💥Join UPSC 2027,2028 Mentorship (August Batch) + XFactor Notes & Microthemes PDF
Talk to Mentor

Civilsdaily

Login

GS Paper: GS2

  • Unimpeded trade needs IPMDA as the answer

    Unimpeded trade needs IPMDA as the answer

    Why in the News

    Maritime domain awareness has been identified as the missing focus in United States and India cooperation on unimpeded trade, a term both sides have agreed to without qualification. The Foreign and Commerce Ministers of the two countries have underscored the need for reciprocal trade and energy agreements. The setting is adverse on three counts: mounting sanctions have strained the relationship, visa problems affect Indians travelling to the United States, and the war in West Asia has produced an energy crisis. What is contested is whether Washington can keep the sea lanes its economy depends on open without regional powers such as New Delhi carrying part of the surveillance load.

    What is the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA)?

    1. A Quad initiative launched in 2022: IPMDA was launched under the Quadrilateral framework of India, Australia, Japan and the United States as the most credible multilateral architecture yet devised for the surveillance problem.
    2. What it actually does: It is a technology based mechanism for sharing near real time maritime data across partner nations.
    3. What the data is for: The shared picture allows partners to detect, deter and respond to threats to the free flow of trade.
    4. Where its operationalisation rests: Its full operationalisation is anchored in cooperation between the United States and India under the Quad.

    What is maritime domain awareness (MDA)?

    1. A layered picture of activity at sea: MDA is the assimilation of data from several technologies into an effective understanding of the maritime domain.
    2. What the picture is used to judge: It covers the effects of maritime activity on security, safety, the economy and the environment together, rather than naval movement alone.

    What is the Automatic Identification System (AIS)?

    1. A transponder that broadcasts a ship’s identity and position: AIS is the transponder carriage requirement applied to vessels. A fitted vessel continuously transmits its identity, position, course and speed to nearby ships and shore stations.
    2. Why switching it off matters: A vessel that disables its transponder disappears from the civil tracking picture without leaving the water, which is the practice analysts call going dark.

    Why is the Indo-Pacific the artery on which the trade argument rests?

    1. The circulatory system of the global economy: The Indo-Pacific is a vast maritime corridor through which nearly 7 trillion dollars in trade flows annually.
    2. What the corridor connects: It links energy producers in the Persian Gulf to manufacturing hubs in East Asia and to consumer markets across the Americas.
    3. The chokepoints inside its waters: The Straits of Malacca, the Lombok and the Sunda straits, Hormuz, Bab-al-Mandeb and the Mozambique channel all sit within it, and each is crucial for both energy and container supplies.
    4. Why the West Asia crisis widened the frame: The crisis demonstrated that the region is a geostrategic location not only for India and the United States but for the rest of the world.

    What does the surveillance gap allow?

    1. A gap that is geographic, jurisdictional and institutional at once: The threat to the corridor is a convergence of state sponsored coercion, illegal maritime activity and a surveillance deficit that even the United States finds challenging to address alone.
    2. Vessels going dark: Hundreds of vessels across the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea and the Western Pacific routinely disable their AIS transponders, likely to evade sanctions and conceal cargo, which also creates safety and environmental threats.
    3. Contraband movement at sea: Such vessels may be engaged in smuggling or in ship to ship transfers of contraband, which never touch a monitored port.
    4. Fishing fleets outside the rules: Many smaller fishing vessels fall outside mandatory AIS carriage requirements and are found fishing illegally in other nations’ waters or on the high seas, which depletes regional stocks and undermines the food security of littoral states.
    5. Grey zone coercion: Non state and state affiliated actors conduct operations designed to intimidate and coerce. Those operations are calibrated to escape any legal or conventional military response.

    How does the shared surveillance architecture work?

    1. The 2026 collaboration layer: The Quad’s Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Collaboration 2026 (IPMSC) sits under the IPMDA architecture and rests on the shared understanding that no country can monitor the vast oceans alone.
    2. What data is fused: It integrates commercial satellite based radio frequency monitoring, radar fusion and existing partner nation sensor networks.
    3. What the fusion produces: Sharing that fused data with like minded partners creates a layered, near continuous picture of maritime activity.
    4. The Indian acquisition behind it: India purchased SeaVision technology from the United States in 2025, along with software enhancements, training and the logistical support needed for mutual MDA cooperation.

    Why is cooperation between the United States and India necessary but not sufficient?

    1. The American interest is one of concentration: Regional cooperation in the Indian Ocean is essential for the United States if it is to focus on its immediate neighbourhood in the Pacific and the Atlantic.
    2. India already holds the matching institution: The Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR), established at Gurugram in 2018, is a natural institutional complement to the regional hub architecture of IPMDA.
    3. Why the arrangement suits India: IPMDA amplifies India’s reach without requiring it to surrender control over its own maritime data or decisions.
    4. The stated limit: With the basics already in place, cooperation between the two countries is necessary and not sufficient to cover the corridor.

    Which partners have to join for the architecture to cover the region?

    1. The Quad and Southeast Asia: Full potential is realised only through the active participation of existing Quad partners and of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) partner states.
    2. The Pacific Island nations: These states constitute critical maritime corridors and are indispensable to a continuous picture of the Pacific approaches.
    3. The European Union: The bloc has upheld the importance of free and open trade since the Hormuz crisis, which signals an appetite for engagement that Washington and New Delhi must cultivate.
    4. Smaller littoral partners: Bangladesh, the Maldives, the Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Fiji hold independent surveillance infrastructure of their own.
    5. Why their systems fail: Their waters are frequently exploited because those systems remain ineffective against maritime crimes that originate beyond their jurisdictions, which is precisely the gap a shared picture closes.

    What does the shift from presence to transparency change about deterrence?

    1. The old assumption has collapsed: The strategic environment has systematically dismantled the assumption that open trade is unilaterally sustainable.
    2. Contestation hardens into precedent: Freedom of navigation is increasingly contested, and contestation that goes unrebutted has become precedent in recent years.
    3. Transparency as a deterrent: In a region where coercion has become the currency of power, visibility of what happens at sea has to function as deterrence in its own right.

    Challenges to IPMDA

    1. Data classification limits what can be shared: Partners will not release sensor derived military data on the same terms as commercial satellite data, which thins the picture at the point where it matters. Eg. Radio frequency and radar tracks of naval auxiliaries are routinely withheld even among treaty allies. Fix. Build the shared layer on unclassified commercial data by default and keep classified feeds in a separate bilateral channel.
    2. Detection without enforcement changes nothing: A dark vessel identified in an exclusive economic zone still needs a ship or aircraft to intercept it. Eg. Illegal fishing fleets operating off East Africa are frequently tracked and rarely boarded. Fix. Pair the data hub with pooled coast guard patrol assets and pre agreed boarding arrangements between neighbouring states.
    3. ASEAN hesitancy about Quad branding: Several Southeast Asian states avoid initiatives read as an anti China bloc, which limits regional take up. Eg. Divergent positions within ASEAN on the South China Sea have repeatedly blocked a unified maritime response. Fix. Route the data offer through ASEAN centred bodies and existing information fusion centres rather than under a Quad label.
    4. Dependence on a single technology supplier: The picture rests on platforms and commercial imagery contracts controlled outside the region. Eg. India’s own MDA upgrade in 2025 came through the purchase of an American software platform. Fix. Fund an indigenous radio frequency satellite constellation so that the regional picture survives a supplier or sanctions disruption.
    5. Continuity of a leaders’ level grouping: The Quad has no secretariat or treaty base, so its programmes track political calendars in four capitals. Eg. The grouping failed to convene a leader level summit in 2025. Fix. Anchor the surveillance programme in a standing technical secretariat with its own multi year budget line.
    6. The dark fleet keeps growing faster than the sensors: Sanctions evasion has created a large fleet of ageing tankers with opaque ownership and no reliable insurance. Eg. Ship to ship transfers of sanctioned crude are routinely conducted outside monitored ports. Fix. Tie port entry and insurance recognition to a verified transponder record for the whole voyage.

    Conclusion

    Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific can no longer be underwritten by a single navy, and the response has shifted from presence at sea to a shared picture of what happens at sea. IPMDA and its 2026 surveillance layer make that picture technically possible, and their value depends on whether capacity constrained littoral states, ASEAN members, the Pacific Islands and the European Union are inside the arrangement rather than outside it. What remains unresolved is enforcement, since detection produces deterrence only where a partner state can act on what it has been shown.

    “[2021, GS2, 15 marks] The newly tri-nation partnership AUKUS is aimed at countering China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region. Is it going to supersede the existing partnerships in the region? Discuss the strength and impact of AUKUS in the present scenario.”

  • SIR’s exclusion of citizens is made possible by complicity of institutions

    Why in the News

    Tribunals in West Bengal are struggling to handle the caseload thrown up by the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, and every State running the exercise is reporting rising numbers of electors marked “absent”, “shifted”, “dead” and “duplicate”. The Supreme Court settled the legal question in Association for Democratic Reforms and Others v. Election Commission of India and Others (May 2026). That ruling upheld the Election Commission of India’s power to conduct the revision. It also recorded the Court’s satisfaction with the procedure the Commission adopted, holding the deletions to be within the parameters of that procedure. The contest is now over whether a constitutional court that declines to scrutinise an electoral authority is protecting institutional autonomy or removing the only check available to an elector who has been struck off.

    What is the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls?

    1. A house to house verification, not a paper update: SIR is a time bound enumeration of the whole roll. Booth Level Officers physically visit every household to verify each entry on it.
    2. It differs from the routine revision: The annual Summary Revision works off claims and objections filed by electors. SIR re-verifies every single existing entry.
    3. Its stated objects: It removes deceased, duplicate and permanently shifted entries, registers newly eligible electors, and extends high security Electors Photo Identity Cards to full coverage.
    4. It is periodic, not novel: Intensive revisions were first run between 1952 and 1956, and India has conducted roughly fourteen such exercises, including those of 1983, 1995, 2002 and 2004.

    What did the Court actually hold in the SIR case?

    1. The power was affirmed: The judgment upholds the Commission’s authority to conduct an intensive revision of the rolls.
    2. The procedure was endorsed: The Court recorded its satisfaction with the procedure the Commission adopted, rather than testing that procedure against outcomes.
    3. The deletions were validated collectively: Deletions were held to fall within the parameters of the approved procedure, which forecloses an individual challenge on the ground that the procedure itself is defective.

    Which of the two available approaches did the Court choose?

    1. The first option was structured suspicion: The Court could have adopted scepticism towards the Commission’s claims of authority, on the view that judicial vigilance is needed to hold the balance between asserted state power and citizens’ rights.
    2. The second option was institutional trust: It could instead repose trust in another constitutional authority, on the assumption that constitutional institutions are themselves sufficiently committed to protecting citizens’ rights, making intensive scrutiny unnecessary.
    3. It took the second: The judgment rests on the premise that a constitutional body does not need to be watched, which is precisely the premise a rights challenge exists to test.
    4. Rights are lost by practice, not only by intent: An authority can undermine citizens’ rights without any explicit intention to do so, simply through unreasonable practices applied at scale.
    5. Trust tests motive, scrutiny tests effect: A court satisfied that a body means well never reaches the question of what the body’s method actually produces on the ground.
    6. The error is not isolated: It sits inside a broader contemporary judicial tendency that increasingly privileges “authority” over the citizen asserting a right against it.

    How does the ruling fail the principle of representation?

    1. Representation was the missing anchor: The judgment is not anchored in the foundational principle underlying the controversy, which is representation, so the logic of representation did not inform how the Commission’s authority was read.
    2. Inclusion is now a defining requirement of citizenship: As democracy has evolved and the idea of citizenship has expanded, full inclusion has become one of its central requirements.
    3. The requirement runs in two directions: Citizenship must not be denied or diminished on grounds such as sex, religion, race, caste or class, and political representation is not meaningful if citizens are effectively disabled from participating in elections as voters.
    4. The arithmetic follows: Leaving eligible electors out of an election inevitably produces flawed representation, whatever the quality of the procedure that excluded them.

    Can a power to purify the rolls be exercised without becoming a power to exclude?

    1. The power was accepted without its limit: Having accepted that the Commission may prepare rolls and examine whether a person is genuinely entitled to be on them, the Court did not ensure that this power of scrutiny stops short of excluding or harassing eligible voters.
    2. The default duty runs the other way: In a democratic election the Commission’s first responsibility is to include, not to exclude, and a verification drive inverts that default by design.
    3. The Commission was not seized of inclusion: Nothing in the record shows the Commission asking whether its verification drive keeps eligible electors on the roll.
    4. The instrument turns on its purpose: Without a stated inclusion duty, the revision becomes a hatchet rather than a purifying procedure.

