisions for the development and regulation of foreign trade and to formulate the Foreign Trade Policy.
Directorate General of Foreign Trade: Created under this Act as the authority that issues import and export authorisations and notifies policy changes.
Customs Act, 1962: Provides the framework for levy and collection of customs duty, valuation, and confiscation for misdeclaration of goods.
Customs Tariff Act, 1975: Carries the tariff schedules and the enabling provisions for anti dumping, countervailing and safeguard duties.
Customs (Administration of Rules of Origin under Trade Agreements) Rules, 2020: Place the burden on the importer to hold and produce origin and value addition information when claiming preferential duty under a trade agreement.
Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999: Governs the foreign direct investment regime, including the conditions applicable to e-commerce entities.
Back2Basics: Make in India
Launched:25 September 2014, as a national programme to raise the share of manufacturing in output and employment.
Nodal agency: The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
Original coverage:25 sectors spanning automobiles, electronics, defence manufacturing, textiles, pharmaceuticals and renewable energy.
Stated objective: Raising the manufacturing share of Gross Domestic Product to 25 percent and creating large scale industrial employment.
Four pillars:New processes through ease of doing business, new infrastructure through industrial corridors, new sectors opened to foreign direct investment, and a new mindset treating government as a facilitator.
Second phase:Make in India 2.0 extended the programme across 27 sectors, covering both manufacturing and services.
Government Initiatives
Production Linked Incentive schemes: Outlay linked incentives on incremental sales across sectors including electronics, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and solar modules, targeted at domestic and export oriented manufacturers.
Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP): Refunds embedded central, State and local duties that are not otherwise rebated, available to exporters across most tariff lines.
Districts as Export Hubs: Identifies a product with export potential in each district and builds an institutional mechanism to support producers there.
Trade Infrastructure for Export Scheme (TIES): Funds export linked infrastructure such as testing laboratories, cold chains and border haats through State agencies.
Interest Equalisation Scheme: Provides a subvention on pre and post shipment rupee export credit, targeted at labour intensive sectors and micro, small and medium enterprises.
PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan: A multimodal connectivity plan intended to reduce logistics cost, which is a direct determinant of export competitiveness.
Key Facts about India’s Trade Architecture
Foreign Trade Policy 2023: Notified without a fixed end date, replacing the earlier five year policy cycle.
World Trade Organization: India is a founding member from 1 January 1995 and was earlier a contracting party to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade from 1948.
Appellate Body paralysis: The World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body has been unable to hear appeals since December 2019 for want of quorum.
Generalised System of Preferences: India’s beneficiary status under the United States programme was withdrawn in 2019.
Rules of origin: Preferential origin under India’s trade agreements is normally established through a combination of change in tariff heading and a minimum domestic value addition requirement.
Challenges in India’s External Trade
Narrow export basket: A few sectors carry a disproportionate share of export earnings. e.g. petroleum products, gems and jewellery and pharmaceuticals together account for a large share of merchandise exports.
High logistics cost: Delivered cost erodes tariff advantages won at the negotiating table. e.g. turnaround time at Indian ports remains higher than at Singapore or Colombo transshipment hubs.
Non tariff barriers abroad: Standards and certification requirements block market access even at zero duty. e.g. European Union restrictions on Indian shrimp and basmati consignments over residue limits.
Trade deficit with China: Manufacturing growth deepens the input dependence that the deficit reflects. e.g. active pharmaceutical ingredient imports from China underpin India’s own formulation exports.
Currency and commodity exposure: Import bills move with global oil and gold prices regardless of export performance. e.g. gold imports of $71.98 billion in 2025-26 widened the current account pressure.
Weak participation in global value chains: India remains outside the large regional production networks that set input sourcing rules. e.g. India stayed out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in 2019.
Way Forward
Document value addition: Build a verifiable, firm level record of domestic value addition in export sectors so that transshipment allegations can be answered with data rather than assertion.
Negotiate rather than pre-empt: Hold tariff concessions until a reciprocal commitment is on the table, since unilateral cuts before talks forfeit bargaining value.
Deepen component manufacturing: Extend incentives from final assembly to components and sub assemblies so that the intermediate goods share shifts from imports to domestic supply.
