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GS Paper: GS1

  • Don’t make learning a test of worth

    Why in the News

    A student at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay has taken his life, and the circumstances of the death are under investigation. Accounts of what happened are sharply polarised, so establishing the immediate cause will not answer the larger questions the death raises. Over the last decade the IITs have recorded more than 170 deaths by suicide, a large number of them by students from Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities. A Supreme Court appointed task force on student suicides already has an interim report on the table. The contested point is whether such deaths are individual mental health events or the outcome of how these institutions treat the students they admit.

    Why does admission not deliver equality on campus?

    1. Society reproduced on campus: Prestigious institutions are not immune to the strains, power structures, hierarchies and discriminatory practices of society at large. Selectivity does not filter any of those out.
    2. The pressure to excel becomes outsized: Students arrive from very different social backgrounds into a system where the pressure to excel acquires outsized importance. Admission does not by itself guarantee equality for a student from a marginalised community.
    3. The additional burden: The burden is greater where a student must also negotiate subtle prejudice. A persistent sense of not quite belonging sits on top of the ordinary academic load.

    What did the Supreme Court appointed task force find?

    1. The panel and the report: A task force on student suicides appointed by the Supreme Court and chaired by a retired Supreme Court judge issued an interim report in June. Its findings are about the institutions rather than about the students.
    2. Complaint mechanisms do not work: Students often see institutional complaint mechanisms as difficult to access, ineffective, or operating in tokenistic ways. A mechanism that goes unused produces no record of the problem it exists to capture.
    3. Under reporting by the students most affected: For students from marginalised communities the fear of not being believed, or of retaliation, makes them hesitant to report discrimination at all. An absence of complaints is therefore not evidence that discrimination is absent.

    Why is the mental health framing insufficient?

    1. Counselling and wellness provision: More counsellors, helplines, wellness centres and greater awareness of distress are all necessary. None of them examines the conditions that produced the distress.
    2. The institution’s absence from the account: Individualising suicidal tendencies as personal difficulty, or as a student’s failure to cope, removes the institution from the account. It is then never required to ask difficult questions of itself.

    Why does faculty composition matter beyond representation?

    1. The social mismatch: The panel described a social mismatch between the backgrounds of a large number of students and those of their teachers. Access to higher education has grown more diverse and faculty composition has not followed.
    2. The measured gap: More than 65 per cent of faculty in IITs, National Institutes of Technology (NIT) and private institutions are from communities other than the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward Classes (OBC).
    3. Understanding from within: A more diverse faculty helps a campus understand social difference from within. Support then rests on institutional culture rather than on the good intentions of individual teachers.

    What does making academic performance the measure of worth cost?

    1. The promise of social mobility: In a country with a large aspirational class, the promise of social mobility is an important part of pursuing a degree. Education cannot be separated from career ambition.
    2. The purpose of an institution of learning: At the heart of academic life sits the process of gaining knowledge rather than grades, degrees and the job market alone. The purpose of an institution is to intertwine the two.
    3. The cost of an unrelenting measure: A student thinking constantly about grades, rankings, deadlines, evaluations and the consequences of falling behind has little room to follow an idea. The pleasure of learning is displaced by the accounting of it.
    4. Artificial intelligence as a shortcut: The ease with which artificial intelligence (AI) becomes a shortcut to learning makes the question unavoidable. An institution has to state whether it rewards the acquisition of knowledge or the ability to produce the right answer under pressure.

    What would an institution that examined itself have to change?

    1. The question the system has not answered: Institutions have not examined whether all students have the same space to enjoy friendships, freedom and intellectual discovery. Those are part of what higher education promises and they are not evenly distributed.
    2. The variable an institution actually controls: Elite institutions cannot insulate students from the vagaries of the economy. They can decide whether those uncertainties are amplified on campus, or whether education supplies the intellectual confidence to confront them.

    Conclusion

    The difficulty is not that the cause of each death is unknown. It is that both routes by which a student could raise a grievance, the complaint mechanism and the teacher, have been found wanting by an inquiry the institutions did not themselves commission. The unresolved question is whether an institution will accept an external finding against itself, since nothing in the present response obliges it to. The marker to watch is whether the task force’s final report attaches a named accountability route to the grievance mechanism, or repeats the recommendation to strengthen counselling.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS1, 15 marks] Despite comprehensive policies for equity and social justice, underprivileged sections are not yet getting the full benefits of affirmative action envisaged by the Constitution. Comment.”

  • From Venice with love: India at the Venice Biennale

    Why in the News

    India has returned to the Venice Biennale with a national pavilion after seven years, presenting ‘Geographies of Distance: Returning Home’ under the curator Amin Jaffer. The pavilion carries five artworks, all rooted in Indian craft traditions and all built around the idea of home. Critics, patrons and the global media have called it dazzling and spectacular. The contested point is that India has mounted a national pavilion only three times in the event’s history, so the question raised by the praise is whether a strong showing becomes a standing presence or remains an occasional one.

    What is a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale?

    1. The Venice Biennale: Begun in 1895, it is among the oldest, largest and most prestigious contemporary art events, and is called the Olympics of the art world. In its current format it hosts the International Art Biennale, the International Architecture Biennale, national pavilions and collateral events.
    2. A national pavilion: This is a presentation organised and funded by a government to showcase its own artists, which makes it an exercise in soft power and cultural diplomacy rather than a private exhibition.
    3. Giardini and Arsenale: Thirty countries own permanent buildings at the historic Giardini park. The Arsenale rents space for the six-month-long biennale, and India’s pavilion sits there in a brick-walled former maritime warehouse, a five-minute walk from China’s pavilion.

    What does the India pavilion put on display?

    1. Permanent Address, by Sumakshi Singh: White threads hold up fragments of a broken home, an embroidered recreation of 33 Link Road in Delhi, the artist’s now-demolished house that her grandparents, Partition refugees from Pakistan, built in 1951. The house was embroidered on water-soluble fabric down to its gates, stairs, walls, doors, windows and door bolts.
    2. Chaal, by Asim Waqif: A bamboo scaffolding 30 feet high, using 12 tonnes of bamboo sourced largely from Assam and West Bengal, stands as a commentary on the erosion of rural architecture under construction rules that favour steel and aluminium. It uses a single lashing technique, two lengths of bamboo tied with a composite nylon shipping strap, with no holes, joinery, nuts or bolts.
    3. Echoes of Home, by Skarma Sonam Tashi: A prototype of a Ladakhi settlement recalls homes traditionally built from earth, stone, timber and collective knowledge passed down generations. It was made from recycled material, including papier-mache, egg trays, cardboard and old paper.
    4. Under the Same Sky, by Ranjani Shettar: A monumental floral vine is suspended from the ceiling as a floating garden.
    5. Cracked soil, by Alwar Balasubramaniam: A two-panelled installation of cracked soil sourced from rural Tamil Nadu, one panel covering an entire wall of the pavilion.

    How was the 2026 pavilion put together?

