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GS Paper: GS2

  • The house of multilaterals

    Why in the News

    The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has held its 26th summit at Bishkek in the Kyrgyz Republic, marking the completion of 25 years since its launch. The Bishkek Declaration expressed deep concern at and condemned the military strikes on Iran, and reaffirmed support for its sovereignty and territorial integrity. It named the United States and Israel as having violated the principles of international law and the UN Charter. The summit was the first since the U.S. and Israel began their war on Iran on 28 February 2026, which killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a number of senior officials. The tension is that a grouping able to speak in one voice against outside powers closed the summit by handing its chair to Pakistan.

    What is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation?

    1. Founding: The SCO was launched on 15 June 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan, together known as the Shanghai Five, as its founding members. India and Pakistan joined the group in 2017.
    2. Institutional machinery: The grouping has 29 charter bodies, including the Council of Heads of State, the Council of Heads of Government, the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, meetings of heads of ministries and agencies, and the Council of National Coordinators, alongside over 40 working mechanisms.
    3. What the machinery is for: These bodies meet through the year and serve as formal channels of communication between member states. They give members a standing consultation route in a sudden conflict or a cross-border natural calamity.
    4. No collective defence: The SCO carries no collective defence component, and several of its members have disputes with one another.

    What did the declaration say on West Asia?

    1. Condolence and a peace process: Member states condoled the assassination of Ali Khamenei and welcomed the peace process supported and mediated by several countries, including SCO member Pakistan.
    2. Indirect backing on the nuclear question: The summit advocated the “inalienable right” of member countries to develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes, which reads as support for Iran in its nuclear negotiations with the U.S.
    3. Palestine named as the root question: The declaration asserted that lasting stability in West Asia can be secured only through a just settlement of the Palestine question.
    4. Silence on Ukraine: Member states maintained silence on Russia’s role in the Ukraine war.

    Where did the declaration push back against the prevailing order?

    1. Missile defence: The declaration held that the “unilateral and unlimited build-up of global missile defence systems by groups of states” has a negative impact on international security and stability.
    2. Satellite Internet: It stated that “unauthorised satellite Internet services on the territory of Member States” violate international law, an evident reference to Starlink supplying Internet services in parts of eastern Ukraine and in Iran.
    3. Trade in local currencies: SCO leaders have periodically called for greater use of local currencies in trade, a practice viewed with scepticism in the West and particularly by the current U.S. leadership.
    4. A bank of its own: The announcement of the establishment of an SCO Development Bank is a further step in that direction.

    What did India press at Bishkek, and where did it diverge?

    1. No double standards on terrorism: The Prime Minister, who led the Indian delegation, spoke on ensuring that there is “no double standards” in fighting terrorism and called for peace and stability in Afghanistan.
    2. India’s Afghanistan record: He highlighted India’s role in supplying relief materials to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan over the years, and the declaration separately called on Afghanistan to form an “inclusive government”.
    3. Connectivity with a condition: He spoke for greater connectivity between the markets of SCO members, and for respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. That formulation is an apparent reference to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which India has criticised for years.
    4. The Belt and Road split: India stayed away from endorsing the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Other member states expressed support for it and advocated alignment between the BRI and the Eurasian Economic Union, a customs union of Russia and four post-Soviet states.
    5. The troika language: The declaration carried strong language on the troika of challenges, “terrorism, separatism and extremism”, and “strongly condemned” terrorism, reflecting India’s concerns and those of other members.

    Why does the next chair create a problem for New Delhi?

    1. Pakistan takes the chair: With the conclusion of the summit, Pakistan has assumed the chair of the SCO, and the group’s next summit will be held in that country.
    2. The level of attendance is undecided: The Ministry of External Affairs has not clarified whether the Prime Minister will travel to Pakistan for it. The External Affairs Minister had visited Islamabad in 2024 for the 23rd meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of Government.
    3. What has intervened since: The Pahalgam terror attack of 22 April 2025, the subsequent Operation Sindoor, and India’s decision to place the Indus Waters Treaty, the 1960 arrangement sharing the Indus system between India and Pakistan, “in abeyance” have further complicated relations.
    4. A decision, not a formality: These developments will be a factor in the level at which the government sends representatives to next year’s summit.

    What has India got out of the grouping since 2017?

    1. A route back to China after Galwan: India and China began to re-engage at the 2024 Kazan Summit in Russia, where the Prime Minister met the Chinese President.
    2. A concrete boundary outcome: A further meeting between the two leaders at Tianjin in 2025 produced an “Early Harvest” proposal on boundary delimitation and the resumption of border trade through three points.
    3. Political will survived a military crisis: The Tianjin meeting showed that both sides retained the will to meet despite the strain following Operation Sindoor in May 2025, when China supported Pakistan as India targeted terror camps in Pakistani territory.
    4. A multilateral setting for hard subjects: The SCO gives the world an opportunity to engage China multilaterally on issues such as freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and gives India and Pakistan a platform for sustained engagement inside a broader framework.
    5. Leverage in an uncertain phase with Washington: With the U.S. President imposing punitive tariffs on Indian goods, the grouping let New Delhi engage all major stakeholders and maintain diplomatic dialogue.

    Challenges to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

    1. Consensus decision-making lets one member stall an agenda: Every substantive document needs unanimity, so an economic or connectivity text is reduced to language all ten members can sign. Eg. India declined to endorse the Belt and Road paragraph at successive summits, and the connectivity language in SCO declarations has stayed generic as a result.
      The Fix: Adopt a consensus-minus-one procedure for economic annexures, so a project document can proceed without binding a dissenting member.
    2. Enlargement has widened the internal contradictions: Membership has grown from the original five to include India and Pakistan in 2017, Iran in 2023 and Belarus in 2024, and each addition brings its own quarrels into the room. Eg. Two pairs of members, India and Pakistan and India and China, carry live disputes with each other.
      The Fix: Tier the agenda, so security cooperation runs among members with no active bilateral dispute and the full membership meets on economic and connectivity subjects.
    3. Members do not share a definition of terrorism: The counter-terrorism arm works from a list members interpret differently, so a summit can condemn terrorism in general and fail on any specific incident. Eg. The SCO defence ministers’ meeting at Qingdao in June 2025 ended without a joint communique after India refused to sign a text that omitted the Pahalgam attack.
      The Fix: Attach a standing annexure of entities already designated by the UN Security Council, so the counter-terrorism text is not renegotiated at every summit.
    4. Connectivity runs through bilateral corridors rather than a common framework: The grouping has no transit and customs instrument of its own, so trade routes are governed by separate bilateral or plurilateral agreements. Eg. The International North-South Transport Corridor, used by India, Iran and Russia, rests on a 2000 agreement signed outside the SCO entirely.
      The Fix: Bring the corridor’s customs, transit and insurance protocols under an SCO transport facilitation agreement, so members trade on one rulebook.

    Conclusion

    The grouping’s value to India has always been access rather than agreement. It is the one table where New Delhi can sit with Beijing and Islamabad without the meeting itself being the story. That access now comes attached to a host India has no ordinary diplomatic traffic with. The decision to watch is the level at which India is represented at the next summit, because it will show whether access is still worth the price of attending.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “Critically examine the aims and objectives of SCO. What importance does it hold for India?”