Diversify export destinations: Use the concluded trade agreements to shift a measurable share of exports away from a single dominant market.
Strengthen origin administration: Equip customs with certification and audit capacity under the origin rules so that genuine Indian manufacturing is distinguishable from routing.
Secure energy optionality: Maintain diversified term contracts for crude so that sourcing decisions are not dictated by tariff threats.
“[2025, GS3, 10 marks] What are the challenges before the Indian economy when the world is moving away from free trade and multilateralism to protectionism and bilateralism? How can these challenges be met?”
A draft United States letter warns the 35 signatories of its artificial intelligence (AI) Opportunity Statement that signing up to Beijing’s competing framework will exclude them from the American led Pax Silica coalition. The demand converts a supply chain initiative into a test of exclusive alignment. Kazakhstan, a potential source of critical minerals that has joined both coalitions, is the immediate trigger.
What is the Pax Silica initiative?
About:Pax Silica was launched by Washington last year to secure supply chains for AI models, semiconductors and critical minerals.
Purpose: It was built for the technology rivalry with Beijing, treating minerals and chips as the inputs that decide who builds the most capable AI.
Membership:About two dozen countries have joined, including close allies Japan, Australia and South Korea.
Legal character: The framework is not binding, so membership carries no treaty obligation.
The new condition: Members that also join Beijing’s rival body face exclusion from the coalition.
What is the AI Opportunity Statement?
About: A United States statement signed in June by 35 countries that wish to align AI cooperation with Washington.
Coverage: Its signatories include members of the Pax Silica framework and other countries outside it, and the draft warning letter is addressed to this full list.
What is the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization?
About: A rival body launched in July by the Chinese President as a challenge to United States influence over the AI sector.
Its offer: It promotes China’s open weight technology, positioning access to models rather than access to chips as the basis of membership.
What are open weight AI models?
About: Models whose trained parameters are published for download, allowing anyone to run and adapt them on their own hardware.
Why it matters strategically: Adoption does not require a continuing commercial relationship with the developer, so influence spreads without any agreement being signed.
What does the draft letter actually demand?
A binary choice: Dozens of countries are to be told they must pick sides in the AI race with China.
The penalty: Signing Beijing’s competing framework means exclusion from the United States led coalition.
The stated objective: Washington hopes to starve China of resources in the race to build the most sophisticated AI.
Why that matters: The most capable models are treated as usable for military or economic dominance, which is what makes inputs a security question.
The evidentiary basis: The warning rests on an internal draft and a United States official, not on a published policy.
Why do critical minerals sit at the centre of the AI race?
Minerals precede chips: Semiconductors, servers and power systems depend on rare earths, gallium, germanium and graphite before any model can be trained.
Refining, not mining, is the chokepoint: China dominates the midstream separation and refining stages even for ore mined elsewhere.
Export controls as leverage: Beijing has used licensing of gallium, germanium, graphite and rare earth magnets as a direct policy instrument.
Why Kazakhstan matters: It is a key potential source of critical minerals, which is why its dual membership set off alarm in Washington.
The self limiting problem: Excluding a supplier country does not create refining capacity anywhere else.
What do the individual signatories’ positions show about the cost of forcing a choice?
Kazakhstan, the hedger: It is the only country so far known to have joined both initiatives, using its mineral endowment to sell access to both blocs rather than choose.
Japan, the equipment supplier: A Pax Silica member whose firms control critical semiconductor manufacturing equipment, photoresists and wafer materials that no bloc can replace quickly.
South Korea, the memory chip producer: A Pax Silica member whose memory chip makers run large fabrication capacity inside China, so exclusivity carries a direct commercial cost.
Australia, the mining leg: A Pax Silica member with rare earth deposits and a dedicated critical minerals financing facility, but with separation capacity that has historically depended on offshore processing.
China, the rival architecture: Beijing counters chip and minerals leverage with the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization and freely downloadable models.
United States, the coalition builder: Washington combines export controls on advanced chips with Pax Silica membership, and now with the threat of exclusion.
Why does the exclusivity demand cut against the United States’ own supply goal?
