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GS Paper: GS2

  • Swachhata Hi Seva: Making Cleanliness a Collective Responsibility

    Swachhata Hi Seva: Making Cleanliness a Collective Responsibility

    Why in the News

    The Ministry of Jal Shakti launched Swachhata Hi Seva (SHS) 2026 on 17 September, with the theme “Swachhata Mein Sahbhag.” The campaign’s own framing marks a shift from cleanliness as an annual government-led activity to cleanliness as an embedded citizen habit and collective responsibility.

    What infrastructural base does SHS 2026 build on?

    • Rural coverage: Rural India was declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) in 2019; 12.22 crore individual toilets and 98,273 biogas plants have since been constructed.
    • ODF Plus saturation: As of 17 September 2026, India has over 5.69 lakh ODF Plus villages, of which more than 5.25 lakh have reached ODF Plus Model status.
    • Waste management systems: Over 5.38 lakh villages have solid waste management arrangements and 5.65 lakh have liquid waste management systems.
    • Urban infrastructure: 95,478 urban wards have 100% door-to-door waste collection, and India operates 3,254 waste-to-compost plants and 60 waste-to-energy plants processing over 25,000 tonnes daily.

    How does SHS operationalise Jan Bhagidari as the mechanism for behaviour change?

    • Origin logic: SHS was created as a dedicated citizen-mobilisation vehicle under SBM’s broader Jan Bhagidari (citizen participation) approach, distinct from the infrastructure-building mandate of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) itself.
    • Institutional design: SHS 2026 follows a “Whole of Government” and “Whole of Society” approach, assigning stakeholder-specific responsibilities rather than centralising action in one agency.
    • Grievance-linked accountability: The Swachhata App allows citizens to report garbage sites directly, which are then mapped on the SHS 2026 portal for tracked action.
    • Standardised assessment: Public toilets are evaluated against the FACES parameters — Functional, Accessible, Clean, Eco-friendly, Safe — converting a subjective cleanliness goal into a measurable standard.

    What do the five pillars of SHS 2026 target?

    • Cleanliness Target Units (CTUs): Neglected garbage points and difficult-to-clean sites undergo removal and sustained maintenance rather than one-time cleanup.
    • Swachh Paathshala: Students from Classes 6–12 undertake Swachhata Gyan Yatras to sanitation facilities, extending behaviour change into school curricula.
    • SafaiMitra welfare: Suraksha Seva Evam Samman Shivirs provide sanitation workers health services, safety equipment and welfare linkages.
    • Jan Bhagidari activities: Source segregation demonstrations, anti-littering campaigns, and awareness of the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026 are run through citizen and institutional channels.
    • Swachhata Se Samriddhi: Kabaad Se Jugaad and Kabaad Se Kala link waste management to resource recovery and circularity rather than treating waste purely as a disposal problem.

    Does SHS’s nine-year trajectory show behavioural change or expanding event scale?

    • Thematic arc: SHS moved from shramdaan-based volunteerism (2017) to plastic waste focus (2019), visual cleanliness (2021–22), “Garbage-Free India” (2023), Swabhav-Swachhata values (2024), festival integration (2025), and collective ownership (2026).
    • Participation scaling: Reported participation rose from 2.46 crore children in a 2017 painting competition to 109 crore total participations in the 18-day SHS 2023 campaign alone.
    • Metric dependence: Each edition is documented primarily through counts — shivirs organised, pledges taken, sites cleaned — rather than measures of sustained individual behaviour after the campaign period ends.
    • Unresolved distinction: The campaign’s own account does not distinguish participation in a time-bound event from adoption of a permanent practice.

    Conclusion

    SHS 2026 explicitly names its objective as converting an annual, event-driven cleanliness campaign into embedded collective habit. The campaign’s institutional design — app-based grievance tracking, FACES assessment, stakeholder-specific pillars — targets sustained behaviour rather than one-time action. What remains unaddressed is measurement: nine years of SHS have been reported through participation and event counts, not through evidence that cleanliness behaviour persists once the campaign period ends. The shift from activity to habit is asserted in the 2026 theme but not yet demonstrated in the metrics used to evaluate it.

  • A dangerous dose of deception

    Why in the News

    A joint police and drugs control raid on a farmhouse in C.K. Tandya village in South Bengaluru district has uncovered a unit repackaging low cost, substandard and expired pharmaceutical formulations into fresh vials under counterfeit labels of established companies. More than 5,600 vials of counterfeit antibiotic injections were recovered, with the total seizure valued at about Rs 4.91 crore. Police say the suspect medicines have reached more than 90 hospitals and clinics in Karnataka and other States. The unit was found because an agricultural labourer reported a heap of dumped medical waste to the local police, not because a regulator detected it. Section 17B of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 already defines a spurious drug and Section 18 already prohibits its manufacture and sale, so the failure sits in enforcement capacity and in the price gap that creates a market for fakes.

    What does the law define as a spurious drug?

    1. The definition: Section 17B of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 defines a spurious drug as one sold under a name belonging to another drug, one imitating another product so as to deceive, or one falsely purporting to be the product of a manufacturer it is not.
    2. The prohibition: Section 18 bars the manufacture, sale, stocking, distribution and exhibition for sale of a spurious or misbranded drug.
    3. Why relabelling is caught: The offence attaches to the label and the representation, so moving a substandard or expired formulation into a new vial carrying another firm’s label is itself the offence.
    4. Who enforces it: Drug inspectors appointed by the State drugs control departments carry out inspection, sampling and prosecution, against the central standards the Act lays down.

    How did the network operate?

    1. The premises: The unit ran from a rented farmhouse of nearly eight acres behind a compound wall on the outskirts of the village, whose owners live in Bengaluru and seldom visited it.
    2. The inputs: The operators procured low cost, substandard or expired pharmaceutical formulations from other States.
    3. The process: Those formulations were transferred into fresh vials. Counterfeit labels and packaging of established pharmaceutical companies were then applied so the product would pass as genuine inside the supply chain.
    4. The movement of goods: Villagers had seen men entering and leaving on a scooter with no number plate, and courier and e commerce delivery vehicles making regular trips to the secluded location.
    5. The evidence recovered: Police seized ledgers, invoices, mobile phones and other records that set out the supply chain, and a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was constituted to work it.

    How did the counterfeit drugs reach hospitals?

    1. The distributor: The farmhouse operators supplied Krupa Healthcare, a wholesale pharmaceutical distributor on a commercial street in Bengaluru, which then distributed the stock onward.
    2. The price incentive: Some of the medicines were offered to hospitals at discounts of up to 50 percent.
    3. The sales push: The distributor employed more than 15 medical representatives to promote the medicines and offered commissions to push the discounted stock to private hospitals and medical centres.
    4. The product range: The counterfeits were not limited to antibiotics and included critical care injections and cancer medicines.
    5. The inter State reach: A joint force carried out simultaneous searches across Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Telangana, and a person police describe as a key figure in the network is currently outside the country.

    What does a counterfeit drug do to a cancer patient’s treatment?

    1. Dependence on exact dosing: Cancer treatment turns on the right drug at the right dose at the right time, so any compromise in authenticity or quality directly affects the course of treatment.
    2. Failure that is invisible: A counterfeit, substandard or expired drug may not work as intended, which delays disease control and allows the cancer to progress. The absence of response is often read as the cancer becoming resistant rather than as a drug failure.
    3. Unknown contents: A counterfeit product may carry an incorrect dose, inactive ingredients, contaminants or substances producing unexpected side effects, which is more dangerous for a patient already on multiple cancer medicines.
    4. The money already spent: Families reported paying more than a lakh and a half rupees for a single immunotherapy vial and lakhs more across the full course, with no way now of establishing whether what was administered was genuine.
    5. The decision a patient cannot make: A patient who cannot verify the authenticity of the medicine has no basis on which to decide whether to continue or discontinue treatment.

    What has the State disclosed and what has it withheld?

    1. What was published: The State government has published the list of antibiotics seized during the raid.
    2. What has not been released: The names of the oncology drugs, the hospitals and clinics that may have received the stock, and the names and batch numbers of the counterfeit medicines linked to serious illnesses remain undisclosed.
    3. The stated reason: The Karnataka Minister for Health and Family Welfare has said the full list has been communicated to the Union government and all State governments, and that nothing will be revealed while the Special Investigation Team is seized of the matter.
    4. What disclosure would enable: Hospitals need the product names and batch numbers to identify exposed patients, and a specialist in healthcare law has put the position that a hospital then carries an ethical duty to inform those patients.
    5. The cost of delay: A detailed investigation takes time, and the suspect stock can continue to reach patients while it runs.