    1. Selection process: The Culture Ministry received multiple expressions of interest and assessed proposals against the vision it sought to present at Venice, over months of discussion and evaluation.
    2. Curatorial brief widened: The selected proposal was initially for a single artist. The ministry held that India’s diversity called for a multi-artist presentation, and the curator expanded the narrative to five.
    3. The question the theme asks: The curation treats Indians as migrants and asks whether belonging is determined solely by geography, or can be sustained through memory, practice and emotional attachment.
    4. Institutional partners: The government delivered the pavilion with two institutional partners, the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) and Serendipity Arts.
    5. What a Venice presence demands: Beyond selecting artists, a pavilion requires curatorial expertise, production capability, international partnerships, sustained funding and the ability to build audiences and relationships around the work.
    6. Official reception: The biennale’s President described India’s presentation as grounded in its ancient heritage while looking to the future.

    Why has India’s presence at Venice been episodic rather than sustained?

    1. Three pavilions in 131 years: India has participated with a national pavilion only in 2011, 2019 and 2026, even as Indian artists have regularly shown in their individual capacities at the biennale’s central exhibitions.
    2. The gaps between them: India reportedly failed to accept the biennale’s invitation in 2007, and returned only after eight years following its 2011 debut.
    3. Absence as a signal: In 2015 an Indian artist said she felt ashamed at the absence of a national pavilion, because the absence showed where India placed its contemporary art.
    4. How others do it: China has showcased its pavilion since 2005 from a permanent home at the Arsenale, and smaller countries such as Uruguay and Angola either hold permanent pavilions or participate consistently.

    What did the 2011 and 2019 pavilions do differently?

    1. 2011, a free curatorial hand: The Culture Ministry chose the historian and art critic Ranjit Hoskote, who was left free to set the concept and pick the artists. He asked who had the right to call themselves Indian and left out some of the biggest names.
    2. 2011, a critical work: The debut showed Desire Machine Collective’s Residue, a short film shot in a defunct thermal power plant outside Guwahati, which took a dig at the Indian State’s thoughtless industrialisation.
    3. 2019, a commemoration as the brief: The pavilion was mounted around the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and explored his continued relevance in a world navigating conflict, with works by Jitish Kallat, Atul Dodiya, MF Husain and Shakuntala Kulkarni.
    4. 2019, the curatorial constraint: The curator was told the funds came from the Gandhi 150 commemoration, and secured agreement that the curation would carry a critical lens. Critics still dismissed the pavilion as government-mandated, unoriginal and bureaucratic.
    5. 2019, the delivery model: The Ministry of Culture worked with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) as principal partner and financial backer, and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on co-organisation, corporate advocacy and execution.
    6. The platform’s own tradition: The biennale has a rich record of artists using a State-funded platform to challenge governments. Eg. Hans Haacke’s Germania in 1993 was an indictment of the German government’s inaction over racial violence against immigrants.

    Challenges to a sustained Indian presence at the Venice Biennale

    1. Renting rather than owning a space: Participation has to be renegotiated each edition because India holds no permanent building at the biennale. Eg. Entering the Giardini park requires navigating a labyrinth of diplomatic, legal and administrative clearances, which Qatar completed in 2025 and South Korea last did in 1995.
      The Fix: Pursue a permanent space, which is cheaper over time and compels a return at every edition.
    2. Occasion-driven funding: A pavilion financed out of a commemoration ties its theme to the reason the money was released. Eg. The 2019 curation was fixed to an anniversary rather than chosen curatorially.
      The Fix: Fund the pavilion as a standing budget line, so the theme is set by the curator and not by the source of the grant.
    3. Capability that does not accumulate: Each pavilion is delivered by a fresh set of partners, so production and curatorial knowledge does not carry across editions. Eg. The 2019 and 2026 pavilions were built by entirely different institutional partners.
      The Fix: Retain a standing organising body across editions, so what one pavilion learns is available to the next.
    4. Freight exposure on craft-based work: Large installations in natural material need long lead times that a sudden conflict can destroy. Eg. Several species of bamboo had to reach Venice on fixed timelines, and the outbreak of the US-Iran war in February forced the artworks to be flown in instead of shipped.
      The Fix: Budget an air freight contingency into the production plan from the outset for bulky and perishable material.

    Conclusion

    The pavilion has been received as a success, and the success is being read as evidence of a change in how India treats contemporary art abroad. The record does not yet support that reading, because every Indian pavilion so far has followed a specific occasion rather than a standing commitment. India has confirmed a return at the next edition and is preparing to host a biennale of its own in Delhi, which gives the current momentum somewhere to go. What to watch is whether India moves from renting space each time to holding one, since renting keeps participation a decision that has to be taken again and owning makes it an obligation.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2018, GS1, 10 marks] Safeguarding the Indian art heritage is the need of the moment. Discuss.”

  • Towards recognising women farmers

    Why in the News

    Maharashtra has passed the Women Farmers’ Empowerment Bill. The law grants women independent recognition as farmers irrespective of land ownership, through a Woman Farmer Certificate. It is the first Indian State legislation to give enforceable legal form to the activity-based, land-delinked definition of ‘farmer’. The National Policy for Farmers set that definition out in 2007 and never operationalised it. A comparable central law was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in 2011 and lapsed. The contested point is that recognition as a farmer in India runs through land revenue records, and those records stand primarily in men’s names. The United Nations has named 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer.

    What is the Woman Farmer Certificate under the Women Farmers’ Empowerment Bill?

    1. Land-delinked definition: The Act recognises women residents engaged in agriculture for at least one agricultural season a year, irrespective of the nature of the land. It broadens the definitions of both ‘agriculture’ and ‘farmer’.
    2. Woman Farmer Certificate: The certificate is the document that confers an independent agricultural identity on a woman, drawn from what she does rather than from a title in a land record.
    3. Categories named in the Act: It explicitly recognises the landless cultivator, the landless livestock rearer, the agricultural labourer, the plantation labourer and the pastoralist.

    How far has women’s participation in agriculture outrun their recognition as farmers?

    1. Workforce size: In 2025 agriculture employed roughly 110 million women and 127 million men in rural India, on Census adjusted Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) estimates, bringing the sector close to gender parity.
    2. Rate of increase: The women’s agricultural workforce has more than doubled since 2017-18.
    3. Concentration in agriculture: Nearly three-quarters of all rural women workers are now in agriculture, against less than half of men.
    4. Unpaid work: In 2025 more than 41% of female agricultural workers were unpaid, against 20% of men.
    5. Own-account work: Nearly 63% of men were own-account workers, against 39% of women.

    Why does the land record decide who counts as a farmer?

    1. Ownership held by men: Women largely work family land without owning it or appearing on the land record, because patriarchal norms keep records in men’s names.
    2. Share of holdings: Only 14% of operational agricultural land holdings, measured primarily through land records, are with women, as per the Agriculture Census 2015-16.
    3. Land record as the source of truth: Each State uses its land revenue record for administrative purposes, so the bias against women is carried forward into databases and scheme access.
    4. What exclusion costs: A woman left off the record cannot reach credit, subsidies, technology, extension services and related opportunities tied to land titles.

    What does scheme access reveal about the recognition gap?

    1. PM-KISAN coverage: Only 23% of beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) are women.
    2. PM-KISAN design: The scheme pays Rs 6,000 a year in direct financial assistance to eligible landholding farmer families for agricultural expenses and household needs.
    3. Gap where women dominate the workforce: Even in States where women are more than 50% of the agriculture workforce, women are under one-third of beneficiaries in most of them.
    4. Three measures of the gap: The gap is approximated by three shares taken together, women as a share of all agriculture and allied workers in 2025, women’s operational holdings as a share of all operational holdings in 2015-16, and women as a share of eligible PM-KISAN beneficiaries in 2024.
    5. Comparability caveat: The holdings and PM-KISAN figures sit nine years apart, and PM-KISAN counts individuals per landholding family, including successor widows, while the Census counts each holding once.

