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GS Paper: GS2

  • India’s carbon credit scheme receives U.K. official recognition

    Why in the News

    The United Kingdom has recognised India’s Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS) as a qualifying overseas carbon pricing scheme for the purpose of carbon price relief. The recognition was conveyed by His Majesty’s Treasury to the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) under the Ministry of Power. The scheme has been placed on the United Kingdom’s published indicative list of overseas carbon pricing schemes assessed as meeting the qualifying criteria under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (Calculation of CBAM Rate and Determination of Carbon Price Relief) Regulations 2026. A carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) charges an imported good the gap between the carbon price paid where it was made and the price the importing country’s own producers pay. The recognition therefore lets a carbon price already paid in India be set off, lowering the effective CBAM liability on Indian goods. The relief is calculated on the price a tonne of carbon actually fetches in India, so a domestic market still in its early compliance cycles decides how much of the British levy an exporter escapes.

    What is the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme?

    1. Statutory basis: The scheme rests on the Energy Conservation Act, 2001, as amended by the Energy Conservation (Amendment) Act, 2022. It is administered by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency under the Ministry of Power.
    2. Compliance mechanism: Obligated entities in notified industrial sectors receive greenhouse gas emission intensity targets, stated as emissions per unit of output. An entity that beats its target earns carbon credit certificates, and one that misses it must buy them.
    3. Offset mechanism: An entity outside the compliance list can register an emission reduction project voluntarily. It earns certificates once the reduction is verified.
    4. Trading venue: Certificates are traded on the power exchanges. That trade is what produces a domestic price for a tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent.

    How does the recognition change the cost of exporting to the United Kingdom?

    1. Carbon price relief: The British levy is charged on the embedded emissions of an imported good at a British carbon rate. A carbon price already paid in the country of production is deducted from that rate where the paying scheme qualifies.
    2. The indicative list is the administrative gate: Placement on the list is what makes the deduction available to goods produced under the scheme. The list is indicative, so it fixes eligibility rather than the final rate an exporter pays.
    3. Exposed sectors: The United Kingdom’s mechanism applies from 1 January 2027 to imports of aluminium, cement, fertiliser, hydrogen, iron and steel. Indian steel and aluminium shipments are the largest exposures within that set.
    4. The obligation on the exporter survives: Recognition attaches to the scheme, not to any single firm. Each consignment must still be accompanied by emissions data for the goods concerned.

    Challenges to the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme

    1. A weak price yields a weak set off: The deduction is worth only what a carbon credit certificate sells for in India, so a low clearing price transfers most of the levy to the British exchequer anyway. Eg. Energy saving certificates under the Perform, Achieve and Trade scheme, the country’s earlier market based instrument, cleared at prices too low to change investment behaviour.
      The Fix: Set a floor price for compliance certificates, so the market cannot clear below the level at which abatement becomes worth financing.
    2. Target setting is based on intensity, not absolute emissions: An obligated entity meets its target by cutting emissions per tonne of output while expanding total output, so national emissions can rise inside a compliant market. Eg. Cement plants raise clinker substitution to cut intensity while adding fresh capacity.
      The Fix: Convert the compliance mechanism to a declining absolute cap once the first two cycles have established a reliable emissions baseline.
    3. Narrow coverage of the emitting base: The compliance mechanism reaches only large notified industrial sectors, leaving out transport, buildings and the bulk of smaller industrial units. Eg. Foundries and re-rolling mills in industrial clusters sit outside the obligated list despite being coal fired.
      The Fix: Extend the offset mechanism with sector specific methodologies for small units, so a cluster level project can be registered rather than a single plant.
    4. Measurement and verification capacity is thin: Credits are only as sound as the emissions data behind them, and accredited carbon verifiers in India are few relative to the number of obligated entities. Eg. Voluntary carbon markets globally have been discredited by projects whose claimed reductions could not be reproduced on audit.
      The Fix: Accredit and licence verification agencies ahead of the compliance deadline, with random re-audit of a fixed share of issued certificates.
    5. Overlap with earlier instruments confuses the signal: Renewable energy certificates and energy saving certificates already price parts of the same abatement, so a firm can face several partially overlapping obligations. Eg. A cement plant may hold energy saving certificates for efficiency gains that also lower its greenhouse gas emission intensity.
      The Fix: Publish a single conversion and transition schedule that folds legacy certificates into the carbon credit market on a stated date.

    Conclusion

    Recognition removes a trade barrier only to the extent that the domestic carbon market becomes real. The set off is a pass through of a price India charges itself, so the instrument that protects exporters is the same one that has to discipline them. What to watch is the clearing price at the first compliance cycle auctions and whether the European Union grants an equivalent recognition, since the European market absorbs a far larger share of Indian steel and aluminium than the British one.

    Back2Basics: Bureau of Energy Efficiency

    1. Statutory body: The Bureau was set up in 2002 under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001, and functions under the Ministry of Power.
    2. Mandate: It is charged with reducing the energy intensity of the Indian economy, meaning energy consumed per unit of gross domestic product.
    3. Standards and labelling: It runs the star rating programme for appliances and the Energy Conservation Building Code for commercial buildings.
    4. Market instruments: It designed and administers the Perform, Achieve and Trade scheme and now the carbon credit market, making it the nodal agency for India’s carbon pricing architecture.

    “[2023] Consider the following statements :

    Statement-I: Carbon markets are likely to be one of the most widespread tools in the fight against climate change.

    Statement-II : Carbon markets transfer resources from the private sector to the State.

    Which one of the following is correct in respect of the above statements?

    (a) Both Statement-I and Statement-II are correct and Statement-II is the correct explanation for Statement-I

    (b) Both Statement-I and Statement-II are correct and Statement-II is not the correct explanation for Statement-I

    (c) Statement-I is correct but Statement-II is incorrect

    (d) Statement-I is incorrect but Statement-II is correct

  • Arunachal and Aksai Chin between ‘unspecified’ claim lines on UN-endorsed map

    Why in the News

    A new world map endorsed at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) shows Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as distinct regions lying between Indian and Chinese “claim lines”. The endorsement came through the “Correct the Map” resolution adopted on 4 September 2026, which India backed and voted for. The External Affairs Ministry has stated that its vote covered the underlying principle of promoting equal-area cartographic representation. The Ministry has also stated that the resolution constitutes no endorsement of any specific map, projection or depiction of national boundaries. The contest is over what the vote carried with it. A resolution India supported has put into circulation a boundary depiction India rejects, on a document multilateral institutions worldwide will use.

    What is the “Correct the Map” resolution?

    1. About: It is a UNGA resolution endorsing the Equal Earth cartographic projection, a method that renders every landmass at its true relative area rather than inflating the higher latitudes.
    2. The document it endorsed: The accompanying draft world map was authored by the UN Geospatial office on 1 July 2026 and taken up in informal UNGA consultations.
    3. Its legal weight: The map binds no state, and it will still be used by multilateral institutions worldwide as their reference outline.

    Why did African states push for a new projection?

    1. The founding demand: The African Union supported the Equal Earth projection in March 2026 on the ground that it represents Africa more accurately than the projection then in use.
    2. The framing used: The African Union called this approach “cognitive justice”, treating a distorted world image as a distortion of political standing and not only of geometry.
    3. The route to the Assembly: Togo prompted UNGA consultations on the map in April 2026, and the Assembly opened informal consultations in July 2026.
    4. The sponsorship: Togo sponsored the resolution with African Union support, so the campaign’s centre of gravity sat outside the states whose frontiers the map redraws.

    What does the map show along India’s contested frontiers?

    1. Arunachal Pradesh: The map marks the State’s southern border with Assam as the Chinese line and its northern border as the Indian line, and it eliminates the State’s border with Nagaland altogether.
    2. Aksai Chin: The eastern borders of the region are shown as the Indian line and the western borders as the Chinese line, leaving it as a zone between two competing depictions.
    3. The labelling change: These lines continue earlier UN maps, and unlike the 2011 UN map they are not specified as “claim lines” anywhere on the July 2026 sheet.
    4. Jammu and Kashmir: The map uses a dotted line for the Line of Control (LoC), with a printed note recording that the dotted line represents approximately the LoC agreed upon by India and Pakistan and that the final status of the region has not yet been agreed by the parties.
    5. Kalapani: The depiction runs in India’s favour on the Nepal frontier, reflecting India’s control over the Kalapani-Lipulekh-Limpiyadhura region that Nepal claims.

    Why does India’s vote sit uneasily with the map it endorsed?

    1. The stated basis of the vote: The External Affairs Ministry has framed India’s support as a vote on equal-area representation as a principle, detached from any boundary depiction.
    2. The standing red line: The Ministry’s position is that India’s sovereign territory, including Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, must be depicted in accordance with India’s official map, and that any inaccurate or misleading depiction is unacceptable.
    3. The gap the map leaves: No note on the map explains why Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin alone were placed between two claim lines, so the depiction carries no stated cartographic reasoning a state can answer.
    4. The asymmetry in treatment: The disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir is written out in a note on the map, and the northern frontier lines carry no equivalent qualification.