  • Bihar makes consent mandatory for CBI to probe public servants

    Why in the News

    The Bihar Home Department has issued a notification regulating the jurisdiction of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the State under Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946. It widens the agency’s standing general consent over offences involving employees of the Government of India, central Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) and private persons implicated alongside them. A proviso then removes that automatic authority over public servants appointed in connection with the affairs of the Bihar government and over State-owned, State-controlled and State-aided bodies. The notification supersedes every previous notification on the subject. The result is a two-tier regime. The same agency needs no permission to investigate a central employee in Bihar. It needs case-by-case permission to investigate a State employee.

    What is consent under Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946?

    1. The statute is the CBI’s source of police powers: The CBI cannot ordinarily exercise its powers and jurisdiction inside a State without that State government’s consent.
    2. Two forms of consent: General consent allows the agency to investigate specified offences or categories of cases without seeking permission each time. Specific consent is granted for an individual case.
    3. Consent is tied to a notified offence list: The offences the agency may investigate are notified under Section 3 of the Act, so a State’s general consent operates only over that notified list.

    What does the Bihar notification alter on each side of the line?

    1. The offence list under general consent is widened: Consent now covers offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, the Information Technology Act, 2000, cybercrime, and the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 as amended.
    2. Whom the wider consent covers: It applies to employees of the Government of India, employees of PSUs under the Government of India, and private persons implicated alongside them.
    3. The proviso carves out the State’s own establishment: Prior consent of the Bihar government is mandatory for any probe of public servants appointed in connection with the affairs of the State, and of persons in any corporation, company or bank owned by, controlled by, or receiving financial assistance from the State.
    4. The State decides each request individually: On receiving a proposal from the Delhi Special Police Establishment, the State government considers it and takes a decision on granting powers of investigation case by case.

    Why is the order read as widening the agency’s reach rather than curbing it?

    1. The two-pronged reading inside the police establishment: The stated reading is that the first part of the order lets the CBI investigate cases that were the State’s prerogative, and the second part balances that by requiring the State’s permission.
    2. It is read as a template for other States: The assessment within the agency is that Bihar may have set a precedent for other States, and that the order gives the CBI more scope rather than less.
    3. The consent bar binds the executive alone: The requirement of State consent applies only to executive action by the CBI. It does not restrict a High Court or the Supreme Court from ordering a CBI investigation within a State without the State government’s consent.

    Challenges to the general consent mechanism

    1. Consent is revocable at will and leaves probes suspended: A State can withdraw general consent at any time, and the agency must then seek permission for every fresh case in that State. Eg. West Bengal withdrew its general consent in November 2018 and has required case-by-case permission since.
      The Fix: Prescribe a statutory period within which a State must decide a case-by-case request, with reasons recorded for a refusal.
    2. The agency has no charter of its own: The CBI rests on a 1946 police establishment law and a 1963 executive resolution, so its very constitution has been litigated. Eg. The Gauhati High Court in Navendra Kumar v. Union of India (2013) held the 1963 resolution constituting the CBI to be invalid, and the Supreme Court stayed that order within days.
      The Fix: Enact a dedicated CBI statute fixing its composition, its jurisdiction over notified central offences and the limits of State consent.
    3. Corruption probes against State officials face two separate gates: Consent under Section 6 is only the first permission, and a further approval is needed before an inquiry into a public servant’s official decisions can begin. Eg. Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, inserted in 2018, requires prior approval of the competent authority before any enquiry into a recommendation made or decision taken by a public servant in discharge of official functions.
      The Fix: Run both approvals through a single time-bound window, so a refusal at either gate is recorded once and is appealable.
    4. Selective consent invites a political reading of every case: The State controls access to its own officials, so each grant or refusal is readable as a political act rather than a legal one. Eg. The Supreme Court described the agency as a “caged parrot speaking in its master’s voice” in the coal blocks allocation matter in 2013.
      The Fix: Publish an annual statement of consent requests received, granted, refused and pending, State by State, so the pattern is visible rather than inferred.
    5. Joint cases now straddle two consent regimes: One case involving a central employee and a State public servant is fully open on one accused and permission-dependent on the other, which splits a single investigation. Eg. A corruption case in a centrally funded scheme executed by a State department typically names officials of both.
      The Fix: Provide that where a case includes even one accused covered by general consent, the State decides on the whole case within a fixed period rather than on each accused separately.

    Conclusion

    The notification is in force and it supersedes every earlier consent order in the State. It settles nothing about the underlying arrangement, which lets the same agency be widened and fenced by a single executive order that no legislature debated. What is worth watching is whether other States adopt the split model, and whether Bihar attaches any timeline to the permissions it has now reserved to itself. A permission with no deadline is a refusal that never has to be written down.

    Back2Basics: Central Bureau of Investigation

    1. Constitution: The CBI was set up by a resolution of the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1963, and it is not a statutory body created by its own Act.
    2. Administrative control: It functions under the Department of Personnel and Training in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.
    3. Superintendence is split: For offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, superintendence vests in the Central Vigilance Commission. For all other matters it vests in the Central Government.
    4. Appointment of the Director: The Director is appointed on the recommendation of a committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India or a Supreme Court judge nominated by the Chief Justice.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “The jurisdiction of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) regarding lodging an FIR and conducting probe within a particular State is being questioned by various States. However, the power of the States to withhold consent to the CBI is not absolute. Explain with special reference to the federal character of India.”

  • Why is the Centre opposed to totalisers?

    Why in the News

    A three judge Bench of the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice of India has asked the Central government to examine introducing totaliser machines for counting votes recorded in Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), in order to protect the secrecy of booth-wise voting patterns and prevent electors at individual booths from being identified and victimised. The direction was given on September 1, 2026, on a public interest petition filed in 2014 by Yogesh Gupta and Imran Khan seeking that votes cast at the various polling stations in a constituency be mixed before counting. The Election Commission of India has supported the measure since 2008 and has recommended it to the Union government. The Centre has opposed it throughout, arguing at different points that booth-wise disclosure causes no intimidation and that a totaliser could leak data before counting begins. The tension is between the secrecy of the ballot at the level of a locality and the granular booth data that campaigns and the administration both now rely on.

    What is a totaliser?

    1. What it does: A totaliser allows the votes cast in about 14 polling booths to be counted together, against the present practice of tallying votes booth by booth.
    2. How it connects: It is an interface connected to the main control unit of a cluster of 14 EVMs.
    3. What it outputs: Pressing the result button gives the consolidated votes polled by each candidate across the 14 machines, without revealing the voting pattern of any individual polling area.
    4. Who built it: It was developed by Bharat Electronics Limited, Bengaluru and Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad.

    Why was the petition filed?

    1. The stated purpose: The petitioners sought a direction to the poll panel to mix the votes cast at various polling stations in a constituency, on the ground that this was necessary to stop candidates intimidating voters in areas that had rebuffed them.
    2. The illustration offered: The petitioners cited alleged intimidation by a late former Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra in the Baramati constituency during the last general election, where voters were allegedly threatened that his party would detect voting patterns from the EVM readings and cut off their water supply.
    3. Booths map onto communities: Polling booths in India are marked geographically, so where social groups live in segregated clusters, which is the case across much of rural India and increasingly in urban slums, a booth result roughly identifies how a numerically large community voted.
    4. The risk has grown since 2014: Advanced geospatial tools now allow booth trends to be correlated with social settings and causal inferences to be drawn from that correlation, which goes beyond what the petitioners feared when they filed.