    Why is the binding constraint the identification system rather than land itself?

    1. Missing instrument: A women farmers’ registry delinked from land records had been absent before this legislation, so recognition shifts from the owner of land to the person who farms.
    2. Meghalaya: Women are 70% of PM-KISAN beneficiaries there, a share that reflects matrilineal inheritance under which women are the customary landholders.
    3. Kerala: Women are 44% of beneficiaries, and collective farming through groups such as Kudumbashree provides an alternative route to participation and recognition.
    4. Odisha: The KALIA scheme has reached landless and sharecropper women without a land title as the gate.
    5. Widest gaps: In Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh women are nearly two-thirds of the agricultural workforce but a small fraction of beneficiaries.
    6. The constraint named: Where the land record is the gatekeeper women are filtered out, and where an alternative mechanism exists their access rises substantially.

    What will turning recognition into access require?

    1. Route to registration: Implementation runs through either self-registration or identification of women farmers by the Gram Sabha, including women with no land and women with no title in their name.
    2. A new database: The Act provides for a database of women farmers, which has to be connected to existing agricultural databases.
    3. Digital integration: Linking the certificates to Agri Stack, the digital agriculture platform developed by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, and issuing FarmerIDs to women is what carries them into the wider digital agricultural ecosystem.

    Challenges to the Woman Farmer Certificate

    1. Duplication and exclusion in the register: A second database beside existing agricultural databases can record the same woman twice or leave her out of both. Eg. States hold no common definition for identifying a woman farmer, issuing her certificate or maintaining the record.
      The Fix: Build a standardised cross-State system of definitions, certificates and databases, so one woman farmer carries one identity across schemes and platforms.
    2. Awareness as the binding step: A certificate confers status without telling its holder what the status unlocks. Eg. Registration depends on a woman either applying herself or being identified by her Gram Sabha, and a woman who knows of neither route stays uncounted.
      The Fix: Run a continuous local information campaign naming the schemes and the credit lines the certificate opens.
    3. Central eligibility still keyed to land: A State certificate does not by itself alter the eligibility test a central scheme applies. Eg. PM-KISAN pays landholding farmer families, so a landless certificate holder still fails that test.
      The Fix: Rewrite scheme eligibility around the activity-based definition of a farmer rather than around a land title.

    Conclusion

    One State has separated the identity of a farmer from the ownership of land. Access to credit and welfare still runs through databases that read titles. The unresolved question is whether scheme administrators treat an activity-based certificate as proof of farmer status, or whether a second register simply sits beside the first without opening anything. What to watch is whether other States legislate a comparable registry, and whether the Gram Sabha route reaches women who have never appeared in any agricultural record.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2014, GS1, 10 marks] Discuss the various economic and socio-cultural forces that are driving increasing feminization of agriculture in India.”

  • National Film Awards 2026

    National Film Awards 2026

    Why in the News?

    The 72nd National Film Awards will honour Indian films certified during 2024. The awards were announced on 18 July 2026 and will be presented by the President of India on 22 September 2026 at Ekta Nagar, Gujarat.

    Key Highlights

    • National Film Awards instituted: 1954
    • Conferred annually by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
    • Cover three sections:
      • Feature Films
      • Non-Feature Films
      • Best Writing on Cinema
    • Dadasaheb Phalke Award is the highest honour in Indian cinema.

    Evolution

    • 1913: Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra, a landmark in Indian filmmaking.
    • 1954: National Film Awards instituted as State Awards for Films.
    • 1968: First Best Actor and Best Actress awards.
    • 1969: Dadasaheb Phalke Award instituted; Devika Rani was the first recipient.
    • 1973: Directorate of Film Festivals began administering the awards.
    • 2022: Directorate of Film Festivals merged into NFDC, the present implementing body.

    Award Structure

    Feature Films

    • 26 categories, including special mentions.
    • Awards include Swarna Kamal and Rajat Kamal.
    • Cash prizes: ₹3 lakh and ₹2 lakh.

    Non-Feature Films

    • 16 categories, including special mentions.
    • Covers documentaries, short films, animation and related forms.

    Best Writing on Cinema

    • Best Book on Cinema
    • Best Film Critic

    Dadasaheb Phalke Award

    • Highest honour in Indian cinema.
    • Swarna Kamal + shawl
    • Cash prize: ₹10 lakh for the 72nd edition.

    72nd National Film Awards: Key Winners

    • Best Feature Film: Article 370
    • Best Direction: Rajkumar Periasamy for Amaran
    • Best Actor: Mammootty and Kartik Aaryan, shared
    • Best Actress: Yami Gautam for Article 370
    • Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment: Kalki 2898 AD
    • Best Debut Film of a Director: Randeep Hooda for Swatantrya Veer Savarkar
    • Best Non-Feature Film: Bhangaar
    • Best Documentary: Ram-Nami
    • Best Debut Film of a Director, Non-Feature: Angen by Ravi Raj Murmu
    • Best Children’s Film: 35 – Chinna Katha Kaadu

    Language Diversity

    • Best Feature Film awards are given for languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
    • Films in other languages can receive separate recognition.
    • In the 72nd edition:
      • Dholi: Garhwali
      • IMBU: Tulu
    • A Santhali film was recognised in the Non-Feature Film section for the first time.

    How are Awards Selected?

    • Entries are invited for films certified during the preceding calendar year.
    • Separate juries are constituted for the three award sections.
    • Feature films undergo a two-tier examination:
      1. Five regional panels shortlist entries.
      2. A central panel selects the winners.
    • The Dadasaheb Phalke Award follows a separate process and has no open entries. A specially constituted committee recommends the recipient.

    Eligibility

    • Film must be certified by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) during the award year.
    • Must carry English subtitles.
    • Feature film must run for more than 72 minutes.
    • Previously submitted dubbed, remade or re-edited versions are not eligible.

    Dadasaheb Phalke Award 2024

    • Recipient: Anant Nag
    • Announced: 16 September 2026
    • Acting career spans over five decades.
    • Has worked in more than 300 films across six Indian languages.
    • Received Padma Bhushan in 2025.

    Prelims Quick Revision

    • National Film Awards: instituted in 1954
    • First awards: honoured films of 1953
    • Administering ministry: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting
    • Present implementing body: NFDC
    • Highest cinema honour: Dadasaheb Phalke Award
    • First Dadasaheb Phalke Award recipient: Devika Rani
    • 72nd edition: films certified in 2024
    • Ceremony: 22 September 2026, Ekta Nagar, Gujarat
    • Feature films: two-tier jury process
    • Dadasaheb Phalke Award: separate selection process
    • Anant Nag: Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2024

  • Ralph Lauren to Fendi: Why Indian crafts are easy to borrow, hard to protect

    Why in the News

    Two global luxury houses have carried Indian craft techniques into new collections without acknowledging their origin. A pink evening gown showcased by Ralph Lauren carries aari work, the hook embroidery of Gujarat, described in the label’s own wording as “hand applied embellishments”, and Fendi’s autumn collection carries a mirror work Baguette bag modelled on the mirrored purses sold at Indian craft fairs and priced at around Rs 8 lakh. This follows the appropriation of Kolhapuri chappals by Prada. The tension is stated plainly by practitioners in the field: intellectual property is territorial while culture is not, and a traditional craft has cultural provenance but no clearly identifiable legal owner, so the borrowing is cheap while the community behind the craft has no ready route to recognition, ownership or a share of the value created.