Suppliers gain from hedging: A mineral rich state earns more by selling access to both coalitions than by picking one.
A framework with no enforcement:Pax Silica is not binding, so exclusion is the only available lever and it is a blunt one.
Open weight models cannot be fenced: Chinese models spread by download, so denying a country coalition membership does not deny it Chinese technology.
Refining dependence persists: The coalition can exclude a supplier and still find that separation and processing run through China.
Retaliation risk: Beijing can curtail exports of critical minerals essential to advanced technology production while Western supply chains are still being built.
Where does India stand in the AI and critical minerals contest?
Minerals Security Partnership: India joined the Minerals Security Partnership in June 2023, a United States convened grouping to catalyse investment in critical mineral supply chains.
National Critical Mineral Mission: Approved in January 2025 with an outlay of about 16,300 crore rupees, it targets exploration, recovery from tailings and overseas asset acquisition.
IndiaAI Mission: Approved in March 2024 with about 10,371 crore rupees, covering compute capacity, datasets, foundation model support and safe AI.
Summit diplomacy: India chaired the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence and hosted its summit in New Delhi in December 2023, and was named the next AI summit host after the Paris AI Action Summit of February 2025.
The strategic autonomy problem: India sits in United States aligned mineral platforms and in BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation alongside China, so an exclusivity demand of the Pax Silica kind directly conflicts with its standing position.
Challenges to Pax Silica
No enforcement mechanism: A framework that is not binding cannot police dual membership. e.g. Kazakhstan has joined both Pax Silica and the Chinese body without penalty so far.
Substitution by the rival supplier: Excluded states can buy the same inputs and models from Beijing. e.g. China’s export licensing of rare earth magnets from April 2025 halted assembly lines at European car plants, demonstrating who controls the flow.
Cost falls on allies first: Export control regimes hit allied firms’ revenues before they hit the target. e.g. Dutch lithography equipment makers lost a large share of their China sales after successive export restrictions.
Midstream capacity cannot be built quickly: Mining new deposits does not solve separation and refining. e.g. Australian rare earth concentrate was long shipped to Malaysia for separation rather than processed at home.
Price volatility deters new investment: Mineral projects need long horizons that commodity cycles destroy. e.g. lithium prices fell sharply from their 2022 peak, stalling announced projects worldwide.
Open weight diffusion defeats membership rules: Model access spreads independently of any coalition. e.g. a Chinese open weight reasoning model released in January 2025 was downloaded and self hosted worldwide within weeks.
Third country resistance to bloc politics: Middle powers resist being made to choose. e.g. several Global South states hold membership of both Western and Chinese digital and minerals platforms simultaneously.
Conclusion
The AI contest has moved from controlling exports of chips to controlling membership of coalitions, and the United States is testing whether exclusivity can be enforced on countries that hold the minerals. The instrument is weak, since Pax Silica binds no one, open weight models spread by download, and refining capacity stays with China regardless of who is excluded. Kazakhstan’s dual membership is the first demonstration that suppliers will hedge. For India, an exclusivity demand of this type collides directly with a foreign policy built on membership of competing platforms.
“[2025] Consider the following statements: I. India has joined the Minerals Security Partnership as a member. II. India is a resource-rich country in all the 30 critical minerals that it has identified. III. The Parliament in 2023 has amended the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 empowering the Central Government to exclusively auction mining lease and composite license for certain critical minerals. Which of the statements given above are correct? (a) I and II only (b) II and III only (c) I and III only (d) I, II and III
A Ukrainian drone strike on 11 August destroyed two major grain export terminals at Russia’s Novorossiysk port, removing 15.6 million tonnes (mt) of annual export capacity. This opens a second global trade chokepoint alongside the Strait of Hormuz, shifting the food security crisis from a production problem to a shipping/transit blockade.
Key Geography & Infrastructure
Black Sea & Sea of Azov Grain Corridor: Primary maritime route for Russian and Ukrainian agricultural exports via the Kerch Strait and Turkish Straits.
Novorossiysk: Major Russian Black Sea port handling bulk grain shipments.