    What has been the Centre’s position?

    1. The 2017 argument, that there is no harm: The Centre told the apex court that identifying booth-wise voting patterns did not lead to voter intimidation and that there was no need to stop the disclosure of booth-wise results.
    2. The 2017 argument, that there is a benefit: It contended that knowledge of booth-wise vote shares allowed candidates to work harder in areas where support for them was low, producing better results for everyone involved.
    3. The 2018 argument, that the machine is the risk: The Additional Solicitor General told the Bench, then led by the Chief Justice of India, that installing a totaliser could lead to a data breach even before vote counting began.
    4. The ministerial decision on record: A Law Ministry affidavit told the Court that a group of ministers headed by the then Union Home Minister had decided that intimidation or victimisation of voters as apprehended may not occur on a larger scale in this era of media activism.

    What is the Election Commission’s stand?

    1. Consistent support since 2008: The poll body first suggested the measure to the United Progressive Alliance government in 2008 and has recommended the totaliser system to the Union government since.
    2. The 2018 submission: It told the Supreme Court that a time has come for introduction of the totaliser for counting of the votes.
    3. The position in the current hearings: Counsel for the Commission backed the goal of protecting voter anonymity, and that support has carried into the present round.
    4. The caveats it has entered: It flagged practical and legal difficulties in implementing the proposal, including how booth-wise verification would work and how the exercise interacts with the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), the printer attached to a voting unit that shows the elector a paper slip of the vote cast before it drops into a sealed box.

    What has the Court now directed?

    1. The direction to the Centre: The Court asked the Central government to state its position on introducing a totaliser system for counting votes recorded through EVMs.
    2. The specific questions: It sought to know whether there are any impediments to introducing such a mechanism and whether there would be any negative impact from it.
    3. The deadline on the data breach point: The Centre’s repetition of the data breach apprehension prompted the Court to give the Election Commission two weeks to respond to that fear.
    4. The parallel instruction: The Commission has also been asked to submit its proposal to the government, which moves the question from litigation into an executive decision.

    Challenges to introducing the totaliser

    1. Booth level data has administrative uses beyond campaigning: Turnout and result data at the polling station is what flags a station for scrutiny or a re-poll. Eg. An implausibly high turnout at a single station is the standard trigger for ordering a re-poll there.
      The Fix: Retain booth-wise data with the Election Commission for audit and re-poll decisions, and publish only the aggregated cluster result.
    2. A re-poll cannot be isolated once votes are mixed: If the machines of 14 booths have been aggregated, a re-poll ordered at one of them cannot be separated from the counted total. Eg. Re-polls after booth capturing or machine failure are ordered station by station, not cluster by cluster.
      The Fix: Run the totaliser only after every re-poll in the constituency is complete and the machines are back in the strongroom.
    3. Slip verification is anchored to the polling station: The mandatory VVPAT count is done for randomly selected polling stations and compared against that station’s electronic count, which presumes station-wise totals exist. Eg. The Supreme Court’s direction requires slip counting in five randomly selected polling stations in each assembly segment.
      The Fix: Complete the station-wise slip verification first and aggregate through the totaliser only after the match is recorded.
    4. Clustering does not conceal a pattern in a homogeneous area: Where one community occupies most of a 14 booth cluster, the aggregate reveals its voting pattern as clearly as a single booth would. Eg. Reserved constituencies with geographically concentrated settlements would gain little anonymity from aggregation.
      The Fix: Form clusters across socially mixed areas rather than across contiguous ones, so no single cluster maps onto a single community.
    5. The Commission cannot act alone: Counting procedure is governed by the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, and the mixing provision presently covers ballot papers rather than voting machines. Eg. Rule 59A permits mixing of ballot papers before counting in specified elections and does not extend to EVMs.
      The Fix: Amend Rule 59A to extend the existing mixing provision to electronic voting machines, which is the single step that converts the recommendation into a usable power.

    Conclusion

    The Election Commission has backed this measure across successive governments and it has still not been introduced, because the decision sits with the Centre and not with the poll body. The objection now on record has shifted from denying that booth-level victimisation happens to warning that the counting device itself is insecure, which is a question about design and custody rather than about whether ballot secrecy is worth extending to a locality. The Centre’s reply to the Court and the Commission’s fresh proposal to the government are the two documents that decide whether the proposal moves this time.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “In the light of recent controversy regarding the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), what are the challenges before the Election Commission of India to ensure the trustworthiness of elections in India?”

  • Voter lists shrink by 15.7% in 17 States and U.T.s after SIR

    Why in the News

    Draft electoral rolls published after the third phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) show the electorate in 17 States and Union Territories falling 15.7 per cent, from 35,50,50,008 at the 2024 Lok Sabha elections to 29,93,00,115. Maharashtra recorded the largest drop in absolute numbers at 15,896,198 electors, or 17.08 per cent, and Delhi and Chandigarh the sharpest percentage falls at 35.89 per cent and 31.84 per cent. The revision rebuilds the roll rather than updating it, so an elector’s presence on the previous roll does not by itself carry them onto the new one. Of the 6.15 crore electors deleted in this phase, 1.11 crore are marked dead, and the remainder are recorded as absent, multiply enrolled or in an others category. The contest is over that remainder, since absence at the moment of verification is not the same thing as ineligibility.

    What happened to the rolls between the 2024 polls and the revision?

    1. The rolls first grew: Between the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the cut-off date for the enumeration phase, these States and Union Territories added around 57.75 lakh electors, taking the cumulative total to 36,08,07,394.
    2. One State drove most of the addition: Maharashtra added 47.92 lakh electors, and ten other States including Haryana added about 9.83 lakh between them.
    3. Six States and Union Territories moved the other way: Delhi’s roll fell from 1,52,14,638 at the polls to 1,45,10,299 before the revision, a drop of more than 7 lakh.
    4. The other five declines: Uttarakhand fell by 4.7 lakh, Odisha by 3.17 lakh, Chandigarh by 1.44 lakh, Punjab by 1.1 lakh and Arunachal Pradesh by 10,937.

    What are the deletions made of?

    1. Death is the smaller share: Of the 6.15 crore electors deleted, 1.11 crore are marked dead, which is the only category that is verifiable against an independent record.
    2. Absence is the largest category: 4.52 crore electors are marked absent, meaning the enumerator did not find them at the registered address during the field round.
    3. Duplicate registration: 49.58 lakh are recorded as having multiple enrolments, which removes a name from one roll rather than removing the person from the electorate.
    4. The residual: Around 3 lakh fall into an others category that the draft does not break down further.

    Where does the exercise now stand?