    Who bears the cost of a documentation based test of eligibility?

    1. Exclusion is not random in practice: The state’s exclusion operates randomly as a general rule, but a documentation regime used as evidence of citizenship does not fall evenly.
    2. The exposed groups are identifiable in advance: Vast numbers of women, the poor and the marginalised are particularly vulnerable to being trapped by such regimes, both as a matter of theory and as an empirical reality.
    3. The democratic cost is the endpoint: A disproportionate exclusion of these groups undermines democratic representation itself, not merely the individual entitlements of those removed.

    What happens to a citizen after the name is deleted?

    1. The verdict routes deletions to the executive: It directs the Commission to report to the Home Ministry the names of persons whose entries have been deleted, for further adjudication of their claims.
    2. The exercise acquires a second use: That direction allows the Commission and the government to weaponise the revision, pushing individuals into a zone of doubt, suspicion and harassment.
    3. A cautious judgment produced an expansive institution: A ruling anxious not to enter the Commission’s domain has obliquely enabled the Commission to transcend that domain and become enmeshed with executive authority.
    4. The consequences run past the vote: The exercise may end by creating a class of shifted, absent and duplicate persons pushed to the margins of formal existence, with passports and claims to welfare schemes also cast into doubt.

    Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

    1. Booth level staff are set impossible targets: Verification of every entry within a compressed window is loaded onto officers who already hold full time teaching or clerical posts. Eg. Booth Level Officers in West Bengal reported acute duty stress during the current cycle, including cases of suicide. Fix. Cap the number of entries assigned per officer per day and pay a separate verification honorarium tied to that cap.
    2. Legacy document requirements exclude the undocumented: Asking for a birth certificate or an ancestral roll entry disqualifies people whose births were never registered. Eg. Civil registration of births was far from universal in the birth cohorts now in their fifties and sixties. Fix. Accept a widened evidence set including electricity bills, ration cards and community certificates, with a declaration by the Booth Level Officer as a residual proof.
    3. Grievance redress does not keep pace with deletions: Claims and objections pile up faster than hearing officers can dispose of them, so the roll freezes with the disputes unresolved. Eg. Only a fraction of the roughly six million claims filed in West Bengal were disposed of before the poll freeze. Fix. Constitute standing appellate tribunals for electoral rolls that sit year round rather than temporary benches raised at revision time.
    4. Field marking is subjective: A single officer decides on one visit whether an elector is “shifted” or “absent”, with no second visit and no corroboration requirement. Eg. Households locked at the time of a daytime visit are routinely marked absent. Fix. Mandate geotagged evidence of at least two visits at different times of day before any absence marking is recorded.
    5. Manual capture introduces avoidable error: Offline field data is later keyed into the database by hand, so transcription mistakes enter the roll after verification has finished. Eg. Name and age mismatches between the field form and the uploaded entry are a recurring source of objections. Fix. Issue tablets with offline forms that sync directly, removing the separate data entry step.
    6. Fear of a citizenship screen suppresses cooperation: Residents who read the exercise as a covert citizenship test refuse to produce documents, which raises the very deletion risk they fear. Eg. Households in border districts have declined to hand over papers during roll verification. Fix. Print on the enumeration form itself that the exercise determines electoral registration only and creates no finding on nationality.

    Conclusion

    The exclusions now surfacing across States are not an administrative accident sitting downstream of a sound legal position. They follow from the judicial choice set out above, and from the direction routing deleted names to the executive for further adjudication. What remains unresolved is whether a court will accept that a power to verify carries a matching duty to include, because until it does, the elector who is struck off has a procedure to follow and no forum that will ask whether the procedure was reasonable.

    “[2024, GS2, 10 marks] Examine the need for electoral reforms as suggested by various committees with particular reference to “one nation-one election” principle.”

  • Routine data or citizenship check? Why Census questionnaire sparked concern

    Why in the News

    The questionnaire for the population enumeration phase of Census 2027 has triggered a political controversy. The principal Opposition party has alleged that detailed questions about respondents and their parents could facilitate surveillance and serve a “deeper nefarious purpose”, and the Left has raised the same objection. The controversy follows a report of 15 August 2026 that several new or modified questions in the Census questionnaire were also part of the National Population Register (NPR) schedule notified in 2020. That schedule became contentious during protests over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 and fears of a nationwide National Register of Citizens. Two things are now contested: whether a statistical exercise should collect identifiers that link a person across government databases, and whether a register of residents can stay separate from a register of citizens when the law connects the two.

    What is the National Population Register?

    1. A register of usual residents, not of citizens: The NPR records every person ordinarily resident in a local area, and it makes no finding on anyone’s nationality.
    2. Usual resident, defined: A usual resident is a person who has lived in a local area for at least six months, or who intends to stay there for the next six months.
    3. Foreigners can be on it: A foreign national who meets the six month residence test is a usual resident and is entered in the register.
    4. It is not a new exercise: The NPR was first prepared in 2010 alongside the houselisting phase of the 2011 Census, and it was updated through a door to door exercise in 2015.

    What is the National Register of Citizens?

    1. A register of verified citizens: The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a list of persons established to be Indian citizens, prepared by verifying claims against documentary proof of descent or residence.
    2. It has been compiled only in one State: The single updated NRC exercise so far was the Supreme Court monitored update in Assam, completed in 2019.

    What exactly has changed in the Census 2027 questionnaire?

    1. Scale of the change: The schedule carries 40 questions, of which 14 are new or modified compared with the 2011 Census.
    2. Eight questions carried over from the 2020 NPR schedule: These are nationality as declared, father’s particulars, mother’s particulars, mobile number, Aadhaar, voter identity card, passport and driving licence.
    3. The parental fields are the most contested: The NPR schedule sought the date and place of birth of a person’s father and mother, down to the district and the State.
    4. A foreign birthplace had to be named: Where a parent was born outside India, the country of birth had to be recorded. These parental questions were at the centre of the political opposition to the NPR.

    Why is the privacy objection different from earlier Census rounds?

    1. The stated purpose has always been aggregate: Census data has traditionally been collected for population statistics and planning, not for identifying a named individual.
    2. The new schedule collects identifiers, not just attributes: It seeks a much wider range of personal information, including details that can identify a person or link that person to other government databases.
    3. The real question is downstream, not upstream: The issue is not how much data the government collects. It is how that data is stored, protected and used once collected.

    How is the Population Register linked in law to the citizens’ register?

    1. A statutory chain exists between the two: The Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003 provide for the preparation of a Population Register and for its verification for the preparation of the citizens’ register.
    2. The Rules create a category of doubt: They also provide for individuals whose citizenship is considered doubtful to be marked for further inquiry.
    3. The link is legal, not political: The connection sits in subordinate legislation, so it survives any assurance given by a government of the day.

    Why did that legal link become politically explosive in 2019-20?

    1. The sequencing was the problem: The NPR was revived soon after the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 was passed by Parliament.
    2. Assam supplied the precedent: The NRC exercise in Assam had excluded around 19 lakh people, giving a concrete picture of what a documentation based citizenship test produces.
    3. The Union executive named the sequence itself: The Union Home Minister repeatedly spoke of a nationwide NRC and asked people to understand the “chronology”. That chronology placed the Act first and the register after it.
    4. Perception overtook the instrument: A previously uncontroversial statistical exercise came to be read as one associated with the possibility of citizenship being questioned.

    What did the government say in 2020, and why did the assurance not settle the issue?

    1. The contested fields were declared optional: The government stated that the questions on parents’ date and place of birth need not be answered.
    2. The stated purpose was welfare delivery: The NPR was described as primarily a database of residents intended to improve policy formulation and the delivery of welfare schemes.
    3. The administrative case was demographic: Knowing the demographic composition of an area was said to help governments plan services and identify beneficiaries.
    4. The assurance contradicted the record: In December 2019 the Union Home Minister said NPR data would never be used for an NRC and that the two exercises were governed by different laws. Earlier government statements in Parliament had taken the opposite position, as the statutory link set out above already did.

    Does the government have a legitimate case for collecting this data?

    1. Detailed demographic data has real administrative value: A comprehensive database of residents helps the government formulate policy, plan public services, identify beneficiaries and improve national security.
    2. Linkage cuts duplication: Information drawn from different government databases reduces duplication and discrepancies in records, and cuts paperwork for citizens.
    3. The identifiers were the design, not an add on: The NPR was envisaged as a way of bringing basic demographic information together with mobile numbers and identity documents, so that government services run more efficiently.
    4. The objectives are not unreasonable in themselves: Neither the resident register nor the citizens’ register is inherently improper as an exercise in public administration.

    Is the objection to the questions themselves or to the trust deficit around them?

    1. The questions are ordinary in isolation: A field asking for a parent’s place of birth is a standard demographic variable in statistical systems worldwide.
    2. Timing converted them into a citizenship test: The 2019-20 difficulty was that the register was revived at a moment of dented public trust, and the assurances offered failed to restore it.
    3. Trust, once lost, redefines the instrument: Questions that would otherwise read as routine are now read through the prism of citizenship and surveillance.

    Challenges to the Census 2027 data collection exercise

    1. No purpose limitation on identifier fields: Nothing in the notified schedule bars the linkage of Census records to other identity databases at a later date. Eg. The Aadhaar number was originally described as voluntary proof of residence and later became a precondition for a range of subsidies. Fix. Notify a purpose limitation clause under the Census Act, 1948 barring individual level linkage of Census records with any other database.
    2. Digital collection widens the breach surface: A mobile application based enumeration of over 1.4 billion people stores personally identifiable data in a way a paper schedule never did. Eg. The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited breach of May 2024 leaked 278 gigabytes of subscriber data from a public sector network. Fix. Designate the Census data centres as Critical Information Infrastructure and mandate independent security audits before the enumeration window opens.
    3. Self enumeration depends on digital capability: The self enumeration option assumes a smartphone, connectivity and the literacy to complete a 40 question schedule unaided. Eg. Rural self response rates in comparable digital surveys run far below urban rates. Fix. Fund assisted self enumeration desks at common service centres and panchayat offices for the duration of the window.
    4. Fear of citizenship scrutiny corrupts the data: Households that suspect the schedule feeds a citizenship check give incomplete or inaccurate answers, which damages the statistics the exercise exists to produce. Eg. Enumerators in Assam faced sustained non cooperation during the NRC update. Fix. Issue a public statement in the enumeration instructions that no Census response will be used in any individual citizenship or law enforcement proceeding.
    5. Caste enumeration invites organised inflation: Recording caste for the first time since 1931 creates an incentive for groups to coordinate responses in pursuit of quota gains. Eg. The Socio Economic and Caste Census of 2011 recorded over 46 lakh distinct caste and sub caste entries, which made the data unusable for policy. Fix. Publish a pre coded, State specific list of jatis drawn from State Backward Classes Commission records before enumeration begins.
    6. State capacity is stretched across two exercises: The same district administration runs the Census and the electoral roll work in the same period, which raises error rates in both. Eg. Booth level staff across several States have been simultaneously assigned roll revision and enumeration duties. Fix. Ring fence enumeration staff from all other duty assignments for the notified Census period.

    Conclusion

    The dispute is not really about how many questions the schedule carries. It rests on the statutory link set out above, which is why a statistical instrument can be read as the first step of an eligibility test. The government’s administrative case for richer data is sound on its own terms, and the downstream safeguard on that data remains unpublished. Until it is published, every additional field in the schedule will be argued over as a citizenship question rather than a statistical one.

    “[2021] With reference to India, consider the following statements:

    1. There is only one citizenship and one domicile.

    2. A citizen by birth only can become the Head of State.

    3. A foreigner, once granted citizenship, cannot be deprived of it under any circumstances.

    Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 only

    (c) 1 and 3

    (d) 2 and 3

  • SC trims law practice requirement to 1 year for judicial service

    Why in the News

    The Supreme Court has upheld the requirement of prior legal practice for entry into the judicial service. The same order cuts the mandated experience from three years to one. The decision came on review petitions filed against All India Judges Association v. Union of India (May 2025). That judgment had reintroduced a minimum practice condition for candidates applying to the post of Civil Judge (Junior Division), reversing an earlier position that allowed fresh law graduates to sit the examination. The present order was passed by a majority of 2:1 in a three judge Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India. What is contested is whether one year at the Bar can supply the courtroom exposure that the three year rule was designed to guarantee, or whether the shortfall has simply been shifted into training the judiciary itself will now have to deliver.

    What has the Court now ordered on eligibility for judicial service?

    1. The principle survives: Prior legal practice remains a precondition for applying to the judicial service, so the 2025 position that a law degree alone is insufficient is undisturbed.
    2. The quantum is cut by two thirds: The required period of active legal practice falls from three years to one year.
    3. The margin was narrow: The majority opinion was delivered by two judges of a three judge Bench, with the Chief Justice of India authoring it.
    4. The vehicle was a review: The order was passed on review petitions filed against the May 2025 verdict, so it revisits that judgment rather than deciding a fresh challenge.