    What does a Geographical Indication protect, and what does it leave out?

    1. What it is: A Geographical Indication (GI) is a sign identifying a good as originating in a defined territory, where a given quality or reputation of that good is attributable to its geographical origin, registered in India under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999.
    2. What it covers: A GI protects the name, the origin and the reputation of a qualifying product, so an outsider cannot sell a good under that name without meeting the registered specification.
    3. Who can enforce it: Under the Act both registered proprietors and registered authorised users hold the right to seek relief for infringement, including injunctions, damages and an account of profits.
    4. Where it stops: A GI does not necessarily protect every motif, stitch or visual element associated with a craft, so a brand can reproduce the look without using the protected name.

    Why does a traditional craft fall outside conventional intellectual property?

    1. The territorial mismatch: Intellectual property rights are territorial and culture is not, so a right secured in one jurisdiction does not travel with the craft into the market where it is being copied.
    2. No category fits: A centuries old technique may involve an artistic expression, a design, a geographical identity or a protected name, and none of those categories captures a tradition that belongs to a community and has evolved across generations.
    3. Provenance without an owner: Traditional crafts carry cultural provenance and no clearly identifiable legal owner, and that gap is precisely the space that is exploited.
    4. Individual ownership excludes: Vesting a craft right in a single proprietor can exclude the very community that preserved it, so the obvious legal fix reproduces the problem in a different form.

    Why does a recognised right still not produce redress?

    1. Recognition is not capacity: Recognising a right and giving a community the practical capacity to exercise it are two different things, and Indian craft communities hold more of the first than the second.
    2. Cross border litigation is prohibitive: Enforcement against a multinational fashion house has to be pursued in that house’s jurisdiction, and such litigation is resource intensive in a way an artisan collective cannot sustain.
    3. A right on paper: A right without the resources to monitor, negotiate and enforce it is only a right on paper, so monitoring capacity decides whether the right exists in practice.
    4. Where institutional capacity would come from: Producer organisations, cooperatives and other representative bodies can document provenance, organise authorised users, negotiate collectively and pursue enforcement on a community’s behalf.

    How do luxury brands avoid attribution?

    1. The “inspired” framing: European brands work within an inspiration logic that treats a technique as an influence rather than as a source requiring credit.
    2. Renaming the technique: Describing hook embroidery as “hand applied embellishments” detaches the work from the place and the practitioners that gave it its name.
    3. The machine route: Where the work is produced entirely by machine it can be classified as computerised crewel work rather than as aari, which operates as an escape from the craft’s identity altogether.
    4. Asymmetric legal frameworks: Design and copyright frameworks in developed countries are more robust than those of developing countries, so the brand litigates from the stronger jurisdiction.
    5. The value the craft does not capture: The mirror work bag retails at around Rs 8 lakh, while the mirrored purses it draws on are sold at Indian craft fairs at a fraction of that.

    What would a custodianship model require?

    1. Custodianship as the legal test: The law could recognise a community as custodian where a continuing relationship exists between a cultural expression and the community that has preserved, practised and transmitted it.
    2. How provenance would be proved: Historical records, regional practice, oral testimony and community knowledge would together establish that continuing relationship.
    3. What the community would hold: A collective legal identity, documented provenance, enforceable rights and a mechanism for attribution and benefit sharing are the four elements such a framework needs.
    4. The state’s role, bounded: The government should assist with registration, recognition and enforcement while ownership remains with the community, since governments change and cultural custodianship passes across generations.
    5. The decision right that follows: The people who have sustained and transmitted a tradition should have a meaningful role in decisions concerning its protected commercial use.

    Can documentation protect a craft without exposing it?

    1. The case for a registry: A carefully maintained digital registry could document motifs, techniques, names, regions and custodial communities, and would make it much harder for a company to claim a centuries old Indian tradition originated in a European design studio.
    2. What a registry would not do: Such a registry would not grant ownership over every visual similarity, so it functions as evidence of provenance rather than as a monopoly.
    3. The risk of recording: Traditional knowledge cannot simply be recorded and handed to an outside institution, since some knowledge is sacred or restricted and documentation must not result in an outsider gaining control over it.
    4. The opposite failure: Protection should not turn a living craft into a museum piece, so the objective cannot be an absolute community monopoly over every future use of a technique.

    What does the international framework offer?

    1. The negotiation under way: The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is working towards international rules addressing misappropriation, attribution, community rights and benefit sharing, and that framework is still being negotiated.
    2. The precedent already adopted: WIPO adopted a treaty in 2024 dealing with genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, which shows international intellectual property law beginning to recognise these questions beyond conventional copyright and patents.
    3. The existing avenue: The Berne Convention gives creators and communities legal avenues to challenge unauthorised use, with the outcome depending on the specific work and the applicable national law.

    Challenges to protecting traditional Indian crafts

    1. Registration protects the product, not the technique: A GI attaches to a named good from a defined region, so the underlying skill can be lifted and applied to an entirely different product without touching the registration. Eg. Kutch embroidery holds a GI registration, while the hook embroidery technique itself is the subject of no registration anywhere.
      The Fix: Create a distinct registry of craft techniques and their custodial communities, separate from the goods based GI register.
    2. A registration does not by itself produce a case: Even a registered GI leaves a community facing an appropriation that is answered through public statements rather than through infringement proceedings. Eg. Kolhapuri chappals hold a GI registration and the dispute over the Prada design still played out as a controversy rather than as litigation.
      The Fix: Fund a standing legal cell for registered GI proprietors to issue notices and file proceedings without the community bearing the cost.
    3. Indian registration has no extraterritorial reach: A GI on the Indian register does not bind a design house abroad unless the name is separately protected in that jurisdiction. Eg. The proprietor of the Darjeeling tea mark has had to pursue separate proceedings in multiple foreign jurisdictions to stop misuse of the name.
      The Fix: Prioritise foreign registration of the highest value craft GIs in the European Union, the United States and Japan through the existing trade negotiation channels.
    4. Authorised user registration is thin: The right to sue lies with the registered proprietor and registered authorised users, and most working artisans are never entered on that register. Eg. A GI is typically registered in the name of a board, society or association rather than of the artisans practising the craft.
      The Fix: Make authorised user enrolment part of the same application process as the GI registration itself, with no separate fee for individual artisans.
    5. India’s documentation infrastructure covers medicine, not crafts: The country’s defensive documentation was built for traditional medicine and has no equivalent for craft motifs and techniques. Eg. The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library documents Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga formulations for examiners at foreign patent offices.
      The Fix: Extend the same model to a craft motif and technique database accessible to design registries and customs authorities abroad.

    Conclusion

    The appropriation question is usually argued as one of etiquette, and it is a question of legal architecture. What cannot both hold is a system that vests rights in identifiable owners within fixed territories and a body of craft knowledge that has neither an owner nor a border, and no amount of enforcement will reconcile the two without a category built for collective custodianship. The practical middle ground being argued for is narrow and achievable: documented provenance, attribution, and a share in the value, without converting a living practice into a protected relic. What to watch is whether the WIPO negotiation on traditional cultural expressions produces a binding instrument on the model of its 2024 treaty on genetic resources, since that is the only forum in which a right created in India could acquire effect in the markets where the copying happens.

