💥Mains Ready By December. Smash Mains & Smash PYQ Admissions Open
Talk to Mentor

Civilsdaily

Login

GS Paper: GS2

  • On caste census & NPAs, same reluctance to make privilege publicly visible

    Why in the News

    A reported miscommunication between the office of the Registrar General of India (RGI), which conducts the Census, and the Ministry of Social Justice, which maintains the lists of Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes, has established that the Ministry had in fact offered to supply those lists to the RGI. That matters because the stated ground for putting an “open-ended” caste question into the Census, in place of drop-down lists with an “Others” option for unlisted names, was that caste lists were not available. The sequence runs further back. The Union government reversed its position on counting caste before the 2024 general election, then postponed the Census well beyond its due cycle, with the pending delimitation exercise the operative reason. The same state that refuses to publish a caste tabulation also refuses to name the borrowers whose large loans public sector banks have written off. What is contested is therefore not the feasibility of either count, but whether the state will make privilege publicly visible at all.

    What is the open ended caste question?

    1. The design at issue: An open-ended question records whatever caste name a respondent states, as free text, with no list offered on the schedule.
    2. The alternative it displaced: A drop-down list offers the notified caste names for that State, with an “Others” field capturing any name the list does not carry.
    3. Why the two diverge at tabulation: Free text returns have to be matched to notified caste names after enumeration, and a name that matches no entry cannot be counted against any category.

    What does the reported miscommunication establish?

    1. The stated excuse does not hold: The ground given for the open-ended question was the unavailability of caste lists, and the Ministry of Social Justice had offered the Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Class lists to the RGI.
    2. The delay had a separate driver: The Census was postponed beyond reasonable limits, with the impending delimitation exercise the reason.
    3. The obstruction is not new, only more open: Governments have avoided, prevented or diluted a caste count across administrations, the Congress in 2011 and the Bharatiya Janata Party now.
    4. Opposition has been continuous since 2001: Every proposal to count caste since the 2001 Census has attracted immediate and insistent opposition.

    Who opposes a caste count, and on what interest?

    1. Anti-reservation organisations: Youth for Equality, which opposes reservation, was the primary petitioner against the Bihar caste survey, and the Akhila Karnataka Brahmana Mahasabha petitioned against a similar survey in Karnataka.
    2. Dominant caste beneficiaries of reservation: The Akhila Bharata Veerashaiva Lingayat Mahasabha and the Rajya Vokkaliga Sangha petitioned the Karnataka High Court to stay the 2025 caste survey, on the apprehension that a count would reduce their existing share.
    3. The legal arguments were recycled: Petitioners in Bihar and Karnataka invoked grounds already rejected by the Supreme Court or superseded by constitutional amendments, including the 105th Amendment.
    4. The elite response is about status, not quota share: For those in the so-called General Category who occupy the highest positions, being asked their caste is treated as implicating them in something connected to reservation, which is why some technology proprietors, film actors and other prominent individuals dissociated themselves from these surveys.
    5. A partial softening after 2019: Reservation for Economically Weaker Sections, introduced in 2019 and in effect available to the upper castes, softened attitudes to a degree, and beneficiaries of reservation have long attracted resentment from the General Category.

    Why is a caste count conceded in principle and blocked in design?

    1. The electoral bind: An elected government must accommodate the rich and the powerful, and must also seek votes from the mass of people who are neither, so it concedes the principle of a caste count and then designs the count so that it does not produce one.
    2. The debate assumes one kind of benefit: Most participants treat a caste census as being about reservation, so opposition to reservation converts directly into opposition to counting caste.
    3. The spectrum of positions is therefore truncated: A frame built only around reservation leaves out the array of benefits the state confers on those who count but are never counted.

    What does the refusal to name written off defaulters show?

    1. Disclosure was judicially authorised: Reserve Bank of India v. Jayantilal N. Mistry (2015) held that information on wilful defaulters owing large sums to public sector banks is liable to be released under the Right to Information Act, 2005.
    2. Banks and the regulator have not complied on write-offs: Both the banks and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have refused to provide details on loans written off.
    3. The 2024 Directions stop short of write-offs: The RBI’s Wilful Defaulters and Large Defaulters Directions, issued in 2024, require individual banks to list on their websites the instances of default where suits have been filed.
    4. Only aggregates are released: No information beyond aggregate amounts is provided on loans written off. Right to Information applicants have asked for those details repeatedly.
    5. The most recent refusal: Bank of Baroda declined to name the defaulters on loans totalling Rs 35,715 crore, written off between 2020-21 and 2025-26, on which average recovery was 28 per cent.

    What links a caste tabulation to a defaulters’ list?

    1. The same state behaves differently on these two datasets: An administration that collects personal data extensively is reluctant to collect or release data in both these instances.
    2. The common root is visibility of privilege: The reluctance stems from an unwillingness to make privilege publicly visible, so the case against the caste census rests on an aversion to counting the privileged and to putting inequality on record.
    3. Neither dataset would reveal anything new: Neither a caste tabulation nor a defaulters’ list would disclose anything about the privileged that is not already known in a general way.
    4. What is being defended is a claim, not a secret: An official and public count or list is resisted because it breaches an implicit right of the privileged to control their own social visibility.

    Challenges to counting caste in the Census

    1. Stated caste names do not map to a fixed list: A respondent’s own term can be a synonym, a sub caste or a spelling variant that matches no entry in any notified list. Eg. The Socio Economic and Caste Census of 2011 threw up roughly 46 lakh distinct caste and sub caste returns.
      The Fix: Publish the enumeration schedule with State specific drop-down lists mapped to a standard code, retaining a free text field for returns outside the list.
    2. There is no single national list to count against: Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Class lists are notified State by State, so one caste can be listed in one State and absent in the next. Eg. The Jat community sits in the central list of Other Backward Classes for some States and not for others.
      The Fix: Publish a concordance mapping every State list entry to a central code before enumeration begins, so a return is classifiable at the point of entry.
    3. Enumeration records a declaration, not an entitlement: The count captures what a household states, with no check against a caste certificate. Eg. Bihar’s caste survey of 2022-23 recorded caste on the respondent’s own declaration.
      The Fix: Record the stated caste name and the existence of a certificate as separate fields, so the two are tabulated apart rather than conflated.
    4. The count’s timetable carries a seat allocation stake: The Census schedule determines when readjustment of constituencies can begin, which gives the timing an interest independent of enumeration. Eg. The freeze on readjustment of Lok Sabha seats under the Constitution (Eighty-fourth Amendment) Act, 2001 runs until the first Census taken after 2026.
      The Fix: Separate publication of the caste tabulation from the readjustment exercise, so the count’s release does not wait on a seat allocation decision.
    5. Collecting a return does not commit the state to publishing it: Enumeration and publication are distinct decisions, and the second can be withheld indefinitely. Eg. The caste data of the 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census was referred to an expert group and never released.
      The Fix: Release the caste tables on the same notified schedule as the Census’s other tables, so publication is not a separate discretionary step.

    Conclusion

    Two disclosure questions now sit with the executive at the same time. One is whether the Census schedule will carry notified caste lists or free text, which decides whether the enumeration produces a usable tabulation at all. The other is whether the regulator will extend its default disclosure requirement from suits filed to loans written off, which is where the larger sums sit. What to watch is the final form of the Census caste question and any amendment to the RBI’s Directions covering write-offs, since both are administrative decisions that need no legislation and neither has been taken.

    What is transparency and accountability?

    1. Transparency: Public officials and institutions have a duty to act visibly and to provide clear, accessible information about their decisions and actions.
    2. Accountability: Public authorities are obliged to explain their actions, justify them, and take responsibility for them.
    3. Why the pair exists: Information held by the state is the precondition for a citizen questioning its use, so disclosure converts a grievance into a claim the state must answer.
    4. The open government standard: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines open government as transparency in government actions, accessibility of government services and information, and responsiveness of government to new ideas, demands and needs.

    Laws and Rules Governing Transparency and Accountability

    1. Right to Information Act, 2005: Entitles any citizen to seek information from a public authority without stating a reason for the request.
    2. Section 4(1)(b): Requires a public authority to publish specified categories of information on its own motion, so that fewer requests need to be filed.
    3. Section 7: Sets 30 days for a reply, and 48 hours where the information concerns the life or liberty of a person.
    4. Section 8: Lists the exemptions, and Section 8(2) permits disclosure where the public interest outweighs the protected harm.
    5. Section 20: Allows a penalty of Rs 250 a day, to a ceiling of Rs 25,000, on an officer who wrongfully refuses information.
    6. Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019: Removed the fixed five year tenure of Information Commissioners, leaving the term to be prescribed by the Centre, and ended the parity of their salaries with those of Election Commissioners.
    7. Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014: Provides a mechanism to receive disclosures of corruption or misuse of power and to protect the person making them.