Kerch Strait: The sole, narrow maritime outlet connecting the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea (a classic single point of failure).
Greater Odesa Port Complex: Ukraine’s main shipping hub (Odesa, Chornomorsk, Pivdennyi), handling ~90% of its agricultural exports.
Izmail: Ukraine’s primary Danube River port, serving as an alternative inland waterway route.
Regional Dependence & Export Weight
Russian Routing: Over 80% of Russian grain exports move through Sea of Azov and Black Sea ports.
Ukrainian Routing: The Greater Odesa complex handles about 90% of Ukraine’s agricultural exports.
Global Wheat Share:Russia and Ukraine combined account for 27.4% of global wheat exports.
Global Sunflower Oil Share: Russia and Ukraine combined supply 61.5% of global sunflower oil shipments, the highest concentration of any commodity.
Other Staples: Together they control 15.8% of global barley and 12.5% of global corn shipments.
Causes of the Global Price Shock
Shipping Bottleneck, Not Output Deficit:Granaries are full in Russia and Ukraine, but cross-border strikes have created severe risk, stopping safe physical transport.
Soaring Insurance Premiums:War risk cover on hulls and cargo acts as a hidden tariff, driving up freight costs and pricing out smaller buyers.
Compounding EU Crop Yield Reductions (USDA Data):
Wheat: Projected to drop 7.5% (down to 134.2 mt).
Corn: Expected to drop to 50.2 mt (a nearly two-decade low).
Cause:Record summer heatwaves and prolonged drought cut yields across Europe.
Global Repricing:CBOT wheat and corn futures rose 4–5% following the strikes. Major alternative exporters (US, Canada, Australia) saw prices surge simultaneously.
Impact on India & Domestic Policy Measures
Key Exposures
Edible Oil Risk: India is the world’s largest vegetable oil importer and heavily relies on Black Sea sunflower oil.
Dual Chokepoint Strain: Simultaneous disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz (energy/fertilizers) and Black Sea/Kerch Strait (food/edible oils).
Statutory & Policy Framework
Essential Commodities Act, 1955: Regulates production, stock limits, and distribution of foodstuffs and edible oils.
National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013: Guarantees subsidized foodgrains to ~two-thirds of India’s population.
Foreign Trade (D&R) Act, 1992: Legal framework for export bans, quotas, and Minimum Export Prices (MEP).
Customs Tariff Act, 1975: Regulates import duty structures on crude and refined edible oils.
Key Interventions:Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS), Price Stabilisation Fund (PSF), Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), and the National Mission on Edible Oils – Oil Palm (NMEO-OP).
Key Institutional Concepts
FAO Food Price Index: A monthly index tracking international market prices of five commodity groups (Cereals, Vegetable Oils, Dairy, Meat, Sugar), weighted by export shares. Hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (HQ: Rome, established 1945).
Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT): Premier futures exchange establishing global benchmark prices for wheat, corn, and soybeans.
USDA WASDE Report:World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates; the primary global benchmark for crop yields and trade shares.
Maritime Chokepoint: A narrow, strategic passage (e.g., Turkish Straits, Kerch Strait, Strait of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb) where high volumes of global trade pass, creating high geographical vulnerability.
“[2024, GS3, 15 marks] Elucidate the importance of buffer stocks for stabilizing agricultural prices in India. What are the challenges associated with the storage of buffer stock? Discuss.”
A US presidential memorandum allows vetted private companies to participate in government-authorised offensive cyber operations against overseas transnational criminal organisations (TCOs).
Note: Vetted private firms are privately owned companies that have passed thorough background checks by a client, usually a government agency, to prove they are safe, reliable, and qualified to do sensitive work
What does the memorandum allow?
Private participation: Selected firms can conduct hacking operations under government supervision.
Permitted actions: Operations may include entering, disabling or destroying criminal networks’ systems.
Oversight: Firms require government contracts, security vetting and supervision.
Targets: Criminal organisations attacking US persons or interests, excluding entities formally controlled by foreign governments.
Key Concepts
TCO: Criminal network operating across national borders.
Offensive cyber operation: Entering, disrupting or destroying another computer system.
Attribution: Identifying the actor responsible for a cyberattack.