    Challenges to the UN world map’s boundary depiction

    1. A non-binding map still becomes the working outline: Agencies reuse a United Nations base map in reports, datasets and briefings long after the political moment that produced it. Eg. China issued a “standard map” in 2023 placing Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin within its own boundary, and India rejected the depiction formally.
      The Fix: Press for an explicit cartographic note recording the northern lines as unsettled claims, on the pattern the same map already applies to other disputed frontiers.
    2. Third party cartography hardens bilateral disputes: A published depiction gives each side a document to cite in a boundary question only the two states can settle. Eg. Nepal amended its Constitution in 2020 to adopt a map including Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura, and India rejected the amended map.
      The Fix: Route objections through the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs and the India-Nepal Boundary Working Group rather than through the publisher alone.
    3. Depiction is settled in expert bodies, not in the plenary: Boundary conventions are prepared by geospatial specialists and arrive at member states as a finished draft. Eg. Cartographic standards are developed through the UN Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management rather than by a floor vote.
      The Fix: Place Indian surveyors and cartographers inside those expert bodies so a depiction is contested at drafting stage rather than after adoption.
    4. Domestic map rules carry no force on foreign publishers: India regulates how its boundaries are shown within its own jurisdiction and holds no equivalent leverage over a document issued abroad. Eg. Foreign platforms have repeatedly shown Jammu and Kashmir with dotted boundaries in editions sold outside India.
      The Fix: Publish the Survey of India’s official outline as a free machine readable dataset, so the authoritative version is the cheapest one for an international user to adopt.

    Conclusion

    A cartographic reform demanded on grounds of equity has produced a frontier depiction India does not accept, on a document India voted to endorse. The projection question and the boundary question travelled together, and only the first was ever put to the Assembly. What to watch is whether the External Affairs Ministry secures a labelling correction from the UN Geospatial office before the map settles into routine multilateral use. The second marker is whether India’s objection is recorded on the sheet itself rather than in a statement alongside it.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS2, 15 marks] “The reform process in the United Nations remains unresolved, because of the delicate imbalance of East and West and entanglement of the USA vs. Russo-Chinese alliance.” Examine and critically evaluate the East-West policy confrontations in this regard.”

  • India’s opportunity to put BRICS back together

    Why in the News

    The 18th BRICS Summit is to be held in New Delhi on 12 and 13 September 2026 under India’s chairship. The grouping now carries 11 members and 10 partner countries after an expansion India and Brazil both resisted. Its founding practice of adopting documents only by consensus has been bypassed more than once since 2020, most recently at the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting held in New Delhi in May 2026. The contest is over what the group is for: a reform coalition of emerging economies working inside existing institutions, or a bloc defined by opposition to the West. The summit is the point at which the chair can push that choice one way or the other.

    What is BRICS?

    1. What it is: BRICS is a grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, formed to give the emerging economies a greater voice in global governance and institutions, particularly financial and economic ones, and to work towards a more equitable multilateral order.
    2. How it works: It has no treaty and no binding decision procedure. It operates by consensus, and its output is a summit declaration adopted by all members.
    3. What it has built: Its principal institution is the New Development Bank, the multilateral development bank established by the members to lend for infrastructure and sustainable development.

    What did India originally want from BRICS?

    1. A vehicle for reform: India was an enthusiastic early participant, treating the group as a means of securing genuine reform of multilateral institutions.
    2. The first Indian-hosted summit: The fourth BRICS summit, held in India in 2012, took the theme “Global Stability, Security and Prosperity”, which tacitly reflected a much broader geopolitical canvas than economics alone.
    3. What the Indian presidency produced: It helped lead to the establishment of the New Development Bank. Other Indian initiatives followed, including the integration of a counter-terrorism architecture into the group’s work.
    4. The current chairship’s framing: This year’s theme rests on four pillars, Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability, and draws on the Prime Minister’s “Humanity First” vision and a “people-centric” approach to BRICS cooperation.

    How did China’s use of BRICS diverge from the reform agenda?

    1. A different purpose from the start: China saw the group as a counterpoise to Western domination, a view India also shared initially in the specific context of reform.
    2. Why China needed the platform: A group of emerging economies accounting for nearly 20 per cent of world GDP in 2010 could amplify Chinese global ambitions in a way China could not do alone.
    3. The outreach mechanisms carried the design: BRICS-Plus and BRICS Outreach were used to reach the Global South and consolidate its profile as a second pole in a future bipolar world.
    4. Reform support proved selective: China resisted supporting the bids of India, Brazil and South Africa for permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. India then shifted its own effort towards consolidation and intra-BRICS matters to resist Chinese grandstanding.

    What has happened to the consensus principle?

    1. Consensus is what held the group together: It is the practice that prevents a majority from binding the rest, and its erosion changes what membership is worth.
    2. The 2019 summit was the high point of restraint: The Brasilia summit was held with no invited guest countries at all, only the five original members.
    3. The first breach came in 2020: Under the Russian presidency a chair’s statement on COVID-19 was issued without consensus, probably the first such document in the group’s history.
    4. It has become routine: Non-consensus documents were resorted to again at the Foreign Ministers’ meeting in May 2026, because the new members could not agree.
    5. The failure model already exists: The danger is that BRICS goes the way of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), where a majority can bulldoze its view through.

    What has expansion done to the group’s cohesion?

    1. China pushed it and India resisted: China pressed first for expansion of the New Development Bank and then for expansion of BRICS itself. India and Brazil both resisted and were overruled.
    2. The size now: The group has 11 members following the addition of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia, along with 10 partner countries.
    3. The original five manage their differences: Some of those differences are serious, and the five handle them with the maturity that keeping the group intact requires.
    4. The new members do not: They carry their bilateral conflicts into the group and are subverting it through them.
    5. The regional precedent: The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is the case of a grouping paralysed by the bilateral disputes of its own members.

    Is BRICS non-West or anti-West?

    1. India’s line is “non-West”: India has worked to keep the group non-West against pressure from some members to turn it explicitly anti-West.
    2. Events push the other way: China is competing with the United States for global leadership, Russia is at war with Ukraine with the full backing of Europe, and Iran is being bombarded by the United States and Israel.
    3. Two members are under direct pressure: Brazil and India have both been subjected to punitive tariffs by the U.S. President, and the U.S. Congress is considering legislation empowering the President to levy punitive tariffs on countries importing Russian oil.
    4. India’s other options are weakening at the same time: The Quad is being emasculated by the United States, India-U.S. relations are under great pressure, Pakistan is being courted by the United States at India’s expense, and global institutions are being made dysfunctional by the West.
    5. The restraint has support inside the group: Many members share India’s effort to prevent an anti-Western drift, since they gain from engaging actors in different camps in their own national interest. They want change without geopolitical realignment behind China and Russia.

    Why is de-dollarisation not moving as China wants?

    1. The parallel currency proposal has stalled: The push for de-dollarisation through the establishment of a BRICS currency is receiving a lukewarm response.
    2. The reason is who would dominate it: Members are uncomfortable with a currency dominated by the renminbi.
    3. What they will accept instead: The preference is for interlinking payment systems, central bank digital currencies and transactions settled in national currencies.
    4. China is proceeding on its own track: After a successful pilot, it is formally launching mBridge, an alternative cross-border financial payment system.
    5. What India is guarding against: An alternative Bretton Woods system dominated by China is the outcome India least wants.

    What parallel orders are being built outside BRICS?

    1. Both major powers are writing their own rules: The United States and China are enunciating parallel visions of the world and playing by rules of their own rather than internationally negotiated ones.
    2. The contested areas are new ones: Parallel structures and standards are being set in artificial intelligence, digital and Internet governance, data ownership, state control, 5G and 6G telecom, satellite navigation and electric vehicles.
    3. China has added an institution: It has set up a World AI Cooperation Organisation in Shanghai.
    4. The financial architecture already has a rival: The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Belt and Road Initiative and the Digital Silk Road challenge the Bretton Woods institutions and their governance and financing models.
    5. Neither power wants reform: Both are building around the existing institutions rather than seeking to change them, and both see BRICS as one vehicle for those broader goals.

    What is “reformed multilateralism” and why does India want it back?

    1. Where it came from: The Prime Minister first articulated the vision of “reformed multilateralism” at the leaders’ retreat of the 2018 BRICS Summit in South Africa.
    2. How it became group language: By 2019 it had found its way into the summit document at Brasilia, with India, Brazil and South Africa pushing for it.
    3. What it commits the group to: Changing the governance of existing institutions rather than replacing them, which is the opposite of building parallel structures.
    4. Why it matters now: Reviving it makes BRICS a strong voice for the non-West middle powers and, by extension, for the Global South.

    Can BRICS be an organisation of Global South middle powers?

    1. A Global South middle power is a different thing: The middle powers described at Davos by the Canadian Prime Minister are broadly West-centric, and a Global South middle power does not share that anchoring.
    2. BRICS is the only credible platform: If there is a credible organisation of Global South middle powers, it is BRICS.
    3. Its largest member does not fit the description: China is hardly a middle power and holds disproportionate influence within the group.
    4. The India-China relationship is the constraint: The two need greater synergy on emerging global issues even as their bilateral differences are being contained.
    5. The composition is incomplete: Some middle powers that ought to be in the group are not represented in it, which limits what it can claim to speak for.

    Challenges to BRICS

    1. De-dollarisation is rhetorical rather than operational: The share of world trade actually settled outside the dollar has barely moved despite a decade of declarations. Eg. The US dollar is still used in over 80 per cent of global trade settlement.
      The Fix: Set a measurable target for local-currency settlement of intra-group trade and report performance against it at each summit.
    2. Intra-group trade is thin: Members trade far more with the G7 than with each other, so the group’s combined economic weight does not convert into bargaining leverage. Eg. Most members still rely on G7 markets for high-technology imports and services exports.
      The Fix: Negotiate a tariff-preference arrangement covering a limited list of goods, rather than a full trade agreement the membership cannot agree on.
    3. There is no permanent secretariat or charter: Work does not carry between summits, so each chair restarts the agenda and commitments lapse without anyone recording that they have. Eg. The New Development Bank remains the only permanent institution the group has built since its first summit.
      The Fix: Create a small standing secretariat with the single mandate of tracking summit commitments and reporting compliance.
    4. Sanctions constrain the group’s own bank: Western sanctions on Russia limit the New Development Bank’s ability to lend for certain projects, which weakens the alternative it was built to be. Eg. The bank put new transactions in Russia on hold in 2022.
      The Fix: Raise the share of local-currency lending and widen the capital base to more Global South members, so exposure to one jurisdiction’s sanctions falls.
    5. The political systems diverge too far for common positions on norms: The membership spans established democracies and autocracies, so joint declarations cannot carry commitments on rights or governance standards. Eg. Group declarations avoid the language on domestic governance that G7 communiqués routinely carry.
      The Fix: Confine collective positions to the areas where interests genuinely converge, namely institutional reform, development finance and technology standards.