    Challenges in Transparency and Accountability

    1. Information Commissions run behind their own caseload: Appeals accumulate faster than commissions dispose of them, so a delayed disclosure loses its use. Eg. Over four lakh appeals were pending across 29 Information Commissions as of 2024.
      The Fix: Fix a statutory disposal limit for appeals, as the Second Administrative Reforms Commission recommended, and report disposal against it.
    2. Commissions sit without heads: A commission lacking a Chief Information Commissioner cannot constitute benches, so its docket stops moving. Eg. Nine Information Commissions were without a chief in late 2025.
      The Fix: Begin the appointment process a fixed period before a vacancy arises, with the shortlist published.
    3. The penalty provision is rarely used: The power to fine an officer for wrongful refusal is exercised in a small fraction of the cases that attract it, so refusal carries no cost. Eg. Penalties are imposed in about 4 per cent of the cases where they are warranted.
      The Fix: Require a commission to record written reasons whenever it declines to impose a penalty after finding wrongful refusal.
    4. Exemptions are read wide and the public interest override narrow: The exemption grounds are invoked routinely and the override that answers them almost never is. Eg. Section 8(2)’s public interest override is invoked in under 1 per cent of cases.
      The Fix: Harmonise the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 with the disclosure regime so the public interest override, not the personal information exemption, settles a request naming individuals.
    5. Requesters carry personal risk: Seeking records on local contracts, land and licences exposes the applicant to retaliation. Eg. Over 100 Right to Information users have been killed since 2005.
      The Fix: Notify the rules under the Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014 and extend its machinery to information applicants, so a threatened applicant has a statutory route.

    Back2Basics: The Constitution (One Hundred and Fifth Amendment) Act, 2021

    1. What it did: Restored the power of States and Union Territories to prepare and maintain their own list of socially and educationally backward classes.
    2. Why it was needed: An earlier reading of the Constitution (One Hundred and Second Amendment) Act, 2018 had left the power to notify backward classes with the Centre alone.
    3. Provisions touched: It amended Article 342A and clarified Article 366(26c), so a State list and the central list operate separately.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2020, GS2, 10 marks] “Recent amendments to the Right to Information Act will have profound impact on the autonomy and independence of the Information Commission”. Discuss.”

  • SC seeks timeline for FSSAI’s food warning label roll-out

    Why in the News

    The Supreme Court has put the two phase rollout of front-of-pack warning labels (FoPL) proposed by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) under scrutiny. A two judge Bench held that a “reasonable, scientifically justified and clearly defined timeline” must divide the two phases, warning that the second phase could otherwise be “indefinitely postponed”. The Court also questioned why a warning should require a product to be high in at least two nutrients of concern when excess of even one can pose a health risk. The directions came on a public interest litigation seeking mandatory front of pack warnings on packaged foods high in sugar, salt and saturated fats. The protective content of the label therefore turns on a threshold and a commencement date that the proposal left to administrative discretion.

    What is front-of-pack labelling?

    1. What it is: Front of pack labelling puts a summary nutrition signal on the front face of a package, so a buyer sees it without reading the nutrition table printed on the back.
    2. A warning is a directive signal: A warning label declares that a product is high in a specified nutrient, which tells the buyer what to do rather than offering a score the buyer has to interpret.
    3. The nutrients of concern: The Indian proposal covers added fat, added sugar and salt, each linked to non communicable disease at excess intake.
    4. The threshold does the work: A product carries a warning only where it crosses a set limit on a nutrient, so the level of that limit and the number of nutrients required decide how much of the market is actually labelled.

    What did the Court hold on the two phase timeline?

    1. The phased design as proposed: Warnings would initially apply to packaged foods high in two or more nutrients of concern, and would extend in a second phase to products high in even one of them.
    2. Why FSSAI wanted the split: The regulator proposed the phased approach to give consumers time to adapt to the new labels and the food industry time to reformulate its products.
    3. The Court’s objection: The Bench held that assessment of consumer acceptability and adequate reformulation time “cannot be reason enough for this uncertainty in time”, and that a clearly defined timeline or transitionary period dividing the two phases must be indicated for the FSSAI’s approach to be a workable one.
    4. The risk it named: Without a fixed timeline the second phase could be “indefinitely postponed”, which would leave the narrower first phase standing as the operative regime.

    Why is the two nutrient trigger being questioned?

    1. The Court’s question: It asked why a warning should initially require a product to be high in at least two nutrients of concern when excess levels of even one could pose health risks.
    2. The petitioners’ ground: The petition contends that the two nutrient requirement lacks a scientific basis and would leave many products outside the first phase.
    3. The alternative the Court floated: It asked FSSAI to consider a model bringing products with the highest levels of nutrients of concern under the warning regime first, followed by those crossing lower thresholds.
    4. What that alternative would change: Sequencing by severity rather than by the count of nutrients would capture a product that is extreme on a single nutrient, which the two nutrient trigger currently leaves out.
    5. The counter claim on the record: Stakeholders objected to placing ultra processed foods on the same footing as minimally processed packaged foods, on the ground that the latter carry greater nutritional benefit.

    What else did the Court direct, and what happens next?

    1. Nutritional literacy in schools: The Bench asked the Union government to incorporate nutritional literacy into school curricula, teaching children how to interpret nutritional information on a label.
    2. Why children were singled out: The Bench recorded that children are particularly “vulnerable” to “impulse or uninformed dietary decision-making”, so a label by itself does not protect them.
    3. The affidavit and the next date: FSSAI was directed to file an affidavit within 10 days setting out its responses and clarifications, and the matter was posted to 28 September.
    4. The petition behind it: The directions came while hearing a public interest litigation filed by the non profit 3S and Our Health Society, seeking mandatory front of pack warnings on packaged foods high in sugar, salt and saturated fats.

    Challenges to front of pack warning labelling in India

    1. The threshold is set administratively and decides the regime: A limit fixed a little higher exempts most of the processed food shelf without any change to the rule’s text. Eg. FSSAI’s earlier Indian Nutrition Rating proposal drew criticism that its thresholds would have left most packaged snacks favourably rated.
      The Fix: Place the numerical thresholds in the regulation itself rather than in guidance, so any change requires the same consultation the regulation did.
    2. A rating signal is weaker than a warning signal: A star or score lets a buyer rationalise a poor product as better than the alternative, and a warning does not. Eg. Chile’s black octagonal “high in” warnings reduced purchases of labelled products, while star rating systems elsewhere recorded smaller effects.
      The Fix: Settle on a single warning format and bar any parallel voluntary rating on the same pack face.
    3. Reformulation can move a nutrient rather than remove it: A manufacturer can substitute an unlabelled ingredient to drop below a threshold without lowering the product’s health cost. Eg. Sugar replaced by non nutritive sweeteners takes a product below a sugar limit while leaving an ultra processed formulation intact.
      The Fix: Add an ultra processed classification to the pack alongside the nutrient warnings, so formulation is disclosed and not only nutrient content.
    4. Advertising sits outside a labelling rule: A warning on the pack does nothing about the promotion that put the product in the trolley. Eg. Children’s programming and digital platforms carry advertising for products high in fat, sugar and salt that no packaging regulation reaches.
      The Fix: Restrict advertising of products carrying a warning label during children’s viewing hours and on platforms with a substantial child audience.
    5. Most food sold in India is unpackaged: Warning labels reach the packaged segment, and not the loose, street and restaurant food where a large share of fat, sugar and salt is consumed. Eg. FSSAI’s menu labelling requirement applies only to chain restaurants above a size threshold and leaves standalone eateries out.
      The Fix: Extend calorie and nutrient disclosure to chain outlets below the current threshold and to food aggregator listings, where the menu is already digital.
    6. Enforcement capacity is the binding constraint: A labelling requirement is only as real as the sampling and prosecution behind it. Eg. Food testing laboratory capacity and food safety officer strength in the States have repeatedly been flagged as short of sanctioned levels.
      The Fix: Publish a State wise compliance sampling rate for front of pack labelling, so enforcement effort is visible rather than assumed.

    Conclusion

    The label’s protective value sits in two numbers the proposal leaves to administrative discretion: the level at which a nutrient triggers a warning, and how many nutrients must cross it. The Court has decided neither. It has refused to let the gap between the phases stay open ended, which converts a design choice into something the regulator must now justify on the record. What to watch is whether the regulator defends the two nutrient trigger with evidence or moves to the severity first sequence the Bench proposed.