Hacktivist: Non-state actor conducting cyber operations for political or ideological purposes.
Why is it controversial?
Misattribution: Attacks may hit innocent third-party systems.
Collateral damage: Destructive operations can affect infrastructure in other countries.
Escalation: Private hacking can trigger cross-border conflicts.
Accountability: Commercial actors may have weaker accountability than state agencies.
Proxy problem: It resembles the private or proxy cyber models the US has criticised in China and Russia.
Implications for India
India has no publicly declared offensive cyber doctrine.
Sections 43 and 66 of the IT Act, 2000 criminalise unauthorised access and damage.
Compromised Indian servers could become staging infrastructure for foreign cyber operations.
India continues to advocate state responsibility and opposition to cyber proxies at the UN.
Prelims Pointers
CERT-In: National agency for cyber incident response.
NCIIPC: Protects Critical Information Infrastructure.
I4C: Coordinates India’s response to cybercrime.
Defence Cyber Agency: Handles cyber operations for the armed forces.
Section 70B, IT Act: Provides the statutory basis for CERT-In.
[2022, GS3, 10 marks] What are the different elements of cyber security? Keeping in view the challenges in cyber security, examine the extent to which India has successfully developed a comprehensive National Cyber Security Strategy.”
[2017] In India, it is legally mandatory for which of the following to report on cyber security incidents? 1.Service providers 2.Intermediaries 3.Corporate bodies Select the correct answer using the code given below:
PYQ Relevance [UPSC 2023] Introduce the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI). How does AI help clinical diagnosis? Do you perceive any threat to privacy of the individual in the use of AI in healthcare? Linkage: The PYQ examines AI’s applications and its implications for privacy and individual rights. The EU AI Act shows how risk-based AI regulation can address privacy, safety and accountability concerns.
Mentor’s Comment
The European Union Artificial Intelligence Act becoming applicable creates an opportunity for India’s technology services. Its compliance demands could generate work Indian firms can supply.
What is the EU AI Act?
Risk-based law: The European Union Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act regulates AI systems by risk category.
Applicability: It came into force in 2024 and its key obligations apply from 2 August 2026.
High-risk systems: These require a conformity assessment before deployment.
Extraterritorial reach: The Act can apply to entities outside the EU when their AI systems or models are placed on the EU market, used in the EU, or affect people in the EU.
Risk Categories
Unacceptable risk: Systems like social scoring or manipulative/exploitative AI are completely banned.
High risk: Critical sectors like biometrics, employment, and healthcare require rigorous data governance, logging, and conformity assessments.
Transparency (Limited) risk: Chatbots and deepfakes must clearly disclose to users that they are interacting with AI or synthetic media.
Minimal risk: Most everyday utilities like video games or spam filters face no mandatory rules.
Why does the EU regulate AI?
Fundamental rights: Prevent discrimination, manipulation and unlawful surveillance.
Safety: Ensure reliable and safe deployment of high-risk AI.
Transparency: Help users distinguish AI-generated content from human-generated content.
Trust: Create a predictable regulatory environment for responsible AI adoption.
Why does it challenge India’s IT model?
Bespoke services: India’s IT-services firms build customised systems, and any “substantial modification” can trigger a fresh assessment.
Compliance cost: Repeated conformity checks raise the cost of serving EU clients.
Data governance: High-risk AI requires stronger data quality, traceability, record-keeping and governance, requiring firms to upgrade systems.
Shift in competitive advantage: India’s traditional cost-based IT model must evolve towards trusted, auditable and regulation-ready AI services.
Where is the opportunity?
Compliance services: Demand rises for legal, technical, and audit services to meet the Act.
Notified bodies: The India-EU Free Trade Agreement could let Indian conformity assessment bodies be recognised as EU “notified bodies”.
First-mover edge: Early compliance capability positions India as a preferred AI-services partner.
AI Assurance: Indian firms can offer AI risk assessment, algorithmic auditing, testing, documentation and certification support to global clients.
Compliance-by-design: Indian IT companies can build EU-compliant AI systems from the development stage, turning regulatory expertise into a new export advantage.