    How is the shortened practice requirement compensated?

    1. A year at a judicial academy follows selection: A successful applicant carrying one year of legal practice undergoes a one year intensive training programme at the State judicial academy concerned.
    2. A clerkship year follows the academy: That training is followed by a final year of law clerkship with senior judicial officers and High Court judges.
    3. The total exposure is rebuilt to three years: One year of practice, one year of academy training and one year of clerkship together restore the three year period the 2025 judgment had demanded at the Bar alone.
    4. The locus of training shifts: Two of those three years are now delivered inside the judicial system rather than in independent practice.

    What happens to candidates who applied in the interregnum?

    1. A year has already elapsed: The majority noted that a full year has passed since the May 2025 judgment, during which recruitment continued under uncertainty.
    2. Interregnum applicants are deemed compliant: Candidates who applied for the post of Civil Judge (Junior Division) in that period are treated as having completed the required one year of active legal practice.
    3. No proof will be demanded from them: They will not be asked to furnish certificates of proof of practice.
    4. The rule bites from a fixed date: The one year prior practice requirement comes into force in earnest from 1 April 2027.

    Does a one year requirement still deliver what Bar experience was meant to supply?

    1. The dissent rejects the reduction: One judge on the Bench dissented from the majority view on the shortened period.
    2. The stated ground is readiness: The dissenting opinion holds that experience at the Bar is essential for students coming straight out of college, which is an argument about courtroom judgement rather than about length of service.
    3. The majority’s answer is substitution, not agreement: The majority accepts that one year of practice is by itself insufficient, and supplies the balance through the two internal years set out above.
    4. The unresolved question is equivalence: Structured training gives uniform instruction, and practice gives exposure to litigants, adversarial pressure and case failure. The order does not establish that the two are interchangeable.

    Challenges to a prior practice requirement for judicial service

    1. It delays entry and shrinks the applicant pool: A compulsory year at the Bar pushes the earliest entry age up and deters graduates who cannot fund an unpaid year. Eg. Stipends for junior advocates in district courts frequently fall below minimum wage levels in the same district. Fix. Make the practice year count only where the candidate is paid a notified minimum stipend, funded through a Bar Council administered corpus.
    2. Proof of practice invites certification abuse: Practice is usually certified by a senior advocate or a judicial officer, which turns an eligibility condition into a patronage transaction. Eg. Certificates of practice have historically been contested in service litigation over district judiciary appointments. Fix. Replace discretionary certificates with an objective test of appearances recorded on the National Judicial Data Grid.
    3. It falls unevenly on first generation and women entrants: Candidates without family in the profession lack the chambers access that makes a practice year viable. Eg. Women have been the majority of successful candidates in several State judicial service examinations, a pattern that a mandatory chambers year puts at risk. Fix. Create funded court attachment schemes at every district court reserved for first generation law graduates.
    4. Vacancies are already the binding constraint: Adding a filter at entry slows recruitment into a cadre where roughly one fourth of sanctioned posts already lie vacant. Eg. Subordinate courts carry a pendency of about 49 million cases, with over 1.8 lakh cases pending for more than thirty years. Fix. Run recruitment cycles on a fixed annual calendar so the eligibility change does not compound the delay in filling posts.
    5. Training capacity has not been sized for the new load: The academy year now required of every recruit assumes faculty and residential capacity that most academies do not have. Eg. Several State judicial academies run induction courses of a few months rather than a full year. Fix. Fund academy expansion under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme for judicial infrastructure before the rule takes effect in 2027.
    6. The reform addresses quality of entrants, not throughput: Better prepared judges do not by themselves raise disposal where procedure, adjournments and clerical load consume court time. Eg. The case clearance rate in subordinate courts stands at about 89 per cent, so pendency accumulates even with sitting judges at work. Fix. Appoint professional court managers at every district court complex to take administrative work off judicial officers.

    Conclusion

    The Court has retained the principle that a judicial officer should reach the bench with courtroom exposure. It conceded at the same time that a three year bar at the Bar was too heavy a filter for a cadre already short of judges. The compromise moves two of the three years inside the system, and defers the whole scheme so it applies in earnest from 1 April 2027. The next step is with the State High Courts and Public Service Commissions, which must align their service rules and academy capacity before that date.

    Subordinate judiciary in India

    1. Where it sits: The subordinate judiciary comprises the district and taluka level civil and criminal courts, and it is where the overwhelming majority of litigation begins and ends.
    2. The staffing position: India has roughly 21 judges per million people, against the Law Commission’s recommended benchmark of 50.
    3. Who controls it: The High Court of each State exercises administrative and disciplinary control over the subordinate courts within its jurisdiction.

    Constitutional framework governing the subordinate judiciary

    1. Article 233: Provides for the appointment of District Judges by the Governor in consultation with the High Court.
    2. Article 234: Governs the recruitment of persons other than District Judges to the judicial service, by the Governor in consultation with the State Public Service Commission and the High Court.
    3. Article 235: Vests administrative and disciplinary control over the subordinate judiciary in the High Court.
    4. Article 236: Defines “district judge” and “judicial service” for the purposes of this Chapter.
    5. Article 312: Empowers Parliament to create an All India Judicial Service on a Rajya Sabha resolution passed by a two thirds majority.

    Government initiatives for the subordinate judiciary

    1. eCourts Mission Mode Project, Phase III: Funds digitisation of case records, virtual courts and paperless court rooms across district judiciary establishments.
    2. Centrally Sponsored Scheme for Development of Infrastructure Facilities for the Judiciary: Finances court halls, residential units, lawyers’ halls and digital computer rooms at the district and subordinate level.
    3. Fast Track Special Courts: Dedicated courts set up to try offences under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 and rape cases within statutory timelines.
    4. National Judicial Data Grid: A public dashboard publishing case pendency, disposal and age of cases for every district court, which makes court level performance comparable.

    Back2Basics: Civil Judge (Junior Division)

    1. The entry post: It is the lowest rung of the State judicial service and the post through which most judicial officers enter the district judiciary.
    2. How recruitment happens: Candidates are selected under Article 234 through an examination conducted by the State Public Service Commission or the High Court, in consultation with the High Court.
    3. What the court tries: A Civil Judge (Junior Division) exercises original civil jurisdiction up to a pecuniary limit fixed by State law, and the corresponding criminal post is Judicial Magistrate First Class.
    4. Career path: Promotion runs to Civil Judge (Senior Division) and then to the cadre of District Judge, with a share of District Judge posts filled by direct recruitment from the Bar.

    “[2025, GS2, 15 marks] Discuss the evolution of collegium system in India. Critically examine the advantages and disadvantages of the system on appointment of the Judges of the Supreme Court of India and that of the USA.”

  • Modi-ism must evolve into institution-centred nation-building

    Modi-ism must evolve into institution-centred nation-building

    Why in the News

    The political and governing order built around the Prime Minister, given the name Modi-ism, is being tested against the constitutional settlement rather than only against its delivery record. The 2024 verdict returned the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with 240 seats and made coalition partners necessary, which qualified a leader centred mandate without rejecting it.

    What is the governing order named Modi-ism?

    1. About: Modi-ism is the name given to the political and governing order built around the Prime Minister. It is a method of acquiring power, exercising authority and defining the nation.
    2. Named features: The order is built on eight elements: a commanding leader, a disciplined party organisation, civilisational assertion, centralised decision-making, technology-driven welfare, infrastructure-led development, high-energy national security and direct communication with citizens.
    3. Central promise: The promise is a strong leader, a purposeful state and a stronger India.

    What has the order actually delivered?

    1. Political transformation: The BJP moved from being a major national formation to the central axis of Indian politics. It expanded beyond its traditional geographical and social constituencies and made leadership itself the principal electoral proposition.
    2. The 2024 qualification: The BJP fell to 240 seats in 2024 and required its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners to form the government. The verdict chose continuity and restored the relevance of consultation, coalition and restraint.
    3. Delivery at scale: Infrastructure construction, digital public platforms, direct benefit transfers, financial inclusion, sanitation, housing, electrification and welfare delivery at scale strengthened the state’s capacity to reach citizens.
    4. Poverty measurement: NITI Aayog estimated multidimensional poverty at 11.28 per cent in 2022-23, against 29.17 per cent in 2013-14. The methodology is contested, the improvement in delivery is not.
    5. Political containment: The order contained the undue proliferation of regional politics to some degree.
    6. Source of appeal: The order speaks in the language of aspiration, national confidence and civilisational recovery. Citizens long frustrated by delay, indecision and fragmented authority respond to a government promising speed and scale.

    Why is effectiveness not a sufficient test of democratic government?

    1. The five charges: Critics allege that the order seeks to weaken pluralism, dilute socialism, replace rights with governmental charity, capture institutions and ultimately alter the Constitution.
    2. The counter position: Supporters dismiss these charges as partisan hostility or as resistance to India’s cultural resurgence. Both positions are too absolute, since constitutional character must be judged through the actual exercise of power rather than through slogans.
    3. Evidence against dismantling: Elections remain fiercely competitive, governments change in the States, Opposition parties govern substantial parts of the country, and courts continue to examine executive action and enforce fundamental rights.
    4. The Preamble ruling: In November 2024 the Supreme Court rejected petitions challenging the inclusion of the words socialist and secular in the Preamble.
    5. The real risk: A Constitution can be weakened without its words being formally deleted. Institutions may remain intact on paper as their independence, credibility and conventions erode.
    6. What sustains democracy: Democracy rests on five supports beyond periodic elections: restraints on power, respect for dissent, parliamentary accountability, federal balance and equal citizenship.

    What do the pluralism and socialism debates actually turn on?

    1. Pluralism: Religious freedom has not been legally abolished. Majoritarian mobilisation and inflammatory language make minorities feel conditionally accepted.
    2. The distinction drawn: Cultural nationalism is constitutionally legitimate. Cultural supremacy is not.
    3. Equal citizenship: The republic belongs without qualification to every citizen. Equal citizenship cannot depend on religion, political loyalty or conformity with a preferred account of national identity.
    4. What socialism does not mean: Constitutional socialism does not demand a return to the licence-permit raj, hostility to private enterprise or indiscriminate state ownership.
    5. What socialism does mean: It requires social and economic justice, equality of opportunity and protection against degrading deprivation.

    Why must welfare reach a citizen as a right rather than as a gift?

    1. The presentation problem: Statutory entitlements are politically presented as personal gifts from a leader. Food support, employment guarantees, housing, scholarships and social security are public obligations financed by citizens and delivered under law.
    2. The ordering principle: Rights-based governance must complement beneficiary politics rather than be displaced by it. A citizen must remain a rights-holder rather than a grateful beneficiary.
    3. What technology fixes: Technology reduces leakage and accelerates delivery.
    4. What technology creates: Citizens excluded by failed authentication, inaccurate databases or administrative discretion need accessible remedies.
    5. The four safeguards: Welfare requires enforceable standards, grievance redress, social audits and legislative scrutiny.

    What does the record on Parliament and appointments show?

    1. Speed of legislation: During the seventeenth Lok Sabha, 58 per cent of bills were passed within two weeks of introduction.
    2. Committee referral: Only 16 per cent of bills were referred to parliamentary committees.
    3. Budget scrutiny: Around 80 per cent of the Union Budget was voted without discussion between 2019 and 2023.
    4. Political funding: The Supreme Court decision striking down the electoral bond scheme established that secrecy in political funding had crossed a constitutional boundary.
    5. Election commissioner appointments: The law governing the appointment of election commissioners gives the executive a majority on the selection committee, which has raised concerns about perceived independence.
    6. The test for autonomy: Institutional autonomy depends on more than technical legality. It requires transparent appointments, procedural fairness and visible distance from partisan command, so independence is protected in public perception as well as in fact.

    What corrections would a shift to institution-centred nation-building require?

    1. Parliament: Parliament must recover serious deliberation, committee scrutiny and control over public expenditure.
    2. Federalism: Federal consultation must precede major decisions affecting the States.
    3. Appointments and agencies: Appointments to constitutional and regulatory bodies should command cross-party credibility. Investigative agencies must be demonstrably even-handed.
    4. Welfare and discourse: Welfare delivery must be joined to enforceable rights, and political discourse must replace habitual polarisation with constitutional fraternity.
    5. The next development phase: The eight stated goals are productive employment, competitive manufacturing, stronger small enterprises, higher farm incomes, quality public education, accessible healthcare, liveable cities and climate resilience.
    6. Party institutionalisation: No durable national party can remain indefinitely dependent on one personality. It needs empowered ministers, credible regional leaders, internal debate and an orderly culture of succession.