    Back2Basics: Food Safety and Standards Authority of India

    1. Its governing statute: FSSAI is a statutory body established under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, which consolidated several earlier food laws into a single framework.
    2. Its ministry: It functions under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
    3. What it does: It frames science based standards for food articles and regulates their manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import.
    4. How it regulates: It issues regulations such as the Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020, and licenses and registers food businesses through State food safety commissioners.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2016] With reference to pre-packaged items in India, it is mandatory to the manufacturer to put which of the following information on the main label, as per the Food Safety and Standards (Packaging and Labelling) Regulations, 2011? 1. List of ingredients including additives 2. Nutrition information 3. Recommendation, if any, made by the medical profession about the possibility of any allergic reactions 4. Vegetarian/non-vegetarian Select the correct answer using the code given below. (a) 1, 2 and 3 (b) 2, 3 and 4 (c) 1, 2 and 4 (d) 1 and 4 only ANSWER: (c)”

  • E-commerce firms brought under tighter regulation

    Why in the News

    The Union Consumer Affairs Department has notified the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026, published in the gazette on 9 September and operational from 1 January 2027. The Rules require a platform to disclose the importer and country of origin for imported goods, and to publish its own legal identity and grievance contacts. They set a 48 hour clock for acknowledging a consumer complaint and one month for redressing it. The stated purpose is protection against dark patterns and bundled fees, meaning practices that shape a purchase before any dispute arises. The obligation now attaches to the platform rather than to the seller listing on it, which shifts the burden of a purchase decision from the buyer’s diligence to the platform’s disclosure.

    What are the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules?

    1. The parent statute: The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 replaced the 1986 Act and empowered the Union government to make rules preventing unfair trade practices in electronic commerce.
    2. The 2020 baseline: The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 were framed under that power and set the existing duties for platforms, which the 2026 amendment extends.
    3. Who the Rules bind: An e-commerce entity is the platform that owns or operates the digital marketplace, and the duties attach to that entity and not only to the seller whose listing appears on it.
    4. The enforcement route: Contraventions are actionable under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, including through the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), the regulator the Act created to act against unfair trade practices on its own motion.

    What must a platform now disclose?

    1. Origin of imported goods: Platforms must disclose the details of the importer and the country of origin for imported goods.
    2. Its own identity and locations: Every e-commerce entity must provide its legal name, the principal geographic address of its headquarters and of all its branches, and the details of its website.
    3. Where a buyer can reach it: Contact details for customer care and for the grievance officer must be provided.

    What obligations do the Rules place beyond disclosure?

    1. Acknowledge within two days: The grievance officer must acknowledge receipt of any consumer complaint within 48 hours.
    2. Redress within a month: The complaint must be redressed within one month.
    3. Dark patterns are named: The amendment is framed as protecting buyers against dark patterns, meaning interface design that steers a user into a choice they did not intend. Eg. A pre ticked add on, or a countdown that manufactures urgency.
    4. Bundled fees are named: The Rules also address fees bundled into a displayed price, where the amount a buyer finally pays differs from the amount that drew them to the listing.

    Challenges to enforcing the E-Commerce Rules

    1. Disclosure without verification: The Rules require the platform to display what the seller declares about origin, and impose no duty to verify that declaration. Eg. Country of origin fields on marketplace listings have remained inconsistent since the 2020 Rules first required them, with the same product listed under different origins by different sellers.
      The Fix: Make the platform liable for a materially false origin declaration on a listing it hosts, so verification becomes cheaper than the penalty.
    2. The clock times the reply, not the remedy: A platform that records a refusal inside one month has complied with the redress requirement. Eg. A rejected return closed within the window counts as redressed under the same clause as a refunded one.
      The Fix: Require the grievance officer’s closure to record the remedy actually given, and make an unremedied closure appealable to the CCPA.
    3. An enumerated list of dark patterns dates quickly: Interface nudges can be redesigned faster than a rule can name them. Eg. The CCPA’s 2023 guidelines on dark patterns named 13 specified practices, and new variants appeared outside that list.
      The Fix: Add a residual test turning on whether the interface obtained consent the user would not have given had the choice been presented neutrally.
    4. The grievance officer is not independent: The officer deciding the complaint is the platform’s own employee, assessing the platform’s own conduct. Eg. The Information Technology Rules had to create a Grievance Appellate Committee above platform grievance officers after first level redress proved inadequate.
      The Fix: Create an appellate tier above the platform grievance officer, so a rejected complaint has a route that does not begin in a consumer court.
    5. Cross border sellers sit outside reach: A foreign seller shipping directly to an Indian buyer has no Indian entity for the Rules to bind. Eg. Listings fulfilled from outside India name no Indian importer, which is precisely the field the Rules require to be displayed.
      The Fix: Require any platform serving Indian buyers to appoint a resident authorised representative answerable under the Rules, on the model used for foreign data fiduciaries.
    6. The practices stay lawful until commencement: The Rules were gazetted in September and commence on 1 January 2027, so the conduct they name remains permitted in the intervening months. Eg. The festive season carrying the year’s highest online sales volumes falls inside that gap.
      The Fix: Bring the disclosure obligations into force on notification and reserve the transition period for the systems dependent grievance timings alone.

    Conclusion

    The amendment moves the burden of a purchase decision from the buyer’s diligence to the platform’s disclosure. It leaves open who is answerable when the disclosure itself is wrong. A timed grievance channel run by the platform’s own officer measures response speed rather than outcome, so compliance can rise without redress improving. What to watch is whether enforcement directions issue against a named platform under the new obligations, since a rule tested only through individual consumer complaints moves at the pace of those complaints.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2022] With reference to foreign-owned e-commerce firms operating in India, which of the following statements is/are correct ? 1. They can sell their own goods in addition to offering their platforms as market-places. 2. The degree to which they can own big sellers on their platforms is limited. Select the correct answer using the code given below : (a) 1 only (b) 2 only (c) Both 1 and 2 (d) Neither 1 nor 2 ANSWER: (b)”

  • Faith travels first class

    Why in the News

    Pilgrimage in India has been reorganised into a premium travel market, with packages priced from tens of thousands of rupees to several lakh and a projected sector growth rate of 18.2% a year. Two central schemes have funded the sites the market operates on, sanctioning projects at religious and heritage sites and across thematic circuits. The Ministry of Tourism maintains no data on how many pilgrims actually travel, and none on how much of the market is luxury. The commercial volume has reached the point where Char Dham helicopter operations alone exceed Rs 1,000 crore a season, with a fifth fatal crash in six weeks on that route. Public money is therefore building capacity at sites whose ecological and safety limits are measured against no pilgrim number at all.

    How large is the pilgrimage market, and what does the state know about it?

    1. A projected growth rate: A 2025 report by the consulting firm KPMG projects India’s spiritual tourism sector growing at a compound annual growth rate of 18.2%.
    2. The Ministry of Tourism does not count pilgrims: It maintains no specific data on the number of pilgrim visits across the country.
    3. Nor the premium segment: No data exists on what share of the spiritual travel market falls in the luxury or affordable luxury categories, the latter meaning packages bridging the mass and luxury markets.
    4. What the government states in place of a figure: Press Information Bureau handouts say spiritual tourism continues to attract millions of domestic and international visitors every year, with no number attached.

    What has public money built, and on what stated terms?

    1. PRASHAD: The Union Ministry of Tourism’s Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual Augmentation Drive (PRASHAD) gives financial assistance to State governments and Union Territory administrations for tourism infrastructure at identified religious and heritage sites. It has sanctioned 54 projects worth Rs 1,726.74 crore, focused on infrastructure and visitor amenities.
    2. Swadesh Darshan: The scheme develops integrated tourism infrastructure across 15 thematic circuits, including the Buddhist, Sufi, Himalayan, Krishna and Ramayana circuits. It has sanctioned 76 projects worth Rs 5,290.33 crore as of March 2026.
    3. The stated justification: A government explainer titled ‘A Decade of Tourism-Led Growth’, published in June 2026, holds that journeys of faith sustain local livelihoods, support traditional crafts and enterprises, and drive regional economic growth.
    4. Connectivity is the effect travellers report: Pilgrims attribute the new ease of reaching religious places to central efforts to connect religious corridors and improve connectivity.

    What is driving demand into the non budget segment?

    1. Three named drivers: Central infrastructure development around religious sites, rising religiosity, and women’s increasing mobility and independent spending power have together raised demand for group tours in non budget categories.
    2. Two events reset the base: The Kumbh Mela and the inauguration of the Ram Mandir pushed up demand for spiritual tourism.
    3. The traveller profile has changed: Youth now opt for pilgrimages, and group packages are surging in popularity with women travelling in them with or without their husbands.
    4. A reopened route created a new destination: China reopened the Kailash Mansarovar route after six years. The first batch of pilgrims travelled in 2025, and the site has since become the destination travellers flock to.
    5. Visibility is part of the pull: The drivers include an urge to reconnect with roots and the social media pressure to be seen, alongside narratives crafted by spiritual leaders and katha vachaks, meaning religious storytellers, that draw the youth.

    What does the premium segment cost, and who supplies it?