    Conclusion

    BRICS is now being asked to do two jobs that pull against each other. One is to press for reform of institutions that its largest member has no interest in reforming. The other is to hold an enlarged membership carrying live bilateral quarrels inside a body that can only decide unanimously. The Delhi outcome will indicate which job the group has chosen. The specific marker is whether the summit closes on a declaration adopted by every member or on a chair’s statement issued over the heads of some.

    Global South Plurilateral Groupings in India’s Foreign Policy

    1. About: A plurilateral grouping is a small, issue-focused coalition of states that operates outside a formal treaty organisation. Its instruments are summit declarations and working groups rather than binding law.
    2. Why India uses them: They allow India to pursue different interests with different partners at the same time, which is what multi-alignment means in operation.
    3. The spread in practice: India sits in BRICS and the SCO alongside Russia and China, and in the Quad and the I2U2 grouping alongside the United States, without either set of memberships cancelling the other.
    4. What they are measured by: Their output is agenda-setting and coalition building, not enforceable commitment, so their value lies in shifting what larger institutions are willing to discuss.

    Key Facts about BRICS and Global South Groupings

    1. The name: The acronym BRIC was coined in 2001 by a Goldman Sachs economist to group high-growth emerging economies. The first Foreign Ministers’ meeting was held on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in 2006.
    2. The first summit: The first leaders’ summit was held at Yekaterinburg in Russia in 2009, and South Africa joined in 2011 to make the grouping BRICS.
    3. Current weight: The enlarged grouping accounts for over 45 per cent of the world’s population, about 3.6 billion people, and roughly 37 per cent of global GDP measured at purchasing power parity, ahead of the G7 share.
    4. Energy: It controls roughly 42 per cent of global oil production and exports.
    5. New Development Bank: Headquartered at Shanghai, it has approved over $35 billion in infrastructure lending since it began operations.
    6. Contingent Reserve Arrangement: A $100 billion pool providing short-term liquidity support to members facing balance of payments pressure.
    7. Other Global South platforms: IBSA, the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum, was formed in 2003. The G-77 was formed at the United Nations in 1964 with 77 founding members and now carries over 130.

    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.”

  • What flu surge can teach us about next pandemic

    Why in the News

    Different parts of India have reported 2 to 10 times more influenza cases this year than last year. The official position is that the circulating strain has not changed, and public advisories ask people to remain vigilant without becoming alarmed. That instruction states no action a reader can take. The detection layer built after Covid-19 is working, and the layer that must convert a detection into a decision is not. A surge of this size is the period in which that gap can be closed, since a pandemic is the worst time to learn.

    Pillars of outbreak management

    1. Surveillance: The ability to detect an outbreak early and to initiate action on that detection. For influenza it also covers genomic surveillance to identify the strain or variant behind the rise, which is what allows its virulence and the population’s susceptibility to be gauged.
    2. Prevention: Issuing advisories to high-risk individuals to avoid crowded places, promoting mask use, and vaccinating high-risk individuals and health workers.
    3. Control: Ensuring that those already infected receive proper medical care.

    What does the current surge actually show?

    1. The size of the rise: Reported influenza cases across different parts of the country are 2 to 10 times last year’s level.
    2. Hospital positivity has risen: Among patients admitted with severe acute respiratory infection (an acute respiratory illness severe enough to require hospitalisation), the positivity rate in selected hospitals was 16 per cent this year against 12 per cent last year.
    3. An unchanged strain is not by itself the answer: A well-established virus does not warrant serious concern on virological grounds alone. The scale of transmission still decides how many avoidable deaths occur.

    Why does surveillance not convert into action?

    1. No alert threshold is defined: A rise in influenza positivity past a defined threshold should trigger an alert. No such thresholds exist.
    2. The data is not public: There is no publicly available dashboard on which positivity trends can be seen, so no one outside the system can tell when a threshold would have been crossed.
    3. Responsibility is split three ways: Laboratory surveillance sits with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), response coordination with the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), and implementation with State health systems.
    4. No one holds authority to act on the signal: No integrated command structure exists with clear authority to coordinate and implement a response during a disease upsurge. This was the specific lesson Covid-19 offered and it was not learnt.

    Where is the line between an appropriate response and one that causes panic?

    1. The stated fear is panic: Governments hesitate to issue advisories on the ground that a public warning will itself cause alarm.
    2. The line is genuinely thin: Governments across the world struggle to place it, and the WHO has itself been accused of overreacting.
    3. The asymmetry decides it: Where the primary concern is to save lives, overreaction is the better error of the two.
    4. The current position sits on the wrong side: The response is too cautious and too bureaucratic for the scale of the surge.
    5. This is a professional capability, not a temperament: Situations of this kind require trained risk communication and named experts speaking, rather than a general advisory.

    Why does influenza vaccine use stay low even among high-risk groups?

    1. Poorly perceived threat: Influenza is treated as an ordinary seasonal illness, so the risk it carries for the elderly and the immunocompromised is discounted.
    2. Non-affordability: The vaccine is largely an out-of-pocket purchase for those outside institutional programmes.
    3. Doubtful effectiveness: Protection varies by season and by strain match, which weakens the case a physician can make for it.
    4. The annual injection requirement: Immunity does not carry over, so the decision has to be taken and paid for again every year.

    What should the response to this surge prioritise?

    1. Preventing avoidable deaths: At the current scale the objective is not to stop transmission but to keep high-risk people out of severe illness.
    2. A specific advisory rather than a general one: The advisory should tell high-risk people to avoid crowded places and to wear masks, in those terms.
    3. Immunising high-risk groups during the surge: The case for routine immunisation is debatable and the case during a major seasonal surge is not. Skipping it leaves the system unpractised for the next pandemic.
    4. Low antiviral use needs examination: Antiviral use stays low even in peak influenza season, which calls for a relook at the influenza management guidelines.
    5. The private sector has to be inside the response: Private providers and professional bodies deliver most outpatient care and cannot be reached through public system instructions alone.

    Challenges to India’s outbreak surveillance and response system

    1. Influenza carries no statutory duty to notify: Reporting rests on administrative instruction rather than legal obligation, so private-sector cases stay outside the national count. Eg. Most States have no public health Act listing notifiable conditions, and the Kerala Public Health Act, 2023 is among the few that do.
      The Fix: Enact a public health law fixing the list of notifiable conditions and placing the reporting duty on private providers as well as public ones.
    2. Vaccine composition is set for the wrong season: Supply follows the Northern Hemisphere formulation while influenza in much of India peaks with the monsoon. Eg. The WHO issues separate Northern and Southern Hemisphere composition recommendations each year.
      The Fix: Procure the Southern Hemisphere formulation for monsoon-peak States and fix the public procurement calendar to that cycle.
    3. Surveillance is an additional charge, not a post: District surveillance duties are given to serving clinical or programme officers on top of their own work, so analysis is done last. Eg. Rural Community Health Centres run at about an 80 per cent shortfall of specialists, which is the pool such officers are drawn from.
      The Fix: Create a separate public health cadre with dedicated district epidemiologist posts filled on their own recruitment line.
    4. Antiviral supply is not pre-positioned: Oseltamivir was moved from Schedule X to Schedule H1 in 2017, and the prescription-record duty that follows keeps retail stocking low outside declared alerts. Eg. Shortages appear at the retail counter in the same weeks that hospital positivity rises.
      The Fix: Stock antivirals at district hospitals ahead of the seasonal peak rather than relying on retail availability during the surge.
    5. Sequencing capacity is concentrated in a few laboratories: Sequencing volumes are set by laboratory capacity rather than by case load, so variant detection lags the epidemic curve. Eg. Sequencing effort fell sharply between Covid-19 waves and had to be rebuilt each time activity rose.
      The Fix: Fix a minimum sequencing share of positive samples per State per week as a standing requirement rather than an outbreak-time instruction.

    Conclusion

    An outbreak response is judged by the interval between a signal and a decision. India has built the layer that produces the signal and has not built the layer that must act on it, which is a governance problem rather than a scientific one. The next seasonal peak will test the same gap. The markers to watch before it arrives are whether a numeric alert threshold has been fixed and whether positivity data is published where the public can see it.

    Outbreak Surveillance and Pandemic Preparedness in India

    1. About: Disease surveillance is the continuous collection and analysis of health data to detect unusual disease activity early enough to act on it. Preparedness is the standing capacity to respond once that detection is made.
    2. The zoonotic load: Over 60 per cent of emerging infectious diseases in India are zoonotic, so animal and human surveillance cannot be run separately. Eg. Nipah virus, avian influenza, rabies and brucellosis.
    3. The triple burden: India faces infectious disease, rising non-communicable disease and emerging zoonotic threats at the same time.
    4. The standing weakness: Surveillance remains event-based rather than predictive, with communicable disease, non-communicable disease and animal health data held in separate vertical silos.