    Challenges to Institution-Centred Nation-Building

    1. Executive control of the legislative calendar: A ruling coalition can clear the chamber of dissent before a contested bill is taken up. Eg. In December 2023, 146 members were suspended across both Houses, the largest mass suspension since Independence, and the Telecommunications Bill, 2023 was passed with the near entire opposition absent.
    2. A vacant Deputy Speaker’s chair: Article 93 mandates the election of a Deputy Speaker, and the post has been left unfilled for years. Eg. The post lay vacant through the entire seventeenth Lok Sabha and into the eighteenth, so a member from the Speaker’s own panel of chairpersons presided over the no-confidence motion against the Speaker in March 2026.
    3. Discretionary gatekeeping on removal motions: Section 3 of the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 uses the word may, so the presiding officer may refuse a removal motion even when the numerical threshold is met. Eg. In April 2026 a notice signed by 193 opposition members seeking removal of the Chief Election Commissioner was refused admission in both Houses without stated reasons.
    4. The Money Bill route: Certifying a bill as a Money Bill removes the Rajya Sabha’s power to amend it and places the certification beyond ordinary challenge. Eg. The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 was passed as a Money Bill, and the correctness of that certification remains before a larger bench of the Supreme Court.
    5. Bypassed pre-legislative consultation: Draft legislation is often introduced without the public comment period the executive’s own policy prescribes. Eg. The Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy of 2014 requires draft bills to be placed in the public domain for thirty days, and this step is routinely skipped.
    6. Federal consultation deficit: Consultative federal forums exist on paper and meet rarely. Eg. The Inter-State Council, constituted under Article 263, met only once between 2016 and 2024.

    Conclusion

    Effectiveness alone cannot settle the constitutional character of a government, and a Constitution can be hollowed out without a word of its text being altered. The productive core of the order, decisive leadership, infrastructure, digital innovation, credible defence capability and measurable delivery, should continue. What must change is the shift from leader-centred mobilisation to institution-centred nation-building, carried by parliamentary deliberation, federal consultation, cross-party credibility in appointments and welfare delivered as enforceable right. The choice is between an order disciplined by the Constitution and one that seeks to rise above it.

  • Beyond blasphemy: how laws can curtail the possibility of social reform

    Why in the News

    Section 295A and the provisions that succeeded it have been turned against writers, artists and reformers, with arrest, mob campaigns and pre emptive withdrawal delivering the harm long before any verdict. India simultaneously runs statutes that direct the State to attack religious and superstitious practice, so the same legal system both punishes criticism of religion and mandates it.

    What is Section 295A?

    1. What it penalises: Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 punished deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage the religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.
    2. Successor provision: The corresponding offence is now Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.
    3. What the offence turns on: Liability rests on the intent to outrage and not on the truth or falsity of what was said.
    4. How it operates in practice: The offence is cognisable, so a complaint can produce arrest and judicial custody before any court assesses whether malice existed.

    What is the heckler’s veto?

    1. Heckler’s veto: A heckler’s veto is the suppression of expression because a hostile audience threatens disruption or violence, so the objector rather than the law decides what may be said. Speech is stopped in order to keep the peace, which transfers the power of censorship to whoever protests loudest.

    What is a sacrilege law?

    1. Sacrilege law: A sacrilege law criminalises damage to or desecration of a religious text or object, as distinct from an offence aimed at outraging feelings through speech or writing. State level sacrilege provisions of this kind carry punishment extending to imprisonment for life.

    What does the law on outraging religious feelings currently cover in India?

    1. The core offence: Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 penalises deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings by insulting religion or religious beliefs, whether by words, writing, signs or visible representation.
    2. Adjacent offences: Section 298 covers injuring or defiling a place of worship with intent to insult a religion, Section 300 covers disturbing a religious assembly and Section 302 covers uttering words with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings.
    3. Group enmity provisions: Section 196 penalises promoting enmity between groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, language or caste, and Section 197 covers imputations prejudicial to national integration.
    4. No standalone blasphemy statute: India has no offence of blasphemy as such, and the protection is assembled from provisions aimed at intent to outrage rather than at the content of any belief.
    5. State level escalation: Some States have enacted sacrilege provisions carrying punishment up to imprisonment for life, which sets the penalty far above the central provision.
    6. Judicial test applied: In Amish Devgan v Union of India (2020) the Supreme Court laid down a three part contextual test examining the content of the speech, the intent of the speaker and the harm caused or likely to be caused.
    7. Truth is not a defence: Courts have held that a wholly true statement can still outrage religious feelings, so accuracy does not absolve the speaker.

    Constitutional Provisions Related to Free Speech and Religious Freedom

    1. Article 19(1)(a): Guarantees every citizen the right to freedom of speech and expression.
    2. Article 19(2): Permits reasonable restrictions on that right on enumerated grounds, including public order, decency, morality, defamation and incitement to an offence.
    3. Article 25(1): Guarantees freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion, subject to public order, morality and health.
    4. Article 25(2)(a) and Article 25(2)(b): Permit the State to regulate secular activity associated with religious practice, and to provide for social welfare and reform including throwing open Hindu religious institutions to all classes.
    5. Article 26: Gives every religious denomination the right to manage its own affairs in matters of religion, subject to public order, morality and health.
    6. Article 14: Requires that a penal classification rest on an intelligible differentia bearing a rational nexus to the object of the provision.
    7. Article 21: Protects life and personal liberty, which is what arrest and pre trial custody in a speech case directly curtails.
    8. Article 15(1) and Article 17: Bar discrimination on grounds of religion and caste and abolish untouchability, which are the constitutional basis for statutes attacking exploitative religious practice.
    9. Article 51A(h): Makes it a fundamental duty of every citizen to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform.
    10. Preamble: Declares India a secular republic, and secularism has been held to be part of the basic structure and therefore beyond amendment.

    How has the provision been used against writers, artists and film?

    1. Angarey, 1932: A small collection of Urdu short stories attacking obscurantist customs and the sexual hypocrisy of some religious figures was banned soon after publication, and its authors faced threats.
    2. The Satanic Verses, 1988: The government banned import of Salman Rushdie’s novel, making India one of the first countries in the world to act against it, and a secular one at that.
    3. The Da Vinci Code, 2006: Seven Indian States banned the film and the book on the ground that they offended Christian sentiment, and two States lifted the ban only after High Court intervention.
    4. The Hindus: An Alternative History, 2014: Wendy Doniger’s book was withdrawn by Penguin India after a civil suit invoking Section 295A, so the withdrawal followed a civil filing rather than any conviction.
    5. Madhorubagan, 2015 and 2016: Perumal Murugan faced a criminal complaint and a mob campaign over the novel and announced his own death as a writer in 2015; a Madras High Court judgment of 2016 quashed the case and closed with the appeal to let the author be resurrected to what he is best at, write.
    6. M.F. Husain: The painter was hounded into exile and death abroad after decades of prosecutions and threats over his nude depictions of Hindu deities.
    7. Taslima Nasrin: Her writing has met comparable treatment through bans, threats and constraints on where she may live and publish.

    Why does the harm occur before any verdict?

    1. Rehana Fathima, 2018: Weeks after the Supreme Court lifted the traditional ban on women of menstruating age entering the Sabarimala temple, the Kerala activist was arrested under Section 295A over a Facebook photograph of herself dressed as an Ayyappa devotee.
    2. Cost imposed without trial: She spent over two weeks in judicial custody and was suspended by her employer within days of the arrest, all over an image rather than an argument.
    3. Amish Devgan, 2020: The television anchor called the Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti a lootera during a live debate, apologised within days for what he said was an inadvertent slip for a different historical name, and still faced seven separate first information reports across five States.
    4. Multiplicity as the punishment: The Supreme Court declined to quash any of the seven and merely clubbed them together in Ajmer, so the burden of defending across five jurisdictions was reduced rather than removed.
    5. Conviction is not the point: These cases rarely end in conviction and the prosecution more often goes nowhere, so the process itself operates as the penalty.
    6. Three channels of harm: The damage is delivered through arrest, through the heckler’s veto of an aggressive and sometimes violent audience, and through the pre emptive caution of publishers and film certifiers who calculate that no book or film is worth the trouble.

    Which laws run in the opposite direction?

    1. Constituent Assembly position, 2 December 1948: During the debate on whether personal law should be shielded from legislative reform, B.R. Ambedkar rejected the idea that religion could claim a veto over social legislation merely because a custom carried religious sanction.
    2. The reasoning he gave: He said he did not understand why religion should be given a vast, expansive jurisdiction covering the whole of life and preventing the legislature from encroaching upon that field, since this liberty exists in order to reform the social system, so personal law cannot be excluded from the jurisdiction of the State.
    3. Maharashtra, 2013: The Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and Other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act was passed after the assassination of the rationalist campaigner Narendra Dabholkar.
    4. What that Act criminalises: It penalises a long list of exploitative religious practices, ranging from claiming to cure disease through faith healing to inducing self flagellation.
    5. Karnataka, 2017: The State passed a comparable law against inhuman evil practices and black magic.
    6. Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987: It criminalises not only the act of widow immolation but its glorification, treating celebratory speech about a religious practice as itself an offence.
    7. The mirror image rather than the opposite: A law punishing praise of a religious practice uses the same technique as a law punishing criticism of one, since both make speech about religion a criminal question.
    8. What the coexistence exposes: Indian law has no coherent theory of when religious sentiment deserves protection, and what governs is a case by case political calculation about which practices are currently unpopular enough, or which constituencies currently powerful enough, to tip the balance.

    Why does the reformer fall on the wrong side of a blasphemy law?

    1. The State of Mysore versus Henry Rodrigues, 1961: A Catholic editor was tried under Section 295A over an article in his Konkani language magazine Crusader, titled “Honour to Mary or Dishonour?”, which accused Catholic priests of exploiting the credulous by falsely attributing miracles to the Virgin Mary.
    2. The defence offered: He argued that since the criticised beliefs and practices were superstitious and contrary to the Bible itself, the truth of his charge ought to absolve him.
    3. The court’s answer: Following an earlier Allahabad High Court ruling, the Mysore High Court rejected this outright, holding that even a wholly true statement can outrage religious feelings and that the provision punishes the intent to outrage rather than the accuracy of what is said.
    4. The insider treated as the stranger: A believer’s sincere and internally argued complaint against his own clergy was treated exactly as the law treats a stranger’s contempt.
    5. Jyotirao Phule: He spent the 1870s attacking Brahminical religious authority as the theological scaffolding of caste oppression, recasting Hindu myth in his tract Gulamgiri to expose it as a device for keeping the lower castes subjugated.
    6. Hamid Dalwai: A century later he founded the Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal explicitly on Phule’s model, marched a handful of Muslim women to the Maharashtra Assembly to demand an end to triple talaq and polygamy, and was ostracised and abused for it.
    7. The pair the law cannot separate: The offence does not distinguish a Phule or a Dalwai from a bigot baiting a rival faith for sport, since both are trying to make believers feel bad about what they believe.
    8. A line a police station cannot draw: What should separate them is whether the critic is trying to improve the community or merely humiliate it, and an officer recording a complaint is poorly placed to make that assessment.

    Major debates surrounding blasphemy and sacrilege law in India

    1. Public order against expression: A targeted law applied with judicial restraint and the safeguard of proven intent is defended as a proportionate response to sentiment that has repeatedly proved combustible, rather than as an assault on free thought.
    2. Restraint in principle against the record in practice: The historical record of Section 295A, and now of State sacrilege law, gives little confidence that restraint is what actually happens once a complaint is registered.
    3. Discussion, advocacy and incitement: Shreya Singhal v Union of India (2015) held that only incitement carrying a direct and proximate connection to public disorder may be criminalised, and that discussion and advocacy remain protected even where unpopular.
    4. Intent against effect: Whether liability should turn on what the speaker meant or on the disorder that followed, since the intent test is applied only after an audience has already reacted.
    5. Truth as a defence: Whether a demonstrably accurate factual claim about a religious practice should absolve the speaker, which the 1961 ruling denied outright.
    6. Proportionality of punishment: Whether imprisonment for life for an insult to a text can be reconciled with a Constitution whose secularism is held unamendable.
    7. New law against enforcement: In Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay v Union of India (April 2026) the Supreme Court dismissed a batch of petitions seeking fresh hate speech legislation, holding that creating criminal offences belongs to the legislature and that the real problem is an enforcement deficit.
    8. Empirical gap: Data under these provisions is not published in a form that sets arrests, days in custody and withdrawn publications against convictions, so the argument runs on cases rather than on measured outcomes.