    1. The general price range: A religious tour to another State costs a household around Rs 50,000, and Uttarakhand packages run from Rs 40,000 to between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 5 lakh a day.
    2. The Kailash Mansarovar trip: It cost Rs 2.72 lakh a person for one recent couple, and can reach Rs 7 lakh depending on the operator and the route.
    3. Branded packages are the growth end: One travel company sells an “Ayodhya to Kashi Quick Bhakti Yatra with Taj stays” at over Rs 1 lakh, another sells “exclusive glamping packages” for the Kumbh Mela, and several operators market “spiritual luxury” or “VIP darshan” at Tirupati.
    4. The supply base in one State: Uttarakhand’s religious tourism rests on five luxury hotels, over 500 travel agents and private helicopter service providers, offering facilities from basic to five star.
    5. Who is paying at the top end: Seniors are opting for luxury itineraries paid for by children living abroad, and wealthier travellers choose helicopter packages for quick darshans, sometimes clubbed with birthdays or anniversaries.
    6. Hotels report it as their demand driver: The Hotel Association of India attributes strong 2025 hospitality demand to spiritual hotspots including Ayodhya, Jammu, Varanasi, Puri, Amritsar and Tirupati, with the Maha Kumbh lifting Tier II and Tier III markets and steady growth in international arrivals along spiritual circuits.

    Why has the Char Dham helicopter business become a safety problem?

    1. The pilgrimage has changed mode: The Char Dham Yatra covers Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, traditionally completed on foot in a clockwise direction beginning from Yamunotri, and is now done by road or helicopter.
    2. The business is large: Char Dham helicopter operations, split between roughly nine shuttle companies and about 25 charter firms, generate a seasonal business exceeding Rs 1,000 crore.
    3. Competition is translating into cut corners: Industry insiders warn that intense competition pushes safety into the background, with corners cut and checks skipped.
    4. The named consequences of the sortie incentive: Pilots are often incentivised to increase daily sorties, which produces fatigue, rushed decisions, risky flights in unpredictable mountain weather, and minimal oversight of passenger limits or pricing.
    5. The cost has already been paid: A family of three travelling from Yavatmal in Maharashtra to Kedarnath for a birthday was killed in the fifth helicopter crash in Uttarakhand within six weeks.

    What pressure is the volume putting on the sites themselves?

    1. Slopes are being cut for the capacity: Local transport operators report that hills are being cut as tourist numbers rise, and that the mountains were not built for business at this scale.
    2. A flood hit a pilgrimage route: A flood on the Nepal-China border devastated the area around Gyirong Port and swept away the check post on the Kailash Mansarovar route.
    3. Concentration at Amarnath: Around 1.13 lakh people reportedly visited Pahalgam in the first five days of the 2026 season, from where the Amarnath Cave lies 72 km from the district headquarters.
    4. A town rebuilt around one temple: Shirdi, once a town of just over 25,000 residents, now records daily footfall of about 40,000, rising to 1 lakh during celebrations, served by over 150 luxury hotels.
    5. The revenue that footfall generates: The Shree Saibaba Sansthan Trust recorded total annual income of Rs 850.62 crore in 2024-25 and held Rs 3,918 crore in bank fixed deposits as of 31 March 2025. Donations received there include the currencies of 26 countries.
    6. The conservation position: An environment organisation working at Pahalgam holds that the fragile Himalayas must be protected from any further haphazard development.

    Is the public spending priority defensible?

    1. The allocation: The Maharashtra government has planned expenditure of Rs 34,000 crore on infrastructure and hospitality for the 2027 Simhastha Kumbh Mela at Nashik.
    2. The opportunity cost stated from the bench: A Supreme Court judge observed at a public event that 0.1% of the Kumbh allocation spent on Marathi medium schools could have saved more than 100 schools from closure, against a shrinking education budget.
    3. The State’s answer: The Maharashtra Chief Minister holds that 93% of the allocation is going into permanent infrastructure that will serve Nashik for the next 50 years.
    4. A non economic objective rides along: The State government also intends to use the event to assert that Lord Hanuman was born at Anjaneri near Nashik rather than at Kishkinda in Karnataka.

    Challenges to scheme led pilgrimage tourism

    1. The state funds what it does not measure: Infrastructure is sanctioned site by site with no pilgrim count, so no sanction can be tested against the load it was meant to carry. Eg. The project counts under the two central schemes noted above carry no matching pilgrim number.
      The Fix: Make a site level footfall estimate and a carrying capacity assessment a condition of sanction under both schemes, published with the project.
    2. No carrying capacity ceiling on Himalayan shrines: Construction and flight permissions are granted by separate sector regulators, with no single authority setting a daily limit for a fragile site. Eg. The National Green Tribunal has repeatedly heard petitions on unregulated construction along Himalayan pilgrimage routes.
      The Fix: Set a statutory daily visitor ceiling per shrine, derived from a published carrying capacity study and revised on a fixed cycle.
    3. Aviation safety is priced out by competition: Operators bidding for the same short seasonal window compete on price and turnaround, which is paid for out of maintenance and pilot duty time. Eg. The Uttarakhand crash sequence noted above.
      The Fix: Fix a maximum daily sortie count and pilot duty hour limit for the season, enforced by the civil aviation regulator rather than left to the operator.
    4. Event capital spending crowds out recurring social spending: Expenditure on an event is one time and visible, and the school or health budget it displaces is recurring and is not. Eg. The comparison drawn from the bench between the Kumbh allocation and Marathi medium school closures.
      The Fix: Publish an event budget alongside the department budgets it draws from, so the trade off is recorded at approval rather than argued afterwards.
    5. Local livelihoods capture a shrinking share: As packages move to branded operators, air charter and luxury hotels, the spending bypasses the local vendors the schemes’ own justification names. Eg. Kailash Mansarovar and Kumbh packages are sold end to end by national travel companies rather than by operators based at the site.
      The Fix: Reserve a share of on site concessions and transport permits at scheme funded sites for locally registered operators.

    Conclusion

    Pilgrimage in India is now a premium consumer market resting on publicly funded infrastructure, and the state that funds it does not count the people it is funding for. Two claims therefore cannot both be tested: that the spending sustains local livelihoods, and that the volume stays within what the sites can bear. Neither the ecological ceiling nor the safety record can be argued against a number nobody collects. Until that count exists, a growth projection will keep doing the work that evidence should.

    Back2Basics: Simhastha Kumbh Mela

    1. What it is: The Kumbh Mela held at Nashik and Trimbakeshwar in Maharashtra, timed to Jupiter’s entry into Leo, the Simha rashi from which the name comes.
    2. The cycle: It recurs roughly every twelve years at each site, so a State government gets one preparation window in a generation.
    3. The four Kumbh sites: Prayagraj at the Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati confluence, Haridwar on the Ganga, Ujjain on the Shipra, and Nashik on the Godavari.
    4. Its heritage status: The Kumbh Mela was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2015, GS1, 12 marks] The states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand reaching the limits of their ecological carrying capacity due to tourism. Critically evaluate.”

  • Trump’s unusual threat to US Federal Reserve and why it matters to India

    Why in the News

    The US President has warned the Federal Reserve (Fed) to cut interest rates, and has said the United States would otherwise stop trading with countries against which it runs a trade deficit. A central bank’s rate decision is not normally tied to a trade threat, which is what makes the statement unusual. It follows US government debt crossing a record $40 trillion and a trade deficit that has widened despite a slew of tariffs on trade partners. Pressure that begins as a US fiscal problem therefore arrives in India as demands on trade terms. India and the United States have been negotiating a bilateral trade agreement since February 2025, and the framework they announced for an Interim Agreement has already unsettled farmers.

    What is the US Federal Reserve?

    1. The central bank of the United States: It sets US policy interest rates and is charged with keeping prices stable and employment high.
    2. Rate decisions sit outside the executive: They are taken by a committee whose members hold fixed terms, which is the arrangement that separates monetary policy from the government of the day.
    3. Its rates set the price of money worldwide: The yield on the US 10 year government bond is the benchmark against which global borrowing costs are priced.

    Why is the United States pressing for lower interest rates now?

    1. The debt stock has crossed a record: US government debt has passed $40 trillion.
    2. Debt measured against output: The Council on Foreign Relations puts the US debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio at 125%.
    3. Interest now costs as much as defence: International think tanks estimate the US government will spend a little over $1 trillion this fiscal year servicing interest on the debt, which matches its national defence spending.
    4. Borrowing costs are rising, not falling: Rising oil prices from the US-Iran war have made investors warier of the debt, pushing the 10 year yield towards 5%. A rate cut is the cheapest available relief on the interest bill.
    5. Tariffs did not close the gap: The trade deficit widened even after tariffs were imposed across trade partners, which removes the argument that tariffs alone would correct it.

    How does US fiscal pressure reach India?