    Why does the regulatory system not catch this earlier?

    1. An under equipped inspectorate: Drug inspectors are the first line of enforcement and are not adequately equipped for the volume and sophistication of the task.
    2. Weak deterrence: Punishment for wrongdoing is not stringent enough to deter an operation working on these margins.
    3. Price creates the market: The high cost of medicines, cancer drugs in particular, sustains a parallel market for cheaper counterfeit versions, so access and affordability are the underlying issue.
    4. Procurement outside the manufacturer’s chain: A hospital or insurer that sources a drug from outside the manufacturer’s own distribution chain loses the ability to verify origin, which is why some oncology providers refuse externally supplied drugs outright.
    5. No continuous surveillance: There is no standing system that works to prevent drug rackets and reports publicly on its own findings, so detection depends on an incident being noticed by someone.

    Challenges to drug quality regulation in India

    1. A fragmented regulator: Licensing and routine enforcement sit with separate State drugs control departments while standards are set centrally, so a firm constrained in one State can operate through another. Eg. The searches in this case ran across six States because the procurement, repackaging and distribution legs each sat in a different jurisdiction.
      The Fix: Move manufacturing licensing for all formulations to a single central licensing authority, so one regulator holds the complete record for every unit.
    2. Vacancies in the inspectorate: Sanctioned strength of drug inspectors is low against the number of manufacturing units, wholesalers and retail outlets each inspector is expected to cover. Eg. The expert committee on spurious drugs and drug regulatory issues, which reported in 2003, recommended a substantial expansion of the central and State drug regulatory workforce and its laboratory infrastructure.
      The Fix: Fix a statutory inspector to outlet ratio, fund recruitment against it, and publish the shortfall annually.
    3. No end to end traceability: There is no mandatory track and trace across the domestic supply chain, so a vial’s route from manufacturer to hospital cannot be reconstructed after the fact. Eg. Barcoding and quick response code requirements under the Drugs Rules currently apply to a list of top selling brands and to exports rather than to the entire domestic market.
      The Fix: Extend unique identifier coding with a public verification interface to every prescription formulation, and require hospitals to scan each consignment on receipt.
    4. Testing capacity is the bottleneck: A seized sample becomes a prosecution only after a government analyst’s report, so laboratory throughput limits how many samples can be drawn in the first place. Eg. Risk based inspections by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) have repeatedly flagged units failing good manufacturing practice, with action turning on laboratory confirmation.
      The Fix: Fund accredited third party laboratories for routine screening, and reserve government analyst capacity for prosecution grade testing.
    5. The price gap sustains demand for fakes: Patented oncology therapies are priced beyond most households, so a steeply discounted vial is attractive even where its origin is doubtful. Eg. The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority caps prices largely for medicines in the National List of Essential Medicines, which leaves most patented cancer therapies outside price control.
      The Fix: Bring high burden oncology therapies under price control or compulsory licensing, so an affordable legitimate option exists at the point of prescription.
    6. Hospital verification has no auditable standard: Hospitals carry a legal duty to procure responsibly and verify authenticity, with no prescribed verification protocol they can be audited against. Eg. The counterfeits in this case entered through a licensed wholesale distributor rather than through an obviously unlicensed channel.
      The Fix: Prescribe a mandatory supplier qualification and batch verification protocol as a condition of hospital licensing, auditable by the State drugs controller.

    Conclusion

    Every part of the enforcement chain in this case worked after the event. The offence was already defined, the prohibition already existed, and what was absent was anyone looking before the waste was dumped. The unresolved question is disclosure, since the State holds the product names, the batch numbers and the list of affected hospitals, and is withholding them while the investigation runs. The patients with the strongest claim to that information are the ones still under treatment, and whether the list reaches them before the case concludes is where the duty to the patient is tested against the duty to the prosecution.

    Back2Basics: Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO)

    1. What it is: The national drug regulatory authority of India, functioning under the Directorate General of Health Services in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
    2. Who heads it: It is headed by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), who approves new drugs, clinical trials and licences for import.
    3. What it regulates: It approves new drugs, vaccines, blood products and medical devices, and lays down the standards that the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 is enforced against.
    4. How it is organised: It is headquartered in New Delhi and works through zonal, sub zonal and port offices along with central drug testing laboratories.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS2, 15] 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.”

  • In India-China thaw, Beijing’s signals for Washington

    Why in the News

    India and China issued separate statements after the meeting between the Prime Minister and the Chinese President on the sidelines of the 18th BRICS Summit hosted by New Delhi. The Chinese statement runs almost three times as long in its English version, and it carries references to greater BRICS cooperation, the Global South, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the G20 that the Indian statement does not. The Chinese President attended after skipping the G20 summit India hosted in 2023, and arrives less than two weeks before a state visit to Washington. The tension is over who the Chinese text is written for. India used the meeting to sustain the thaw for domestic economic reasons and to show the United States that it has other partners. Beijing used the same meeting to signal to Washington rather than to Delhi.

    What does the length and focus of the Chinese statement reveal?

    1. Audience of the Chinese text: The statement speaks as much to the United States as to India, since it builds out multilateral themes rather than the bilateral agenda. Eg. Its references to greater BRICS cooperation, the Global South, the SCO and the G20 have no counterpart in the Indian statement.
    2. Timing against the Washington visit: The Chinese President’s presence in New Delhi comes less than two weeks before a state visit to the United States, so the meeting doubles as positioning ahead of that visit.
    3. India’s own calculation: India sought to sustain the thaw for domestic economic reasons. It also used the summit to signal to Washington that it has other partners and can influence them.
    4. The difference in restraint: India worked to balance strategic autonomy through BRICS against an even keel with the United States. Beijing used the BRICS platform directly against Washington.

    Why does the ordering of border issues differ in the two statements?

    1. India’s priority: Peace and tranquility in the border areas takes up the bulk of the Indian statement. The text asks both sides to observe existing agreements and understandings on border related issues.
    2. China’s priority: The Chinese statement mentions maintaining peace and tranquility in the border areas twice, with less detail than it gives to people to people exchanges and multilateral cooperation.
    3. Where the border detail sits instead: The specifics appear in the “Eight Points of Outcomes and Consensus” issued after the 25th round of talks between the two Special Representatives on the boundary question last month.
    4. The outcomes are promises rather than settlements: The expert group agreement on an “Early and Substantial Harvest of boundary delimitation and Border Management” has neither a settled definition nor agreed terms of reference. Eg. The proposed meeting on hydrological data sharing and renewal of the relevant memoranda of understanding has been under discussion between the Special Representatives for at least two years.

    What is China asking India to do?

    1. The dual track formulation: Beijing wants India to advance ties in other areas and on border issues in parallel (the dual track, which removes a border settlement as a precondition for wider cooperation). India moved toward this position after the announcement of completed troop disengagement in 2024.
    2. “Eliminate interference”: The term is left undefined in the Chinese statement, so any number of issues can later be raised under it to pressure India.
    3. Managing domestic opinion: China expects India to “effectively improve the public opinion base of bilateral relations”. In practice that asks India to restrain critics of Chinese policy and sceptics of the current thaw.
    4. Taiwan and Tibet inserted: The Chinese statement refers explicitly to India’s “policies and positions on Taiwan and Tibet”. Those references are absent from the Indian statement.
    5. The asymmetry in specificity: Both statements describe what good bilateral ties should look like. Only the Chinese text is specific about what the other side ought to do.

    Why is the Chinese commitment conditional?

    1. The insurance clause: The Chinese statement calls the view of the two countries as “partners rather than adversaries” a “strategic judgment based on the stage of development and the international environment of the two countries”.
    2. What the clause reserves: A judgment tied to circumstances can be revised when those circumstances change, so the framing states a condition rather than a settled position.
    3. The domestic driver: A difficult economic situation at home makes stability in ties with both India and the United States useful to Beijing at present.
    4. The political calendar: The run up to the 21st National Congress of the Communist Party of China, a year away, is the more significant driver of that need for stability.
    5. Keeping India and the United States apart: Stability with each is combined with mechanisms such as BRICS that work to keep the two from converging.