    Challenges to reforming laws on religious offence

    1. Cognisability delivers the punishment: An offence that permits arrest on a complaint produces custody before a magistrate examines whether malice existed. Eg. In Imran Pratapgarhi v State of Gujarat (2025) the Supreme Court extended the preliminary inquiry safeguard to first information reports in speech cases precisely to interpose a check before registration.
    2. Forum multiplicity: A single utterance can be prosecuted in every jurisdiction where a complainant chooses to file. Eg. Clubbing seven first information reports at Ajmer in 2020 consolidated the defence without removing the cost of defending in a distant State.
    3. Self censorship leaves no record: A publisher or certifier that withdraws before any order removes the work without producing a judicial decision that can be appealed. Eg. Penguin India withdrew and destroyed copies of The Hindus: An Alternative History in 2014 with no conviction and no court direction requiring it.
    4. Mob campaign as the real enforcement mechanism: The threat of disruption achieves what a prosecution cannot. Eg. Perumal Murugan withdrew from writing in 2015 after a mob campaign and a local shutdown, and resumed only after the Madras High Court judgment of 2016.
    5. State level bans without central legislation: Executive bans multiply at the State level and are reversed only through litigation. Eg. Seven States banned The Da Vinci Code in 2006 and two lifted the ban only after their High Courts intervened.
    6. Penalty escalation at the State level: A State provision can prescribe imprisonment for life for an offence against a text, which exceeds the penalty for many offences against the person. Eg. State sacrilege provisions carry punishment extending to imprisonment for life against a maximum of a few years under the central provision.
    7. Recodification carried the provision forward: The most recent opportunity to narrow the offence was not used. Eg. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 re-enacted Section 295A as Section 299 unchanged, instead of confining it to incitement to violence.

    Conclusion

    Section 295A and its successor punish the intent to outrage rather than the falsity of what is said, so a reformer criticising his own faith is caught by the same words as a bigot baiting a rival one. India runs that regime alongside statutes that direct the State to criminalise faith healing, black magic and the glorification of sati, which shows there is no settled principle about when religious sentiment deserves protection. What remains unresolved is whether these provisions will be narrowed to their original and defensible purpose of preventing incitement to actual violence, leaving criticism, satire and reform of religious practice to public argument rather than to the criminal courts.

    What is Secularism?

    1. About: Secularism is the principle that the State holds no religion of its own and treats every faith on the same footing in law and in the distribution of public benefits.
    2. Rationale: It exists to keep the coercive power of the State out of the hands of any religious majority or clergy, and to make citizenship independent of belief.
    3. Strict separation model: The State and religion operate in mutually exclusive spheres, with the State neither aiding nor interfering with any religion, which is the model associated with the United States and France.
    4. Principled distance model: The State keeps no religion of its own and retains the power to intervene in religious practice for social reform and equality, which is the model the Indian Constitution follows.
    5. Positive neutrality: Equal treatment is delivered through equal respect rather than equal indifference, so the State may fund, regulate and administer religious institutions on a non preferential basis.
    6. Constitutional location: The word secular was inserted in the Preamble by the Constitution (Forty second Amendment) Act, 1976, and S.R. Bommai v Union of India (1994) held secularism to be part of the basic structure.
    7. Essential religious practices doctrine: Courts decide the reach of religious freedom by asking whether a practice is essential to the religion, which places the determination of religious content with the judiciary.

    Key Concerns Regarding Secularism in India

    1. State entanglement with religious administration: Endowment departments and statutory boards administer the institutions of some faiths and not others, so the State’s distance is uneven across religions.
    2. Judicial determination of religious content: The essential religious practices test requires judges to decide questions of theology, a function courts were not designed or equipped for.
    3. Asymmetric reform power: Article 25(2)(b) expressly permits the opening of Hindu religious institutions, and comparable reform in other communities has proceeded largely through litigation rather than legislation.
    4. Personal law plurality against Article 44: The directive for a uniform civil code remains unimplemented, so family law continues to differ by religion.
    5. Majoritarian capture of neutral language: A formally neutral provision protects the practices of the dominant community more effectively, since those practices attract fewer complaints and fewer prosecutions.
    6. No horizontal anti discrimination remedy: Discrimination on religious grounds by private landlords and employers has no general statutory remedy, since constitutional guarantees bind the State.

    Laws and Rules Governing Religious Offence in India

    1. Indian Penal Code, 1860: Chapter XV grouped the offences relating to religion and remained the governing law until 2024.
    2. Section 295A was inserted by the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1927 following the Rangila Rasul prosecution.
    3. Sections 295 to 298 covered defiling a place of worship, disturbing a religious assembly, trespass on burial places and wounding religious feelings by word.
    4. Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023: Replaced the Indian Penal Code with effect from 1 July 2024 and carried this chapter forward.
    5. Section 299 corresponds to Section 295A, Section 298 to Section 295, Section 300 to Section 296 and Section 302 to Section 298.
    6. Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023: Provides for a preliminary inquiry before registration of a first information report in specified categories of offence, and for prior government sanction before a court takes cognisance of certain offences relating to religion.
    7. Cinematograph Act, 1952: Empowers the certifying authority to refuse or condition certification of a film on grounds mirroring Article 19(2), including public order and decency.
    8. Information Technology Act, 2000: Section 69A permits blocking of online content on grounds that track the restrictions in Article 19(2).
    9. Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987: Criminalises the act of sati, its abetment and its glorification, and provides for Special Courts to try these offences.
    10. Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and Other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act, 2013: Criminalises a listed set of exploitative practices including faith healing claims and induced self flagellation.
    11. Karnataka Prevention and Eradication of Inhuman Evil Practices and Black Magic Act, 2017: Enacts a comparable prohibition in that State.
    12. Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955: Penalises the enforcement of religious disabilities arising out of untouchability, including denial of temple entry.

    Back2Basics: Jyotirao Phule

    1. Life: Born in 1827 in a family of the Mali caste in present day Maharashtra, and died in 1890 in Pune.
    2. First school: Opened a school for girls at Bhide Wada in Pune in 1848, among the earliest such schools established by an Indian.
    3. Extension to the excluded castes: Opened a school in 1851 for children of the castes then treated as untouchable.
    4. Organisation founded: Founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, the Society of Truth Seekers, on 24 September 1873 in Pune, to secure social justice for the lower castes without priestly mediation.
    5. Principal writings: Wrote Gulamgiri in 1873, which read Hindu myth as a record of the subjugation of the lower castes, and Shetkaryacha Asud in 1883 on the condition of the cultivator.
    6. Vocabulary contributed: Popularised the term Dalit for the oppressed castes, which entered later political usage.
    7. Social work: Opened a home for widows and a centre for the prevention of infanticide, and supported widow remarriage.
    8. Title conferred: Given the title Mahatma in 1888 at a public gathering in Bombay.
    9. Partnership: Worked with Savitribai Phule, who taught at the Bhide Wada school and is counted among India’s first women teachers.
    10. Later influence: His model was invoked directly by Hamid Dalwai in founding the Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal in 1970.

    Way Forward

    1. Narrow the offence to incitement: Confine Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 to speech carrying a direct and proximate connection to violence, in line with the Shreya Singhal test.
    2. Make the offence non cognisable: Remove the power to arrest on a bare complaint, so that custody does not precede any judicial assessment of deliberate and malicious intent.
    3. Require prior sanction and preliminary inquiry: Make registration of a first information report conditional on a preliminary inquiry and on sanction by a designated senior officer, extending the Imran Pratapgarhi safeguard to every provision in this chapter.
    4. Consolidate multiple complaints by statute: Provide that all first information reports arising from a single publication or utterance are transferred to one jurisdiction as a matter of right, rather than case by case.
    5. Introduce a public interest defence: Allow truth combined with a reformist or scholarly purpose as a statutory defence, so an insider critic is separated from a speaker seeking only to humiliate.
    6. Cap the penalty: Bring State sacrilege provisions within a central ceiling so that an offence against a text cannot carry imprisonment for life.
    7. Protect the publisher and the certifier: Bar interim injunctions and pre publication restraints on books and films except on a judicial finding of imminent violence, so withdrawal is not the cheapest option.

    “[2014, GS2, 12.5] 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.”

  • US: Will impose toughest sanctions in history on Iran

    Why in the News

    The United States Treasury Secretary announced on 20 August 2026 that Washington will impose the toughest sanctions in history on Iran, to be layered on an existing naval blockade, with the stated objective of collapsing the Iranian government. The United States President separately warned that any country whose financial institutions, businesses, airports or government entities provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face economic consequences. That warning converts a bilateral war into a compliance problem for every third country that trades with Iran.

    What are secondary sanctions?

    1. Definition: Secondary sanctions penalise persons and firms in third countries for dealing with a sanctioned state, even where that dealing is lawful in their own jurisdiction. They extend a national measure into an extraterritorial one.
    2. How they bite: The penalty is exclusion, since a firm that trades with the target loses access to the sanctioning state’s financial system, markets and correspondent banking.
    3. Why the currency matters: Their reach depends on the sanctioning state’s currency being used for settlement, which is why United States measures affect countries that have no dispute with Washington.

    What is a naval blockade?

    1. Definition: A naval blockade is the use of warships to prevent vessels entering or leaving a state’s ports or coastline. It operates through force, unlike sanctions, which operate through law and financial exclusion.

    What does the announced sanctions package actually threaten?

    1. Stated severity: The United States Treasury Secretary said Washington will impose the toughest sanctions in history on Iran.
    2. Combination with the blockade: He described the approach as combining the existing blockade on Iran with the new sanctions, rather than replacing one with the other.
    3. Stated objective: He said the approach would work in Iran and that Washington was going to collapse the government there.
    4. Announced framing: The United States President promised economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale, although details were scant.
    5. Detail still pending: The Treasury Secretary said he would hold a press conference on Monday to set out the specifics.

    Why does the lifeline warning make this a problem for third countries?

    1. The categories named: The warning covers any country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran.
    2. The threatened consequence: Such a country would itself face economic consequences, stated as tremendous in scale.
    3. The timing: The warning was issued on Wednesday, ahead of the sanctions announcement, which places third countries on notice before the measures are published.
    4. Breadth of the categories: Airports and government entities extend the threat beyond banking to transport and to state to state dealings.
    5. Absence of a threshold: No minimum value or category of transaction was specified, so the scope of what counts as a lifeline remains undefined.

    Why have the two ceasefires failed to hold?

    1. Origin of the war: The United States began the war alongside Israel nearly six months before the sanctions announcement.
    2. Two attempts: The United States and Iran twice announced ceasefire deals, in April and in June.
    3. Their stated purpose: Both aimed to restore the free flow of shipping through Hormuz as a path towards ending the conflict.
    4. Both collapsed: Both deals quickly crumbled, even as Israel largely withdrew from the fighting.
    5. Leadership transition in Tehran: A 40 day commemoration ceremony for the former Iranian Supreme Leader was held in Karbala on 20 August 2026, attended by Iran’s Parliament Speaker.

    What is Iran’s counter-position?

    1. Characterisation of the measures: Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the fresh United States economic and trade sanctions, saying they targeted ordinary Iranians.
    2. The legal charge: The ministry described the measures as economic terrorism and as crimes against humanity.
    3. Attribution of motive: The Iranian Foreign Minister called the announcement an attempt to divert American public opinion from domestic financial problems, including record debt and rising interest rates.
    4. The wider claim: He argued that American economic terrorism threatens the global economy and the national sovereignty of countries around the world.
    5. The retained lever: Tehran continues its own economic pressure campaign by keeping the Strait of Hormuz largely closed.

    Why has Oman become the pivot of the Hormuz question?

    1. A separate negotiation: Iran has been negotiating an agreement on managing the Strait of Hormuz with Oman, and has said several times in recent weeks that an agreement was close.
    2. The American response: The United States President responded to those negotiations on Monday by warning that he might bomb the Gulf state if it gets in the way.
    3. The anomaly in that threat: Oman is a longstanding United States security partner, which makes the threat a warning to an ally rather than to an adversary.
    4. Oman’s stated position: The Omani Foreign Minister said lasting security in the strait required a permanent peace in the region and rejected further escalation.
    5. Its diplomatic posture: He made the statement after meeting his Japanese counterpart, which places the strait’s management within a wider set of energy importing interests.

    What does the escalation mean for India?

    1. Energy route exposure: A large share of India’s crude, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) imports transits the Strait of Hormuz, so the strait’s closure raises India’s landed energy costs regardless of who supplies the cargo.
    2. Precedent of forced exit: India stopped importing Iranian crude in May 2019 after United States waivers under the sanctions regime lapsed, ending what had been one of its largest supply relationships.
    3. Connectivity investment at risk: India signed a ten year contract in May 2024 to operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal at Chabahar port in Iran, an asset whose viability depends on the sanctions environment.
    4. Corridor implications: The International North South Transport Corridor to Russia and Central Asia runs through Iranian territory, so secondary sanctions affect a route India built to bypass Pakistan.
    5. Existing exposure to secondary measures: India has already navigated the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, 2017 over its purchase of the S-400 air defence system, which shows the compliance question is not new.