    Government Initiatives for Outbreak Surveillance and Pandemic Preparedness

    1. Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme: Collects district-level disease data and has been upgraded to carry animal health indicators for integrated surveillance.
    2. National One Health Mission: A cross-ministerial effort involving 13 departments to coordinate pandemic preparedness across human, animal and environmental health.
    3. National Institute for One Health, Nagpur: The anchor institution for research, training and policy integration on zoonotic disease.
    4. National Joint Outbreak Response Team: A multi-disciplinary team of human, animal and wildlife experts constituted for rapid outbreak investigation.
    5. BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratory network: A national grid of high-security biosafety laboratories, with a new BSL-4 facility in Gujarat foundation-laid in January 2026.
    6. One Health Governance Framework: Released in December 2025 as a roadmap for States and Union Territories to set up State One Health Cells.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS2, 15 marks] In a crucial domain like the public healthcare system, the Indian State should play a vital role to contain the adverse impact of marketisation of the system. Suggest some measures through which the State can enhance the reach of public healthcare at the grassroots level.”

  • Are nicotine pouches beyond the law?

    Why in the News

    A study led by the ICMR-National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research has found that nicotine pouches are reaching Indian cities through online platforms, hookah shops and gig delivery services. The study follows a World Health Organization (WHO) warning issued in May 2026 on the dangers these products carry. No Indian statute clearly governs them. The two laws written for tobacco and for vaping each exclude the product for a different reason, and its status under the drugs law and the food law is contested. The gap is not a drafting accident, since the executive already holds the power to restrict a product’s import and sale on health grounds.

    What is a nicotine pouch?

    1. The product: A nicotine pouch is a small, tobacco-free sack shaped like a tea bag, containing nicotine, flavourings and plant-based fibres.
    2. How it is used: The user places the pouch between the lip and the gum for up to an hour. Nicotine is absorbed directly into the bloodstream.
    3. What distinguishes it: There is no smoke, no vapour and no spitting. That absence is what keeps it outside the definitions written for cigarettes and for electronic cigarettes.

    Does the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 cover nicotine pouches?

    1. What the Act governs: The Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 (COTPA) regulates the marketing, advertising and sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products.
    2. The definitional limit: The Act’s definition of tobacco products does not extend to every product containing nicotine. A legislature intending to cover every extract of the tobacco plant could have said so.
    3. Strict construction applies: Restrictions on the freedom of trade and commerce are construed strictly. Nicotine pouches are not among the products listed in the Act, so they fall outside it.

    Is a nicotine pouch a drug under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940?

    1. Nicotine is unscheduled: Nicotine is not listed as a drug in any schedule of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940.
    2. Some nicotine products are approved as drugs: Nicotine patches and gums have been approved as drugs by the Drug Controller General of India for therapeutic use in treating nicotine addiction.
    3. The Schedule K exemption cuts both ways: Schedule K under the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 lists gums and lozenges and exempts them from licensing and prescription requirements where they contain less than 2 mg of nicotine. An exemption for some nicotine products implies that the rest were meant to be regulated.
    4. The counter-reading: A pouch makes no therapeutic claim and does not purport to treat addiction. It functions as a substitute for a cigarette, which places it outside the character of a drug.

    Why does the ban on vapes not reach nicotine pouches?

    1. What the vaping law does: The Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act, 2019 (PECA) bans the import and sale of vapes.
    2. Its enactment carries an implication: A separate statute would not have been needed had vapes been drugs, since the government could then have regulated them or refused licences under the drugs law. The enactment indicates that the drugs law did not give adequate power to ban them.
    3. The product does not fit the definition: A nicotine pouch contains no electronic device and produces neither smoke nor vapour, so the 2019 Act does not reach it.

    Could a nicotine pouch be treated as food?

    1. The statutory definition is wide: The Prevention of Food Adulteration Act and the Food Safety and Standards Act define food as any processed, partially processed or unprocessed substance intended for human consumption.
    2. Courts have read it widely: Rulings on supari and chewing tobacco establish that the definition has a very wide amplitude and covers items that are chewed rather than swallowed.
    3. The consequence: On that reading a nicotine pouch falls within the definition of food, which would bring it under the food safety regime rather than the tobacco or drugs regime.

    What governs the import of nicotine pouches?

    1. Two statutes supply the power: The Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992 empowers the Central government to prohibit, restrict or regulate imports. Section 11 of the Customs Act, 1962 allows the government to prohibit goods wholly or partly by notification, on grounds that include the protection of human, animal or plant life.
    2. Who administers it: The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) administers the trade statute and publishes the ITC-HS classification (the Indian Trade Clarification code list, which records whether a good is free, restricted or banned).
    3. A new customs sub-category exists: After the World Customs Organization updated the Harmonized System, code 2404 91 30 was introduced for tobacco-free single-use oral nicotine pouches and 2404 91 90 for other oral nicotine products not meant for therapeutic use. These replaced a residual category for other manufactured tobacco substitutes.
    4. The medicament codes do not apply: Codes for medicaments apply only where a product is strictly a cessation aid, which a pouch is not.
    5. The status is “restricted”, not free and not banned: Goods under 2404 91 30 cannot be cleared merely on payment of duty, and they are not prohibited outright as e-cigarettes are. They require a specific licence or permission, and the DGFT cross-references the health and other ministries before deciding.

    Can nicotine pouches be sold at duty-free shops?

    1. They are on sale now: Nicotine pouches are currently available at a few duty-free stores at Indian airports.
    2. The stores are licensed under Indian law: Duty-free stores are licensed under Section 58 of the Customs Act, 1962 and cannot claim to sit entirely outside Indian law.
    3. What the Calcutta High Court actually held: In Flemingo Duty Free Shop Pvt. Ltd. v. Shri Kaushik Bhattacharya (2024), the Court held that a duty-free store did not “import” goods into India. It was deemed located outside India for the purposes of the Customs Act, so legal metrology labelling requirements did not apply to it.
    4. The holding is narrow: Reading it as excluding all Indian law would leave no court and no police station with jurisdiction over a crime committed inside such a store.
    5. The permitted list does not include them: Cigarettes, alcohol, jewellery, watches, food and small electronic items are permitted at duty-free shops. A nicotine pouch qualifies only if it is treated as food, and its restricted customs classification makes an import licence unlikely to have been granted.

    Challenges to regulating nicotine pouches in India

    1. The sales channel sits outside every enforcement design: Tobacco control law assumes a physical shop with a visible point of sale, so an online order routed through a delivery platform meets no check. Eg. The draft Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Amendment) Bill, 2020 proposed banning online sale of tobacco products and has never been enacted.
      The Fix: Place the compliance duty on the delivery platform and the payment gateway, so liability attaches where the transaction is actually recorded.
    2. Youth uptake runs ahead of regulation: Flavoured oral nicotine is marketed as a lifestyle product rather than a tobacco product, which removes the stigma that deters first use. Eg. The Global Youth Tobacco Survey conducted in India in 2019 found that 8.5 per cent of students aged 13 to 15 used tobacco in some form.
      The Fix: Prohibit characterising flavours in oral nicotine products, which is the single measure that has cut youth initiation wherever it has been applied.
    3. State action produces a patchwork rather than a rule: Food safety commissioners issue prohibition orders that lapse and must be renewed, so the legal position differs by State and by year. Eg. State bans on gutkha and pan masala are issued under Section 30(2)(a) of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 and are renewed one year at a time.
      The Fix: Notify a national product standard through the food safety regulator, so the position holds across States without annual renewal.
    4. A restricted classification is not self-enforcing: Goods requiring a licence still enter through courier consignments and passenger baggage, where the volume of parcels exceeds inspection capacity. Eg. Customs seizures of e-cigarettes at Indian airports have continued in every year since the 2019 ban.
      The Fix: Add the oral nicotine codes to the risk-management system used for courier and baggage screening, so consignments are flagged automatically rather than by sampling.
    5. Health evidence is thin at the point where a decision is needed: Long-term data on the cardiovascular and oral effects of tobacco-free nicotine is limited, which lets manufacturers argue harm reduction against combustible tobacco. Eg. The current Indian evidence base rests on an institute-led study of market availability rather than on outcome data.
      The Fix: Commission a national surveillance study on oral nicotine use and its health outcomes, with its results fixed as the trigger for regulatory review.

    Conclusion

    The legal position is intricate and the remedy is not. The executive already holds the power to prohibit import and sale on health grounds, and a notification exercising it would take minutes to issue. The cost of not issuing it is known from the vaping episode: demand settles first, the ban arrives after, and smuggling replaces the legal market it was meant to close. The question before the government is therefore about timing, not about which statute applies.

    Back2Basics

    1. What it is: The ICMR-National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research is an institute of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the country’s apex body for biomedical research, functioning under the Department of Health Research.
    2. Where it is: It is located at Noida in Uttar Pradesh.
    3. Earlier name: It functioned as the Institute of Cytology and Preventive Oncology before being renamed in 2016.
    4. Mandate: It works on cancer prevention, early detection and population screening, and carries a substantial tobacco control research programme.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2023] With reference to India, consider the following pairs: Action: The Act under which it is covered 1. Unauthorized wearing of police or military uniforms : The Official Secrets Act, 1923 2. Knowingly misleading or otherwise interfering with a police officer or military officer when engaged in their duties : The Indian Evidence Act, 1872 3. Celebratory gunfire which can endanger the personal safety of others : The Arms (Amendment) Act, 2019 How many of the above pairs are correctly matched? (a) Only one (b) Only two (c) All three (d) None ANSWER: (b)”

  • Day after Cabinet move, Mann skips Chief Justice’s oath event

    Why in the News

    Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra has taken oath as Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The Punjab Cabinet had passed a resolution a day earlier demanding that the appointment and the administration of the oath be put on hold until the State’s views were obtained and duly considered. The Punjab Governor administered the oath at Chandigarh, and the Punjab Chief Minister did not attend. The Union Ministry of Law and Justice had already notified the appointment under Article 217(1) of the Constitution. The contest is over what a State’s views amount to in a High Court Chief Justice’s appointment, a consultative input the Centre may record and move past, or a consent it must first obtain.