    1. The template is the China deficit: Washington has narrowed its trade deficit with China to the lowest in two decades, and has begun pressing partners such as India to deliver the same.
    2. First front, market access: Steep market access demands are being pressed through the trade deal negotiations.
    3. Second front, investment diversion: Investment is being drawn out of India and into the United States.
    4. Third front, input origin: India is under pressure to lower its dependence on inputs originating in China.
    5. The stated ground for the third front: The US position is that China operates a “shadow transhipment network”. On that reading, routing Chinese goods through third countries widens the effective US trade deficit, displaces US domestic production, reduces GDP growth and lowers federal tax receipts.

    What has India already conceded?

    1. Energy purchases: India has stepped up energy imports from the United States.
    2. Tariff cuts across consumer goods: Duties have been lowered on a broad range of products of US interest, from motorcycles to whiskey.
    3. Tax concessions: A tax holiday has been extended to datacentres and to items needed to expand nuclear power production in India.
    4. The LPG shift is already measurable: The US share of India’s liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) imports has crossed 50% in the six months since the West Asia crisis began.

    What does the trade framework put at risk for Indian farmers?

    1. A negotiation already long running: India and the United States have been negotiating a bilateral trade agreement since February 2025.
    2. An interim step was announced: The two countries announced a framework for an Interim Agreement in February this year.
    3. The named exposure: Trade experts warn that lower customs duties on US imports would put direct pressure on Indian growers of apples, cotton, grapes, oranges, soybeans and walnuts. Each is a crop where US output is price competitive at the Indian border, so the duty is what currently holds the domestic price.
    4. The tension is live before any cut: The framework has created considerable tension among farmers while the duty lines themselves remain unchanged.

    Why is accommodation raising Indian costs rather than lowering them?

    1. Cotton sourcing rules reach Indian mills: US restrictions on the use of cotton originating in China’s Uyghur region have made Indian spinners the preferred supply, and fear of US scrutiny is pushing cotton prices higher.
    2. The price move is large: The Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) reports cotton yarn prices up around 60%, from about Rs 250 a kg in early 2026 to about Rs 400 a kg currently.
    3. Exporters are asking for restriction, not liberalisation: Indian apparel exporters approached the Commerce and Industry Ministry and the Textile Ministry last month seeking regulation of cotton yarn exports to arrest the surge.
    4. The contradiction: Accommodating the United States on input origin has raised the cost base of the export sector the market access is meant to serve.

    Challenges to India in absorbing US trade pressure

    1. Concessions are hard to reverse: A duty cut granted to win market access becomes the baseline from which the next round of demands starts. Eg. The motorcycle and whiskey duty lines already conceded.
      The Fix: Bind each concession to a stated reciprocal commitment with a review date, so it lapses where the counterpart obligation is not met.
    2. Diversified energy sourcing has narrowed into dependence: Buying more from one supplier to ease a trade dispute concentrates a supply that was diversified precisely to reduce risk. Eg. The LPG share shift noted above occurred inside a single half year.
      The Fix: Set a ceiling on the share of any single crude or gas supplier in the import basket, reviewed annually against the diversification target.
    3. Cutting Chinese inputs raises the input bill: Indian manufacturing depends on Chinese intermediates, so removing them substitutes a costlier input rather than removing a cost. Eg. China supplies a large majority of India’s imports of active pharmaceutical ingredients, for which comparable domestic capacity does not exist.
      The Fix: Stage any input substitution requirement behind a domestic capacity milestone, so the switch follows the capability rather than preceding it.
    4. Farm liberalisation has no compensation channel: A duty cut lowers the price the grower receives, and no mechanism transfers the consumer gain back to the grower. Eg. Edible oil duty cuts held retail prices down and left domestic oilseed growers facing imported palm and soya oil at a lower landed cost.
      The Fix: Attach a price deficiency payment to any agricultural tariff line opened under a trade agreement, funded from the revenue the agreement is projected to generate.
    5. Monetary policy abroad sets India’s borrowing cost: A US yield near 5% pulls capital away from emerging markets whatever India’s own policy rate does. Eg. Foreign portfolio investors withdrew from Indian debt during earlier episodes of rising US Treasury yields.
      The Fix: Lengthen the maturity profile of government borrowing while domestic rates are low, so a later rise in global yields reprices a smaller share of the stock each year.

    Conclusion

    The pressure India is managing originates in the American fiscal position rather than in any Indian trade practice. That makes it insensitive to what India offers, since a concession which does not shrink the US deficit invites the next demand. Accommodation on those terms has no natural stopping point, and each round narrows the room available for the next. What to watch is whether the agreement under negotiation settles the agricultural tariff lines or leaves them to a later round.

    Back2Basics: Interim and early harvest trade agreements

    1. What it is: A partial trade agreement covering a limited set of tariff lines, concluded ahead of a full free trade agreement, so both sides bank early gains while the harder chapters continue.
    2. What it leaves out: Services, investment, government procurement and dispute settlement are typically deferred to the full agreement.
    3. The WTO condition: World Trade Organization (WTO) rules permit a preferential deal only where it covers substantially all trade between the parties, so an interim deal is defensible only as a stage in a wider agreement with a stated timetable.
    4. India’s use of the form: India signed the Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement with Australia in 2022 as an interim deal ahead of a fuller Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[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?”

  • 9th ASEAN India Ministerial Meeting reaffirms commitment to food security and resilient value chains [Dossier]

    PIB class: Press Release. Ministry: Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

    Why in News

    The 9th ASEAN India Ministerial Meeting on agriculture reaffirmed commitment to food security, sustainable agriculture and resilient value chains.

    Core facts

    1. The forum: ASEAN is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a ten member regional grouping. India is a dialogue partner and a strategic partner of ASEAN.
    2. Stated themes: Food security, sustainable agriculture and resilient agricultural value chains formed the agenda of the ministerial meeting.
    3. Figures and specific deliverables: Not verifiable this run and therefore omitted.

    Static Context

    1. ASEAN was established in 1967 through the Bangkok Declaration. Its members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
    2. India ASEAN relations run through a structured framework. India joined as a sectoral dialogue partner in 1992 and a full dialogue partner in 1996. The relationship became a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2022.
    3. The ASEAN India Trade in Goods Agreement is under review. Agriculture cooperation runs through a rolling plan of action agreed by the two sides.
    4. Food security cooperation links to India’s Act East Policy. It ties agriculture trade to India’s wider Indo Pacific engagement.

    Prelims angle

    ASEAN founding year 1967 and the Bangkok Declaration. The ten members. India’s status as a Comprehensive Strategic Partner since 2022. India ASEAN connectivity projects such as the Kaladan Multi Modal Transit Transport Project and the India Myanmar Thailand Trilateral Highway.

    Mains angle

    GS2, regional groupings affecting India’s interests. Agriculture and food security cooperation as a pillar of the Act East Policy and of India’s Indo Pacific strategy.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026] Which of the following connectivity projects is/are a part of cooperation between India and the ASEAN member countries? 1. Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project 2. IMT Trilateral Highway 3. Agartala-Akhaura Rail Line (a) 1 and 2 (b) 2 and 3 (c) 1 and 3 (d) 2 only. Answer: (a)”

  • BRICS [PIB Backgrounder]

    PIB class: PIB Backgrounder. Unit: PIB feature unit.

    Why in News

    PIB published a thematic Backgrounder on BRICS, the intergovernmental grouping.

    Core facts (static, definitional)

    1. BRICS is an intergovernmental grouping. The founding members are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
    2. Origin: The term BRIC began as an economic grouping in 2006. South Africa joined in 2010, making it BRICS.
    3. Expansion: The grouping admitted new members from January 2024. Indonesia became a full member in January 2025 and is the first Southeast Asian state in the bloc.
    4. Institutions: The New Development Bank (NDB) finances infrastructure and sustainable development projects. The Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) is a currency swap framework for balance of payments support.

    Static Context

    1. The New Development Bank (NDB) was established in 2015 and is headquartered in Shanghai. Founding members subscribed equal capital, so no single member dominates its voting.
    2. The Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) is a treaty based safety net. It lets members access foreign currency during short term liquidity pressure.
    3. BRICS positions itself as a voice of the Global South. It presses for reform of the United Nations Security Council and of the Bretton Woods institutions.
    4. The 16th BRICS Summit was held at Kazan, Russia in 2024 under the Russian chairship. Its theme concerned strengthening multilateralism for just global development and security.

    Prelims angle

    Founding versus new members. The NDB headquarters at Shanghai and its equal capital structure. The CRA as a swap arrangement. Latest summit host and chair. Indonesia as the first Southeast Asian member.

    Mains angle

    GS2, global groupings affecting India’s interests. BRICS as a counterweight in global governance and a platform for the Global South, weighed against internal divergence among members.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025] Consider the following statements with regard to BRICS: I. The 16th BRICS Summit was held under the Chairship of Russia in Kazan. II. Indonesia has become a full member of BRICS. III. The theme of the 16th BRICS Summit was Strengthening Multiculturalism for Just Global Development and Security. Which of the statements given above is/are correct? (a) I and II (b) II and III (c) I and III (d) I only. Answer: (a)”

    “[2026, GS2, 10 marks] BRICS acts as a powerful counterweight in global governance, actively amplifying the voice and influence of the Global South. Explain the role of BRICS in projecting itself as an alternative to other groupings.”