    Challenges to a sanctions-led approach

    1. Poor record at producing regime change: Comprehensive sanctions rarely dislodge governments and often consolidate them. Eg. Cuba has been under a United States embargo since 1962 without a change of political system.
    2. Humanitarian burden falls on civilians: Restrictions on banking and shipping obstruct food and medicine even when formally exempted. Eg. Iran’s foreign ministry stated that the measures targeted ordinary Iranians and amounted to crimes against humanity.
    3. Evasion through parallel networks: Targets build shadow fleets, front companies and barter arrangements that blunt enforcement. Eg. United States sanctions on Hezbollah have repeatedly targeted courier networks and exchange houses used as fronts for cash movement.
    4. Erosion of the sanctioning currency’s role: Extraterritorial reach pushes third countries to settle trade outside the dollar. Eg. India has implemented the Special Rupee Vostro Account framework for invoicing, payment and settlement of international trade in rupees.
    5. Alliance friction: Threats against partners weaken the coalition needed for enforcement. Eg. The United States President warned he might bomb Oman, a longstanding American security partner, over its Hormuz negotiations with Iran.
    6. Counter escalation by the target: A sanctioned state with a chokepoint can impose costs on the sanctioning coalition’s own economies. Eg. Iran keeps the Strait of Hormuz largely closed, which carries 20 percent of global oil and 20 percent of global LNG.
    7. Legal contestation of extraterritoriality: Third states dispute the authority of one country to regulate transactions between two others. Eg. The European Union’s Blocking Statute was updated in 1996 and again in 2018 to shield European firms from United States extraterritorial sanctions on Iran.

    Conclusion

    The United States has moved from military coercion to declared economic warfare against Iran, pairing an existing naval blockade with sanctions described as the toughest in history and aimed openly at collapsing the government in Tehran. The lifeline warning extends the measures to third countries, while Iran retains its own lever by keeping the Strait of Hormuz largely closed and negotiating its management with Oman. The next milestone is the United States Treasury Secretary’s announced press conference on Monday setting out the details, with the Iran Oman understanding on the strait the other outstanding variable.

    About Economic Statecraft

    1. About: Economic statecraft is the use of economic instruments, positive and negative, to change another state’s behaviour without resorting to force.
    2. Rationale: It exists because military action is costly and diplomatic protest is weak, so states seek an intermediate instrument that imposes real cost while remaining below the threshold of war.
    3. Positive inducements: Aid, trade preferences, market access and investment offered to secure a policy change.
    4. Comprehensive sanctions: Blanket restrictions on trade and finance with an entire economy, which impose broad cost but weak targeting.
    5. Targeted or smart sanctions: Asset freezes, travel bans and entity listings aimed at named individuals, firms and sectors, designed to spare the general population.
    6. Primary sanctions: Prohibitions binding on the sanctioning state’s own persons, firms and jurisdiction.
    7. Secondary sanctions: Penalties on third country persons for dealing with the target, which give a national measure global reach.
    8. Multilateral sanctions: Measures mandated by the United Nations Security Council under Chapter VII, binding on all member states.

    Key Concerns Regarding Economic Statecraft

    1. Sovereignty and extraterritoriality: Secondary sanctions require states to enforce another state’s foreign policy inside their own jurisdiction. Eg. The French bank BNP Paribas paid about $8.9 billion to United States authorities in 2014 for processing transactions involving Sudan, Iran and Cuba.
    2. Humanitarian spillover: Financial de-risking by banks blocks exempted humanitarian trade because compliance officers avoid any exposure to a sanctioned jurisdiction. Eg. The Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement was created in 2020 because ordinary banking channels would not carry payments for food and medicine to Iran.
    3. Fragmentation of the payments system: Repeated use of currency dominance as leverage accelerates the construction of alternative settlement channels and reduces future leverage. Eg. Russia built the System for Transfer of Financial Messages in 2014 as a domestic substitute for international bank messaging channels.
    4. Weak exit mechanism: Sanctions are politically easy to impose and hard to lift, so they persist beyond the objective they were designed to achieve. Eg. The Jackson Vanik amendment of 1974 remained applicable to Russia until its repeal in 2012, long after the emigration restrictions it targeted had ended.
    5. Measurement problem: There is no agreed method to establish that a policy change was caused by sanctions rather than by other pressures, which makes evaluation contested. Eg. Iranian oil exports fell sharply after the reimposition of sanctions in 2018 while the nuclear programme expanded, leaving both outcomes attributed to the same measures.

    Laws and Instruments Governing Sanctions

    1. Charter of the United Nations, 1945: Article 41 empowers the Security Council to decide measures not involving the use of armed force, including complete or partial interruption of economic relations, which are binding on all member states.
    2. International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 1977: The principal United States statute allowing the President to declare a national emergency and regulate or block transactions with foreign persons.
    3. Iran Sanctions Act, 1996: Originally the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, it introduced penalties on foreign firms investing in Iran’s energy sector, establishing the secondary sanctions template.
    4. Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, 2010: Widened the reach of energy sector sanctions and brought refined petroleum supply to Iran within their scope.
    5. Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, 2017: Codified sanctions against Iran, Russia and North Korea and limited the President’s discretion to waive them.

    India’s Measures to Manage Sanctions and Energy Risk

    1. Special Rupee Vostro Account framework: A Reserve Bank of India mechanism for invoicing, payment and settlement of international trade in rupees, reducing dependence on third currency settlement.
    2. Chabahar port agreement: A ten year contract signed in May 2024 to operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal, giving India a sea route to Afghanistan and Central Asia that bypasses Pakistan.
    3. International North South Transport Corridor: A multimodal ship, rail and road route linking India to Russia and Central Asia through Iran, shortening transit time against the Suez route.
    4. Strategic Petroleum Reserve: Underground crude caverns at Visakhapatnam, Mangaluru and Padur operated by Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited to cushion supply interruptions.
    5. Supplier diversification: Term and spot procurement spread across Russian, West Asian, West African and American grades to reduce dependence on any single sanctioned or chokepoint dependent source.

    Key Facts about United States Iran Relations

    1. 1979 Islamic Revolution: Ended the monarchy and was followed by the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran and the severing of diplomatic relations.
    2. 1984 designation: The United States designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, which triggered a standing set of trade and aid restrictions.
    3. Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, 2015: Concluded in July 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 group, it limited Iran’s enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief.
    4. 2018 withdrawal: The United States withdrew from the agreement in May 2018 and reimposed sanctions under a maximum pressure strategy.
    5. India’s exit from Iranian crude: India ended imports of Iranian crude oil in May 2019 after United States waivers expired.
    6. Strait of Hormuz weight: The strait carries about 20 million barrels of oil a day, 20 percent of global oil and 20 percent of global LNG.

    Back2Basics: Strait of Hormuz

    1. Designation: A maritime chokepoint connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.
    2. Littoral states: Iran lies on the northern shore and controls seven of the eight islands in the strait, while Oman controls the southern entrance through the Musandam exclave.
    3. External presence: The United States Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain, acts as the external guarantor of transit through the strait.
    4. Energy weight: It carries the highest concentration of energy flow of any chokepoint in the world.
    5. Comparative chokepoints: The Strait of Malacca carries 23.7 percent of global seaborne trade and 80 percent of China’s energy imports, Bab el Mandeb carries 8.7 percent of global trade as the sole southern gateway to the Suez Canal, and the Suez Canal itself carries 12 percent of global maritime commerce with closure adding 9 to 17 sailing days.

    Challenges in the West Asian Security and Energy Order

    1. Chokepoint dependence with no land alternative: Pipeline bypasses cover only a fraction of the volume that moves by sea. Eg. Closure of the Strait of Hormuz affects 20 million barrels a day, which no existing pipeline network can absorb.
    2. Non state armed actors controlling shorelines: Sea lanes can be closed by groups that hold coastline without holding a state. Eg. The Houthis control the eastern Yemeni shore of Bab el Mandeb in practice.
    3. Proxy networks that survive sanctions on the principal: Financial pressure on a state does not disable the armed groups it funds. Eg. The United States redesignated Hezbollah for service to the Iranian government under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.
    4. Overlapping external guarantors: Multiple outside powers with competing objectives raise the risk of miscalculation. Eg. The United States threatened to strike Oman over its Hormuz talks while relying on Omani mediation with Iran.
    5. Absence of a regional security architecture: There is no equivalent of a regional organisation with dispute settlement authority for the Gulf. Eg. The management of the Strait of Hormuz is being negotiated bilaterally between Iran and Oman rather than through any regional body.
    6. Energy revenue concentration in importing economies: Importing states have limited fiscal room to absorb a price shock. Eg. Every $1 per barrel increase raises India’s oil import bill by up to $2 billion on an annualised basis.
    7. Recognition and legitimacy disputes: Contested political authority complicates any negotiated settlement. Eg. Iran’s own leadership transition was marked by a 40 day commemoration for the former Supreme Leader in August 2026.

    Way Forward

    1. Seek carve outs early rather than after listing: India should engage the United States Treasury on humanitarian, food and connectivity carve outs before the sanctions text is notified.
    2. Protect the Chabahar exemption: Press for the continuation of the project specific exemption that has allowed the Shahid Beheshti terminal to operate, given its Afghanistan and Central Asia connectivity function.
    3. Accelerate non dollar settlement channels: Expand the Special Rupee Vostro Account framework and rupee invoicing so that legitimate trade is not hostage to correspondent banking access.
    4. Diversify the maritime route, not only the supplier: Build term contracts with Atlantic basin and West African producers whose cargoes do not transit Hormuz.
    5. Support de-escalation through the Oman channel: Back a negotiated framework for managing the strait, since reopening it does more for importing economies than any adjustment to sanctions design.
    6. Insulate the corridor investments: Structure International North South Transport Corridor participation through non sanctioned entities and multilateral instruments to limit exposure.
    7. Build reserve depth ahead of escalation: Complete Phase II of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve so that a sanctions driven supply interruption does not translate immediately into a price shock.

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

  • Shah hails southern states: ‘Biggest contributor to nation’s development’

    Why in the News

    The 31st meeting of the Southern Zonal Council was held at Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu on 20 August 2026, chaired by the Union Home Minister, who described South India as the biggest contributor to the country’s development. Every demand the southern States tabled at the same meeting asked that this contribution not cost them seats, funds or control over shared resources. The praise and the agenda therefore pointed in opposite directions.

    What are the Zonal Councils?

    1. What they are: Zonal Councils are advisory bodies that bring the States and Union Territories of a region together with the Centre to discuss matters of common interest. There are five Zonal Councils, covering the Northern, Central, Eastern, Western and Southern zones.
    2. Their legal basis: They were created by Sections 15 to 22 of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, so they are statutory bodies and not constitutional ones.
    3. Who sits on them: The Union Home Minister is the chairman of each Zonal Council. The Chief Ministers of the member States are members, with the office of vice chairman rotating annually among them, and each State also nominates two other ministers.
    4. What they can do: They discuss and make recommendations on inter State disputes, economic and social planning, border and linguistic minority issues, and matters arising from State reorganisation. Their conclusions are recommendatory and carry no binding force.

    What did the Union Home Minister set out as the South’s contribution?

    1. The three pillars named: The development journey of South India was attributed to three pillars, namely a high literacy rate, trained manpower, and technical expertise in the utilisation of deep seas.
    2. The sectors credited: The region was said to have contributed across literature, research and development, space, information technology, artificial intelligence, industrial development and agriculture, with the automobile, pharmaceutical and infrastructure sectors also named.
    3. The instruction drawn from it: The rest of the country was asked to learn from South India on innovation and revenue generation.
    4. The timeframe set: The Independence Day message that what has not been achieved in the last seven decades must be accomplished in the next five to seven years was underlined, with every State asked to contribute.
    5. Water framed as the region’s constraint: Water was described as the soul of the region across four areas, namely agriculture, industry, healthy citizens and the environment.
    6. The proposal on rivers: Linking major rivers from the Brahmaputra to the Kaveri and the Godavari was put forward as a way to ensure the country faces no water shortage for the next 100 years.
    7. The nutrition point: Malnutrition and stunted growth were described as snowballing into a national problem, with the fight against malnutrition credited to Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh before it was accepted across India.

    What did each southern State place before the Council?