    Challenges to the India and China thaw

    1. Disengagement is not de escalation: Troop disengagement at friction points leaves large forward deployments and new infrastructure in place, so the risk of a fresh standoff is unchanged. Eg. The 2020 Galwan Valley clash in eastern Ladakh followed a build up along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that no existing agreement had reversed.
      The Fix: Convert the expert group’s boundary delimitation talks into a dated work programme with agreed terms of reference, so a promise becomes a schedule.
    2. The boundary itself remains unclarified: The LAC has never been mutually agreed on maps, so each side patrols to its own claim and contact is built into routine patrolling. Eg. The exchange of maps under the confidence building framework stalled after the middle sector in the early 2000s.
      The Fix: Resume sector by sector clarification of the LAC on maps, beginning with the sectors where patrol overlap is densest.
    3. Economic dependence widens as ties warm: A thaw pulled by domestic economic needs increases reliance on Chinese inputs in the sectors India is trying to localise. Eg. Indian pharmaceutical production depends heavily on Chinese active pharmaceutical ingredients and key starting materials.
      The Fix: Tie each relaxation in trade and investment screening to a measurable substitution target in the dependent sector.
    4. Water data sharing rests on lapsing instruments: Hydrological data on the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej flows through memoranda that expire and must be renewed, so flood season information becomes a bargaining chip. Eg. Data was not supplied to India during the 2017 Doklam standoff.
      The Fix: Replace the renewable memoranda with a standing agreement carrying automatic renewal and a fixed transmission schedule.
    5. Third country questions are imported into the bilateral: Raising Taiwan and Tibet in a bilateral readout converts India’s positions on those questions into bargaining material. Eg. China’s protests over Indian leaders visiting Arunachal Pradesh follow the same pattern.
      The Fix: Keep India’s stated positions on Taiwan and Tibet out of bilateral outcome documents, and record any divergence separately.

    Conclusion

    The Chinese text reads as a message to Washington delivered through a bilateral meeting in New Delhi. The Indian text reads as a bilateral document, and that gap is the thing to hold on to. Beijing has attached its own condition to the relationship by describing partnership as a judgment about circumstances rather than as a settled view. The markers to watch are the Chinese President’s visit to the United States and China’s own political calendar, since those are the circumstances the formulation reserves the right to respond to.

    About India and China relations

    1. The disputed boundary: India and China share a boundary of about 3,488 km across the western, middle and eastern sectors, and it has never been mutually delineated.
    2. The agreements that hold it: The Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control, 1993 and the Agreement on Confidence Building Measures in the Military Field, 1996 are the base instruments governing conduct along the boundary.
    3. The trade asymmetry: China is among India’s largest trading partners, and India runs its single largest bilateral trade deficit with China.
    4. Overlapping memberships: The two sit together in BRICS, the SCO and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), so cooperation and contestation run through the same institutions.

    Back2Basics: the Special Representatives mechanism on the boundary question

    1. When it was set up: The mechanism was established in 2003 to explore a settlement of the boundary question from the political perspective of the overall bilateral relationship.
    2. Who holds the posts: India is represented by the National Security Adviser and China by its Foreign Minister.
    3. What it produced: The Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India China Boundary Question, 2005 was concluded under this mechanism.
    4. The three stage design: The talks were framed to move from agreed political parameters, to a framework for settlement, and then to delineation on maps and on the ground.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS2, 10] The West is fostering India as an alternative to reduce dependence on China’s supply chain and as a strategic ally to counter China’s political and economic dominance.’ Explain this statement with examples.”

  • I&B Ministry notifies new film certification guidelines for CBFC

    Why in the News

    The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) has notified revised film certification guidelines for the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). The guidelines retain every aspect of the detailed 1991 version and add exactly two points. One requires a disclaimer or statutory warning in scenes depicting or involving the use, consumption or trafficking of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances. The other brings in the three new age markers under the UA (Unrestricted Public Exhibition With Parental Guidance) certificate, created by the Cinematograph Rules, 2024. The certification standards a film is judged against therefore remain those framed in 1991, while the certificate categories themselves were rewritten in 2024.

    What does the Central Board of Film Certification do?

    1. Its statutory basis: It is a statutory body under the Cinematograph Act, 1952, functioning under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
    2. What it certifies: No film may be publicly exhibited in India unless it has been certified by the Board, so certification is a condition of release rather than an advisory rating.
    3. What the certificate decides: The Board may certify a film for unrestricted public exhibition, restrict it by age, restrict it to specialised audiences, or refuse certification, and it may require cuts as a condition of a category.
    4. What guides the decision: The Board applies guidelines notified by the central government under the Act, which is the instrument that has now been revised.

    What are the two additions to the guidelines?

    1. The narcotics warning: Scenes depicting or involving the use, consumption or trafficking of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances must now carry the warning “Illicit Narcotics Destroy Health and Guarantees Imprisonment, Say No to Drugs.”
    2. The age markers: The guidelines now specify the three categories within the UA certificate, UA 7+, UA 13+ and UA 16+, marking content suitable for children aged seven, 13 and 16 respectively.
    3. What triggers an age marker: Where the Board considers it necessary to caution a parent or guardian on whether a ward may be allowed to see a film, it certifies the film for unrestricted public exhibition with an endorsement to that effect.

    What do the retained 1991 standards require?

    1. Crime and violence: The Board is to ensure that anti social activities and violence are not glorified or justified.
    2. Operational detail of crime: The modus operandi of criminals, and visuals or words likely to incite the commission of an offence, are not to be depicted.
    3. Alcohol: Scenes justifying or glorifying drinking are to be avoided.
    4. Children: Scenes showing children in violence as victims, perpetrators or forced witnesses, or subjected to any form of child abuse, are not to be presented needlessly.
    5. Disability and animals: The Board is to discourage scenes showing abuse or ridicule of persons with disabilities, and scenes showing cruelty to or abuse of animals.

    Why does the alignment with the 2024 categories matter?

    1. The gap it closes: The age bands were created in the Rules in 2024, while the guidelines the Board actually applies continued to describe a single undifferentiated UA category until this notification.
    2. What a graded band changes for a film: A film that would previously have carried one UA label now carries an age specific one, so the same content can be placed at a different point on the scale rather than cut to reach a category.
    3. Where the burden shifts: An age marker transfers the decision on viewing to the parent or guardian, since a UA film remains open to unrestricted public exhibition whatever the band.
    4. What the Board has asked of the industry: The Board’s Chairperson has asked filmmakers to study the revised guidelines before submitting applications, and asked film associations to circulate them within the industry.

    Challenges to the film certification framework

    1. Certification operates as prior restraint: A film cannot be exhibited at all until the Board clears it, so the delay in a decision has the same effect as a refusal for a film with a fixed release date. Eg. The Supreme Court upheld pre censorship of films in K.A. Abbas v. Union of India (1970), on the ground that film affects audiences differently from other media.
      The Fix: Fix a binding outer limit for the Board’s decision and treat expiry of that limit as deemed certification in the applied category.
    2. Standards are open ended in application: Terms such as glorification of violence or anti social activity are matters of judgement, so identical content can be treated differently across examining committees. Eg. The Cinematograph Act, 1952 grounds refusal in the reasonable restrictions of Article 19(2), which are broad heads rather than stated tests.
      The Fix: Publish the reasoned orders of examining and revising committees, so a standard is visible from decided cases rather than from the text alone.
    3. Extra statutory pressure after certification: A certified film still faces protest, litigation and State level obstruction, so certification does not settle the right to exhibit. Eg. In Prakash Jha Productions v. Union of India (2011) the Supreme Court held that a State cannot ban a certified film on law and order grounds and must maintain order instead.
      The Fix: Require a State suspending exhibition of a certified film to record reasons and obtain judicial confirmation within a fixed period.
    4. A single framework for unequal platforms: Films require certification while streaming content is governed by self regulation, so the same content faces different scrutiny by mode of release. Eg. Online curated content runs under the self classification and three tier grievance structure of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
      The Fix: Align the age classification bands used in film certification with those used for online curated content, so one scale runs across platforms.
    5. Warnings substitute for classification: A mandatory on screen disclaimer is easy to add and easy to disregard, so it does little where the depiction itself is the concern. Eg. The statutory anti tobacco warning has run in Indian films for years alongside continued depiction of smoking.
      The Fix: Attach the depiction of narcotics to a defined age band in the classification scale, rather than treating the warning as the whole remedy.

    Conclusion

    The certification standards and the certificate categories were revised a generation apart, and this notification is the step that brings them into one document. The substantive tests a film is judged against remain those of 1991, so the change is one of classification rather than of standards. The guidelines are notified and in force, and the Board has asked the industry to study them before filing applications. The thing to watch is how the three UA bands are applied in practice, since a graded scale only changes outcomes if films are placed across it rather than clustered in one band.