  • The challenges for BRICS

    Why in the News

    India hosts the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on 12 and 13 September, twenty years after the grouping was formalised in 2006. The grouping now accounts for a larger share of world output than the G7 and has grown from four members to eleven. Expansion has made agreement harder rather than easier. The foreign ministers’ meeting earlier in 2026 closed without a joint declaration after two members on opposite sides of an active conflict clashed. The economic project shows the same gap, with the idea of a single BRICS currency shelved in favour of settling bilateral trade in national currencies.

    How did BRICS grow from a four country dialogue into an eleven member bloc?

    1. Origin in a growth forecast: BRIC began in 2006 with Brazil, Russia, India and China, following a Goldman Sachs projection identifying these economies as future engines of global growth.
    2. From ministers to leaders: The format moved from a foreign ministers’ dialogue to a leaders’ forum, and the first summit was held at Yekaterinburg in Russia in 2009.
    3. First enlargement: South Africa joined in 2010, and the grouping took its present name.
    4. Second enlargement: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were added in 2024, and Indonesia became the eleventh full member in January 2025.

    How does BRICS now compare with the G7 in economic weight?

    1. The position in 2000: The four original members together accounted for roughly 23% of global GDP on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, which compares economies using what a currency actually buys at home rather than at market exchange rates. The G7 held nearly 52%.
    2. The position in 2024: The eleven member grouping accounted for approximately 36.8% of global GDP (PPP), and the G7 share fell below 29%.
    3. Growth differential: BRICS economies are projected to grow by an average 3.8% in 2025 and 3.7% in 2026, more than three times the G7 average.
    4. Prosperity tells a different story: Per capita GDP averages around $53,000 in the G7 against roughly $8,200 in BRICS.
    5. What drives the aggregate: The bloc’s weight comes from population and resource scale rather than from individual prosperity.

    Why has the grouping’s original grievance survived twenty years?

    1. The founding complaint: Global institutions have not kept pace with the redistribution of economic and political power.
    2. What the first summit asked for: Reform of the international financial institutions and of the United Nations, greater energy security, and a more democratic multipolar world order.
    3. Still unmet: Those demands remain the grouping’s central agenda two decades later, which is why an economic forum has turned into a geopolitical one presenting itself as a voice of the Global South.

    What does BRICS do for India’s strategy of multi alignment?

    1. Membership without alliance: India participates simultaneously in BRICS, the G20, the Quad and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) without accepting alliance commitments.
    2. The purpose of that spread: Multi alignment rests on strategic autonomy and is about creating room for manoeuvre rather than choosing between competing power centres.
    3. The grouping is not anti Western by origin: BRICS emerged during an early phase of convergence between India and the United States on strategic questions.
    4. India’s institutional contribution: India proposed a development bank at the 2012 New Delhi summit, and that proposal became the New Development Bank (NDB).
    5. What the bank has done: By mid 2026 the NDB had approved approximately $44 billion across 141 projects.

    What divides the members over what BRICS is for?

    1. The Chinese and Russian reading: Both increasingly position the grouping as a counterweight to Western dominance and a platform to challenge United States led institutions and the dollar’s hegemony.
    2. Beijing’s stake in size: China drove the enlargement, treating a larger grouping as a vehicle to project leadership of the Global South.
    3. Moscow’s stake in survival: Excluded from the SWIFT messaging network that banks use to send cross border payment instructions, and facing sweeping sanctions, Russia treats BRICS as an economic lifeline.
    4. The Indian and Brazilian reading: Both view BRICS primarily as an economic and reform oriented grouping.
    5. Where the divergence became explicit: Russia demanded in 2023 that India pay for oil in yuan, and India refused, insisting on dollars or rupees only.

    Why has expansion made consensus harder to reach?

    1. The visible fault line: The BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting in New Delhi in May 2026 failed to agree on a joint declaration.
    2. What caused the breakdown: Two member states on opposite sides of an active conflict, Iran and the UAE, confronted each other directly.
    3. What the chair issued instead: India recorded a chair’s statement acknowledging “differing views among some members regarding the situation in West Asia”.
    4. The structural point: BRICS operates on consensus, and every added member adds another veto on any text touching a geopolitical crisis.

    What has replaced the idea of a single BRICS currency?

    1. The currency idea is shelved: The United States President has threatened 100% tariffs on BRICS nations if they created a new currency or backed another currency to replace the dollar, and a single BRICS currency has largely been dropped.
    2. Bilateral settlement instead: Members have moved to settling trade in national currencies, a decentralised route that needs no common institution. Russia and China now settle over 90% of their bilateral trade in ruble and yuan.
    3. The India cases: Roughly 90% of direct payments between Russia and India have moved to national currencies through Special Rupee Vostro Accounts, which are rupee accounts that a foreign bank holds with an Indian bank, authorised by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). India has run a rupee and dirham settlement system with the UAE since July 2023 and a rupee and rupiah framework with Indonesia since July 2026.
    4. A payments layer, not a currency: BRICS Pay, to be unveiled at the 2026 summit, links national payment rails including Russia’s SPFS, China’s CIPS, India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix, so members can settle trade without routing through dollar correspondent banks.
    5. India’s own preference: India pushes interoperable central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), meaning sovereign digital money that can move across systems, rather than a supranational currency.

    How far has the dollar’s position actually weakened?

    1. Reserve holdings barely moved: The dollar still accounted for 57.13% of global central bank reserves in the first quarter of 2026.
    2. No member is building an alternative reserve: No BRICS member is accumulating rupee, yuan or rand reserves at meaningful scale.
    3. The Western assessment: Western countries treat the grouping not as an immediate replacement for the existing international order, but as a platform capable of gradually reshaping the distribution of geopolitical power.

    Challenges to BRICS

    1. No permanent secretariat or charter: The grouping has no treaty, no standing staff and no institutional memory, so follow up on a summit commitment depends on whichever member holds the rotating chair. Eg. Implementation is tracked through each chair’s own sherpa arrangements rather than by a standing body.
      The Fix: Create a small permanent secretariat with a published implementation review against each summit declaration.
    2. Unsettled disputes between members cap cooperation: India and China remain in an unresolved boundary dispute, which limits how far either will accept the other’s leadership of the bloc. Eg. The Galwan Valley clash of 2020 froze wider cooperation between the two for years.
      The Fix: Ring fence bilateral disputes into a separate channel so bloc business is not suspended whenever a member pair falls out.
    3. The bank depends on the market it wants to bypass: The NDB raises much of its capital in dollar markets, so lending to a sanctioned member threatens its own credit standing and funding cost. Eg. The bank suspended new transactions in Russia in 2022 to protect its market access.
      The Fix: Expand local currency lending and local currency bond issuance so project finance does not rest on dollar funding.
    4. Enlargement without an entry standard: Membership now spans oil exporters, sanctioned economies and aid recipients with little shared trade interest, which weakens any common negotiating position. Eg. Argentina abandoned its accession after being invited to join in 2023.
      The Fix: Publish objective accession criteria covering intra bloc trade share and acceptance of the reform agenda before any further enlargement.

    Conclusion

    BRICS has accumulated weight faster than it has accumulated agreement. Its economic case is largely settled and its political case is not. The marker to watch at the New Delhi summit is whether the chair closes with a text every member has signed or with a statement of its own. A second marker is whether the payments platform moves from launch to measurable settlement volume, since that is where the grouping’s stated ambition meets the actual behaviour of its members.

    Back2Basics: New Development Bank

    1. Founding instrument: The bank was established by an agreement signed at the 2014 BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, and began operations in 2015.
    2. Headquarters: It is based in Shanghai, with its first regional office in Johannesburg.
    3. Voting design: The five founding members hold equal shareholding, unlike the weighted voting used in the Bretton Woods institutions.
    4. Membership beyond the founders: Bangladesh, the UAE, Egypt and Algeria have been admitted as members, so the bank’s membership is wider than the grouping itself.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026, GS2, 10 marks] “BRICS acts as a powerful counterweight in global governance, actively amplifying the voice and influence of the Global South.” Explain the role of BRICS in projecting itself as an alternative to other groupings.”

  • Good governance is when state, society and markets deliver together

    Why in the News

    Cities ranked highest in the Swachhata Sarvekshan cleanliness survey attribute their results to the same two things, decentralised community action and collaborative governance. The argument built on that record is that six factors, rather than additional schemes, decide whether outcomes improve at scale, and that the state, society and markets have to deliver together. The sectors where delivery still fails are described as “wicked problems”, meaning problems with too many interacting variables for one agency to control on its own. The claim that follows runs against the way the system is organised. Centralisation is the default in precisely those sectors, and the reform that would displace it, an elected authority below the ward with funds and functionaries attached, has not been made.