    What is the Memorandum of Procedure?

    1. What it is: The Memorandum of Procedure is the written document setting out the steps for appointing judges to the Supreme Court and the High Courts.
    2. Where it comes from: It was framed to give administrative effect to the collegium system established through the Second and Third Judges cases. It is neither a statute nor part of the Constitution.
    3. What it governs: It fixes who initiates a proposal, who is consulted, and the order in which the file moves between the collegium, the State and the Union government.

    How was this appointment processed?

    1. Collegium recommendation: The Supreme Court collegium recommended four High Court Chief Justices, including this one, on 6 August.
    2. Views sought from the States: On 12 August the Centre sought the views of the Chief Ministers and the Governors of the four States concerned.
    3. The notification: The Appointments Division of the Department of Justice notified the appointment on 5 September under Article 217(1), with effect from the date the appointee assumes charge.
    4. He was already discharging the office: The Centre had asked him on 1 June to perform the duties of Chief Justice, after the previous Chief Justice was elevated to the Supreme Court.

    What does Punjab say was violated?

    1. The resolution: An emergency Cabinet meeting resolved that the appointment and the administration of the oath be held until Punjab’s views were obtained and duly considered.
    2. Consent, not consultation: The State’s stated position is that the appointment was made without obtaining the consent of the State government.
    3. A pattern claim: The resolution described the step as another instance of the Centre bypassing Punjab’s constitutional rights and established procedure.
    4. The ground stated publicly: The Chief Minister’s objection rested on the Memorandum of Procedure and on constitutional norms rather than on any statutory bar.

    Where does the process actually leave a State?

    1. Article 217(1) names its consultees: The President appoints a High Court judge after consultation with the Chief Justice of India and the Governor of the State. A Chief Minister acts through the Governor and is not a separate consultee.
    2. No deadline binds a State’s reply: The Memorandum of Procedure stipulates no time period within which a State must respond to a request for its views.
    3. Chief Justice appointments move fastest: Consent for the appointment of a Chief Justice is dealt with immediately in practice, so a State that does not answer quickly is overtaken by the file.
    4. Consultation is not concurrence: A collegium recommendation reiterated after reference back binds the executive. A State’s view is an input into that process and not a veto over it.

    Why is this friction not an isolated episode?

    1. A pending money order against the State: The High Court directed the Punjab government on 3 August to release pending dearness allowance instalments and arrears to employees and pensioners.
    2. The State has gone to the Supreme Court: Punjab has filed a special leave petition against that ruling, delivered by a division bench headed by the same judge while he was acting Chief Justice.
    3. Policies stayed and rolled back: The High Court stayed the Land Pooling Policy, 2025 in August 2025 and the Punjab Unified Building Rules, 2025 in December 2025, and the State later withdrew or reversed both.
    4. Welfare corpus diversion blocked: In July 2026 the High Court stayed a proposal to divert the Punjab Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board corpus to other schemes.
    5. The electoral clock: Punjab Assembly elections are less than six months away, which gives the confrontation a political audience it would otherwise lack.

    Challenges to the Memorandum of Procedure

    1. It carries no legal force: The Memorandum is an executive document, so no participant can be compelled to complete a step within any time. Eg. The revised Memorandum sought after the National Judicial Appointments Commission judgment of 2015 has still not been settled between the government and the collegium.
      The Fix: Give the Memorandum statutory backing, so each stage carries a deadline that a court can enforce.
    2. Delay operates as a silent veto: The Union government can sit on a recommendation without formally rejecting it, which produces the outcome of a rejection without the record of one. Eg. Names reiterated by the collegium have remained pending with the government for well over a year on repeated occasions.
      The Fix: Treat a reiterated recommendation as notified if the government does not act on it within a fixed period.
    3. The consultation record is closed: Views submitted by a State or a Governor are never published, so a claim that they were ignored cannot be tested by anyone. Eg. Punjab’s objection here rests on a file that no one outside the process can read.
      The Fix: Publish the sequence of consultations for every appointment, with the date each input was received and acted on.
    4. Transfers proceed without stated grounds: The Memorandum does not set out the criteria on which a judge is moved from one High Court to another. Eg. Collegium resolutions record transfers as being in the interest of better administration of justice, with no further reasoning.
      The Fix: Require a written and published reason for every transfer proposal before it is acted upon.

    Conclusion

    The appointment has gone through and the disagreement it exposed has not. A State can be consulted on a High Court appointment while nobody is obliged to wait for its answer, which makes the consultation real in form and empty in effect. That gap is not a Punjab problem, and it will recur wherever a State government and the Centre sit on opposite sides. Closing it needs a written timeline binding on both, not a resolution passed after the file has already moved.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2017, GS2, 10 marks] Critically examine the Supreme Court’s judgement on ‘National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014’ with reference to appointment of judges of higher judiciary in India.”

  • Draft SIR list shows anomalies, absurdities. Independent audit is needed

    Why in the News

    An analysis of the Election Commission of India’s draft rolls finds that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has removed 13.37 crore names at the draft stage. The revision began as a pilot in Bihar, where 65 lakh names were deleted, and has since run across the country in three phases. Deletion rates have risen with each phase rather than falling. India’s electorate stood at about 98 crore at the 2024 Lok Sabha election, against an adult voting-age population of about 99 crore. The electorate is projected to fall to about 88 crore against a projected adult population of 103 crore. Either the population projection or the electoral roll is badly wrong.

    What is the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls?

    1. A house-to-house verification: The Special Intensive Revision is a time-bound enumeration in which Booth Level Officers visit each household and verify every existing entry on the roll.
    2. Different from the annual revision: The routine summary revision only processes claims and objections that voters themselves file. The intensive revision re-verifies the entire roll on the ground.
    3. The sequence: Enumeration produces a draft roll. Claims and objections against that draft are then decided before a final roll is published.

    What do the national numbers show?

    1. The expected final figure: Publication of a draft roll is usually followed by more additions than deletions. Final deletions are estimated at over 11.5 crore once the remaining States are counted in.
    2. What is still outstanding: Draft rolls have not been released for Nagaland and Tripura. The revision has not begun in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
    3. The scale against the early warning: An early projection that a nationwide revision could delete up to 10 crore names was dismissed when it was made. The draft-stage figure has already passed it.

    What explains the gap between the electorate and the adult population?

    1. Only two readings are available: Either the official population projection is far too high, at under 125 crore rather than the projected figure above 145 crore. Or close to 15 crore voting-age Indians are absent from the roll.
    2. Correct deletions do not settle it: The pre-revision roll carried accumulated errors and spurious names, so a majority of the deletions may well be correct. A wrongful share of even one third still leaves an unacceptable number of voters removed.
    3. Under-enfranchisement is the other half: Eligible voters who never appeared on the pre-revision roll, those struck off before the revision started, and young voters who should have been added during it are all outside the count. The revision was not designed to find any of them.

    How have the three phases differed?

    1. Phase one, Bihar: Deletions of 65 lakh amounted to a fall of under 8 per cent in the elector-to-population ratio (the electorate expressed as a share of the adult population). Judicial scrutiny brought the final figure down to 45 lakh.
    2. Phase two, 13 States: Deletions reached nearly 13 per cent of the roll, totalling 6.5 crore. Public attention concentrated on the targeted removal of Muslim voters in West Bengal.
    3. Phase three, the rest of the country: Deletions in the draft rolls crossed 17 per cent, totalling 6.1 crore. The phase followed a Supreme Court order that left the Commission free to proceed.
    4. The direction of travel: Each phase recorded a higher deletion rate than the phase before it, and each attracted less scrutiny than the phase before it.

    Which States account for the largest deletions?

    1. Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra lead: Uttar Pradesh recorded 2.9 crore deletions and Maharashtra 2.1 crore.
    2. The next tier: Karnataka recorded 1.08 crore, Tamil Nadu 97.4 lakh, Gujarat 73.7 lakh and West Bengal 58.2 lakh.
    3. Mid-sized States: Delhi recorded 47.6 lakh, Andhra Pradesh 44.9 lakh, Jharkhand 43.6 lakh, Madhya Pradesh 42.7 lakh, Rajasthan 41.9 lakh and Haryana 33.9 lakh.
    4. Smaller totals: Chhattisgarh recorded 27.1 lakh, Kerala 24.1 lakh, Punjab 20.7 lakh, Odisha 20.1 lakh and Uttarakhand 8.3 lakh.
    5. Where the rate is abnormal: Haryana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Delhi recorded deletion rates well above the pattern for their phase.
    6. What the table excludes: Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and the Union Territories are left out because population projections are unavailable for them. The projections used are drawn from the Report of the Technical Group on Population Projections of July 2020.

    Why are the deletion categories the core of the problem?

    1. Deaths are a small and stable share: Voters marked “dead” held steady at around 3 per cent of total deletions across all three phases.
    2. The two large categories are undefined: Most deletions were recorded as “absent” or “shifted”. Neither term has been defined so far, and local electoral officials have applied both at their own discretion.
    3. A further fifth is flagged rather than resolved: About one-fifth of the remaining electors face further scrutiny as “unmapped” or under “logical discrepancy”. No standard operating procedure states how such a flag is to be decided.
    4. The flag clusters oddly: Odisha, Jharkhand and Telangana show unusually high shares of “logical discrepancy”. A uniform software check applied across States would not produce that distribution.