    Back2Basics: Cinematograph (Amendment) Act, 2023

    1. What it introduced on piracy: It created offences for unauthorised recording and exhibition of films, with imprisonment of three months to three years and a fine.
    2. Age based categories: It replaced the single UA category with age based sub categories, which the Cinematograph Rules, 2024 then specified as UA 7+, UA 13+ and UA 16+.
    3. Validity of a certificate: It made a certificate valid perpetually, removing the earlier limit of ten years.
    4. Revisional power removed: It withdrew the central government’s revisional power over a certified film, in line with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Union of India v. K.M. Shankarappa (2000).

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2014, GS2, 12] What do you understand by the concept “freedom of speech and expression”? Does it cover hate speech also? Why do the films in India stand on a slightly different plane from other forms of expression? Discuss.”

  • Picked by BJP, protected by Congress: Face of Karnataka job scams stayed on despite red flags

    Why in the News

    The chairman of the Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC), Shivashankarappa S Sahukar, was suspended by the Governor on 25 August on the State Cabinet’s recommendation, over the selection of his daughter to a State government post and the leak of a recruitment examination paper. Internal records show the irregularities were flagged by senior officers of the Commission at least four times between 2019 and this year, across State governments led by both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress. A KPSC secretary formally recommended action under Article 317 of the Constitution against the chairman and four members in January 2024, and was placed on paid leave the day after being asked to withdraw the letter. The tension is that the constitutional protection designed to keep a Public Service Commission independent of the executive also makes its removal route dependent on the same executive. Recruitment to over 2,000 government posts stalled while the standoff ran.

    Why is a Public Service Commission member so difficult to remove?

    1. Who appoints and on what terms: The chairman and members of a State Public Service Commission are appointed by the Governor, and Article 316 requires that, as nearly as may be, half the members should have held government office for at least 10 years.
    2. The category that carries no qualification: The remaining members are classified as “non official”, and no specific educational or professional qualification is prescribed for them.
    3. The only removal route: Removal for misbehaviour runs through Article 317, on a reference by the President to the Supreme Court and on that Court’s advice, so a State government cannot remove a member on its own finding.
    4. What that leaves the State with: The State’s only available step is to recommend a reference and to suspend in the interim, which makes removal a political decision rather than an administrative one.

    How was the appointment made in the first place?

    1. The timing of the entry: The appointment to the Commission came on 31 August 2019, 36 days after the BJP Chief Minister took oath, under the “official” category alongside two non official members.
    2. The reclassification: He was shifted to the non official category after objections that he had never held government office, which the official category requires for at least 10 years.
    3. The professional record on file: KPSC records show an agricultural engineering degree in 1988, work as a supervisor between January 1989 and August 1991, and a contractual post from July 1996 in a National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI) project.
    4. What the record omitted: The NCUI decided in March 2010 not to extend that contract beyond March 2011, citing performance that was “not found satisfactory”, and there are no public records of engagements after that until the KPSC posting.
    5. The elevation to chairman: The State Cabinet decided on 17 March 2021 to appoint him chairman, on the same day the serving chairman’s tenure was set to end on 3 April, against a precedent in which the previous appointment took over a month and a formal screening process.

    What happened to the officers who flagged the irregularities?

    1. The first standoff: The KPSC secretary appointed in July 2022 introduced transparency measures on the Commission’s website and social media accounts, and the chairman responded by withholding approval on files and holding meetings that bypassed the secretary.
    2. The first removal: That secretary reported to the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms on 13 September 2023 that “departures from the rules” had produced “misuse of authority by the Chairperson and injustice to meritorious candidates”, and was removed from the post the next day.
    3. The second refusal: His successor declined in December 2023 to approve the appointment of the Commission’s Head of Legal Cell, selected by a three member panel headed by the chairman, citing lack of transparency.
    4. The retaliation recorded: The chairman and five other members stayed away from key meetings and gave written notice that they would not sign files until their candidate was appointed.
    5. The second removal: On 25 January 2024 she wrote to the Governor through the Chief Secretary seeking action under Article 317 for “misuse of authority”, was told on 6 February to withdraw the letter or go on leave, and was placed on paid leave the following day.
    6. What followed immediately: On 13 February 2024 the Commission approved the chairman’s chosen legal cell candidate and withdrew the notification inviting fresh applications.

    What did the standoff cost recruitment?

    1. Appointments frozen: The refusal to sign files stalled recruitment to more than 2,000 government posts, with meetings repeatedly postponed and files left without orders or reasoned rejections.
    2. The veterinary recruitment: In the recruitment of 400 veterinary doctors, 29 selected candidates, including an alleged relative of the chairman, are accused of receiving the question paper a day before the January 2026 examination.
    3. What the investigation found on that leak: The Criminal Investigation Department’s probe has found that candidates paid up to Rs 80 lakh to middlemen, were housed at resorts and hotels, coached on answers, and driven to examination centres on the day.
    4. The daughter’s selection: Recruitment to 50 posts of Industrial Extension Officer was called in March 2024, and the chairman’s daughter was selected in January 2026 after producing an income certificate showing annual family income of Rs 40,000, against his own recorded gross salary of Rs 3.60 lakh a month in 2023.
    5. The wider exposure: The investigation has also raised questions over the recruitment of 384 Karnataka Administrative Service gazetted probationers, for which over two lakh aspirants appeared in the 2024 preliminary examination.
    6. The record before this: Major recruitment scams involving the Commission came to light in 1998, 1999, 2004 and 2011, involving a secretary, two chairmen and a member.

    Why was a reforms panel’s recommendation reversed rather than implemented?

    1. What the panel recommended: On 3 February 2023 the Karnataka Administrative Reforms Commission II recommended that the Commission’s total strength, including the chairperson, be cut from 14 to eight.
    2. The comparison it relied on: It noted that Maharashtra and West Bengal had three member commissions, and that apart from Kerala no other State then had more than eight members.
    3. The qualification it proposed: For an appointee drawn from academia it suggested at least 10 years of experience as a full professor.
    4. What the government did instead: Four weeks later the Chief Minister directed that sanctioned strength be raised from a chairperson and 13 members to a chairperson and 15, the regulation was amended on 15 March 2023, and a single non official member was appointed the next day.
    5. What the courts have said about qualifications: A Karnataka High Court bench hearing a case on selection irregularities observed that it “bewilders any sensible man” how unqualified members could interview meritorious candidates who are graduates and post graduates in specialised fields.

    Who was put in charge of the Commission’s own inquiry?

    1. The choice of panel head: The Commission picked the member appointed in March 2023 to head its four member committee investigating the allegations against the chairman, on 25 July, a day after police registered a case over the veterinary recruitment.
    2. The stated basis for that choice: The interim chairman’s stated ground was her seniority as a member, and her recorded qualifications are BSc and BEd degrees with an appointment in recognition of social service.
    3. The business connection on record: Corporate filings show she was a director of a construction company from its incorporation in 2013, and that her directorship ceased on 15 March 2023, the day before her KPSC appointment.
    4. The company’s position: Filings for 2025 record her shareholding at 10% and her husband’s at 90%, and the company’s revenue rose from about Rs 25 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 65 crore in 2022-23.
    5. How the inquiry ended: The Commission dissolved the panel after the State government transferred the police investigation to the Criminal Investigation Department on 28 July.

    Challenges to the integrity of State Public Service Commissions

    1. Appointment is discretionary while removal is not: A State can appoint a member on its own decision but can only recommend removal through the President and the Supreme Court, so a wrong appointment is far cheaper to make than to undo. Eg. The elevation to chairman was cleared by the Cabinet on a single day, while the Article 317 recommendation against him went nowhere for over two years.
      The Fix: Require a published selection procedure with stated eligibility criteria and a search committee record for every appointment to a State Public Service Commission.
    2. No prescribed qualification for non official members: Where the Constitution fixes no educational or professional bar for half the seats, political suitability becomes the operative test. Eg. A reforms panel recommendation to require 10 years as a full professor for academic appointees was never acted on.
      The Fix: Prescribe minimum qualifications for non official members by State regulation, since Article 316 leaves the field open rather than closed.
    3. The officer who reports wrongdoing has no protection: A secretary who records irregularities serves at the State’s pleasure, so the report and the reporter can both be removed in a day. Eg. Two successive secretaries who flagged misuse of authority were removed or sent on leave within a day of writing.
      The Fix: Fix a minimum tenure for the Commission’s secretary and require reasons to be recorded before a premature transfer.
    4. Internal inquiry into an institution’s own head: A committee of members appointed by, and serving alongside, the person under inquiry cannot produce a finding that survives scrutiny. Eg. The internal panel was headed by a member appointed during the same period whose own appointment was contested.
      The Fix: Refer any allegation against a chairman or member to an external agency at the outset, with the internal route closed by regulation.
    5. Recruitment stops while the dispute runs: Aspirants lose examination cycles and age eligibility while files stay unsigned or selections stay under investigation. Eg. Over 2,000 posts were stalled during the standoff, and further recruitments are now under investigation or in litigation.
      The Fix: Provide a statutory age relaxation and a fresh cycle for candidates of any recruitment annulled or delayed by an inquiry into the recruiting body.