    1. The current phase: The third phase covers 16 States and three Union Territories. Draft rolls have been published for 17 of them, with Nagaland due on September 20 and Tripura on October 21.
    2. Final rolls begin: The rollout of final lists starts with Mizoram, Sikkim and Manipur on September 6, and the numbers in the final lists can rise, since the Election Commission provides a window for claims and objections and for registration of new voters.
    3. Already completed: The revision is over in Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Goa, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.
    4. Assam is on a different track: A special revision was conducted there instead, because of legal questions connected to the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the Assam-specific register of citizens prepared under Supreme Court supervision.
    5. What remains: With the third phase, the exercise covers the entire country except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, whose schedule is to be announced later.

    Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

    1. The largest deletion category is the least verifiable: An elector recorded as absent may be a migrant worker away for the season rather than a person who has moved permanently. Eg. Out-migration from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar peaks between sowing and harvest, which is when field verification is conducted.
      The Fix: Accept a claim filed remotely from a declared work address, with the home address retained, before a deletion on grounds of absence is confirmed.
    2. The remedy reaches the wrong address: The claims and objections window opens after publication and depends on the elector learning of the deletion, and notices are served at the registered address the elector was not found at. Eg. A household away for work misses both the enumeration visit and the notice that follows it.
      The Fix: Require the booth level officer to record a served notice and one repeat attempt before any absence-based deletion becomes final.
    3. The burden of proof inverts: In an intensive revision the existing roll stops being evidence of eligibility, so an elector already enrolled must establish the claim again. Eg. Electors absent from the previous intensive revision roll have had to produce documentary proof of eligibility rather than relying on their existing entry.
      The Fix: Treat the previous roll as presumptive evidence, and require the Electoral Registration Officer to record a specific ground before displacing that presumption.
    4. Field capacity is thin at the point where accuracy is decided: A single booth level officer covers a polling station of up to 1,500 electors within a fixed enumeration window. Eg. The verification and the draft publication in this phase ran across 19 States and Union Territories simultaneously.
      The Fix: Publish the per-officer elector load and the number of verification visits made, so the quality of the field round can be audited rather than assumed.

    Conclusion

    The draft numbers are not the final numbers. The claims and objections window decides whether an elector deleted in absence returns to the roll, and its use depends on people who are away learning that they were removed. A revision that removes duplicate entries and a revision that removes voters produce the same headline figure and are not the same event. The final lists are where the two become distinguishable.

    Back2Basics: Special Intensive Revision

    1. An intensive revision rebuilds the electoral roll from scratch, enumerating every elector afresh, rather than adding and deleting names at the margin as a summary revision does.
    2. It is conducted by the Election Commission of India under the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.
    3. The sequence is fixed: house-to-house enumeration, publication of a draft roll, a window for claims and objections, then publication of the final roll.
    4. The last countrywide intensive revision was carried out in 2002-03, and revisions since then have been summary revisions.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “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?”

  • NAMASTE Cards distributed to waste pickers in Najafgarh zone

    NAMASTE Cards distributed to waste pickers in Najafgarh zone

    Why in News

    The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE) inaugurated distribution of NAMASTE Cards to waste pickers in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) Najafgarh Zone on 4 September 2026.

    Core facts

    1. Scheme name: NAMASTE stands for National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem. It is a central scheme for the safety and dignity of sanitation workers.
    2. Implementing bodies: The scheme is run jointly by the MoSJE and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).
    3. Event substance: Profiled waste pickers received NAMASTE identity cards. The cards formally recognise the worker and link the worker to scheme benefits.
    4. Officeholder: The distribution was inaugurated by the Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment. The individual identity is not material to the policy content.

    Static Context

    1. Objective: NAMASTE targets zero fatalities in sanitation work in India. It seeks to end direct human contact with faecal matter in sewer and septic tank cleaning.
    2. Coverage expansion: NAMASTE originally covered sewer and septic tank workers (SSWs). The scheme was later extended to enumerate and cover waste pickers. A national digital application for profiling waste pickers was launched on World Environment Day 2025.
    3. Benefits design: The scheme provides occupational profiling, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits, Ayushman Bharat health cover, and a capital subsidy for sanitation related livelihoods.
    4. Predecessor: NAMASTE subsumed the earlier Self Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers (SRMS).
    5. Governing law: Manual scavenging is prohibited under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.

    Prelims angle

    1. Scheme full form and nodal ministries: NAMASTE is run by the MoSJE with the MoHUA. Expect a purpose or ministry match question.
    2. Beneficiary categories: Sewer and septic tank workers, and waste pickers. The waste picker inclusion is the newest hook.
    3. Benefit bundle: PPE, Ayushman Bharat health cover, capital subsidy, occupational profiling.
    4. Predecessor scheme: SRMS. Governing Act: Manual Scavengers Act, 2013.

    Mains angle

    GS Paper 2, welfare schemes for vulnerable sections. A question can frame the shift from a rehabilitation model (SRMS) to a mechanisation and formalisation model (NAMASTE), and ask whether profiling and card based inclusion secures the rights of informal sanitation workers.

    “[2016] Rashtriya Garima Abhiyaan’ is a national campaign to

    (a) rehabilitate the homeless and destitute persons and provide them with suitable sources of livelihood

    (b) release the sex workers from their practice and provide them with alternative sources of livelihood

    (c) eradicate the practice of manual scavenging and rehabilitate the manual scavengers

    (d) release the bonded labourers from their bondage and rehabilitate them.

  • The Gulf is calling and New Delhi must listen

    The Gulf is calling and New Delhi must listen

    Why in the News

    Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan have entered a collective defence arrangement, the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, at India’s western maritime doorstep. The agreement follows an American retreat into an unpredictable “selective engagement” posture, which has opened a security vacuum that regional states are now filling with new partners. India’s West Asia policy was built for the opposite condition. The United States guaranteed regional security and kept sea lines of communication open, so India could hedge between Riyadh, Tehran, Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi without accepting security obligations to any of them. That posture, called multi alignment, bought influence while the region wanted markets, labour and capital. The region now wants security guarantees, and India has none on offer.

    What is the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement?

    1. Three capabilities in one arrangement: It links Gulf capital to Turkish defence technology and to Pakistani military manpower and skill, inside a collective defence framework.
    2. It is framed as defensive: The pact is presented as a way of managing shared vulnerabilities among its members rather than as a bloc aimed at any particular state.
    3. Its significance is structural: It signals that West Asia’s security framework is being rewritten, and that the rewriting is being done by actors whose strategic interests run counter to India’s long term objectives.

    What did India’s multi alignment rest on?

    1. The region was read as an economic hinterland: West Asia was treated as a critical source of crude oil, a reliable destination for outbound labour and a vital conduit for remittances.
    2. Hedging was the default in a crisis: India balanced relations between competing power centres and declined security obligations to any single capital.
    3. The framing was macroeconomic: The region’s geography, oil and gas reserves, capital accumulation and appetite for imported labour and skills positioned it as the bridge between a debt burdened West and a rising Asia.
    4. Distance was itself the asset: Being friendly to all without being too friendly to any was the point of the policy, since an obligation to one power centre would have cost access to another.

    What has changed in the region’s security market?