    1. Kerala: The State sought State specific premiums for the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana in place of a uniform national premium, eligibility aligned with the National Food Security Act, 2013 database, and a revised central share reflecting actual expenditure incurred on centrally sponsored families. It also sought a more equitable and flexible funding approach for centrally sponsored schemes and asked that auctioning of mineral blocks along the Kerala coast be put on hold.
    2. Kerala on Mullaperiyar: The State reaffirmed its willingness to supply water to Tamil Nadu from a new dam it has proposed at Mullaperiyar in Idukki district in place of the existing structure, offering to bear the construction expense while leaving construction and location to Tamil Nadu.
    3. Karnataka: The State argued that success in population control must not be allowed to diminish southern political representation, urged the Centre to reconsider the recently passed Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, and pressed for fairness in funds, voice and respect.
    4. Karnataka on delimitation: The State urged the Council to adopt a resolution calling on the Centre to honour the 1971 Census as the basis for delimitation.
    5. Tamil Nadu: The State conveyed its concerns on delimitation and pressed that the existing freeze on the number of Lok Sabha seats should continue. It asserted its position on increasing the storage height of the Mullaperiyar Dam.
    6. Tamil Nadu on the terms of the relationship: The State stated that southern States seek not preferential treatment but fair and equitable treatment that respects fiscal autonomy and rewards performance alongside equity.
    7. Andhra Pradesh: The State projected that the southern economy could reach $10 trillion by 2047, sought greater cooperation among States in the region and urged the Centre to expedite resolution of bifurcation related issues.
    8. Telangana: The State stated that established adjudicatory mechanisms on Krishna waters must be respected and reiterated that it retains lower riparian rights over surplus waters. It stated that it sought no special privilege but only its fair entitlement through the legal mechanisms already established.
    9. Telangana on the method: The State stated that cooperative federalism should provide a framework for resolving inter State issues in a fair, time bound and legally sustainable manner.
    10. The demand two States made jointly: Tamil Nadu and Karnataka both urged that the existing number of Lok Sabha seats be frozen and that women’s reservation be accommodated within the current number of seats.
    11. What the Council recorded as agreed: On the division of assets and liabilities between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, both States agreed to resolve the matters in consultation with the Ministry of Home Affairs. On pending water issues, the southern States agreed to early resolution through meetings involving the ministries concerned, the Inter-State Council and the respective States.

    Why does delimitation dominate the southern agenda?

    1. The freeze is the source of the current seat distribution: The number of Lok Sabha seats allotted to each State has been held at the 1971 Census population, so States that reduced fertility fastest have not lost seats for doing so.
    2. The freeze has an expiry: The freeze runs until the first Census taken after 2026, after which readjustment on current population becomes constitutionally due.
    3. Performance and representation move in opposite directions: States that completed the demographic transition earliest have the slowest population growth, so a population based readjustment reduces their share of the House.
    4. The demand is for the freeze to be extended, not for a new formula: Tamil Nadu and Karnataka both asked that the existing number of seats continue rather than proposing an alternative allocation rule.
    5. Women’s reservation raises the stakes: Accommodating the reserved seats within the current total, as both States asked, keeps the reservation from becoming a reason to expand the House on a population basis.

    Why do water disputes keep returning to the Council table?

    1. The rivers are inter State and the users are not: The Krishna, the Kaveri and the Godavari cross State boundaries, so every allocation decision transfers water from one electorate to another.
    2. Adjudication and negotiation run in parallel: Telangana pressed that established adjudicatory mechanisms be respected on Krishna waters, which places a tribunal award and a Council discussion on the same question at the same time.
    3. A structure can outlive its settlement: The Mullaperiyar dispute turns on the storage height of an ageing structure, with Kerala proposing a replacement dam and Tamil Nadu asserting a claim over storage in the existing one.
    4. Ownership and operation are split: Kerala offered to bear the cost of a new dam while leaving construction and location to Tamil Nadu, which separates who pays from who controls.
    5. Interlinking is offered as the way past allocation: The proposal to link the Brahmaputra to the Kaveri and the Godavari reframes a distribution dispute as a supply problem, which shifts it out of the tribunal system and into a capital project.

    Can a body without binding power settle demands of this kind?

    1. The Council can only recommend: Nothing decided at a Zonal Council binds the Centre or any State, so agreement at the table is a statement of intent rather than a settlement.
    2. The demands are not within its gift: Delimitation is fixed by the Constitution and by Parliament, mineral taxation by a central Act, and river water allocation by tribunals under a separate statute.
    3. What it did settle was procedural: The two outcomes recorded, on Andhra Pradesh and Telangana assets and on pending water issues, were agreements to hold further consultations rather than agreements on substance.
    4. The forum multiplies rather than converges: Water issues were referred onward to the ministries concerned, the Inter-State Council and the States, which adds forums to a dispute rather than closing it.
    5. The tension the meeting exposed: The southern States were praised for performance and simultaneously asked the Centre to ensure that performance does not reduce their seats, their scheme funding or their control over coastal minerals.

    Challenges to the Zonal Council as a forum for resolving these demands

    1. Meetings are irregular and agenda driven: A Council that meets once in a year or longer cannot track an issue between sittings, so items are carried forward rather than closed. Eg. The Southern Zonal Council reached only its 31st meeting in 2026, seven decades after the Councils were created in 1956.
    2. Recommendations carry no enforcement: There is no mechanism to compel a member State or the Centre to act on a resolution the Council adopts. Eg. Karnataka’s request that the Council resolve to honour the 1971 Census for delimitation would bind neither Parliament nor the Centre even if adopted.
    3. The Council has no dispute settlement power over water: Inter State river water disputes are reserved to tribunals by statute, so the Council can discuss but not decide them. Eg. The Krishna waters question was placed before the Council even as Telangana insisted that established adjudicatory mechanisms be respected.
    4. Fiscal questions sit outside its mandate: Scheme design and the central share are decided by the Union ministries and the Finance Commission, not by a regional council. Eg. Kerala’s request for State specific Ayushman Bharat premiums has to be settled by the health ministry, not by the Council.
    5. Asymmetry of the chair: The Union Home Minister chairs the Council, so the Centre presides over a forum where the principal counterparty in most disputes is the Centre itself. Eg. Karnataka used the meeting to ask the Centre to reconsider a central Act on mineral taxation.
    6. Overlapping bodies dilute accountability: The Inter-State Council, the NITI Aayog Governing Council, the Goods and Services Tax Council and the Zonal Councils all handle Centre State coordination without a clear division of subjects. Eg. The pending water issues were referred simultaneously to the concerned ministries, the Inter-State Council and the States.

    Conclusion

    The Council closed with agreement on two procedural points, namely further consultation on the division of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana assets and further meetings on pending water issues, and the next step lies with the Ministry of Home Affairs. The substantive demands raised, on delimitation, on the freeze on Lok Sabha seats, on centrally sponsored scheme funding and on coastal mineral auctions, remain with Parliament and the Union ministries. The meeting confirmed that the southern States are asking to be held harmless for the very performance they were praised for. That question cannot be answered by a body whose conclusions are recommendatory.

    What is Cooperative Federalism?

    1. About: Cooperative federalism is a working arrangement in which the Union and the States act as collaborating levels of the same government rather than as rival sovereigns, coordinating through joint institutions on subjects that neither can handle alone.
    2. Rationale: It exists because the Indian Constitution distributes powers between two levels while leaving many problems, such as river water, internal migration, public health and taxation of a single national market, indivisible across those levels.
    3. The institutional forms it takes:
    4. Constitutional coordination bodies: The Inter-State Council and the Finance Commission are created by the Constitution itself rather than by statute.
    5. Statutory coordination bodies: The Zonal Councils under the States Reorganisation Act, 1956 and the North Eastern Council under its own 1971 statute are created by Parliament.
    6. Executive coordination bodies: The NITI Aayog Governing Council and its Regional Councils operate through executive resolution rather than statute.
    7. Constitutionally mandated joint decision bodies: The Goods and Services Tax Council under Article 279A takes decisions binding in practice on both levels through a weighted vote.
    8. The doctrinal companion: Competitive federalism describes States competing on outcome indicators for investment and rank, and operates alongside cooperative federalism rather than replacing it.

    Key Concerns Regarding Cooperative Federalism

    1. The Governor’s office as a point of friction: Reservation of Bills for the President’s consideration and indefinite withholding of assent place an appointee of the Centre inside the State legislative process.
    2. Central agencies operating in State subjects: Police and public order are State List subjects, while central investigative agencies operate within States, and several States have withdrawn general consent for such operations.
    3. Unilateral legislation on Concurrent List subjects: Parliament can legislate on Concurrent List entries without State agreement, and central law prevails over State law under Article 254 in the event of repugnancy.
    4. Central control over the higher civil service: All India Service officers serve in the States but are governed by central cadre rules, so deputation and disciplinary control sit with the Centre.
    5. Coordination bodies meet at the Centre’s discretion: The Inter-State Council and the Zonal Councils have no fixed calendar in the Constitution or the statute, so their frequency depends on the Union executive.
    6. Reorganisation obligations remain open for years: Division of assets and liabilities after State bifurcation is left to be settled by consultation, which leaves successor States negotiating long after reorganisation.

    Constitutional Framework Governing Centre State Coordination

    1. Article 246 with the Seventh Schedule: Distributes legislative power across the Union List, the State List and the Concurrent List.
    2. Article 254: Provides that central law prevails over a repugnant State law on a Concurrent List subject, subject to Presidential assent for the State law.
    3. Article 262: Empowers Parliament to provide for adjudication of disputes over the waters of inter State rivers and to bar the jurisdiction of courts, including the Supreme Court, over such disputes.
    4. Article 263: Empowers the President to establish an Inter-State Council to inquire into and advise upon inter State disputes and to investigate and discuss subjects of common interest.
    5. Article 279A: Establishes the Goods and Services Tax Council as a joint forum of the Centre and the States with a weighted voting formula.
    6. Article 280: Establishes the Finance Commission to recommend the distribution of net tax proceeds between the Union and the States and the principles governing grants in aid.
    7. Article 281 and Article 282: Require Finance Commission recommendations to be laid before Parliament, and allow the Union and the States to make grants for any public purpose, which is the constitutional basis for centrally sponsored schemes.
    8. Article 81 and Article 82: Fix the composition of the Lok Sabha and require readjustment of seat allocation among States after each Census, on the terms Parliament determines.
    9. Article 293: Places conditions on State borrowing where a State is indebted to the Union.
    10. Article 131: Confers original jurisdiction on the Supreme Court in disputes between the Government of India and one or more States.

    Laws and Rules Governing Inter State Coordination

    1. States Reorganisation Act, 1956: Reorganised the States on a linguistic basis and created the five Zonal Councils.
    2. Sections 15 to 22 establish the Councils, fix their composition and define their advisory functions on inter State and Centre State matters.
    3. North Eastern Council Act, 1971: Created a sixth regional council for the north eastern States, later amended in 2002 to add Sikkim and to make the Council a regional planning body.
    4. Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956: Provides for the constitution of a tribunal where a State complains that its interests in an inter State river are affected.
    5. The 2002 amendment fixed a one year deadline for constituting a tribunal and a three year deadline for its award, with a further two year extension permitted.
    6. Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014: Governs the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, including the division of assets, liabilities and institutions still under negotiation.
    7. Inter-State Council Order, 1990: The Presidential order that constituted the Inter-State Council on a recommendation of the Sarkaria Commission on Centre State relations, and defined its duties.
    8. It makes the Prime Minister the chairman, with the Chief Ministers of all States, the Chief Ministers of Union Territories with legislatures, administrators of other Union Territories and six Union Cabinet Ministers nominated by the Prime Minister as members.
    9. A Standing Committee chaired by the Union Home Minister handles continuous consultation, and the Council Secretariat functions under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
    10. Its recommendations are not binding on the Centre or on any State.

    Challenges in Centre State Fiscal and Resource Relations

    1. The divisible pool is smaller than the tax collected: Cesses and surcharges are not shared with the States, so revenue can rise without the States’ share rising with it. Eg. Kerala pressed at the Council for a revised central share reflecting actual expenditure incurred on centrally sponsored families.
    2. Centrally sponsored schemes carry uniform design across unequal States: A single national parameter ignores differences in cost, disease burden and delivery capacity across States. Eg. Kerala asked for State specific premiums under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana in place of a uniform national premium.
    3. Resource decisions on State territory are taken centrally: Auction and regulation of major minerals sit with the Centre while the resource and its social costs sit in the State. Eg. Kerala asked that auctioning of mineral blocks along its coast be put on hold, and Karnataka asked the Centre to reconsider the 2026 mineral law amendment.
    4. River water adjudication is slow enough to become a political dispute: Tribunal timelines stretch across electoral cycles, so States negotiate politically while adjudication is pending. Eg. The Krishna waters allocation between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana remained live at the Council table.
    5. Bifurcation settlements remain unfinished for years: Division of assets, liabilities and institutions is left to consultation without a deadline. Eg. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana agreed at this meeting to resolve asset and liability division in consultation with the Ministry of Home Affairs, twelve years after reorganisation.
    6. Fiscal performance is not rewarded in the transfer formula: Devolution weights population and income distance heavily, so States with better demographic and fiscal outcomes receive a smaller share. Eg. Tamil Nadu stated at the meeting that it seeks treatment that rewards performance alongside equity.
    7. Borrowing headroom is set by the Centre: State borrowing limits are fixed centrally under Article 293 and under the fiscal responsibility framework, which caps State led capital spending. Eg. Andhra Pradesh projected a $10 trillion southern economy by 2047, a target that depends on capital expenditure the States do not independently control.