    Conclusion

    The case tests whether an institution insulated from the executive can be held to account by it. Insulation under Article 317 was designed to stop a government removing a Commission member it found inconvenient, and it has instead protected a chairman whom two governments found it convenient to keep. The officials with a statutory duty to report were the ones the system could move, which is the inversion the record shows. The thing to watch is whether the State now forwards an Article 317 reference to the President, since suspension by itself leaves the office filled and the removal question open.

    Back2Basics: State Public Service Commission

    1. Constitutional basis: Article 315 provides for a Public Service Commission for the Union and one for each State, and a Joint Commission may be created for two or more States by Parliament on their resolutions.
    2. Tenure: Under Article 316 a member of a State Commission holds office for six years or until the age of 62, whichever is earlier.
    3. Functions: Under Article 320 it conducts examinations for appointments to State services and is consulted on recruitment methods, promotions, transfers and disciplinary matters.
    4. Accountability: Under Article 323 it submits an annual report on its work to the Governor, which is laid before the State legislature along with a memorandum on any advice of the Commission that was not accepted.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS2, 10] The Doctrine of Democratic Governance makes it necessary that the public perception of the integrity and commitment of civil servants becomes absolutely positive. Discuss.”

  • JPC members question Centre on FCRA Bill’s asset takeover provisions

    Why in the News

    Parliament’s Joint Committee on the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 questioned the Centre on the Bill’s asset takeover provisions at its first meeting. The provision at issue vests foreign contributions and all assets created from them in a government appointed “designated authority” when an organisation’s Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) certificate is cancelled, surrendered, or lapses automatically, without a prior hearing or a judicial determination. The Union Home Ministry defended the change as making the use of foreign contributions more transparent and accountable, and said a “prescribed authority” already exists under the present law. The tension is between an administrative gap the Ministry says it is closing and the constitutional bar on deprivation of property without due process. Opposition members of the Committee invoked Article 300A of the Constitution against the provision.

    What does the “designated authority” provision do?

    1. When it is triggered: It operates on three events, cancellation of an organisation’s FCRA certificate, its surrender by the organisation, and its automatic lapse.
    2. What vests: Foreign contributions already received and every asset created out of them pass to a government appointed designated authority.
    3. What it dispenses with: The vesting takes effect without a prior hearing for the organisation and without a judicial determination that the assets should pass.
    4. How wide the power is: The authority is to hold powers of a wide ambit over those assets, which is the specific feature the Committee’s members contested.

    What is the Ministry’s stated rationale for the change?

    1. A custodian already exists in law: The present Act provides for a “prescribed authority”, identified by a notification of 5 November 2018 as the Additional Chief Secretary or Principal Secretary (Home) of the State or Union Territory concerned.
    2. The custodian cannot act: There is no deadline on that custodianship under the current law, which leaves the prescribed authority a “passive custodian” unable to take substantive decisions on assets.
    3. No procedure for the handover: The law lays down no standard procedure for taking possession of such assets, maintaining inventories, or separating foreign contribution assets from domestically funded ones.
    4. The cost of open ended custody: Prolonged custodianship leaves States facing budgetary and manpower constraints in running vested institutions such as schools, hospitals and orphanages.
    5. Two silences in the existing law: The Act says nothing on the final disposal of vested assets and nothing on the treatment of places of worship.

    On what constitutional ground is the provision contested?

    1. The provision relied on: Opposition members of the Committee argued that deprivation of property cannot be permitted without a prior hearing, relying on Article 300A of the Constitution.
    2. What Article 300A guarantees: It states that no person shall be deprived of property save by authority of law, so a taking requires a valid law and a fair procedure even though property is no longer a fundamental right.
    3. Why automatic vesting is the pressure point: Cancellation, surrender and lapse are administrative events, so tying the transfer of assets to them removes any stage at which the organisation is heard before it loses them.
    4. What it leaves unsettled: The Ministry’s own submission records that the law is silent on final disposal, so an organisation whose certificate later stands restored has no stated route back to its assets.

    Why did the Ministry’s presentation on religious groups draw objection?

    1. What the presentation contained: It catalogued foreign contributions received by different religious groups and highlighted that a majority of the funds went to Christian organisations.
    2. The objection raised: Members questioned the rationale for segregating contributions received under religious heads at all.
    3. Why the classification matters: A regulatory case built on the religious identity of recipients shifts the test from how funds were used to who received them.

    Why is the FCRA framed as a national security law?

    1. The Ministry’s characterisation: The Home Ministry told the Committee that the latest amendment is at its core a “national security” legislation.
    2. The origin of the statute: The FCRA was enacted in 1976, amid Cold War era mistrust of Western influence and concern over threats to India’s sovereignty and democratic institutions.
    3. What preceded it: Before 1976, non governmental organisations receiving foreign funds operated under general laws such as the Societies Registration Act, the Trusts Act and the Companies Act.
    4. The gap it filled: Those general laws carried no centralised mechanism to monitor foreign contributions, which is the function the FCRA introduced.

    Challenges to the FCRA regulatory framework

    1. Sanction without a judicial stage: Cancellation, and now the vesting of assets, follow executive determination, so an organisation contests the outcome after it has already taken effect. Eg. The vesting under the Bill operates with no prior hearing and no judicial determination.
      The Fix: Require a reasoned show cause order and a hearing before vesting, with the transfer suspended until an appellate forum has ruled.
    2. Suspension operates as a penalty on its own: A certificate suspended pending inquiry stops foreign funds immediately, so service delivery halts before any finding is recorded. Eg. Registration of the Centre for Policy Research was cancelled in 2024 after a prolonged suspension, ending its foreign funded research programmes.
      The Fix: Cap the suspension period in the statute and require the inquiry to conclude within it or the certificate to revive automatically.
    3. Compliance costs fall hardest on small organisations: Annual returns, a designated single bank account and renewal every five years require dedicated staff that a small grassroots body does not have. Eg. The 2020 amendment required every recipient to route foreign funds through a designated account at a single branch of the State Bank of India in New Delhi.
      The Fix: Set a simplified filing track and a longer renewal cycle for organisations below a stated annual receipt threshold.
    4. A ban on transfers breaks the funding chain: Prohibiting an FCRA holder from passing funds to another organisation cuts off smaller field level bodies that never receive foreign money directly. Eg. The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Act, 2020 barred transfer of foreign contribution to any other person, including another FCRA registered body.
      The Fix: Permit onward transfer to a registered recipient with reporting of the transfer, so the audit trail is preserved without ending sub granting.
    5. Regulatory reach shapes advocacy as much as accounting: Where funding status turns on administrative discretion, an organisation adjusts its public positions to protect its registration. Eg. The Supreme Court upheld the 2020 amendments in Noel Harper v. Union of India (2022), holding that no organisation has a vested right to receive foreign contribution.
      The Fix: Publish the grounds and the evidentiary standard for every cancellation, so refusal is testable against a stated rule rather than inferred.

    Conclusion

    The Bill is at the start of committee scrutiny and the disagreement is already about process rather than purpose. Both sides accept that custody of assets after a certificate ends is currently unregulated, and they differ on whether the answer is an authority that can act at once or a procedure that must be completed before it acts. The unresolved question is what happens to an organisation that succeeds on appeal after its assets have already vested, since the Ministry’s own submission records that the law is silent on final disposal. The next milestone is the Joint Committee’s examination of the Bill and the report it returns to Parliament.

    Back2Basics: Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010

    1. What it replaced: It repealed and replaced the 1976 Act, and is administered by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
    2. What it regulates: It governs the acceptance and utilisation of foreign contribution and foreign hospitality by persons and associations, to ensure they do not act against the national interest.
    3. Registration and its renewal: An association must hold registration or prior permission to receive foreign contribution, and registration is valid for five years and renewable.
    4. Who is barred outright: Election candidates, judges, government servants, members of a legislature, journalists and editors of registered newspapers, and political parties are prohibited from accepting foreign contribution.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2015, GS2, 12] Examine critically the recent changes in the rules governing foreign funding of NGOs under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), 1976.”