    What happens to a voter deleted before the revision starts?

    1. No enumeration form is ever issued: A voter removed before the revision formally begins never receives an enumeration form. That removal is not counted as a revision deletion at all.
    2. The scale of pre-revision removals: Over 14 lakh such deletions took place between 12 May, when the third phase schedule was announced, and the day that phase formally began. Over 8 lakh of them were in Maharashtra.
    3. Delhi is the clearest case: Delhi lost more than 11 lakh voters before the revision was launched, counting from its assembly election in February the previous year. Its roll then fell from 1.56 crore to 98 lakh after the draft was published.

    Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

    1. The burden of proof sits on the voter: The exercise requires an elector to establish entitlement rather than requiring the state to establish ineligibility. Eg. Electors in Bihar were asked to produce legacy documents such as a parent’s entry in an earlier intensive revision roll.
      The Fix: Place the burden on the electoral registration officer to record a written ground and serve notice before any name is struck off.
    2. Field officers carry unworkable targets: Verifying every household within a few weeks exceeds the staff assigned to the task. Eg. Deaths and suicides among Booth Level Officers were reported during the West Bengal phase.
      The Fix: Fix a maximum number of households per officer and extend the enumeration window instead of compressing verification into the deletion window.
    3. Grievance redress runs slower than the roll: Claims and objections are decided after the deadline that freezes the roll for an approaching election. Eg. Only a fraction of the claims filed in West Bengal were disposed of before the roll was frozen.
      The Fix: Bar publication of a final roll until every claim against the draft carries a written and appealable order.
    4. Deletion data is not published in usable form: Rolls are released as image files, so any independent count of deletions has to be reconstructed by hand. Eg. The national deletion total here had to be assembled State by State from separately published draft rolls.
      The Fix: Publish booth-level deletion lists carrying the recorded ground for each name, in a downloadable machine-readable format.

    Conclusion

    The revision was justified as a clean-up and is producing a shrinking electorate. A roll that removes names far faster than it adds them cannot be defended as an accuracy exercise, and the Commission cannot certify its own accuracy. What is contested is not whether errors existed on the old roll but whether their correction followed any stated rule. An audit by a body outside the Commission is the only thing that would settle that, and nothing in the current process provides for one.

    Constitutional Framework Governing Electoral Roll Revision

    1. Article 324: Vests the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of elections in the Election Commission of India.
    2. Article 325: Mandates one general electoral roll for every territorial constituency and bars exclusion from it on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex.
    3. Article 326: Provides for universal adult suffrage, with the voting age lowered to 18 by the Sixty-first Amendment.
    4. Article 327: Empowers Parliament to legislate on all matters relating to elections, including the preparation of electoral rolls.
    5. Article 329: Bars courts from questioning an electoral law or a completed election except through an election petition.

    Laws and Rules Governing Electoral Roll Revision

    1. Representation of the People Act, 1950: Provides for the allocation of seats and for the preparation and revision of electoral rolls.
    2. Section 19: Sets the conditions for registration, being 18 years of age and ordinarily resident in the constituency.
    3. Section 21: Authorises the Commission to order a special revision of a roll at any time, for reasons recorded in writing.
    4. Section 16: Lists the disqualifications for registration, including non-citizenship and unsoundness of mind.
    5. Section 31: Penalises a false declaration made in connection with the preparation or revision of a roll.
    6. Registration of Electors Rules, 1960: Lay down the procedure for house-to-house enumeration, publication of the draft roll, and disposal of claims and objections.
    7. Representation of the People Act, 1951: Governs the conduct of elections and confines a challenge to a completed election to an election petition before the High Court.

    Government Initiatives for Electoral Roll Management

    1. ECINET: A single digital interface launched in 2026 that consolidates more than 40 separate Commission applications used by voters and officials.
    2. National Voters’ Services Portal: Allows a voter to register, correct and verify roll details online without visiting a registration centre.
    3. Electors Photo Identity Card delivery standard: A revised operating procedure requires an updated identity card to reach the elector within 15 days of an update.
    4. Common electoral roll proposal: A single roll for parliamentary, assembly and local body elections, intended to end the parallel rolls maintained separately by State Election Commissions.

    Key Facts about Electoral Roll Revision

    1. National Voters’ Day: Observed on 25 January each year, marking the founding of the Election Commission in 1950.
    2. Frequency of intensive revision: An intensive revision of this kind has been carried out about 14 times, with earlier rounds in 1983, 1995, 2002 and 2004.
    3. The first rolls: The first intensive revisions ran between 1952 and 1956 to build the country’s first reliable voter database.
    4. Qualifying dates: Since the 2021 amendment to the election laws, a person turning 18 may register with reference to any of four qualifying dates in a year, 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October.

    Way Forward

    1. Link the roll to the civil registration system: Automatic removal of deceased electors through the death register would take the largest legitimate deletion category out of field discretion entirely.
    2. Permanent electoral tribunals: A standing tribunal for roll disputes would replace the temporary appellate arrangements assembled around each revision.
    3. Geo-tagged field verification: Recording each house visit with a location and time stamp would make a claimed visit checkable after the fact.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026, GS2, 10 marks] Is the right to vote a fundamental right? Discuss the position of the Election Commission of India while undertaking the revision of electoral rolls. Can it also examine the question of citizenship of voters?”

  • ‘Working together, combining resources, talent, scale, we think India and Canada can be world beaters’

    ‘Working together, combining resources, talent, scale, we think India and Canada can be world beaters’

    Why in the News

    Canada’s High Commissioner to India has set out the instruments now in place to rebuild the bilateral relationship, and has stated confidence that the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) will be concluded by the end of the year.

    How has the relationship been rebuilt since the 2023 rupture?

    1. Leader-level contact restored: The two Prime Ministers have met four times over the past year. New envoys were announced in June last year after the reset was agreed.
    2. Security channels reopened: Security officials on both sides are now in regular contact over practical cooperation. The stated purpose is that neither side is surprised by the other’s statements or actions.
    3. A terrorist entity listing: Canada has listed the Bishnoi gang as a terrorist entity and launched a financial crimes commission. The stated trigger is extortion pressure on the Indian community in Canada from such gangs.
    4. The separatism question remains open: Canada’s position is that political expression is protected in a democracy, so it will not restrict views it disagrees with. Its intelligence agency’s report tabled before Parliament refers to Khalistan actors and to the Air India bombing.

    What does Canada offer India on energy and critical minerals?

    1. Scale in hydrocarbons: Canada ranks fourth in oil reserves and production, fifth in natural gas production, fifth in liquefied petroleum gas production and sixth in nuclear power.
    2. Export capacity is being built out: By 2030 Canada expects to export 50 million tonnes of natural gas through its West Coast ports, with a 400 per cent increase in liquefied petroleum gas export capacity. A newly announced pipeline will allow the export of two million barrels of oil, against a production of five to six million barrels a day.
    3. India’s import volume matches that scale: India imports crude oil at roughly the level Canada produces each day. Canada has never sold India oil, gas or liquefied petroleum gas.
    4. Minerals are in the ground, not in production: Canada holds rare earths, lithium and graphite, and 20 per cent of the world’s tungsten reserves. It has no active tungsten mine, and opening one takes three to five years.

    How central is nuclear cooperation to the relationship?

    1. A concluded contract: A uranium sale worth $2.3 billion for India’s reactors was concluded during the Canadian Prime Minister’s visit.
    2. The installed base is Canadian in origin: Eighteen of India’s 24 existing reactors are based on CANDU technology.
    3. Canada’s new policy is export-facing: A newly announced nuclear policy looks to build up to 10 more reactors in Canada, and is focused on working with other countries on building their nuclear capacity.
    4. Small modular reactors are the proposed next step: Powering the full electrification of India’s railway system has been floated as an application for small modular reactors.

    What does the trade track now involve?

    1. A dated target: The CEPA is targeted for conclusion by the end of the year, with both Prime Ministers having repeatedly committed to it.
    2. The record it is measured against: The previous attempt at a bilateral trade agreement ran 12 years without getting far. Canada concluded a comparable agreement with the United Arab Emirates in 47 days.
    3. A trade volume commitment: The two Prime Ministers committed to double bilateral trade by 2030. Current trade is described as nowhere near where it should be.
    4. A business delegation follows: A large Canadian trade delegation is due in India in October.

    What is the defence and maritime component?

    1. A partnership already announced: A maritime security partnership was announced in March, covering defence material cooperation. The joint statement provides for a defence dialogue between the two governments.
    2. An information-sharing framework is being negotiated: A joint security of information agreement is under work, to give companies on both sides a framework for handling sensitive information.
    3. The procurement number is large: About $180 billion of Canada’s $500 billion defence outlay to 2035 is procurement, with the remainder on dual-use infrastructure.
    4. Canada’s constraint is scale, not technology: A population of 42 million cannot absorb the cost of defence products alone, and Canada has agreed with European partners to develop 12 submarines. Its stated specialisations include optics, driven by rising access to the Arctic.

    What is the state of the student and visa channel?

    1. The numbers are substantial: There are 400,000 Indian students in Canada, alongside a diaspora of almost two million people.
    2. Caps were a housing response: Study permit caps were imposed because intake outran available housing. Some colleges were found to be delivering no real education.
    3. Reputation is the cost being carried: The tightening left a perception in India that Canada had closed itself to students. The visa system is under review to correct processing.

    Why is Canada turning to India now?