    Back2Basics: World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

    1. What it is: WIPO is the United Nations specialised agency for intellectual property, providing the forum in which international intellectual property treaties are negotiated and administered.
    2. When it was formed: It was established by the WIPO Convention signed at Stockholm in 1967, which entered into force in 1970, and it became a specialised agency of the United Nations in 1974.
    3. Where it sits: Its headquarters is at Geneva, Switzerland, and its membership covers the large majority of states, India included.
    4. What it runs: It administers the principal international treaties on copyright, patents, trademarks and designs, and operates global registration systems for patents, trademarks and industrial designs.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “Which of the following has/have been accorded ‘Geographical Indication’ status? (1) Banaras Brocades and Sarees (2) Rajasthani Daal-Bati-Churma (3) Tirupathi Laddu Select the correct answer using the code given below. (a) 1 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3”

  • Missing measure in India’s magnet mission

    Why in the News

    China’s tight export controls on rare earth magnets and materials, imposed in April 2025, exposed the dependence of global industrial value chains on a single supplier and the limits of what importing countries know about their own exposure. India has responded by strengthening its critical minerals and rare earth strategy through the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM), overseas mineral acquisitions, expanded geological exploration and Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes. India’s primary vulnerability does not stem from a shortage of critical minerals. It lies in the absence of a comprehensive framework able to pinpoint where strategic technological dependence is cultivated, accumulated and propagated along the permanent magnet value chain. The tension is that the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) puts the domestic permanent magnet market at about Rs 750 crore while international trade statistics record import values several times larger than that entire reported market.

    What is a high performance permanent magnet?

    1. About: A permanent magnet holds its magnetic field without a continuous electric current, which is what allows a motor or a generator to convert energy without an external magnetising supply.
    2. The main types: Ferrite, Alnico and Samarium Cobalt magnets continue to serve important industrial applications, each at a different level of strength and temperature tolerance.
    3. Why NdFeB dominates: Neodymium Iron Boron (NdFeB) magnets have become the backbone of the energy transition and advanced manufacturing, because no other commercially available permanent magnet combines comparable magnetic strength with such a high ratio of power to weight.
    4. Where they sit in the economy: Electric vehicle motors, semiconductor fabrication facilities and precision manufacturing machinery all depend on the high performance permanent magnet as a component.

    Where does India’s magnet economy go statistically missing?

    1. The reported market: The Annual Survey of Industries estimates the domestic permanent magnet market at around Rs 750 crore.
    2. The contradiction in the trade data: International trade statistics indicate import values several times larger than that entire reported domestic market.
    3. Possible explanations: The gap may reflect differences in statistical coverage, differences in industrial classification, or supply chain accounting that records the magnet only inside a finished assembly.
    4. What the gap costs policy: Policymakers cannot confidently explain where these magnets enter the economy or how they move through it, so part of the permanent magnet economy exists without being visible in statistics.
    5. A partial statistical picture overall: India’s statistical system provides only a partial account of what is mined, what is imported and what is manufactured.

    Why does the stage structure of the value chain matter?

    1. The upstream sequence: Geological exploration leads to mining, mining feeds mineral processing, and processing enables chemical separation.
    2. The downstream sequence: Separation produces oxides, which are refined into metals, transformed into alloys, engineered into magnetic materials and finally manufactured into finished magnets.
    3. Each stage is a different capability: Every stage demands different scientific knowledge, different industrial capability and a different level of technological maturity.
    4. Where the real question sits: The strategic question is not whether India possesses rare earth resources or whether imports from China can be reduced, it is what happens in between.
    5. Capability without a map of it: India has built capabilities across several stages of magnet manufacturing, and it still lacks a systematic way of identifying where those capabilities are globally competitive, where critical gaps persist, and how dependence accumulates across production stages.

    Can a techno economic map close the dependence gap?

    1. What the framework is: An Integrated Techno Economic Mapping (ITEM) framework brings engineering measurement together with economic measurement to show how a permanent magnet is built, from minerals in the ground to the finished products that use them.
    2. The missing toolkit: Such a framework is at present a missing piece in India’s industrial policy toolkit.
    3. What it would identify: It would show where industrial capability should be built, where technological partnerships become essential, and where domestic investment would yield the greatest strategic return.
    4. Why resources alone are not security: A country may secure mineral resources and still remain dependent if it lacks processing and manufacturing capability, which makes closing the measurement gap an industrial imperative rather than an academic exercise.

    Challenges to India’s rare earth magnet push

    1. Separation and refining is the bottleneck, not ore: Rare earth oxides have to be separated into individual elements before they can be alloyed, and that is the stage at which India has almost no commercial capacity. Eg. China processes over 90% of the world’s rare earths, which is what gives an export control its effect regardless of where the ore was mined.
      The Fix: Tie incentives under the rare earth permanent magnet scheme to certified output at the separation and alloying stages rather than to installed magnet capacity.
    2. Monazite is locked into atomic energy regulation: India’s principal rare earth bearing sand carries thorium, so its processing sits under atomic energy control rather than under ordinary mining law. Eg. Monazite is a prescribed substance under the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, and Indian Rare Earths Limited handles its processing.
      The Fix: Create a licensed private participation route for the non thorium fraction of monazite with a defined custody protocol for the thorium residue.
    3. Heavy rare earths decide magnet grade and India holds few: Dysprosium and terbium are what let an NdFeB magnet hold its field at motor operating temperatures, and India’s deposits are weighted toward the light rare earths. Eg. Indian monazite is rich in cerium, lanthanum and neodymium rather than in dysprosium.
      The Fix: Secure heavy rare earth offtake through overseas acquisition and make a share of every contract conditional on processing inside India.
    4. Recycling has no separated feedstock stream: A magnet recovered from an end of life motor or wind turbine is the one domestic source needing no mining, and no collection channel separates it out. Eg. The E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022 set extended producer responsibility targets by weight rather than by recovered critical material.
      The Fix: Add a material specific recovery target for rare earth magnets, reported separately from bulk electronic waste tonnage.
    5. Exploration data is too shallow to auction on: A block offered without G1 or G2 level exploration cannot be priced by a bidder, so auctions clear thinly or not at all. Eg. Only about 48% of the mineral blocks auctioned between 2020 and 2023 were sold.
      The Fix: Fund state exploration to G2 level before a critical mineral block is offered, so an auction transfers a defined resource rather than a prospect.

    Conclusion

    India’s rare earth problem is being treated as a supply problem when it is in the first instance a visibility problem. Securing ore, acquiring assets abroad and incentivising magnet capacity all assume the state already knows which stage of the chain its dependence sits at, and no existing statistical instrument tells it. What to watch is whether the next revision of the mission’s monitoring framework records capability stage by stage from ore to finished magnet, because until it does, spending is allocated against a chain the state can describe at both ends and not in the middle.