  • How it widens social security net, why unions are claiming it is ‘too little and too late’

    Why in the News

    The Ministry of Labour and Employment has notified a rise in the wage ceiling of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) from Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 a month, the first revision in 12 years. The notification follows approval of the increase by the Union Cabinet. Over 8 crore subscribers must now contribute mandatorily up to the new limit under the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) scheme, the Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPS) and the Employees’ Deposit Linked Insurance (EDLI) scheme, and about 51 lakh more workers come under mandatory coverage. The tension is over what a ceiling fixed in rupees can do. Trade unions have called the new figure “too little and too late” and want the threshold tied to wages and inflation rather than revised once a decade.

    What is the EPFO wage ceiling and what does it trigger?

    1. What the ceiling is: It is the monthly wage level up to which membership of the EPFO’s three schemes is compulsory in a covered establishment, and beyond which a worker may choose not to contribute.
    2. What it applies to: The same figure governs mandatory coverage under all three schemes at once, the provident fund, the pension scheme and the deposit linked insurance scheme.
    3. What it does not cap: A worker already contributing on basic pay above the old limit is unaffected in the provident fund, since the ceiling bounds the compulsory floor of coverage rather than the amount that may be saved.

    What changes in the contribution arithmetic?

    1. Who pays what: The employee and the employer each contribute 12% of basic salary, dearness allowance and retaining allowance, with the employee’s entire share going to the EPF.
    2. How the employer’s share splits: Of the employer’s 12%, 3.67% goes to the EPF and 8.33% to the EPS, and the pension share is calculated on the wage ceiling for most subscribers.
    3. The pension effect: The monthly pension contribution rises to Rs 2,083 from Rs 1,250, because 8.33% is now computed on Rs 25,000 instead of Rs 15,000.
    4. The state’s own share: The government contributes 1.16% towards an employee’s pension up to the wage ceiling to cover any shortfall from low wages, and employees make no contribution of their own to the pension scheme.
    5. The insurance leg: Under the EDLI scheme the employer contributes 0.5% of wages with no deduction from the employee, and the scheme pays life insurance cover of Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 7 lakh on death during service.
    6. Who gains most: Workers earning between Rs 15,000 and Rs 25,000 see the largest change, since their social security contributions rise from voluntary or low levels to the full mandatory rate.

    Where does this revision sit in the scheme’s own history?

    1. Frequency of revision: This is the ninth revision of the EPF scheme’s wage ceiling since the scheme began in 1952.
    2. The pattern of long gaps: It is only the third occasion on which the gap between two revisions exceeded a decade, so a frozen ceiling is a recurring feature rather than a one off lapse.
    3. The two previous steps: The ceiling was raised to Rs 15,000 from Rs 6,500 in September 2014, and to Rs 6,500 from Rs 5,000 in June 2001.
    4. Where the demand was raised: The revision had been discussed in several meetings of the Central Board of Trustees of the EPFO over the last decade before it was acted on.

    What does the new ceiling signal to the wider labour market?

    1. Statutory minimum wages had overtaken the old ceiling: At least seven major States and Union Territories set statutory minimum wages for unskilled workers above the old Rs 15,000 limit.
    2. The specific figures: Monthly minimum wages stand at Rs 17,800 in Delhi, Rs 17,000 in Maharashtra and Rs 16,800 in Karnataka.
    3. What the gap meant in practice: A ceiling below the legal minimum wage in a State excluded the lowest paid formal workers there from compulsory coverage, which inverts the purpose of a floor.
    4. The signalling effect: A higher central threshold indicates a higher expected wage scale to States and to employers, beyond its direct effect on contributions.

    Why do trade unions call the revision inadequate?

    1. The stated objection to the frozen figure: The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) has said a social security ceiling held at Rs 15,000 for 12 years was already out of step with prevailing wages.
    2. The demand on the number: Its General Secretary has asked for the ceiling to be raised to Rs 30,000 so that more deserving sections of employees are covered.
    3. The demand on the method: The union position is that the threshold must move in step with minimum wages, actual wages, inflation and the cost of living, rather than being reset by discretion.
    4. The take home pay concern: Employers are expected to absorb the higher contribution inside the existing cost to company structure, so a worker’s monthly take home pay falls even as the savings balance rises.

    Challenges to the EPFO wage ceiling framework

    1. A nominal ceiling loses value every year it is not revised: A threshold fixed in rupees falls in real terms with inflation, so coverage narrows automatically between revisions. Eg. The previous limit stood unchanged from 2014 while several States raised statutory minimum wages past it.
      The Fix: Link the ceiling to a published wage or price index with automatic annual revision, so coverage does not depend on a discretionary decision.
    2. Coverage is tied to the establishment, not the worker: Compulsory membership runs through establishments covered by the scheme, so gig, platform and informal workers stay outside it whatever the ceiling is. Eg. The Code on Social Security, 2020 provides for schemes for gig and platform workers, which remain outside the EPFO’s mandatory contribution structure.
      The Fix: Operationalise the aggregator contribution route for gig and platform workers so coverage follows the worker across employers.
    3. A higher mandatory contribution can push employment off the books: Where an employer treats the contribution as a cost to be avoided, the response is under reporting of wages or headcount rather than compliance. Eg. Splitting pay into allowances outside basic wages was contested up to the Supreme Court in the 2019 Regional Provident Fund Commissioner v. Vivekananda Vidyamandir line of cases on what counts as basic wages.
      The Fix: Audit wage structures of covered establishments against declared basic wages and publish sector wise compliance data.
    4. Pension outcomes remain weak despite higher contributions: The pension share is computed on the ceiling rather than on actual pay, so the pension of a worker earning well above the ceiling stays low. Eg. Pensionable salary for most subscribers is capped at the ceiling even where actual wages are several times higher.
      The Fix: Publish the actuarial position of the pension scheme at each revision, so the pension a given contribution buys is visible before the ceiling is set.
    5. Take home pay falls for the workers the change is meant to protect: A low wage worker gains a deferred benefit and loses current income, which is the trade off least affordable at that wage level. Eg. Employers absorb the higher contribution within the existing cost to company package.
      The Fix: Phase the increased employee share over two or three years for workers in the newly covered band, while the employer share applies at once.

    Conclusion

    The revision settles the level of the ceiling and leaves open the method of setting it. A threshold fixed in rupees and revised at intervals of a decade will drift below statutory minimum wages again, which is what produced the present anomaly of a social security floor lower than the legal wage floor in several States. The stated union demand is not merely a higher number but an indexation rule that removes the need for a political decision each time. The thing to watch is whether the Central Board of Trustees takes up a standing revision formula, since that is what decides whether this correction has to be repeated in another twelve years.

    Back2Basics: Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO)

    1. Statutory basis: It administers schemes framed under the Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952, and functions under the Ministry of Labour and Employment.
    2. Who governs it: It is steered by the Central Board of Trustees, a tripartite body of government, employer and employee representatives, chaired by the Union Labour Minister.
    3. The three schemes: It runs the EPF scheme for retirement savings, the EPS for pension, and the EDLI scheme for life insurance cover linked to provident fund membership.
    4. Scope of application: The parent Act applies to establishments employing 20 or more persons in notified industries, and coverage continues even if employment later falls below that number.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2021] With reference to casual workers employed in India, consider the following statements: 1.All casual workers are entitled to Employees Provident Fund coverage. 2.All casual workers are entitled to regular working hours and overtime payment. 3.The government can, by notification, specify that an establishment or industry shall pay wages only through its bank account. Which of the above statements are correct? (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2, and 3 Answer: (b)”

  • Nearly 2,000 marriage records in Odisha manipulated to claim welfare aid: report

    Why in the News

    A draft audit report on the implementation of the PAReSHRAM and Nirman Shramik portals has found nearly 2,000 instances of alleged manipulation of marriage records used to fraudulently claim marriage assistance from the Odisha Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board. The report is expected to form part of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) audit report for 2024-2025. It follows a finding from the same audit that 2,487 construction workers were recorded as dead and their nominees paid death assistance, while those workers went on drawing subsidised foodgrain after their recorded deaths. The audit’s own conclusion is the contested part. It attributes the leakage to system design flaws and lack of validation rather than to isolated fraud, which places the failure in the payment system rather than in the claimants.