    1. Distancing has lost its value: West Asian capitals no longer treat non alignment or multi alignment as a virtue, and are actively seeking dependable security partners.
    2. Diplomatic and commercial offers no longer buy influence: What is sought is naval patrols, intelligence sharing, defence industrial collaboration and credible counter terrorism capability, not platitudes and routine economic cooperation.
    3. The vacuum is filled by whoever arrives first: Türkiye has already converted the opening into a treaty commitment, and regional security arrangements will coalesce with or without Indian participation.
    4. The exposure is concrete: Hostile regional pacts and the growing influence of external powers bear directly on India’s trade routes, its energy security and the welfare of millions of Indian citizens in the Gulf.

    Why does economic infrastructure not buy security?

    1. Low cost weapons defeat capital intensive assets: The eruption of hostilities involving Iran showed that state of the art port facilities, energy networks and logistics corridors remain vulnerable to low cost drones in grey zone, asymmetric warfare, meaning attacks kept below the threshold of declared war and carried out by deniable or irregular means.
    2. A secure enclave is not secure: Hyper secure economic zones stay exposed to spillover from the instability around them, because the perimeter is not where the risk originates.
    3. The Gulf model is hostage to perception: The economy runs on foreign corporations and expatriate labour, so talent and capital exit as rapidly as they arrived once security risk crosses a psychological threshold.
    4. A corridor is only as strong as its worst link: Disruption at a narrow naval chokepoint or along an overland route stalls the whole supply chain, whatever the quality of the infrastructure at either end.

    What hard moves are available to India?

    1. Build presence at the chokepoints: The named priorities are the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Aden, the waters off the Somali coast and the Bab el-Mandeb.
    2. Convert presence into standing arrangements: Joint maritime patrols, permanent logistics access arrangements and interoperable surveillance networks with friendly Gulf states are what turn deployments into a net security provider role.
    3. Sell capability rather than only buying it: India’s defence manufacturing base can offer West Asian states an alternative source of hardware and technology, with collaborative ventures, exercises carrying real operational content and deep intelligence sharing replacing procurement discussions.
    4. Use minilaterals rather than alliances: Security frameworks with the United Arab Emirates or Israel, and separately with Saudi Arabia, build a counterweight against hostile axes without the rigidity of a Cold War style alliance.

    Challenges to an Indian security role in West Asia

    1. India holds no base of its own in the region: Sustained naval presence at several chokepoints needs repair, replenishment and crew rotation ashore, which an access agreement does not guarantee during a crisis. Eg. India’s logistics in the western Indian Ocean rest on access to Port Duqm in Oman rather than on infrastructure it controls.
      The Fix: Convert existing access arrangements into pre stocked logistics hubs with agreed wartime access clauses, so replenishment does not turn on a host government’s decision mid conflict.
    2. A Gulf security partnership collides with the Iran relationship: Deeper security alignment with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi narrows the space for India’s connectivity investments in Iran. Eg. The Chabahar port project has already run into payment and equipment difficulties because of exposure to United States sanctions.
      The Fix: Keep the maritime role functional rather than political, built around freedom of navigation and anti piracy tasks from which Iran also benefits.
    3. Pakistan’s institutional depth in Gulf security cannot be matched quickly: Decades of troop deployments, training missions and personnel exchanges give it standing that a new partner cannot replicate through joint exercises. Eg. Pakistani personnel have served in Saudi Arabian training and internal security roles across successive decades.
      The Fix: Compete where the incumbent is weak, in maritime domain awareness, satellite surveillance and cyber defence, rather than in ground manpower.
    4. The defence export base is small relative to the offer: Supplying a serious regional partner requires sustained production, spares and lifecycle support, which the Indian ecosystem has demonstrated in a narrow band of systems. Eg. India’s defence exports remain concentrated in components, subsystems and a small number of complete platforms.
      The Fix: Anchor offers to systems with a proven service record and a committed spares chain, instead of promising a full spectrum supplier relationship the industrial base cannot yet sustain.
    5. A guarantor role imports the region’s own quarrels: Standing commitments make India a party to disputes among partners who are themselves in conflict with each other. Eg. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates backed rival factions in Yemen while both are named as prospective Indian partners.
      The Fix: Restrict commitments to maritime and counter terrorism tasks with defined geographic limits, excluding participation in intra regional ground conflicts.

    Conclusion

    The currency of influence in West Asia has changed from investment to protection, and India’s instruments were built for the older one. Trade volume and a large resident population do not translate into a seat in a security arrangement, which is what the region is now assembling. The marker to watch is whether the Mecca arrangement acquires operational content, meaning a joint command, basing rights or a published exercise calendar, since that is the point at which a signed pact becomes a standing capability. India’s answer will register in the same currency or it will not register at all.

    India and West Asia

    1. The policy has a named progression: A pro Arab, Non Aligned Movement era stance gave way to full diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992, a “Look West” policy in 2005 centred on the Gulf Cooperation Council, and a “Think West” approach from 2014 that added maritime security, counter terrorism and investment to oil and diaspora.
    2. Energy is the base of the relationship: The region supplies nearly 60 percent of India’s crude oil and about 70 percent of its liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas requirements.
    3. The Gulf is India’s largest trading bloc: India-GCC bilateral trade stood at $178 billion in FY 2024-25, making the Gulf Cooperation Council India’s largest trading partner bloc.
    4. The human link is the largest anywhere: About 10 million Indians live and work in West Asia, and the region contributes roughly 38 percent of India’s global remittances.

    Government Initiatives and Frameworks for India-West Asia Relations

    1. I2U2: A grouping of India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States, working on joint projects in food and energy security.
    2. India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC): A rail and shipping corridor intended to link India to Europe through the Gulf, bypassing the Suez route.
    3. India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA): A bilateral trade agreement that removed tariffs across most trade lines and deepened investment flows between the two countries.
    4. Chabahar port agreement: A ten year contract signed in 2024 to operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal in Iran, giving India a land and sea route to Afghanistan and Central Asia that avoids Pakistan.

    Challenges in India’s West Asia Engagement

    1. Energy import concentration: A large share of India’s crude and gas comes from a single region whose export routes run through two narrow straits. Eg. Qatar supplies roughly 40 percent of India’s liquefied natural gas imports.
      The Fix: Expand long term contracts with West African, American and Australian suppliers, so no single region carries a majority of the import basket.
    2. Remittance dependence at the State level: Household incomes and State finances in parts of India rest on Gulf transfers that fall the moment the regional economy contracts. Eg. Kerala reported roughly a 20 percent decline in monthly Gulf inflows during the 2026 crisis.
      The Fix: Widen the destination mix for emigrant workers through skill mobility agreements with Japan, Germany and Australia, so remittance flows are not tied to one region’s business cycle.
    3. Fertiliser and food input exposure: Gulf sourced urea and phosphate underpin Indian crop cycles, so a shipping disruption reaches the farm within a season. Eg. Long term potash and phosphate supplies from Jordan and Oman are central to India’s fertiliser availability.
      The Fix: Hold buffer stocks timed to the Rabi and Kharif input calendars, and widen phosphate sourcing towards Morocco, so one corridor’s closure does not hit a sowing season.

    [2018, GS2, 15 marks] In what ways would the ongoing US-Iran Nuclear Pact Controversy affect the national interest of India? How should India respond to this situation?”