    Critical Minerals in India

    1. Definition: Critical minerals are minerals essential to a country’s economic development and national security, whose limited availability or concentrated extraction and processing in a few locations can disrupt critical industries.
    2. India’s list: India has identified 30 critical minerals through a three stage assessment, including lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earth elements, titanium, molybdenum and vanadium.
    3. Selection parameters: The list was drawn on resource availability, import dependency and significance for future technologies, clean energy and agriculture.
    4. Where the demand originates: Solar photovoltaic cells rely on silicon, tellurium, indium and gallium, wind turbines use neodymium and dysprosium, and electric vehicle batteries depend on lithium, nickel and cobalt.

    Government Initiatives for Critical Minerals

    1. Rare Earth Permanent Magnet Manufacturing Scheme, 2025: A scheme with an outlay of Rs 7,280 crore to establish 6,000 tonnes per annum of integrated rare earth permanent magnet capacity for electric vehicles, renewables, aerospace and defence.
    2. Auction of critical mineral blocks: By May 2025, 34 critical and strategic mineral blocks had been auctioned across five tranches, including India’s first potash block.
    3. Royalty rationalisation: Royalty rates for lithium, niobium and rare earth elements were approved in 2023 under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957, and rates for twelve further critical minerals were specified in 2024, completing rationalisation for all twenty four strategic minerals.
    4. Khanij Bidesh India Limited (KABIL): This joint venture of three public sector undertakings acquires critical mineral assets abroad, with lithium and cobalt as its stated priorities.

    Back2Basics: National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM)

    1. Ministry and launch: The mission is run by the Ministry of Mines, was announced in the Union Budget for 2024 to 2025 and was launched in 2025 with an outlay of about Rs 16,300 crore.
    2. Scope: It covers the entire value chain, from mineral exploration and mining through beneficiation and processing to recovery from end of life products.
    3. Instruments: It offers financial incentives for exploration, creates a fast track regulatory approval route for critical mineral mining projects, and supports the setting up of mineral processing parks.
    4. Strategic reserve: It provides for building a national stockpile of critical minerals as a buffer against an export restriction by a dominant supplier.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “Which of the following statements about Rare Earth Elements (REEs) and Critical Minerals is/are correct? 1. Modern technological innovations including Artificial Intelligence, robotics and space exploration extensively utilise Rare Earth Elements (REEs). 2. China has the highest share in mining of REEs followed by India. 3. The Government of India launched the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM) in 2025 to establish a robust framework for self-reliance in the critical mineral sector. 4. Rare Earth Elements are a set of 13 metallic elements. Select the answer using the code given below: (a) 1 and 3 only (b) 3 only (c) 1, 3 and 4 (d) 1, 2 and 4”

  • How melting glaciers could ‘put 20% of GDP at risk’

    Why in the News

    A new assessment of the Himalayas has put a monetary value on India’s dependence on the mountain range, estimating that Rs 64.8 lakh crore, or 21.5% of India’s FY24 GDP, rests on Himalayan water and Himalayan economies. The report, ‘A resilient Himalaya: protecting a region at risk and securing future prosperity’, follows the Nepal floods that placed the warming Himalayas under public attention. It converts glacier retreat from an environmental concern into a measurable macroeconomic exposure. The tension it exposes is one of timing. Meltwater flows are rising now and are expected to peak around the middle of this century before declining, while the one driver India can act on quickly, black carbon, is being tackled unevenly across States.

    What is the ‘A resilient Himalaya’ report?

    1. Compiling body: The report was compiled by the consultancy Systemiq, in partnership with the Integrated Mountain Initiative.
    2. Supporting institutions: It was supported by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Nepal, and the GB Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment, Uttarakhand.
    3. Core estimate: It places Rs 64.8 lakh crore, equal to 21.5% of India’s FY24 GDP, as dependent on the Himalayas.

    How was the 20% of GDP figure arrived at?

    1. Direct layer: The Gross State Domestic Product of the Himalayan States is counted in full as Himalaya dependent output.
    2. Indirect layer: Downstream agriculture, manufacturing, hydropower and services reliant on Himalayan fed rivers and on groundwater recharge are added. Rain fed production is expressly excluded from this layer.
    3. Induced layer: Supply chain and wage spending effects are counted, such as tractors sold from southern States into the Indo Gangetic Plains, and wages spent on food and services.

    Why does glacier retreat translate into economic risk?

    1. Three river systems: The Himalayas feed the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra systems, which support agriculture, cities and industry downstream.
    2. Named dependent economies: The report ties these flows to wheat and rice across the Indo Gangetic plain, tea in Assam and Bengal, hydropower in the Northeast, and pilgrimage economies in downstream towns.
    3. Disaster concentration: The Himalayas account for 18% of India’s land but roughly 35% of its disasters, making them a standing disaster hotspot rather than an occasional one.
    4. The reconstruction trap: Disasters create food and water insecurity, disrupt supply chains, displace people and raise macroeconomic and sovereign debt pressure. Reconstruction spending then leaves less money available for building future resilience.

    Why do meltwater flows rise before they fall?

    1. Glaciers as storage: Glaciers hold water as ice and release meltwater into rivers, particularly during the dry season when rainfall contributes least.
    2. Peak Water: Himalayan river basins are expected to reach ‘Peak Water’ around the middle of this century, the point at which glacier meltwater reaches its maximum.
    3. The decline after the peak: Flows begin to fall after that point as the ice reserve shrinks, so today’s higher flows are not a durable supply.

    Why is black carbon the driver India can act on fastest?

    1. What black carbon is: Black carbon is soot produced by incomplete combustion, and unlike global warming as a whole it is a pollutant India can act on quickly on its own.
    2. The snow darkening effect: When black carbon lands on snow it darkens the surface, so the snow absorbs more sunlight instead of reflecting it. Modelling shows this adds about 40 watts per square metre of surface heating in the spring season across the Himalaya.
    3. Zigzag kiln technology: Converting brick kilns to zigzag firing, a method that burns fuel more efficiently, cuts black carbon and particulate emissions by roughly 70% and fuel use by 20% to 30%.
    4. Uneven adoption: Punjab and Haryana have completed the switch to zigzag kilns. Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest brick producer, is at only 56%, and the rest of India runs on traditional technology.
    5. Kilns are not the whole story: Real progress requires kilns, cookstoves, transport and crop residue burning to be tackled together rather than one source at a time.

    Challenges to securing the Himalayan economy

    1. Transboundary river dependence: The three river systems the estimate rests on originate outside India in whole or in part, so flow security is not a purely domestic policy variable. Eg. The Indus system is governed by a treaty arrangement with Pakistan, and the Brahmaputra rises in Tibet where upstream storage decisions are not disclosed to India.
      The Fix: Build hydrological data sharing into existing basin level dialogues so flow changes are detected upstream rather than inferred from downstream damage.
    2. Gaps in glacier monitoring: India monitors only a small fraction of its glaciers on the ground, so mass balance estimates rest heavily on modelling. Eg. Glacier and lake monitoring shortfalls were flagged after the February 2021 Chamoli disaster in Uttarakhand.
      The Fix: Expand automated weather station and mass balance networks across benchmark glaciers in each Himalayan basin.
    3. Glacial lake outburst risk: Warming creates and expands moraine dammed lakes whose failure sends a flood wave downstream with little warning time. Eg. The October 2023 South Lhonak lake outburst in Sikkim destroyed the Teesta III hydropower project at Chungthang.
      The Fix: Attach early warning instrumentation and drawdown works to every high risk lake identified in the national expansion inventory.
    4. Construction in a fragile zone: Hydropower, highway and tunnel projects add load and cut slopes in terrain that is already seismically active and steep. Eg. Land subsidence in Joshimath, Uttarakhand, in January 2023 forced the evacuation of hundreds of households.
      The Fix: Make cumulative basin level impact assessment, rather than project by project clearance, the condition for approving new infrastructure in the Himalayan States.
    5. Fiscal asymmetry between hill and plain States: Himalayan States carry the cost of protecting catchments while the economic benefit accrues largely downstream. Eg. Forest cover in the Himalayan States supports irrigation and power generation in the plains without a matching transfer for that service.
      The Fix: Widen ecological and forest cover weightage in Finance Commission devolution so catchment protection is financed rather than assumed.