    What is a wicked problem, and what do they look like in practice?

    1. A problem with no settled definition: A wicked problem is one where the parties cannot even agree what the problem is, because how it is framed already implies who is responsible and what the fix should be. Malnutrition framed as a food shortage produces a ration; framed as a sanitation and maternal health failure it produces something else entirely.
    2. Too many interacting variables for one agency: The causes sit across departments that each control one lever and none of the others, so no single authority can act on the problem as a whole. Eg. School learning outcomes turn on teacher deployment, nutrition, household income and distance to school at once.
    3. No stopping rule and no clean test of success: Work ends when money or attention runs out rather than when the problem is solved, and every intervention changes the situation it was measuring.
    4. The sectors the article places here: School education, health and nutrition, the systems it says have been expanded and must now be opened to citizen centric governance.

    Why do wicked problems resist conventional governance?

    1. Administrative structure cuts the problem into pieces: A department is built to deliver one function well and is accountable for that function alone, so a problem spanning four departments has no owner and four partial answers.
    2. Centralisation removes the people who can see the whole: The variables interact locally and differently in each place, and the tier that can observe that interaction is the one furthest from the decision.
    3. The measurement system rewards the wrong thing: Targets are set on what a single department can count, meaning inputs and coverage, so a scheme reports success while the outcome it was meant to move does not shift.
    4. Standard delivery assumes a known solution: Conventional administration is organised to execute a fix that is already decided, and a wicked problem has no such fix to execute, which is why the article argues for decentralised action and collaboration rather than a better scheme.

    Which six factors decide whether outcomes change at scale?

    1. Decentralised community action: Delivery improves where planning and management move down to the smallest viable unit, reaching below the block to the cluster level.
    2. Collaborative governance: The state, community organisations and market actors work on one outcome together rather than through parallel programmes.
    3. Women’s agency: Women’s collectives supply the standing local presence that holds a public service to account between elections.
    4. Technology as enabler: Digital systems are treated as support for local decision making rather than as a substitute for it.
    5. Accountability and public trust: Results improve where citizens hold a consensual decision making role and where data is validated by the community it describes.
    6. Professionals and community resource persons: Trained professionals and locally resident resource persons together carry the technical load that elected representatives cannot.

    What does the delivery record show, and why have social indicators moved slowly?

    1. The largest instance: The National Rural Livelihood Mission organised a hundred million women into 10 million self help groups, with decentralised management running down to the cluster level below blocks.
    2. Administrators converge on one explanation: Over a hundred chief executive officers of zila parishads gave the same answer as the research, that decentralised community action and collaborative governance deliver better where a problem carries too many variables for quality outcomes.
    3. Where the approach has already worked: The Green and White revolutions, the Rural Livelihoods Mission, the Swachh Bharat Mission Grameen, the total literacy campaigns, and collaborative work in watershed development and livelihoods diversification all rest on professionals combined with citizen centric accountability.
    4. The States that show the gains: Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Sikkim report improvements in multidimensional poverty and human development indicators where local governments and women’s collectives work together.
    5. Poverty fell without becoming durable: Extreme poverty declined sharply over the past two decades, and many households remain vulnerable to slipping back into it.
    6. The quality of work is the gap: Productivity gains and wages of dignity have been elusive in many employment opportunities, which slows the rate of improvement in social indicators.
    7. The new rails are in place: Digital public infrastructure, women’s bank accounts, direct benefit transfers and access to retail credit have all created new opportunities for growth and development.
    8. Rails are not outcomes: The persistent wicked problem sectors have not responded to those gains, which is what makes a different approach necessary rather than optional.

    Why does centralisation remain the default, and what is the binding constraint now?

    1. Electoral compulsions: The demands of democratic electoral processes push decisions upward to the level where visible credit is assigned.
    2. A bureaucracy built for other work: The administrative machinery is not geared to the qualitative outcomes these sectors require.
    3. Institutions and processes that do not function: Systems of institutions and management processes are inadequate, and in places dysfunctional.
    4. Accountability without community validation: Accountability stays weak wherever data is never validated by the community it purports to describe.
    5. The first task is largely complete: The heavy lifting of community mobilisation and social capital has been achieved in most parts of rural India.
    6. What is needed next: Higher order education and skills that raise productivity and allow the effort to scale.
    7. The systems now to be opened up: School, health and nutrition systems have been expanded, with real gains in social participation, and are the ones to be subjected to citizen centric impactful governance.
    8. What makes that possible locally: Untied and adequate funds, professionals posted below the block level alongside local governments, and a large body of community resource persons.
    9. The countervailing presence: Local government institutions standing alongside women’s collectives and their social capital create the conditions for accountable governance.
    10. A cadre that changed its own role: ASHA workers, the accredited social health activists based in villages, have made primary healthcare facilities more accountable, and improvements in their capabilities have moved many of them toward the work of community health workers.
    11. The transferable lesson: Accountable public systems need well trained frontline workers who live in the locality they serve.
    12. The effect on hired expertise: Where community resource persons exist, professionals recruited from the market also become more accountable and gain the scale to implement new approaches.

    What would change with an elected tier and full devolution?

    1. An elected tier below the ward: Direct elections at the basti level, below the large ward level, would create a legitimate accountable authority close to the community.
    2. Authority without resources fails: Those who carry the responsibility must also hold the resources.
    3. Collectives working with elected leaders: Women’s and youth collectives working with elected basti level leaders can provide accountable governance at the doorstep, with funds, functions and functionaries in place.
    4. Interconnected sectors need one authority: Given the interconnectedness of the wicked problem sectors, the responsibilities listed for local governments in the Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules should be accepted in full.
    5. The effect it produces: Such an adoption generates community convergent action from below rather than convergence ordered from above.
    6. A ranking already exists: The Panchayat Advancement Index, which ranks local governments, can be made better by community validation of every outcome it records.
    7. Financing should follow the deficit: The financing of local governance must be commensurate with the size and the shape of the deficit the Index reveals.

    Challenges to collaborative governance

    1. Devolution stops at the list: States accept the schedules in name and retain the functions in practice. Eg. Fewer than ten States have transferred all 29 subjects listed for panchayats, and the overall devolution index stands at about 44 percent.
      The Fix: Require activity mapping for every transferred subject, naming the tier that plans, the tier that spends and the tier that answers for the result.
    2. There is nobody below the block to collaborate with: Local governments lack the staff to hold a professional cadre to account. Eg. Panchayats average well under one secretary each, and in some large States the figure is close to a third of one per panchayat.
      The Fix: Create a dedicated local government cadre, recruited and paid at district level, with untied funds attached to each sanctioned post.
    3. Elected city leadership has no executive power: Urban collaboration fails where the elected head is ceremonial and the executive is appointed by the State. Eg. Parastatal agencies run water supply and transport in most large cities, leaving the municipal body answerable for services it does not control.
      The Fix: Transfer parastatal functions to municipal bodies together with the staff and the revenue streams that fund them.
    4. Community validation is missing where it matters most: Accountability tools collapse where the community never sees the record made in its name. Eg. Ward committees and area sabhas are non functional or absent in most States, and only a handful have legally mandated participatory bodies.
      The Fix: Make a social audit by the gram sabha or area sabha a condition for releasing the next tranche of performance linked grants.

    Conclusion

    The gap in these sectors is not a shortage of programmes or of community capacity. It is the absence of an elected authority small enough to be answerable and resourced enough to act, sitting next to the people who use the service. Every proposal in this space arrives at the same precondition, that a State has to give up functions, funds and staff it currently holds, and no State has yet faced a cost for declining to. What to watch is whether any fiscal transfer to a State is ever made conditional on measured devolution to its local governments, since nothing else makes retention expensive.

    Participatory Governance in India

    1. What it means: Governance is participatory where citizens hold a decision making role in planning, execution and audit, rather than only receiving a service designed elsewhere.
    2. The two values it rests on: Local institutions are justified on efficiency in public service delivery and on the deepening of democracy through proximity to citizens.
    3. The architecture on the community side: Self help groups are federated upward into village organisations and then into cluster level federations at panchayat or block level, which gives very small groups scale.
    4. The scale of women’s representation: Over 14.5 lakh elected women representatives sit in local bodies, and 21 States provide 50 percent reservation for women.

    Constitutional Framework Governing Local Self Government

    1. Article 243G: Empowers a State legislature to endow panchayats with the powers and authority to function as institutions of self government, with reference to the subjects listed in the Eleventh Schedule.
    2. Article 243W: Does the same for municipalities, with reference to the subjects listed in the Twelfth Schedule.
    3. Article 243I and Article 243Y: Require a State Finance Commission every five years to review the financial position of panchayats and municipalities and recommend the devolution of taxes, duties and grants.
    4. Article 243ZD: Provides for a District Planning Committee to consolidate the plans of panchayats and municipalities into a draft development plan for the district.