    1. Trade talks with the United States have collapsed: Canada walked away from the negotiation over demands it judged to lie beyond normal trade talks, including impositions on its cultural sovereignty. Tariffs are being imposed dollar for dollar in response.
    2. Diversification is stated as the primary plan: Canada describes building its own economy and external partnerships as plan A rather than a fallback. Investment is being directed into domestic resources and capacity.
    3. China remains the larger relationship: Canada’s economic relationship with China is bigger than the one with India and has been put back on an even keel. It is described as different in quality and character from the Indian relationship.

    Challenges to the India-Canada reset

    1. The criminal case is still live: A finding in the Canadian courts on the 2023 killing can reopen the political dispute the reset was built to contain. Eg. The allegation in October 2023 produced tit-for-tat expulsions and the withdrawal of most Canadian diplomats from India.
      The Fix: Keep the security dialogue and the economic track under separate institutional mandates, so a judicial outcome suspends neither.
    2. Distance works against Canadian energy: Freight cost and voyage time from the Pacific coast disadvantage Canadian cargoes against short-haul Gulf suppliers. Eg. Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supply the bulk of India’s crude on far shorter sea routes.
      The Fix: Anchor Canadian supply in long-term contracts and upstream equity rather than spot cargoes, so volume rather than delivered price carries the relationship.
    3. Nuclear liability law blocks reactor sales: Foreign vendors have resisted India’s supplier recourse provision, which is why cooperation has stayed at the fuel supply stage. Eg. Section 17(b) of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 has held up foreign reactor contracts for over a decade.
      The Fix: Settle supplier recourse terms in a bilateral protocol before any reactor negotiation opens.
    4. Critical mineral reserves are not supply: Reserves without processing capacity cannot displace the existing source of refined material. Eg. China refines the majority of the world’s rare earths and graphite.
      The Fix: Co-invest in Canadian separation and refining plants under a shared offtake agreement, rather than contracting for unmined ore.

    Conclusion

    The relationship is being rebuilt instrument by instrument rather than by settling what broke it. That design holds only as long as both governments treat the court’s eventual finding as a legal outcome and not a diplomatic one. Everything else listed so far is either a contract or an announcement. The trade agreement is the first thing the two governments have set themselves to close, and whether they close it is the marker to watch.

    Back2Basics

    1. CANDU reactor: Short for CANada Deuterium Uranium, a pressurised heavy water reactor design developed in Canada.
    2. Fuel and moderator: It runs on natural uranium and uses heavy water as both moderator and coolant, so it needs no uranium enrichment.
    3. On-power refuelling: Fuel bundles are replaced while the reactor is running, which raises availability and removes the need for shutdown refuelling.
    4. The Indian link: India’s pressurised heavy water reactor programme began with Rajasthan Atomic Power Station Unit 1, built with Canadian collaboration and commissioned in 1973.

    [2019, GS2, 15 marks] “What introduces friction into the ties between India and the United States is that Washington is still unable to find for India a position in its global strategy, which would satisfy India’s National self-esteem and ambitions” Explain with suitable examples.

  • As yoga and Ayurveda become part of India’s global health diplomacy

    As yoga and Ayurveda become part of India’s global health diplomacy

    Why in the News

    India’s recent trade agreements now carry written commitments on traditional medicine. The India-Oman Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), operationalised in June 2026, carries what the government describes as its first comprehensive commitment on traditional medicine across all modes of supply. The India-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (FTA) adds a dedicated health and traditional medicine annex. Together these agreements move Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) from a cultural export to a formalised health services opportunity. Practitioners of these systems now have a treaty basis for licensing, standards and mobility abroad. The contest is over what that basis is worth, since formal recognition converts into market access only where evidence, regulation and practitioner quality satisfy the host regulator.

    What have India’s recent trade agreements committed on traditional medicine?

    1. The Oman agreement sets the benchmark: The India-Oman CEPA carries the government’s first comprehensive commitment on traditional medicine covering all modes of supply. It came into operation in June 2026.
    2. The New Zealand agreement creates a mobility route: The India-New Zealand FTA carries a dedicated health and traditional medicine annex covering AYUSH practices. It provides a structured mobility pathway with a dedicated visa quota for AYUSH practitioners.
    3. The European Union agreement goes furthest on qualifications: The India-European Union FTA, signed in January 2026, allows AYUSH practitioners to use their Indian qualifications in member countries that have no regulatory framework of their own. It also provides for AYUSH wellness centres and clinics.
    4. The common obligations are regulatory, not promotional: All three agreements carry measures to ease licensing, develop standards and facilitate the movement of AYUSH practitioners and instructors. The New Zealand agreement additionally institutionalises cooperation on education, training, standards development and wellness services.

    What carries the strategy outside the trade agreements?

    1. A dedicated visa category: The AYUSH visa was introduced in 2023 for foreign nationals travelling to India for treatment under these systems. Between January 2023 and December 2025, 3,375 people travelled on AYUSH or e-AYUSH visas and another 579 on attendant visas.
    2. The earlier reported count: The Ministry of AYUSH had previously reported 1,646 AYUSH visas issued to nationals of 75 countries between January 2024 and February 2025.
    3. An education channel: Under the AYUSH Fellowship Scheme, 260 students from 32 countries were studying these systems in Indian institutions. Education operates as a channel of influence alongside treatment.
    4. Overseas programming: The Ministry’s international cooperation programmes fund training, seminars, conferences and knowledge exchange. These include yoga instruction and education delivered overseas.

    Why can the return on these commitments not be measured?

    1. The growth figure is not an AYUSH figure: Foreign medical arrivals in India rose from 1.83 lakh in 2020 to 6.44 lakh in 2024. That count covers medical travel of every kind and not AYUSH patients specifically.
    2. No country-wise ranking is published: The government does not publish a current consolidated country-wise ranking of AYUSH patients. The named markets are Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Germany, Russia, Malaysia, Mauritius and Saudi Arabia.
    3. The market share is unknown: The absence of consolidated data makes it impossible to assess what share of India’s medical value travel market AYUSH actually holds. A negotiator therefore cannot state the value of the access being sought.
    4. The expert objection is about inputs, not demand: Credible standards, an evidence base, regulation, practitioner quality and patient safety are named as the preconditions for these systems to establish themselves in regulated healthcare markets.

    Challenges to AYUSH market access abroad

    1. Host country law decides the right to practise: Destination markets license practitioners under their own medical statutes, so an Indian qualification carries no automatic right to treat patients. Eg. Ayurveda is recognised in law as a practising profession in only a small set of jurisdictions, Hungary and Switzerland among them.
      The Fix: Negotiate mutual recognition annexes that name the qualifying degree and the permitted scope of practice, rather than a general commitment to cooperate on standards.
    2. A thin clinical evidence base: Regulators in evidence-driven markets ask for trial data that most classical formulations do not carry. Eg. The World Health Organization opened its Global Centre for Traditional Medicine at Jamnagar in 2022 to build exactly this evidence and data base.
      The Fix: Fund registered controlled trials on a shortlist of high-volume formulations and publish the protocols, so a foreign regulator can audit the method.
    3. Product safety findings block entry: Heavy metal content in some traditional preparations has drawn regulatory action in importing countries. Eg. The United States Food and Drug Administration has issued import alerts against Ayurvedic products over lead and mercury contamination.
      The Fix: Make batch-level heavy metal testing and certification mandatory before export, with the results carried on the product label.
    4. Domestic advertising undercuts the regulatory case: Cure claims made without trial evidence at home weaken the argument for recognition abroad. Eg. The Supreme Court held Patanjali Ayurved in contempt in 2024 over advertisements claiming cures for named diseases.
      The Fix: Enforce the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954 against AYUSH advertising and publish the penalty orders.

    Conclusion

    The commitments are in force and the harder work now sits inside India. What a foreign regulator will ask for is what a practitioner has been trained to and what a preparation contains, and neither is currently documented to an auditable standard. India also cannot count its own AYUSH patients separately from medical travellers, so it has no way to report what any of these annexes has delivered. The first practitioner registered abroad on an Indian qualification, and the first published count of AYUSH-specific arrivals, are the two markers that will show whether this is trade access or an announcement.

    Back2Basics

    1. Ministry of AYUSH: Formed in November 2014 by upgrading the Department of AYUSH, which itself succeeded the Department of Indian Systems of Medicine and Homoeopathy set up in 1995.
    2. Mandate: It administers education, research, drug standardisation and practice regulation for the six recognised systems.
    3. Education regulators: The National Commission for Indian System of Medicine and the National Commission for Homoeopathy, both created by 2020 statutes, regulate education and registration in place of the earlier central councils.
    4. Drug regulation: AYUSH medicines are regulated under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 and the rules made under it.

    [2026] The Chancellor of Germany visited India in January 2026. Which of the following is/are NOT correct in terms of outcomes?

    1. MoU between All India Institute of Ayurveda and University of Hamburg

    2. MoU on Youth Hockey Development between Hockey India and German Hockey Federation

    3. Establishment of a bilateral dialogue mechanism on the Indo-Pacific

    4. Opening of an Honorary Consul of Germany in Lucknow

    (a) 2 and 3 (b) 1 and 4 (c) 3 and 4 (d) 1 only

  • Two countries and a shared river: Mistrust is not inevitable

    Two countries and a shared river: Mistrust is not inevitable

    Why in the News

    India’s most important rivers rise in a region it cannot see into, controlled by China, which treats the data about them as an asset to switch on and off. The Brahmaputra rises as the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet and enters Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang, and the Sutlej and the Indus rise there too. The arrangement that governs what India learns about them, a pair of flood-season memorandums, lapsed in June 2025. China broke ground in July 2025 on the Medog project at the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo, immediately upstream of the point where the river turns towards Arunachal Pradesh. The tension is that hydrological data on rivers India depends on is a discretionary favour rather than a treaty right, and India practises the same discretion on the rivers where it sits upstream.