  • ‘UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is still the constitution of oceans’

    ‘UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is still the constitution of oceans’

    Why in the News

    The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) remains the governing framework for the world’s oceans, in the assessment of Tommy Koh. He presided over the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, and led more than 150 nations to adopt the Convention in 1982. He is among this year’s Ramon Magsaysay award winners. He puts the number of parties at 172 and treats that as near universal. The United States has never ratified the Convention and still regards it as the authoritative law of the sea. Iran is not a party either, and the regime of transit passage binds it as customary international law. The Convention’s authority is therefore being tested in the Strait of Hormuz against a state that never accepted the treaty.

    What is UNCLOS?

    1. What it is: A comprehensive treaty setting the legal order for the world’s oceans, adopted in 1982 after nine years of negotiation and in force since 1994.
    2. What it allocates: It fixes the maritime zones a coastal state may claim and the rights it holds in each, running outward from the territorial sea to the exclusive economic zone, the continental shelf and the high seas.
    3. What it does with the deep seabed: Part XI treats the deep seabed and its minerals as the “common heritage of mankind”, to be administered for all states rather than claimed by any one of them.
    4. Why it is described as a constitution: It settles jurisdiction, resource rights and dispute settlement in one instrument, so later ocean agreements are negotiated inside its framework rather than beside it.

    Why has the United States never ratified UNCLOS?

    1. The objection was to the seabed regime, not to the law of the sea: The Reagan Administration rejected Part XI as incompatible with free enterprise and private property norms.
    2. It reversed an earlier American position: The stance taken during the Carter Administration was changed under President Reagan, and the demands that followed were rejected by the developing countries.
    3. The 1994 repair did not change the outcome: A separate agreement in 1994 revised the Part XI arrangements to meet those objections, and ratification still did not follow.
    4. Non ratification is not confined to one objector: Iran and a number of other states have also stayed outside the Convention.

    What binds a state that is not a party?

    1. The count itself does the work: With 172 parties, the Convention’s rules describe general state practice rather than the internal arrangements of a treaty club.
    2. Custom reaches the non party: Transit passage through international straits has passed into customary international law, so it binds Iran although Iran never joined the Convention.
    3. The dispute is political rather than legal: There was no trouble in the Strait of Hormuz before the war, so the priority is ending the war rather than rewriting the law that governs the strait.
    4. A fourth conference answers the wrong question: Reopening the Convention to bring the remaining states in would put a settled architecture back on the negotiating table, and near universal participation already exists without it.

    Where does the Convention not reach?

    1. Dark fleet enforcement is happening outside it: States are designating vessels as a “dark fleet” and taking punitive material action against them, including on the high seas.
    2. The forum named for that problem is the IMO: The International Maritime Organization, rather than a law of the sea conference, is where the practice should be addressed.
    3. Boundary disputes are read as application, not failure: Exclusive economic zone and seabed contests in the South China Sea and over Indian Ocean boundaries are treated as arguments inside the Convention’s architecture rather than as evidence that the architecture has stopped working.

    Conclusion

    A treaty honoured by states that never signed it is strong in one sense and weak in another. Its rules describe how states actually behave, which is precisely what turns them into custom. It carries no way of compelling a state that decides to behave differently, because the states outside it are the ones its dispute settlement machinery cannot reach. That gap is where a closed strait sits, and no further round of accessions would close it.

    Back2Basics: International Maritime Organization

    1. What it is: The United Nations specialised agency responsible for the safety and security of shipping and for preventing marine pollution by ships.
    2. When it was established: It was created by a convention adopted in 1948, began functioning in 1959, and is headquartered in London.
    3. What it produces: Its principal instruments are the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL).
    4. How it enforces: It sets standards that flag states then apply to ships registered with them, so it regulates through member state implementation rather than by direct enforcement at sea.

    [2022] With reference to the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea, consider the following statements :

    1. A coastal state has the right to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles, measured from baseline determined in accordance with the convention.

    2. Ships of all states, whether coastal or land-locked, enjoy the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea.

    3. The Exclusive Economic Zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baseline from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured.

    Which of the statements given above are correct ?

    (a) 1 and 2 only

    (b) 2 and 3 only

    (c) 1 and 3 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

  • Missing: boundary walls, bathrooms, blackboards

    Why in the News

    Government schools across Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are running without boundary walls, functional wash rooms, sufficient classrooms or electricity. Children in several of them sit on verandas, under trees, or in a single room shared with storage almirahs and meal utensils. A citizen audit campaign called ‘School thik karo’, run by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) since 15 August, asks residents to download a checklist, audit their local school and post the findings, covering drinking water, boundary walls, wash rooms and midday meals. These schools have sanctioned buildings, sanctioned teaching posts and an annual maintenance head in the budget. What is absent is the capacity to convert those into a room a child can sit in. State attention has meanwhile moved to a small tier of flagship institutions.

    What did the four State ground reports find?

    1. Bihar, schools operating without a facility of any kind: Three schools in Muzaffarpur and Vaishali districts run without a boundary wall, a wash room or storage for midday meal supplies.
    2. A primary school of 119 students, established in 1982, has plaster falling from the corridor its two classrooms open onto. Its six teachers use neighbours’ bathrooms and the children go in the open.
    3. A middle school of 283 students has two rooms, so Class 8 sits on the veranda and Classes 1 and 2 sit under a tree behind the kitchen.
    4. A primary school in Vaishali has no building of its own. It runs 91 students across Classes 1 to 5 in a single room of a community centre, alongside department almirahs and meal utensils.
    5. Rajasthan, the approach to the school is itself the barrier: In Unchki village of Deeg district there is no public road to the school, so students walk through a graveyard and a muddy path to reach it.
    6. Corridors serve as classrooms in three schools of the district, and one teacher takes Classes 4 and 5 together for want of rooms or electricity.
    7. None of the three has functional wash rooms, so children walk home in the middle of the school day and return.
    8. The district falls within the National Capital Region and lies 165 km from Delhi.
    9. Uttar Pradesh, the cost of a dirty wash room: A cab driver in Lucknow is moving his 11 year old daughter out of a government primary school after a prolonged urinary tract infection that the family attributes to the school’s wash room.
    10. The transfer costs an additional Rs 4,000 a month, which the household is meeting by cutting other spending.
    11. Drinking water at the school arrives intermittently and the wash room’s water supply is often dysfunctional, so students fetch water from nearby houses.
    12. Madhya Pradesh, buildings condemned and services withdrawn: A middle school in Hirapur village of Sehore district runs eight classes in three rooms, after the primary block on the same premises was abandoned six months ago.
    13. Its 22 students sit on mats without benches, in rooms with dim lighting, broken almirahs, fans that do not work and rainwater seeping through the roof.
    14. One of the two student wash rooms is functional, so girls and boys use the same toilet.
    15. The self help group contracted to cook the midday meal stopped three months ago, and the school in charge is buying ration himself while awaiting reimbursement.
    16. A second school 20 km away, of 104 students, has had its electricity connection cut because water leaking through the ceiling was reaching the wiring.

    Where does the teaching itself break down?