    Conclusion

    The estimate changes the category of the problem rather than the facts of it. A mountain range treated as an environmental subject now carries a fifth of national output as a stated exposure, which places it inside fiscal and investment planning rather than only inside climate policy. Two things cannot both hold: flows rising toward a mid century peak are being planned against as though they were permanent, while the ice reserve that produces them is shrinking. The near term marker is whether brick kiln conversion moves beyond the two States that have completed it.

    Back2Basics: International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)

    1. Nature: An intergovernmental knowledge and learning centre for the Hindu Kush Himalaya region.
    2. Establishment and headquarters: Founded in 1983, with its headquarters at Kathmandu, Nepal.
    3. Membership: Its eight regional member countries are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.
    4. Mandate: It supports mountain research, cryosphere monitoring and transboundary cooperation across the Hindu Kush Himalaya.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2020, GS1, 10] How will the melting of Himalayan glaciers have a far-reaching impact on the water resources of India? (हिमालय के हिमनदों के पिघलने का भारत के जल-संसाधनों पर किस प्रकार दूरगामी प्रभाव होगा ?)”

  • Global Gender Gap Index 2026

    Global Gender Gap Index 2026

    Why in the News?

    The World Economic Forum (WEF) released the Global Gender Gap Index 2026, ranking 145 economies across four dimensions. India retained its 131st position. Iceland remained at the top.

    Key Findings

    • India’s overall gender parity: 64.5%
    • Global average: 69.2%
    • India has closed 4.3 percentage points of its gender gap since 2006.
    • Globally, 69.2% of the gender gap has been closed.
    • Iceland: 1st, with 93% of its gender gap closed.
    • Top three:
      • Iceland
      • Finland
      • Norway
    • Chad: lowest-ranked country.
    • Iran and Pakistan were also among the bottom three.

    Four Dimensions of the Index

    1. Economic Participation and Opportunity

    India’s parity score: 41.2%

    • Improved by 0.5 percentage points from the previous edition.
    • Still 3.5 percentage points below India’s best score in 2013.
    • Professional and technical workers: parity increased from 26.6% in 2006 to 49.9% in 2026.
    • Legislators, senior officials and managers: 13.1% parity.
    • Labour-force participation parity: 44.1%.

    2. Educational Attainment

    • India recorded 96.6% parity.
    • Declined by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year.
    • Educational gains have been a major contributor to India’s improvement since 2006.

    3. Health and Survival

    • India’s parity score: 95.6%.
    • Sex ratio at birth remained nearly one percentage point lower than in 2006.

    4. Political Empowerment

    • India’s highest-performing subindex.
    • 24.5% of the gender gap closed.
    • Global rank: 67th.
    • Parliament: 16.1% of the gender gap closed in 2026.
    • Ministerial level: 5.9%, compared with 3.5% in 2006.
    • India’s ministerial parity had reached 30% in 2019, before declining.

    Important Global Observations

    • Southern Asia was the lowest-scoring region in Economic Participation and Opportunity.
    • Globally, political empowerment recorded the largest gains since 2006, but has experienced a reversal since 2016.
    • Women account for 19.1% of CEO roles globally.
    • Women remain underrepresented in Artificial Intelligence (AI), accounting for fewer than one in five AI engineers.
    • Australia entered the global top 10 for the first time.
    • Iceland was the only country to cross 90% parity, at 93%.

    Important Full Forms

    • WEF: World Economic Forum
    • AI: Artificial Intelligence
    • CEO: Chief Executive Officer

    Prelims Quick Revision

    • Global Gender Gap Index: World Economic Forum
    • 2026 edition: 145 economies
    • India: 131st
    • Top: Iceland
    • India overall parity: 64.5%
    • Global parity: 69.2%
    • Four dimensions:
      1. Economic Participation and Opportunity
      2. Educational Attainment
      3. Health and Survival
      4. Political Empowerment
    • India’s highest subindex: Political Empowerment
    • India’s Economic Participation parity: 41.2%
    • India’s Educational Attainment parity: 96.6%
    • India’s Health and Survival parity: 95.6%
    • Political Empowerment: 24.5% gap closed
  • PMAY-U: Housing, Inclusion and Empowerment

    PMAY-U: Housing, Inclusion and Empowerment

    Why in the News?

    The Ministry highlighted the achievements of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U) and the progress of PMAY-U 2.0, aimed at achieving Housing for All in urban areas. PMAY-U was launched in June 2015, while PMAY-U 2.0 was launched in September 2024.

    Key Highlights

    PMAY-U

    • Provides all-weather pucca houses with basic civic amenities to eligible urban households.
    • Focuses on:
      • Economically Weaker Sections (EWS)
      • Low Income Groups (LIG)
      • Middle Income Groups (MIG)
      • Slum dwellers
    • Original mission period was up to March 2022, extended up to 30 September 2026 for completion of sanctioned projects.

    PMAY-U 2.0

    • Launched in September 2024.
    • Implementation period: 2024-2029.
    • Target: 1 crore additional urban poor and middle-class families.
    • Financial assistance: up to ₹2.50 lakh per unit.
    • Also includes affordable rental housing.

    Income Categories

    • EWS: Annual income up to ₹3 lakh
    • LIG: ₹3 lakh to ₹6 lakh
    • MIG: ₹6 lakh to ₹9 lakh

    Four Verticals of PMAY-U 2.0

    1. Beneficiary-Led Construction (BLC)

    • Financial assistance up to ₹2.5 lakh.
    • For eligible EWS families.
    • Construction on own available land.
    • Maximum carpet area: 45 sq m.

    2. Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP)

    • Public/private agencies construct affordable houses.
    • Houses generally have 30-45 sq m carpet area.
    • Financial assistance up to ₹2.5 lakh per unit.

    3. Affordable Rental Housing (ARH)

    • Provides affordable rental accommodation.
    • Covers EWS and LIG beneficiaries, including:
      • Migrants
      • Homeless persons
      • Industrial workers
      • Working women
      • Construction workers
      • Street vendors
      • Rickshaw pullers
      • Contractual workers

    4. Interest Subsidy Scheme (ISS)

    • Provides interest subsidy on eligible home loans.
    • Applicable to loans sanctioned and disbursed on or after 1 September 2024.
    • Covers EWS, LIG and MIG beneficiaries.