    Government Initiatives for Community Institutions

    1. Lakhpati Didi: Aims to enable 3 crore women members of self help groups to earn over ₹1 lakh a year through livelihood diversification, skilling and enterprise scaling.
    2. Namo Drone Didi: Provides drones to women’s self help groups for agricultural rental services, creating a new income stream and a route into technology use.
    3. Kudumbashree, Kerala: A State network of over 45 lakh members in more than 3 lakh groups, integrated with local self government and treated internationally as a benchmark.

    Key Facts about Participatory Governance

    1. The bank linkage programme: The Self Help Group Bank Linkage Programme was launched in 1992 and was pioneered by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).
    2. Its standing: It is the world’s largest microfinance programme by volume, with a loan repayment rate above 96 percent.
    3. The People’s Plan Campaign: Kerala’s campaign gives local bodies control over roughly 40 percent of the State’s plan budget.

    Challenges in Community Institutions

    1. Most groups never reach credit: A majority remain at the savings stage, and full credit linkage stays incomplete decades after bank linkage began. Eg. A significant share of groups are recorded as defunct, formed but inactive in meetings, savings and lending.
      The Fix: Make bank linkage, rather than group formation, the reported output against which a district’s performance is assessed.
    2. Weak market linkage caps incomes: Products lack quality, branding, packaging and access to organised markets, so most groups sell only locally. Eg. Public procurement routes such as the Womaniya initiative on the Government e Marketplace reach only a small share of producers.
      The Fix: Attach branding, logistics and quality certification support to cluster level federations rather than to individual groups.
    3. Entry capital is too small to build an enterprise: The revolving fund and community investment fund provided at formation cannot finance a business beyond subsistence. Eg. A revolving fund of ₹20,000 to ₹30,000 per group is the standard starting support.
      The Fix: Move to a credit plus model that adds technical consultancy and business incubation instead of only enlarging the loan.
    4. Women’s time is the unpriced constraint: Domestic responsibility limits the hours available for meetings and for enterprise work. Eg. Women spend upward of seven hours a day on unpaid domestic work against roughly one and a half hours for men.
      The Fix: Fund childcare and drudgery reducing shared infrastructure at federation level as part of livelihood spending rather than as welfare.

    Back2Basics: Panchayat Advancement Index

    1. Who publishes it: The Ministry of Panchayati Raj.
    2. What it ranks: Gram panchayats, on measured progress toward development outcomes rather than on expenditure incurred.
    3. How it is built: It is organised around nine themes of the Localised Sustainable Development Goals, covering poverty, health, water, infrastructure, social justice and governance among others.
    4. How panchayats are graded: Each is placed in a performance category, ranging from Achiever at the top down to Beginner.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2023] Consider the following statements: 1. The Self-Help Group (SHG) Programme was originally initiated by the State Bank of India by providing microcredit to the financial deprived. 2. In an SHG, all members of a group take responsibility for a loan that an individual member takes. 3. The Regional Rural Banks and Scheduled Commercial Banks support SHGs. How many of the above statements are correct? (a) Only one (b) Only two (c) All three (d) None ANSWER: (b)”

  • After DGCA cracks whip, dope tests begin on all pilots of Indian airlines

    Why in the News

    The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the civil aviation regulator, has ordered every Indian airline to conduct a one time test for psychoactive substances on all its pilots by July next year. The direction was issued in August and testing has already begun. Indian airlines are estimated to employ close to 14,000 pilots. The order follows an Air India pilot testing positive for drugs after the aircraft he was commanding lost altitude suddenly on a Phuket to Delhi flight. The standing requirement is annual random testing of 10% of pilots, so the response to a single detected case is a census rather than a tighter sample.

    How does a psychoactive substance test work?

    1. The sample is split at collection: The employee’s urine sample is divided and stored in two separate containers.
    2. The first container is screened at once: A screening test is run on that sample immediately after it is collected.
    3. A non negative screening result grounds the pilot: A result indicating the presence of psychoactive substances takes the pilot off flying duty immediately, pending the confirmatory result.
    4. The second container decides the case: It is sent to a designated laboratory for a confirmatory test using high complexity instrumentation, because screening can return false positives from certain medications, food items and technical errors.

    What happens after a confirmed positive?

    1. A medical review comes first: The organisation’s medical in charge must consult a medical review officer to establish whether the result arose from legitimate therapeutic treatment or another innocuous source rather than from drug abuse. Eg. Pain relief medication containing codeine can trigger a positive result for opiates.
    2. A first offence is treated as a health problem: The employee is referred by the organisation to a specialist doctor, counsellor or de addiction centre for a rehabilitation programme.
    3. Return to duty is conditional: The employee must undergo fresh testing, obtain a negative report, and obtain a fitness certificate from the organisation’s medical in charge.
    4. The ladder then turns punitive: A positive result after return to duty suspends the licence for three years. A third positive result leads to cancellation of the licence.

    Why has the regulator moved from a sample to a census?

    1. The rule it is working around: The Civil Aviation Requirements on testing for psychoactive substances, effected in January 2022, make annual random testing of a tenth of pilots and air traffic controllers mandatory.
    2. The ministry asked for more: The Ministry of Civil Aviation suggested to the regulator that every pilot undergo a test once a year in place of the random sample.
    3. The revision was already under way: Consultations to revise the rules on testing aviation personnel were in progress when the incident occurred, and the incident produced calls for a stricter testing protocol and stricter disciplinary action in proven cases of drug abuse.
    4. The census is an interim step: With consultations still open, the regulator chose to put all airline pilots through a single test spread over nearly 12 months. A draft of the new and more stringent norms is expected by the end of this month, per the Union Civil Aviation Minister.

    Who else does the testing regime cover?

    1. Air traffic controllers sit alongside pilots: The existing rules treat both groups as the primary focus segments for testing, and the one time census covers pilots alone.
    2. The rules reach further than the cockpit: Aircraft maintenance engineers and certifying staff, trainee pilots, and instructors and examiners are all covered as personnel engaged in safety sensitive functions.
    3. Their testing is event based: That wider group is tested at the time of hiring or after specific incidents rather than on an annual cycle.

    What did the airline do before the regulator acted?

    1. A voluntary round came first: The Air India Group had already initiated one time random drug tests on an estimated 5,000 pilots employed by Air India and Air India Express, before the regulator’s direction was issued.
    2. Dismissal followed the investigator’s disclosure: Hours after the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau flagged the positive drug test of the pilot in command of that flight, the airline said it had terminated the pilot’s employment.

    Challenges to psychoactive substance testing of aviation personnel

    1. A one time census tests a date, not a habit: A single sweep across a year detects use in a narrow window and creates a predictable gap on either side of it. Eg. A pilot already tested knows that no further test is due until the revised norms take effect.
      The Fix: Move to unannounced random testing at a high annual coverage rate, so the probability of being tested stays constant instead of being exhausted.
    2. A test detects consumption, not impairment in the cockpit: A positive result establishes that a substance was consumed and does not establish that performance was degraded on a particular flight. Eg. Alcohol is handled separately through pre flight breath analyser checks, precisely because impairment there is measured at the point of duty.
      The Fix: Link the regime to flight data monitoring, so a recorded performance anomaly triggers a test as readily as a test triggers an inquiry.
    3. A punitive ladder suppresses self reporting: A regime in which a repeat finding costs the licence discourages a pilot from disclosing a dependency or a prescribed medication. Eg. Aviation medicine practice elsewhere pairs testing with a confidential peer support route back to the cockpit.
      The Fix: Create a protected disclosure channel with treatment and monitored return, entered voluntarily rather than after a failed test.
    4. Laboratory and custody capacity is the binding constraint: Confirmatory testing needs accredited laboratories and an unbroken chain of custody, and a census multiplies both demands at the same time. Eg. A mishandled sample cannot be tested again, so a disputed result becomes unresolvable for the employee and the regulator alike.
      The Fix: Notify the designated laboratories with their assessed capacity, and audit custody records rather than only test outcomes.

    Conclusion

    The regulator has answered a detection failure with coverage. Testing everyone once establishes a baseline, and it does not change the odds a user faces on any given day, which is what actually deters use. The substantive decisions sit in the rules still being drafted, namely the annual coverage rate, whether testing is unannounced, and whether a pilot who comes forward is treated as a patient or as a case. Those three choices, and not the size of the first sweep, will decide whether the regime catches impairment before a flight rather than after one.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2015, GS2, 12 marks] For achieving the desired objectives, it is necessary to ensure that the regulatory institutions remain independent and autonomous. Discuss in the light of the experiences in recent past.”