What are the challenges to capturing the opportunity?
Standards gap: India lacks a mature domestic AI conformity-assessment ecosystem.
Mutual recognition: Recognition of Indian bodies depends on the FTA’s regulatory-cooperation terms.
Talent: Specialised AI-audit skills are scarce.
Regulatory clarity: India’s own AI governance framework is still evolving.
Conclusion
The Act raises compliance costs but also creates a services market India can serve. Capturing it depends on the India-EU FTA delivering mutual recognition of conformity assessment bodies.
India distanced itself from former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s public event in Delhi while inviting Bangladesh’s new leader to the 18th BRICS Summit in his capacity as BIMSTEC Chair, signalling a recalibration of ties with Dhaka.
What is BIMSTEC?
Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional organization established in 1997 to promote economic, technical, and security cooperation in the Bay of Bengal region.
Members: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand
Secretariat: Dhaka, Bangladesh.
What is the BRICS Outreach Session?
A special session where BRICS invites leaders of regional organizations and partner countries.
Bangladesh was invited in its capacity as the current BIMSTEC Chair.
Why is India Recalibrating Ties?
Relations changed after Bangladesh’s political transition.
India has resumed engagement with the new government through diplomatic outreach and restoration of visa services.
Anti-India sentiment in sections of Bangladeshi society.
Sheikh Hasina’s presence in India.
Teesta River water-sharing dispute.
Border management, smuggling, and illegal migration.
Security of minorities.
Growing Chinese strategic and economic influence in Bangladesh.
[2026] Match List I (BIMSTEC Centre) with List II (Location): A. BIMSTEC Cultural Industries Observatory B. BIMSTEC Energy Centre C. BIMSTEC Centre for Weather and Climate D. BIMSTEC Technology Transfer Facility 1. NOIDA 2. Bengaluru 3. Colombo 4. Thimphu (a) A-3, B-2, C-1, D-4 (b) A-3, B-1, C-2, D-4 (c) A-4, B-2, C-1, D-3 (d) A-4, B-1, C-2, D-3
The 36th North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit held in Ankara (July 2026) highlighted a shift in transatlantic security, with the United States (US) urging European allies to take greater responsibility for conventional defence, allowing Washington to focus more on the Indo-Pacific.
What is NATO?
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a military alliance established in 1949 under the Washington Treaty.
Based on collective defence under Article 5, where an attack on one member is considered an attack on all.
Members: 32 countries (including Finland and Sweden).
Key Developments
US expects European allies to assume primary responsibility for conventional defence.
Greater emphasis on burden-sharing through higher defence spending.
US continues as NATO’s: Nuclear guarantor. Strategic enabler. Political leader.
Evolution of NATO
NATO 1.0 (1949-1991): Cold War; deterrence against the Soviet Union.
NATO 2.0 (1991-2022): Eastward expansion and operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan.
NATO 3.0 (2022 onwards): Europe strengthens conventional defence while the US focuses increasingly on the Indo-Pacific.
Significance for India
Greater US strategic focus on the Indo-Pacific.
Enhanced opportunities for India-Europe cooperation in: Defence manufacturing. Artificial Intelligence (AI). Cybersecurity. Semiconductors. Space technology.
Supports India’s strategic autonomy through diversified partnerships.
Challenges
Burden-sharing disagreements among NATO members.
Europe’s dependence on US military capabilities.
Industrial capacity constraints.
Continuing Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Simultaneous security commitments in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
Value Addition
Article 5: The cornerstone of NATO, providing collective defence. It has been invoked only once, after the 11 September 2001 (9/11) terrorist attacks on the United States.
Article 10: Allows European states to join NATO by unanimous agreement of existing members.
NATO and India
India is not a NATO member.
India engages with several NATO members through bilateral defence cooperation while maintaining strategic autonomy.
“[2024] Consider the following pairs: Country : Reason for being in the news 1. Argentina : Worst economic crisis 2. Sudan : War between the country’s regular army and paramilitary forces 3. Turkey : Rescinded its membership of NATO How many of the pairs given above are correctly matched? (a) Only one pair (b) Only two pairs (c) All three pairs (d) None of the pairs