    What does the Odisha Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board do?

    1. Its statutory basis: State welfare boards for construction workers are constituted under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996, which provides for registration of workers and for welfare benefits to them.
    2. How it is funded: Its money comes from a cess on the cost of construction, levied under the Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Cess Act, 1996, and collected from builders rather than from the general budget.
    3. The benefit in question: The board pays Rs 50,000 for the marriage of an unmarried registered female beneficiary, or for the marriage of two unmarried daughters above 18 years of a registered construction worker.
    4. The size of the fund: The board had accumulated over Rs 4,000 crore by 2024.

    What did the audit find on the marriage records?

    1. Errors carried in from the legacy database: Analysis of the legacy database showed 676 marriage certificates with registration dates earlier than the date of the marriage itself.
    2. The same defect in sampled districts: In five sampled districts, 126 marriage registration dates were found to be prior to the date of marriage.
    3. What happened after the portal went live: 1,257 such cases were found across the State after the Nirman Shramik Portal became operational, and 333 in the sampled districts.
    4. The money involved: Those post portal cases led to disbursement of Rs 6.29 crore.

    What did the block level registers at Khariar show?

    1. How the registers were kept: Marriage certificate issue registers at the Block Development Office, Khariar were maintained with blank pages and without the signatures of recipients.
    2. The scale of disbursal there: 586 marriage benefits amounting to Rs 2.90 crore were disbursed at that office over 2020 to 2025.
    3. The gap that leaves: Details of the certificates actually issued against those payments were not available, so there is no record tying a payment to a named certificate holder.

    How does this connect to the earlier death assistance finding?

    1. The finding: 2,487 construction workers were declared dead and their nominees were paid death assistance from the same fund.
    2. What contradicted it: Those same workers continued to draw subsidised foodgrain under the National Food Security Act, 2013 and the State Food Security Scheme after the dates recorded as their deaths.
    3. What the pair has in common: In both cases a claim was cleared against a document the paying system never tested against the database that would have contradicted it, so the same absence of validation produced two different frauds.

    Why does the audit call this a design failure rather than isolated fraud?

    1. The audit’s own words: The draft report states that system design flaws and lack of validation allowed ineligible individuals to exploit the scheme, in violation of marriage registration protocols.
    2. The rule that was never enforced in software: Under the Orissa Hindu Marriages and Registration Rules, 1960, parties to a solemnised marriage must compulsorily submit an application in Form B before the Registrar within 30 days of solemnisation, so a registration date preceding the marriage date is impossible on the face of the record.
    3. Why scale points away from individual fraud: A defect that recurs across the legacy database, across five sampled districts and again after the portal went live is a property of the validation rules, not a pattern of unconnected claimants.

    Challenges to the Odisha construction workers’ welfare delivery system

    1. No validation between the benefit portal and the marriage registrar: A claim is accepted on a certificate the paying system cannot check against the registration record that produced it. Eg. The chronological test built into the 1960 Rules exists in law but corresponds to no field the portal validates.
      The Fix: Reject at entry any claim whose certificate registration date precedes the marriage date or falls outside the thirty day window.
    2. Migration of an uncleaned legacy database: Records created before the portal were carried across without being reconciled, so old defects became new approvals. Eg. The same date sequencing error appears both before and after the portal went live.
      The Fix: Reconcile the legacy register against the Registrar’s records once, completely, before any further disbursal against legacy entries.
    3. Paper registers as the only proof at block level: Where a manual register is the sole record of issue, an incomplete register leaves no way to test whether a benefit reached the named person. Eg. Disbursal is recorded by hand at the block office even though the claim itself is filed on a portal.
      The Fix: Make a digital acknowledgement with beneficiary authentication the record of issue and retire the manual register.
    4. A large accumulated corpus with weak drawing controls: A board holding a large cess fund without transaction level checks is an attractive target, since detection depends on a periodic audit rather than on a system alert. Eg. This leakage surfaced only at draft audit stage, years after the payments were made.
      The Fix: Set automatic exception alerts on duplicate beneficiary identifiers, out of sequence dates and repeat nominee accounts, reviewed monthly rather than at audit.

    Conclusion

    The finding is about design, not about a handful of dishonest claimants. A portal that accepts a document without testing it against the register that issued it will convert every weak record into a valid payment, and the audit reached that same conclusion for two separate benefits drawn from one fund. The report is still at draft stage, so the board and the State government have the opportunity to respond before it is finalised. The thing to watch is whether the final report carries a recovery figure alongside the leakage figure, since recovery is what separates an audit finding from a correction.

    Back2Basics: Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)

    1. Constitutional basis: The office is created by Article 148 of the Constitution, and the holder is appointed by the President and removable only in the manner and on the grounds applicable to a Supreme Court judge.
    2. Source of duties: Duties and powers are laid down by the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971, not by the Constitution alone.
    3. What an audit examines: Beyond checking that expenditure was legally authorised, a propriety audit examines whether the spending was wise and justified, and a performance audit examines whether a scheme met its stated objectives economically and effectively.
    4. How a finding becomes a report: Findings are first issued in draft to the audited entity for its response, and the finalised State report goes under Article 151(2) to the Governor, is laid before the State legislature, and is then examined by the Public Accounts Committee.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS2, 10] “The duty of the Comptroller and Auditor General is not merely to ensure the legality of expenditure but also its propriety.” Comment.”

  • Won’t provide land in T.N. for Navodaya schools: Minister

    Why in the News

    Tamil Nadu’s Minister for School Education has said the State will not provide land for establishing Navodaya schools that follow the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) syllabus, and that the State remains firm on its two language policy in schools. The statement answers the Supreme Court, which has given Tamil Nadu three months to comply with its direction of 15 December 2025 to identify land in each district for Navodaya schools. At the same hearing on the adoption of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Scheme in the State, the Court said Tamil Nadu had to change its “mindset” that Hindi could not be taught there, and cautioned that “individual States cannot act like individual countries”. The tension is between a judicial direction to perform an administrative act and a State’s control over both land and school language policy. The State has offered no legal challenge to the direction and no compliance with it either.

    What is the Navodaya Vidyalaya Scheme?

    1. What it provides: It runs Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, co educational residential schools offering free education from Class VI to Class XII, with one school intended for every district.
    2. Who runs it: It is administered by the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, an autonomous body under the Ministry of Education, and the schools are affiliated to the CBSE.
    3. Who it targets: Admission is through a selection test at Class VI, and at least 75% of seats in a school are reserved for candidates from rural areas of that district.
    4. What the State must supply: The Centre funds and runs the school, while the State government is expected to provide the land on which it is built.

    What is Tamil Nadu’s stated ground for refusing?

    1. The language policy: The State follows a two language policy in schools and has said there will be no change in that stand.
    2. The statutory anchor: The previous Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government, in an affidavit filed in March this year, said the Navodaya scheme deviated from the mandate of the Tamil Nadu Tamil Learning Act, 2006.
    3. The stated motive alleged: That affidavit alleged the scheme was only a “backdoor” route to making Hindi compulsory in the State.
    4. The claimed alternative: The State’s position is that it already runs model schools successfully, and that students from those schools have gone on to higher education.
    5. The position on the Court’s remarks: The State has treated the judge’s oral observations as an opinion rather than a verdict, on the stated ground that the judicial proceedings are still under way.

    Why is land the pressure point in this dispute?

    1. Two different lists: Education sits at Entry 25 of the Concurrent List after the Constitution (Forty second Amendment) Act, 1976, while land sits at Entry 18 of the State List, so the Centre may frame the scheme but cannot supply the site.
    2. A veto without a challenge: A State that declines to allot land stalls a central scheme without having to contest its validity, so the dispute never reaches the question of legislative competence.
    3. What the Court can and cannot order: A direction to identify land can be issued, and it has been, but the identification itself is an executive act of the State administration, which is why the remedy has so far been an extension of time rather than an execution order.