    What is the India-China hydrological data arrangement?

    1. No water treaty exists between the two countries: The relationship rests on two flood-season memorandums, one on the Brahmaputra signed in 2002 and one on the Sutlej signed in 2005.
    2. India pays for the data it receives: India pays roughly Rs 1 crore a year for the flood-season information supplied under those memorandums.
    3. A consultative body that convenes at China’s convenience: An expert-level consultative mechanism sits alongside the memorandums and meets when relations allow.
    4. The instrument is seasonal by design: The memorandums cover the flood season, so hazards arising outside that window carry no notification obligation at all.

    Why is there no legal floor under the arrangement?

    1. Both states sit outside the governing convention: The 1997 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses would oblige an upstream state to give prior notice of works and not to cause significant harm to those below. China voted against it and India abstained.
    2. A non-binding memorandum can be suspended without breach: Withholding data under such an arrangement carries no legal consequence, so there is nothing for India to invoke when supply stops.

    Why does shared data function as a lever rather than a right?

    1. Supply tracks the state of the boundary dispute: China stopped sharing Brahmaputra data during the Doklam standoff of 2017, blaming damaged collection sites, even as that summer’s floods killed scores in Assam.
    2. The pattern repeated and then ended the arrangement: Sharing resumed once relations thawed, dried up after the Galwan clash of 2020, and the memorandum lapsed in June 2025.
    3. Flood prediction data is not a neutral public good: It is released when ties are warm and withdrawn when they are not, which makes it a bargaining instrument rather than a technical input.
    4. Reassurances cannot be checked: Beijing attributes the stoppages to technical faults, calls the dam “fully within China’s sovereignty” and promises it will “prevent and mitigate disasters”. Those meant to be reassured cannot verify any of it, because the region is sealed and India, which hosts the Dalai Lama and the largest Tibetan exile community, is viewed with particular suspicion.

    What does the Medog project add to India’s exposure?

    1. The largest hydropower project in the world, at the worst possible point: The Medog project at the Great Bend will run to 60 GW, sited just before the Yarlung Tsangpo turns towards Arunachal Pradesh.
    2. It sits on the seam that generates the hazard: The site lies in one of the planet’s most seismically violent zones, the same tectonic seam that produces the outburst floods now hitting the border.
    3. Downstream states have been told nothing: Arunachal Pradesh’s Chief Minister has called the project an “existential threat” to the Siang valley. Bangladesh, at the river’s end, sought details in early 2026 and received none.

    Where does India’s own record cut against its demand?

    1. India settled for paid data instead of pressing for a right: Successive governments accepted the paid-data memorandum and did not push for the binding, basin-wide architecture that would make information an entitlement rather than a favour.
    2. India is an upstream withholder on its own rivers: It shares thinly with Bangladesh, and it has placed the Indus Waters Treaty, 1960 in abeyance following the Pahalgam terror attack.
    3. The same logic runs in both directions: The reasoning India faces on the Brahmaputra is the reasoning it practises on the Indus, which removes the ground from which it could demand a rule of general application.

    What do the Senegal and Mekong models show is possible?

    1. Poverty is not the constraint: On the Senegal River, four of the world’s poorest African countries jointly own their dams as “common and indivisible property”.
    2. Nor is conflict: That joint ownership was sustained even through a war between two of the member states, so mistrust between riparian governments does not by itself prevent pooled sovereignty over a river.
    3. China’s absence is a choice, not a limitation: Its neighbours built the Mekong River Commission and China stayed outside it, which shows the refusal to enter a basin institution is political rather than structural.

    Challenges to a binding India-China river arrangement

    1. Forecasting depends on a single unverifiable supplier: Flood forecasting for the Brahmaputra rests on upstream gauge readings that no Indian agency can independently audit, so a stoppage removes the input rather than degrading it. Eg. Central Water Commission forecasts for the Assam valley are built on flows measured at stations India cannot access.
      The Fix: Fund independent satellite-based flow and precipitation estimation for the upper basin, so a data cut-off reduces accuracy instead of ending the forecast.
    2. The hazards that kill fall outside the covered season: Glacial lake outburst floods and landslide-dam breaches occur without regard to the monsoon calendar the arrangement is built around. Eg. The South Lhonak glacial lake outburst flood of October 2023 destroyed the Teesta-III dam in Sikkim and killed dozens, outside any flood-season notification window.
      The Fix: Negotiate a year-round hazard-notification obligation covering lake formation, landslide damming and reservoir release, separately from seasonal flow data.
    3. Water has no forum of its own: The boundary question runs through the Special Representatives channel, and water sits in a separate expert mechanism with no power to compel a meeting or an answer. Eg. An interruption in data supply has no body before which it can be formally raised as a breach.
      The Fix: Give the expert mechanism a fixed annual calendar and a standing agenda item on notification failures, so a stoppage produces a documented exchange.
    4. The lower riparians negotiate separately on the same river: India, Bangladesh and China each deal bilaterally, so the basin’s downstream users never present a common position. Eg. India and Bangladesh’s Joint Rivers Commission covers 54 shared rivers and has produced only two water-sharing treaties in five decades.
      The Fix: Raise the Yarlung Tsangpo-Brahmaputra as a joint India-Bangladesh agenda item so notification is sought by the whole downstream reach at once.
    5. India’s own counter-project is contested at home: Storage proposed on the Siang as a strategic answer to Medog is opposed by the communities it would displace, which weakens the case India makes about consultation. Eg. Survey work for the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project has faced sustained local protest in Arunachal Pradesh.
      The Fix: Settle consent and compensation on the Indian side of the border before advancing a counter-dam as a security argument.

    Conclusion

    India cannot compel China to open the plateau, and the question is therefore not about leverage but about design. What is missing is an architecture that makes hazard information an obligation owed to everyone downstream rather than a concession granted when relations permit. Building it requires India to accept the same obligation on the rivers where it sits upstream, since a rule it will not apply to itself is not a rule it can ask for. The unresolved point is whether a shared river is treated as a common lifeline or as a weapon held in reserve, and neither government has yet chosen.

    Transboundary River Water Sharing in India

    1. About: A transboundary river crosses an international boundary, and its use is governed by bilateral treaties and memorandums between the riparian states rather than by a single binding global law.
    2. India’s position is both upstream and downstream: India is the lower riparian to China on the Brahmaputra, the Sutlej and the Indus headwaters, and the upper riparian to Pakistan on the Indus system and to Bangladesh on the Ganga and the Teesta.
    3. The dependence is agricultural: Around 45% of irrigation in the Indo-Gangetic plain depends on water from the Himalayan rivers, which is why control of the headwaters translates directly into food security.

    Laws and Agreements Governing Transboundary River Water Sharing

    1. Indus Waters Treaty, 1960 (India-Pakistan): Brokered by the World Bank, it assigns the Eastern Rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) to India and the Western Rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) to Pakistan, with run-of-the-river hydropower and limited storage permitted to India on the Western Rivers.
    2. Article XII: Termination is possible only through a ratified treaty between both governments, and the text carries no suspension provision.
    3. Ganga Waters Treaty, 1996 (India-Bangladesh): It fixes the sharing of dry-season flows at the Farakka Barrage and runs for 30 years, expiring in December 2026.
    4. Kushiyara River Treaty, 2022 (India-Bangladesh): It provides for withdrawal of an agreed quantum from the Kushiyara in the dry season, and is only the second water-sharing treaty between the two countries.
    5. Kosi Agreement, 1954 and Gandak Agreement, 1959 (India-Nepal): These provide for flood control, barrage construction and irrigation management on shared rivers, with India funding and operating the structures on Nepali territory.
    6. Mahakali Treaty, 1996 (India-Nepal): It covers the integrated development of the Mahakali river, including the Pancheshwar Multipurpose Project, which remains stalled over disagreement on benefit-sharing.

    Challenges in Transboundary River Water Sharing

    1. The customary principles bind weakly without a forum: Equitable and reasonable utilisation and the obligation not to cause significant harm are widely accepted in principle, and no standing tribunal exists to apply them to a river basin. Eg. The Mekong River Commission can review a member’s dam proposal and cannot stop it.
      The Fix: Build compulsory technical arbitration into each treaty at renewal, so a disputed project has a named forum rather than a bilateral stalemate.
    2. Treaties fix volumes that the climate then moves: Allocations negotiated on decades-old flow records become unworkable as glacier melt, monsoon variability and river morphology change the water actually available. Eg. Negotiations over the Ganga sharing formula are complicated by changing river morphology and by disagreement over water levels at Farakka.
      The Fix: Replace fixed quantum allocations with percentage-of-flow formulas carrying explicit dry-year and surplus-year rules.
    3. Domestic federal politics stalls bilateral agreements: A riparian State’s objection can hold up an agreement the two national governments have already negotiated. Eg. The draft Teesta agreement of 2011, providing for a 50:50 sharing arrangement, has never been implemented.
      The Fix: Include the riparian State in the negotiating delegation from the outset, rather than seeking its concurrence after a text is settled.
    4. Third parties build in the same basin without notice: A neighbour can bring in external financing and construction for a project on a shared river without consulting the other riparian. Eg. Bangladesh has re-engaged China on the Teesta River Management Project.
      The Fix: Write a prior-notification and joint-appraisal requirement for any new structure into every treaty renewal, applying to externally financed projects as well.

    [2016, GS1, 12 marks] Present an account of the Indus Water Treaty and examine its ecological, economic and political implications in the context of changing bilateral relations.