    Major Achievements

    As of 9 August 2026:

    • 1.25 crore houses sanctioned under PMAY-U and PMAY-U 2.0.
    • More than 1 crore houses completed and delivered.
    • Under PMAY-U 2.0:
      • 18.38 lakh houses sanctioned
      • 14.40 lakh under BLC
      • 2.48 lakh under AHP
      • 1.36 lakh under ISS
      • 13,046 dwelling units under ARH
    • Around 1 crore houses among the 1.25 crore sanctioned were allotted to women, either in the name of the female head of household or through joint ownership.

    Inclusion and Empowerment

    PMAY-U promotes:

    • Women ownership/co-ownership of houses.
    • Housing access for:
      • Scheduled Castes (SCs)
      • Scheduled Tribes (STs)
      • Other Backward Classes (OBCs)
      • Minorities
      • Senior citizens
      • Persons with disabilities
      • Transgender persons

    Technology-enabled Implementation

    • Unified Web Portal: application, processing, tracking and fund disbursement.
    • PMAY-U Dashboard: real-time monitoring of key indicators.
    • Geo-tagging: tracks houses through five stages:
      1. Grounding
      2. Foundation
      3. Superstructure
      4. Finishing and external development
      5. Completion
    • Technology Sub-Mission (TSM): promotes modern and disaster-resilient construction technologies.
    • Technology and Innovation Sub-Mission (TISM): promotes innovative, green and climate-responsive housing.
    • Technology Innovation Grant (TIG): supports innovative technologies in AHP projects.

    Prelims Quick Revision

    • PMAY-U: launched in June 2015.
    • PMAY-U 2.0: launched in September 2024.
    • PMAY-U 2.0 period: 2024-2029.
    • Target: 1 crore additional families.
    • Four verticals: BLC, AHP, ARH, ISS.
    • PMAY-U 2.0 covers EWS, LIG and MIG.
    • ARH focuses on rental housing, including migrants and working women.
    • ISS relates to home-loan interest subsidy.
    • Technology tools include geo-tagging, dashboards and unified digital platforms.

  • ‘Census Town’ definition is outdated: Ministry to panel

    Why in the News

    The Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry has told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs that the four decade old criteria used to classify Census Towns cannot capture the actual scale of urbanisation in India. The Ministry deposed before the panel on a draft report titled “Census Criteria for Defining Urban Areas”. It had already flagged the same objections to the Registrar General of India in a communication in February 2024. The Registrar General has decided to continue with the existing definition, holding that it is too late to alter the framework for Census 2027, so the next Census will measure a transformed settlement pattern with a test written in 1981.

    What is a Census Town?

    1. The three part test: A Census Town is a village with a minimum population of 5,000, at least 75% of the male working population engaged in non agricultural pursuits, and a population density of at least 400 persons per square kilometre.
    2. It is a statistical category, not a legal one: A settlement meeting the test is counted as urban by the Census while continuing to be governed as a village, since municipal status is conferred separately by the State.
    3. Unchanged since 1981: The definition has not been revised in four decades, so every intervening Census has applied the same thresholds.

    What does the Ministry say is wrong with the 1981 test?

    1. Male bias: Only the male working population is used as a parameter to define a town, and the Ministry has said female workforce participation should also be used.
    2. Uniform national thresholds: A single population and density threshold applied across the country disadvantages hilly and northeastern States, where settlement sizes and densities differ structurally.
    3. Density measured on the wrong area: Density is calculated using administrative boundaries rather than built-up areas, which misclassifies settlements.
    4. The rural and urban binary: The binary classification overlooks peri-urban settlements and growth corridors that function as urban areas without qualifying as one.
    5. Stale input data: The current system works off data from the previous Census, which produces both exclusion and inclusion errors.

    What has the Ministry proposed instead?

    1. Satellite imagery: Greater use of imagery would identify built-up extent directly rather than inferring it from administrative units.
    2. A ‘transitional areas’ category: A third category between rural and urban would capture rapidly urbanising regions that neither label fits.
    3. Female workforce participation as a parameter: Adding it to the non farm employment test would measure the settlement’s economy rather than half of its workforce.

    How much urbanisation does the current definition miss?

    1. The official count: Census 2011 recorded a total population of 121 crore, of which about 83.3 crore or 68.8% lived in rural areas and 37.7 crore or 31.2% in urban areas.
    2. The satellite based estimate: The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), the advisory body reporting to the Prime Minister on economic policy, argues that India’s urbanisation level could have been as high as 63% in 2015 on satellite data.
    3. The size of the gap: The satellite based figure is more than double the official Census 2011 estimate, which is the measure of what the definition is failing to register.

    Why will Census 2027 still use the old framework?

    1. The Registrar General’s position: The framework cannot be altered at this stage of preparation for Census 2027.
    2. Field architecture is already built on it: Enumeration blocks, boundaries, enumerator training and field deployment all depend on the rural and urban classification being finalised in advance.
    3. The consequence: The classification produced by Census 2027 will be the base for scheme eligibility and urban planning through the following decade.

    Challenges to reforming the Census Town definition

    1. Classification drives governance and finance: A settlement counted as urban by the Census keeps rural governance and stays outside municipal planning and finance powers. Eg. Most Census Towns remain under panchayats and outside municipal law.
      The Fix: Tie any ‘transitional areas’ category to a statutory route for a State decision on municipal status under Article 243Q.
    2. Decadal measurement lag: A test applied once every ten years classifies settlements long after they have urbanised. Eg. Census 2027 will apply thresholds last revised in 1981.
      The Fix: Update classification against annual satellite built-up area data between Censuses rather than only at enumeration.
    3. Misclassification misdirects money: Grant devolution and scheme eligibility follow the rural or urban label, so a wrong label sends the wrong programme to a settlement. Eg. The Swachh Bharat Mission runs separate rural and urban verticals with different funding norms.
      The Fix: Allow a settlement classified as transitional to draw on both rural and urban scheme windows for one funding cycle.
    4. Satellite data measures construction, not employment: Built-up extent records buildings and cannot by itself establish the non farm economic activity the definition is meant to test. Eg. Warehousing clusters and plotted layouts register as built-up while the surrounding workforce stays agricultural.
      The Fix: Combine built-up area with workforce and night lights data rather than substituting one indicator for another.
    5. States control the next step: Creating a municipality is a State decision, and States carry fiscal and political reasons to leave urbanised settlements classified as villages. Eg. Kerala and West Bengal account for a large share of Census Towns still governed by panchayats.
      The Fix: Make a Census Town classification trigger a time bound State decision on municipal status with reasons recorded.

    Conclusion

    The Ministry and the Registrar General are not disagreeing about the facts of urbanisation. They are disagreeing about whether a measurement framework can be changed once field preparation has begun. That conflict is now settled in favour of continuity, and it settles the terms on which India will be counted as urban for another decade. The thing to watch is whether the Standing Committee’s final report converts the Ministry’s objections into a dated mandate for the Census after this one, since an objection recorded and not scheduled expires with the report.

    Back2Basics

    1. Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India: An office under the Ministry of Home Affairs, created in 1949, that conducts the decennial Census.
    2. Other functions: It maintains the Civil Registration System for births and deaths and runs the Sample Registration System, the source of India’s birth, death and infant mortality rate estimates.
    3. Statutory basis: The Census is conducted under the Census Act, 1948, which makes furnishing information compulsory and individual records confidential.
    4. Language data: The office also compiles the linguistic survey and mother tongue returns used to classify scheduled and non scheduled languages.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “Which of the following are among the million-plus cities in India on the basis of data of the Census, 2001?”