    1. Attendance runs at roughly half the roll: Teachers at the three Rajasthan schools say 50 to 60 percent of enrolled students come on a given day, and they attribute part of that absence to the infrastructure.
    2. Posted teachers are absent or shared: At one Rajasthan school neither of the two teachers came on the day of the visit, and a teacher posted elsewhere visits only after finishing his own school day.
    3. Senior classes go unstaffed: At the Madhya Pradesh school of 104 students, all three teachers for Classes 6 to 8 were on leave and the principal was away at a training exercise, leaving two primary teachers in charge.
    4. The commute eats the school day: One headmaster travels 15 km each way and a teacher 40 km daily by motorcycle to reach schools in rural Bihar.
    5. Staff are under orders not to speak: Teachers in the Rajasthan schools said their supervisors had instructed them not to speak to the media, so their complaints surface only anonymously.

    Why do repairs not happen even when schools ask for them?

    1. The annual grant cannot fund a repair: One Madhya Pradesh school receives Rs 25,000 a year for miscellaneous works, which is spent on hiring a worker once a month to clean the wash rooms.
    2. Proposals go unanswered for years: That school has sent annual repair proposals for five years without a response, over the same period its building has been in poor condition.
    3. The panchayat fills the gap the department leaves: Its floor, boundary wall and gate were built by the village panchayat after a school alumnus became its head.
    4. Budget is the stated reason given to schools: Rajasthan teachers say district authorities answer requests for more classrooms by citing the absence of budget, while the District Magistrate’s position is that complaints are acted on quickly and vacancies filled regularly.
    5. Attention has moved to a flagship tier: A State School Education Department official says the focus in Madhya Pradesh has been on Sandipani Schools, earlier called CM Rise, and Excellence schools, so small rural schools have struggled for basic infrastructure.

    Who stays in these schools, and who leaves?

    1. The exit has a price: A private school near the Rajasthan cluster costs about Rs 18,000 a year, which a grandparent says rules out sending all his grandchildren to one.
    2. Enrolment collapses where an alternative exists: The Madhya Pradesh middle school runs eight classes for fewer children than a single functioning class would hold, and the school in charge says dominant communities in the village send their children to private schools.
    3. Those who remain are the poorest: Most of the students left at that school are from marginalised communities, and its neglect tracks who is left in it.
    4. Residents read the neglect as targeted: Locals around the Rajasthan schools allege that their requests are ignored because they live in predominantly Muslim areas.
    5. The reason parents give is not academic: The Lucknow parent cites a peaceful atmosphere in which a child can concentrate, not examination results, as what the private school offers.

    Conclusion

    A school counts as functioning in the record when it has a building, a sanctioned staff strength and a maintenance head in the budget. None of those three states whether a child can sit in a lit room, use a toilet, or eat a cooked meal that day. The forward move is to make the release of school funds conditional on periodic physical verification of those conditions, rather than on the return the school files about itself. Until that link exists, the audit is being done by residents with a downloaded checklist while departmental records show nothing wrong.

    Back2Basics: Sandipani Schools, earlier CM Rise Schools

    1. What they are: A Madhya Pradesh government programme creating a tier of well resourced composite schools, running from the pre primary stage to Class 12 on a single campus.
    2. What they provide: Selected schools receive upgraded buildings, laboratories, libraries, digital classrooms and transport for students drawn from surrounding villages.
    3. How they differ from an ordinary school: They are a small, high investment tier rather than a universal upgrade, so a district holds a handful of them alongside its regular government schools.
    4. Why the name changed: The schools were launched as CM Rise Schools and were later renamed Sandipani Vidyalaya.

    [2022, GS2, 15 marks] The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 remains inadequate in promoting incentive-based system for children’s education without generating awareness about the importance of schooling. Analyse.”

  • Play leading role in skilling push: Govt tells industry

    Play leading role in skilling push: Govt tells industry

    Why in the News

    The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has asked industry to take the leading role in the Pradhan Mantri Skilling and Employability Transformation through Upgraded ITIs (PM-SETU) scheme. The scheme’s own design already places industry there. Industry partners take a controlling 51 percent stake in the Section 8 companies (not for profit companies registered under the Companies Act, 2013, which cannot pay dividends to their members) that will manage clusters of Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs). The Centre and the States put up the bulk of the money. Industry’s 17 percent share qualifies as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) spending. Control over curriculum, technology and delivery therefore passes to a partner whose own contribution comes out of a statutory obligation rather than commercial risk capital.

    What is PM-SETU?

    1. What it is: A central scheme carrying an outlay of Rs 60,000 crore to upgrade government Industrial Training Institutes.
    2. What it funds: Upgraded laboratories, new machines and revised trade curricula at the institutes it covers.
    3. What it is measured on: Employability, since the stated purpose is the quality and relevance of vocational training rather than the number of training seats created.

    What does the ownership structure change?

    1. Industry holds control of the managing entity: Industry partners take a controlling 51 percent stake in the Section 8 companies that will manage ITI clusters.
    2. The state pays and industry decides: The Centre and the States provide the bulk of the funding, against an industry contribution of 17 percent.
    3. The industry share is a statutory obligation, not risk capital: That 17 percent is eligible under Corporate Social Responsibility, so the controlling partner can meet it from money the Companies Act, 2013 already requires it to spend.
    4. What moves into the partner’s hands: Curriculum design, technology adoption and the running of skill development pass to the industry partner.

    Why is industry being asked to lead?

    1. The demand side gets to write the syllabus: Placing curriculum and technology decisions with employers is meant to keep trade training aligned to the machines and processes actually in use.
    2. The immediate driver is the energy and manufacturing transition: The appeal was addressed to the power and utilities industry, whose workforce requirements are changing as generation and grid technology change.
    3. A working cluster is being held up as the model: ArcelorMittal’s leadership of the Vizag cluster has been cited as the benchmark for what the arrangement should produce.
    4. Institute workshops lag the shop floor: ITIs have long trained on equipment that industry has already replaced, which is the specific gap upgraded labs and employer set curricula are meant to close.

    Challenges to PM-SETU

    1. Most trades have no anchor employer: A cluster needs a large firm willing to hold a controlling stake and carry the management burden, which exists in steel or power and not across most trades an ITI teaches. Eg. Plumbing, welding and electrical work are served largely by contractors and micro enterprises, with no single firm able to lead a cluster.
      The Fix: Allow a sector skill council or an industry association to hold the controlling stake in trades where no single anchor firm exists.
    2. Corporate Social Responsibility money contracts in a downturn: A partner funding its share from CSR can redirect that spending in a year when its own hiring slows. Eg. The obligation is calculated at two percent of average net profits of the preceding three financial years, so it falls exactly when industrial demand falls.
      The Fix: Fix the industry contribution as a multi year commitment inside the cluster agreement, so a cluster’s operating budget does not track one partner’s profits.
    3. Control is granted without an outcome obligation: A controlling stake gives industry decision rights over publicly funded assets with no placement or wage commitment attached to those rights. Eg. The National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme has repeatedly recorded engagement below its sanctioned targets, since participation carried no binding hiring commitment.
      The Fix: Tie renewal of a cluster’s management contract to verified placement and wage outcomes for its trainees.
    4. Clusters will form where industry already is: The model reproduces the existing gap between industrialised and lagging States, because the anchor employer is the precondition. Eg. Institutes in the north eastern States operate with far thinner employer presence than those in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat or Maharashtra.
      The Fix: Reserve a share of central funding for clusters in districts with no large anchor employer, with a public sector undertaking as the lead partner.
    5. The trained worker is a poachable asset: A Section 8 company cannot distribute surplus, so a firm’s only return is the workers it hires, and a competitor can hire them instead. Eg. A firm that trains a welder who then joins a rival bears the full cost and gets none of the benefit, which is the standard problem in employer funded training.
      The Fix: Publish cluster wise trainee supply data so participating firms recruit from a pool they collectively financed rather than each underwriting a rival’s hiring.