    Challenges to the Navodaya Vidyalaya Scheme in Tamil Nadu

    1. A central scheme dependent on a State asset: A centrally funded school cannot be built without a State allotment order, so a State can stop the scheme without legislating against it. Eg. The direction to identify land in every district has run since December 2025 without a single site being notified.
      The Fix: Route the scheme through central government land holdings or centrally acquired land in States that decline allotment, so the school is not contingent on a State order.
    2. Weak enforcement of a direction against a State government: A court can direct compliance but has no machinery of its own to perform an administrative act, so compliance turns on political will. Eg. The Court has had to extend time rather than treat its earlier direction as executed.
      The Fix: Require a dated compliance affidavit for each district with the State Chief Secretary personally answerable for every district returned as nil.
    3. Language requirement as a condition of access: Tying a school system to a language requirement converts an education entitlement into a political question, and the entitlement is what is lost. Eg. Admission runs through a common selection test at Class VI, so a student in a State without these schools has no route into free residential central schooling.
      The Fix: Permit the State’s own two language combination inside the school, so the language dispute stops deciding who gets a seat.
    4. Rural students bear the cost of the standoff: Most seats are reserved for rural candidates, so the students shut out are those least able to pay for residential schooling. Eg. The dispute has run for the length of a full academic cycle without a school being sited.
      The Fix: Pending resolution, extend seats in Navodaya schools in neighbouring States to Tamil Nadu candidates on the same rural reservation terms.

    Conclusion

    The standoff is not about whether a school can be built. It is about what a court can require a State to do when the State’s objection is to a scheme’s content rather than to its legality. Tamil Nadu has neither challenged the direction nor complied with it, and the Court has answered with more time rather than with coercive process. The marker to watch is what the State files at the end of the three months, since a district by district compliance statement would close the matter and its absence would move it from direction to enforcement.

    Back2Basics: the three language formula

    1. What it prescribes: It requires the study of three languages in school, and in the form recommended for Hindi speaking States it covers Hindi, English and a modern Indian language, while in non Hindi speaking States it covers the regional language, English and Hindi.
    2. Where it comes from: It was adopted in the National Policy on Education, 1968, carried forward in the National Policy on Education, 1986, and retained in the National Education Policy, 2020.
    3. What the 2020 policy changed: The policy states that no language will be imposed on any State and leaves the choice of the three languages to States, regions and students, provided at least two of the three are native to India.
    4. Tamil Nadu’s position: The State has stayed outside the formula since 1968 and has followed a two language policy of Tamil and English in schools since then.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS2, 15] What changes has the Union Government recently introduced in the domain of Centre-State relations? Suggest measures to be adopted to build the trust between the Centre and the States and for strengthening federalism.”

  • ‘Over 37 lakh SIR appeals still pending in Bengal tribunals’

    Why in the News

    The Election Commission of India has informed the Supreme Court that 37,18,452 of a total 38,20,683 appeals arising out of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal are still pending before 19 Appellate Tribunals, with only 1,02,231 disposed of. The affidavit, covering appeals across 24 districts, was filed after the Court ordered the Commission to produce the data. Petitioners had complained that pendency and disposal rates were not in the public domain at all, and had relied on a Right to Information (RTI) reply from the election authorities to raise the issue. More than six months have passed since the Court constituted the Appellate Tribunals. The tension is that municipal elections in the State are approaching while the status of most appellants on the roll is undecided, and the Commission’s position is that the working of the tribunals is not its responsibility.

    What is the Special Intensive Revision and what does the appeal route do?

    1. What the revision is: A Special Intensive Revision is a house to house verification exercise in which the existing electoral roll is rebuilt rather than merely corrected, so every elector must establish eligibility afresh.
    2. What it produces: It generates two classes of change, inclusions of new names and exclusions of existing ones, and both are open to challenge.
    3. The appeal route in this case: Appeals arising from the West Bengal exercise lie to 19 Appellate Tribunals constituted by the Supreme Court, which sit alongside the ordinary appellate route to the District Magistrate and then the Chief Electoral Officer.
    4. Why the appeal matters more than usual: A name kept off the roll when the roll is used is off the roll for that election, whatever the appeal later decides, so the timing of the decision carries the same weight as its content.

    What do the pendency figures show?

    1. The aggregate: 38,20,683 appeals were submitted regarding both inclusions and exclusions of voters during the revision.
    2. What has been decided: Only 1,02,231 appeals have been disposed of, which is under three in every hundred filed.
    3. Time elapsed: The tribunals have been in existence for over six months, so the backlog is not a start up delay.
    4. Spread of the caseload: The affidavit, dated 16 September, carries annexures giving separate district by district statistics across all 24 districts.

    What do the district figures reveal about disposal capacity?

    1. Murshidabad: 7,47,921 appeals were filed and only 514 were decided.
    2. Uttar Dinajpur: 3,03,155 appeals are pending, with 9,104 disposed of, which is the strongest district performance on the record.
    3. Purba Bardhaman: Out of 2,80,029 appeals, only 131 had been decided by the tribunals.
    4. What the spread means: Disposal is not tracking caseload anywhere, so the backlog reflects the capacity of the forum rather than the difficulty of particular districts.

    Who actually filed these appeals?

    1. Appeals by excluded voters: Only about seven lakh of the appeals were filed by voters who had been left off the roll and are seeking re inclusion.
    2. Appeals seeking further exclusion: The remaining 31 lakh were filed either by the Commission itself or by other objectors seeking to exclude more people from the West Bengal electoral roll.
    3. Why the split changes the problem: A single undifferentiated queue means an appeal that would restore a voter waits behind appeals that would remove others, so delay operates in one direction only.

    What has the Court asked for, and what is the Commission’s position?

    1. The direction on data: The Court directed the Commission to file an affidavit segregating the number of appeals filed by ousted voters seeking re inclusion from those filed by parties wanting more voters excluded.
    2. The direction on process: The Bench also asked the Commission to consider a mechanism for updating and streamlining the progress of pending appeals before the tribunals.
    3. The open question on priority: The Bench, headed by the Chief Justice of India, sought the breakup by nature of appeal before deciding whether appeals by disenfranchised voters seeking re inclusion should be prioritised.
    4. The Commission’s distancing: The affidavit said the appellate mechanism and its accessibility fall within the standard operating procedures governing these fora and the authorities entrusted with their administration, and that the “feasibility, modalities and implementation” of any streamlining measure are best left to the Appellate Tribunal concerned rather than being made the subject of directions against the Commission.

    Challenges to the SIR appellate process

    1. Disposal capacity measured against the electoral calendar: A forum that clears under three per cent of its caseload in six months settles the roll by inaction rather than by decision. Eg. Municipal elections in West Bengal fall due while the overwhelming majority of appellants have no order either way.
      The Fix: Fix a statutory outer limit for deciding each appeal, running from the date of filing and enforceable before the roll’s final publication.
    2. No public tracking of progress: Figures on filing and disposal reached the record only through litigation, so an appellant cannot see where their own matter stands. Eg. The district annexures were produced only after the Court ordered the Commission to file segregated data.
      The Fix: Publish a dashboard of appeals filed, decided and pending for each tribunal, updated at fixed intervals.
    3. Diffused responsibility for tribunal performance: Where the Commission treats the tribunals’ working as a matter for the authorities administering them, no single body answers for the backlog. Eg. The appellate mechanism runs on standard operating procedures rather than on a statutory timeline with a named accountable officer.
      The Fix: Designate one nodal authority answerable for tribunal disposal rates, reporting to the Court at fixed intervals.
    4. Undifferentiated queueing of opposite claims: Appeals that would restore a name and appeals that would remove one sit in the same line, so the voter already off the roll bears the whole cost of delay. Eg. Roughly four in five appeals on the record seek further exclusions rather than restoration.
      The Fix: Split the docket into two tracks and decide re inclusion appeals before the date of final publication of the roll.

    Conclusion

    The dispute has shifted away from the revision itself. What is now contested is whether the remedy built to correct the revision can operate at the speed the electoral calendar demands, because an appeal undecided when the roll is used produces the same result as an appeal dismissed. The Commission has placed responsibility for the tribunals’ working with the tribunals and their administering authorities, and the Court has not yet placed it anywhere else. The thing to watch is whether the Court orders re inclusion appeals to be heard first, which is the question it framed and left open.

    Back2Basics: Representation of the People Act, 1950

    1. What it governs: It deals with the allocation of seats in the Lok Sabha and State legislatures, delimitation of constituencies, qualifications of voters, and the preparation and revision of electoral rolls.
    2. How it differs from the 1951 Act: The Representation of the People Act, 1951 governs the actual conduct of elections, qualifications and disqualifications of candidates, corrupt practices and election disputes, so rolls sit in the 1950 Act and polls in the 1951 Act.
    3. Revision of rolls: Section 21 provides for the preparation and revision of electoral rolls, including a special revision of a constituency or part of one for reasons to be recorded.
    4. The ordinary appeal route: Section 24 allows an appeal against an order of the Electoral Registration Officer to the District Magistrate, and from there to the Chief Electoral Officer of the State.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026, GS2, 10] 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?”