    Conclusion

    The scheme moves the state from provider of vocational training to financier of it. That works where a large employer wants the workers and is willing to run the institution, and the scheme has not said who takes charge in the trades where neither condition holds. The marker to watch is the first set of cluster agreements, and specifically whether any hiring or wage commitment is attached to the controlling stake.

    Back2Basics: Industrial Training Institutes

    1. What they are: Post school institutions offering trade level vocational training in engineering and non engineering trades, entered after Class 8, 10 or 12 depending on the trade.
    2. Who runs them: Government institutes are run by State governments alongside a large private sector, with standards set by the Directorate General of Training under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.
    3. What a trainee gets: Trainees sit the All India Trade Test and are awarded the National Trade Certificate.
    4. Where they sit in the system: They form the country’s oldest and largest formal vocational training network, run under the Craftsmen Training Scheme since 1950.

    [2023, GS2, 15 marks] Skill development programs have succeed in increasing human resources supply to various sectors. In the context of the statement analyze the linkages between education, skill and employment.

  • Centre’s rationale for not using OBC lists for caste enumeration is flawed, say associations

    Centre’s rationale for not using OBC lists for caste enumeration is flawed, say associations

    Why in the News

    Associations representing Other Backward Classes (OBC) have rejected the Union government’s stated reason for not using the Central and State OBC lists in the caste enumeration component of the 2027 Census. The government’s position is that those lists record classes rather than castes, so caste names cannot be drawn and codified from them. Castes other than the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes will instead be recorded through an open column, in which the enumerator writes down what the respondent states. The associations argue that a government which recognises these communities as OBCs for reservation cannot disregard their caste identities when it collects population data. What is contested is whether an enumeration run without a pre-coded caste frame can produce a usable OBC population figure at all.

    How would the two methods of enumeration differ?

    1. The open column method: Castes other than the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes are recorded as stated by the respondent, without a pre-coded list of caste names for the enumerator to select from.
    2. The list based alternative: Caste names would have been drawn from the Central and State OBC lists and codified in advance, so responses map onto a fixed set of entries.
    3. Where the lists already exist: The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes are enumerated against notified lists, which is the precedent the associations point to.

    What is the government’s reason, and how do the associations answer it?

    1. The stated rationale: The OBC lists identify backward classes rather than castes, so caste names cannot be lifted from them for enumeration.
    2. The associations’ core objection: The All India OBC Students’ Association (AIOBCSA) calls the class and caste distinction artificial, arguing that a government recognising these communities as OBCs for reservation and other affirmative action cannot then disregard their caste identities when collecting population data.
    3. Fix the lists rather than drop them: The associations say that if the existing lists are inadequate or carry inconsistencies for enumeration, the government should use experts to draw and rationalise the caste names from them, not “drop them altogether”.
    4. Administrative records already do both: The AIOBCSA points out that certificates and official records routinely identify communities by their specific social and caste identities, and that even Economically Weaker Section certificates identify the beneficiary through prescribed social or category criteria. Administrative classification and social identity therefore coexist in practice.
    5. A charge of bad faith: The OBC Public Representatives Forum said the justification adds to the perception that the government agreed to enumerate castes with no real intention of doing it properly.

    Why do the associations link this to the EWS estimate?

    1. The estimate behind EWS: When the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) quota was introduced, the government worked with an estimate that the population outside the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs was about 35 to 40 percent.
    2. What a rigorous count would do to it: The Backwards Classes Intellectual Forum argues that a scientific enumeration of OBC populations would show that estimate to be an overestimation.
    3. The alleged motive: The same body argues that the refusal to codify existing caste names and count caste group populations, as is done for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, is intended to cover up the basis on which EWS reservation was justified.

    Why has the OBC count been the core of the caste Census demand?

    1. The figure has never been counted: The OBC population across the country has only ever been estimated in India, based on the caste Census data of 1931.
    2. The demand was built on that gap: Enumerating the OBC population has historically been the principal argument driving the demand for a caste Census.
    3. The method is what is now questioned: Senior Opposition leaders have questioned the utility of the open column methodology for enumerating every caste other than the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.

    Challenges to caste enumeration through an open column

    1. Free text responses multiply into unusable entries: A column with no pre-coded frame collects spellings, surnames, sub castes and clan names as separate answers, and classifying them afterwards becomes a second exercise larger than the count. Eg. The Socio Economic and Caste Census, 2011 returned roughly 46 lakh distinct caste and related entries, and its caste data was never released.
      The Fix: Publish a codified caste directory built from the Central and State lists and State commission reports before enumeration, and let the open column carry only the entries that directory does not hold.
    2. No single classification governs across States: Central and State OBC lists differ, so the same caste name can carry backward class status in one State and not in another or at the Centre. Eg. Jats were added to the Central OBC list in 2014 and the inclusion was set aside by the Supreme Court in Ram Singh versus Union of India (2015), while several States continue to list them.
      The Fix: Record the State of enumeration against each caste entry, so the count can be read against the list actually applicable to that respondent.
    3. Data collected without a publication commitment invites contest: A count whose tables and methodology are not released cannot settle any claim, and every group then disputes its own number. Eg. Bihar’s caste survey of 2023 was challenged in court, and several communities publicly disputed the figures recorded for them.
      The Fix: Fix a statutory deadline for publishing the caste tables together with the methodology note.
    4. Self declaration can be strategic: Where recognition carries reservation benefits, the answer given to an enumerator responds to the benefit rather than to the record. Eg. Sections of the Maratha community in Maharashtra have pressed for recognition as Kunbi in official records in order to access OBC reservation.
      The Fix: Cross check declared entries against existing caste certificate records at the tabulation stage rather than at the point of enumeration.

    Conclusion

    The same administration recognises these communities by caste for the purpose of reservation and declines to name them by caste for the purpose of counting. That is the contradiction the associations have put on the record, and no procedural reason offered so far reconciles the two positions. The decision also determines whether the coming enumeration produces a number that can be used in policy or one that has to be reclassified before anyone can read it. What to watch is whether a codified caste directory is issued to enumerators before fieldwork begins.

    Back2Basics: Economically Weaker Section reservation

    1. What it is: A 10 percent reservation in government jobs and educational institutions for economically weaker sections outside the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.
    2. Its constitutional basis: It was introduced by the Constitution (One Hundred and Third Amendment) Act, 2019, inserting Articles 15(6) and 16(6).
    3. How eligibility is set: Eligibility rests on income and asset criteria notified by the government, not on social or educational backwardness.
    4. Its judicial status: The Supreme Court upheld the amendment in Janhit Abhiyan versus Union of India (2022) by a majority of three to two.

    [2022, GS2, 10 marks] Discuss the role of the National Commission for Backward Classes in the wake of its transformation from a statutory body to a constitutional body.