    Way Forward

    1. Fix a statutory meeting calendar for the Councils: Require the Zonal Councils and the Inter-State Council to meet at a defined minimum frequency, with published agendas and action taken reports on earlier resolutions.
    2. Create an action taken mechanism: Record each Council recommendation against a named ministry with a response deadline, so a recommendation produces a documented decision rather than a carry forward.
    3. Settle the delimitation question before the freeze lapses: Resolve the basis for readjustment through a parliamentary process now, rather than allowing the constitutional deadline to force it.
    4. Cap cesses and surcharges as a share of gross tax revenue: Limit the proportion of central tax revenue kept outside the divisible pool so that devolution tracks actual collections.
    5. Allow State specific parameters within national schemes: Permit variation in premium, unit cost and beneficiary definition within centrally sponsored schemes where a State demonstrates a different cost structure.
    6. Enforce the statutory timelines for water tribunals: Apply the one year constitution and three year award deadlines strictly, and use a single permanent tribunal with benches to prevent each dispute restarting from the beginning.
    7. Close reorganisation settlements with a deadline: Fix an outer date for completing the division of assets, liabilities and institutions under reorganisation statutes, with an arbitral mechanism where consultation fails.

    “[2025] With reference to India, consider the following:

    I. The Inter-State Council

    II. The National Security Council

    III. Zonal Councils

    How many of the above were established as per the provisions of the Constitution of India?

    (a) Only one

    (b) Only two

    (c) All the three

    (d) None

  • Why are South Asians missing from global health databases

    Why in the News

    Genome wide association studies between 2005 and 2025 drew more than 86 per cent of their participants from European ancestry populations, while South Asians accounted for less than 1 per cent. That skew is now being carried into the reference atlases used to train artificial intelligence models in medicine, which converts a historical sampling gap into a bias that reproduces itself at clinical scale across South Asia and the wider low and middle income world.

    What is an integrated biobank?

    1. Definition: An integrated biobank is a large repository that stores biological samples from consenting participants alongside linked data about them, and makes both available to researchers.
    2. What it integrates: It combines participants’ genomic information with electronic health records, environmental exposures and lifestyle data, so that genetic variation can be read against real health outcomes.

    What is a genome wide association study?

    1. Definition: A genome wide association study (GWAS) scans the genomes of many individuals to find genetic variants that occur more often in people with a particular disease than in people without it.
    2. What it produces: It yields a list of variants statistically associated with a trait or disease, which is the raw material for downstream risk prediction tools.

    What is a polygenic risk score?

    1. Definition: A polygenic risk score combines the effects of many genetic variants associated with a disease to estimate a person’s overall genetic risk for it.
    2. Why ancestry matters to it: The score’s weights are derived from the population it was built in, so applying it to a population with a different variant frequency structure changes its accuracy.

    What is a single cell atlas?

    1. Definition: A single cell atlas is a reference map that catalogues the gene activity of individual cells across tissues and organs, rather than of a tissue sample as a whole.

    What is a low and middle income country?

    1. Definition: Low and middle income countries are the economies classified by the World Bank below the high income threshold on gross national income per capita, a grouping used in global health to identify where disease burden and research funding diverge.
    2. Why the category is used here: The under representation problem is stated at the level of this group, with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as instances inside it rather than as separate cases.

    What are potential years of life lost?

    1. Definition: Potential years of life lost is a measure of premature mortality that counts the years a person would have lived had they reached a reference life expectancy.
    2. What it captures that a death count does not: It weights a death at a young age more heavily than a death in old age, which is why it shifts burden sharply towards countries with high early mortality.

    What is G6PD deficiency?

    1. Definition: Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency is an inherited enzyme disorder that can cause a form of anaemia when red blood cells break down under oxidative stress from certain drugs, infections or foods.

    What is metabolic syndrome?

    1. Definition: Metabolic syndrome is a clustering of obesity, raised blood sugar, abnormal cholesterol and high blood pressure that together raise the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

    How large is the ancestry gap in global genomic databases?

    1. The genome wide association study record: The GWAS Catalogue is maintained by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). It records that more than 86 per cent of participants in these studies between 2005 and 2025 were of European ancestry.
    2. The South Asian share: South Asians accounted for less than 1 per cent of participants over that same twenty year period.
    3. The gap at the country income level: Over 90 per cent of the world’s potential years of life lost occurred in low and middle income countries. About 10 per cent of global health research funding addressed the health needs of those countries.
    4. The share of humanity excluded: More than 20 per cent of the world is being neglected in multi modal data integration, and the exclusion denies those populations the opportunity to attain the maximal possible health.
    5. The pattern repeats in newer tools: A study published in Cell Genomics reviewed more than 13,500 samples across three major single cell resources and found a striking and pervasive European over representation alongside under representation of Asian and Latino individuals.
    6. The three resources reviewed: The study covered the Human Cell Atlas, the Human Tumour Atlas Network and the PsychAD Consortium.
    7. South Asians absent from the biobanks too: South Asians remain largely absent from integrated biobanks such as the U.K. Biobank, which are the repositories that transformed biomedical research.

    Why does a European skewed dataset produce worse clinical tools for South Asians?

    1. The burden runs the other way: South Asians face higher rates of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and asthma than people of European ancestry, so the tools built on European heavy data are least accurate for the population that needs them most.
    2. The diabetes case: More than one in ten adults globally now live with diabetes, the risk is higher for people of South Asian ancestry and it appears earlier than in many other populations.
    3. India’s projected burden: The number of people with diabetes in India alone is projected to reach 125 million by 2045.
    4. Risk scores lose accuracy across ancestry: A 2023 study found that polygenic risk scores for multiple sclerosis were less accurate when applied to South Asian populations.
    5. Functional predictions are untested: Most predictions about how variants affect gene expression or cell function are inferred from European datasets, and it is not known which of those predictions hold in South Asians.
    6. The consequence for drug discovery: This limits the ability to understand disease mechanisms and to identify drug targets relevant to South Asian populations.
    7. Thresholds themselves need recalibration: Diagnostic thresholds, risk scores and prediction models developed predominantly from European populations require validation and, where necessary, recalibration using South Asian data.

    Why can South Asia not be treated as a single genetic block?

    1. One of the most diverse populations on earth: South Asia constitutes one of the most diverse human populations in the world, shaped by thousands of years of migration, cultural diversity, endogamy and consanguineous marriages.
    2. Lumping erases the differences: Much existing research groups South Asians, Southeast Asians, West Asians and other Asian populations together, obscuring important differences between them.
    3. Variation within the region: G6PD deficiency varies considerably across South Asia, with some ethnic groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan carrying the trait at much higher rates than others.
    4. Variation within a single population: A study from Sri Lanka found that cardiometabolic risk did not fit into a single metabolic syndrome profile, and within the same population men and women showed distinct patterns of obesity, blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure.
    5. The scale of Indian variation: The GenomeIndia Project has already identified more than 40 million genetic variants unique to the Indian population.
    6. Who must be sampled: India cannot realistically be treated as one genetic block, and inclusion must extend to distinct endogamous and tribal groups rather than a few urban cohorts, since many of the harmful variants found there are not seen anywhere else.

    Why is the data missing in the first place?

    1. Infrastructure followed the money: Research funding, institutions, registries, biobanks and large population cohorts have historically been built and sustained where the money already was.
    2. What that left behind: Low and middle income countries were left with inadequate laboratory infrastructure, inadequate biobanking facilities and too few trained personnel to run comparable studies at scale.
    3. The imbalance is not only financial: It shapes whose problems are studied, whose questions are prioritised and whose evidence informs health policy and practice.
    4. Ancestry classification practice: Where non European participants are recruited, they are frequently pooled into broad continental categories, which means the data collected does not resolve the differences it was collected to capture.

    Why is genomic research hard for South Asian countries to prioritise?

    1. Competing immediate needs: For most South Asian countries genomic research is difficult to prioritise against more immediate and pressing public health demands.
    2. Infectious disease: Communicable disease control absorbs public health budgets and personnel that a genomics programme would otherwise draw on.
    3. Maternal and child health: Maternal and child health programmes command prior claim because their outcomes are measurable within a single planning cycle.
    4. Non communicable diseases: Treatment and screening for non communicable diseases compete for the same budget line that genomic infrastructure would need.
    5. The mismatch in horizons: Genomic infrastructure returns value over a decade or more, while the health systems being asked to fund it are assessed on annual outcome indicators.
    6. Why deferring is costly: Every year the region defers, the reference atlases and the models trained on them are built further without it, which raises the cost of correction later.

    What genomic cohorts already exist in South Asia and why do they not add up?

    1. GenomeIndia: India’s national population reference cohort.
    2. Phenome India: An Indian longitudinal cohort linking health, lifestyle and clinical measurements across participants.
    3. Longevity India: An Indian cohort focused on ageing and the biological determinants of long life.
    4. Sri Lankan Twin Registry Biobank: A Sri Lankan registry and biobank built around twin pairs, which permits separation of genetic and environmental effects.
    5. Pakistan Genome Resource: A Pakistani national genomic resource built on population sampling.
    6. Why they do not combine: These independent cohorts and biobanks are mostly focused on individual diseases or specific populations, and often use different systems for collecting and storing data, which makes it difficult to bring them together for large genetic studies.
    7. The Indian case specifically: India has several sizeable cohorts, but no harmonised system yet exists that lets researchers within and across borders work across them easily.

    What does the U.K. Biobank model demonstrate that South Asian cohorts currently cannot?

    1. United Kingdom, the integrated design: The U.K. Biobank links each participant’s genomic information to electronic health records, environmental exposure data and lifestyle data in a single resource, which is the feature that allows genotype to be read against outcome.
    2. What that integration produced: Repositories of this design accelerated drug development, informed clinical guidelines and shaped public health policy across multiple countries, not only in the country that built them.
    3. The contrast with South Asia: South Asian cohorts are disease specific or population specific and are stored on divergent systems, so no equivalent linkage across genomics, clinical records and exposure exists in the region.
    4. The limit of this comparison: The U.K. Biobank is the single substantive institutional model in the evidence here, so it establishes what an integrated design makes possible, not a ranked set of alternative national models to choose between.

    What does the regional proposal recommend?

    1. The authorship: A perspective in the Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia, written by scientists across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, sets out the regional response.
    2. The core warning: The region risks being excluded from the genomic revolution unless it builds the infrastructure itself, rather than waiting for inclusion in datasets built elsewhere.
    3. Regional collaboration between existing assets: The proposal is to build greater collaboration between existing biobanks and cohorts, rather than to construct a new central repository from scratch.
    4. Interoperability: The aim is a system in which existing datasets can speak to each other, which is the specific technical gap that keeps Indian cohorts from being analysed together.
    5. Inclusion of overlooked populations: Populations that have historically been overlooked, including distinct endogamous and tribal groups, are to be brought into the sampling frame.
    6. Retained control over data use: South Asian researchers and institutions are to retain a meaningful role in how their data are used.
    7. Benefit sharing: The researchers generating the data are to share in the scientific benefits, which addresses the extraction pattern rather than only the data gap.

    Why does the gap compound rather than stay constant?

    1. The atlases became reference maps: Single cell atlases are now the reference maps for biology and medicine, so an error in the map propagates into everything read against it.
    2. They are now training data: Those same atlases are increasingly used to train the artificial intelligence models that will shape future research and care.
    3. Scale changes the nature of the problem: If the underlying data continues to be skewed, the artificial intelligence models and clinical tools built on top of it will reproduce and repeat those biases at a much larger scale.
    4. From a research gap to a clinical one: A skewed research dataset produced inaccurate studies, a skewed training dataset produces inaccurate bedside tools deployed on populations that were never in the data.
    5. The window is closing but not shut: It is late for the region to build its own infrastructure, and it is still not too late.

    Challenges to building a South Asian genomic data infrastructure

    1. Non interoperable data standards: Existing cohorts use different collection, phenotyping and storage systems, so pooling requires retrospective harmonisation that the original consent may not permit. Eg. India’s several sizeable cohorts have no harmonised system that lets researchers work across them.
    2. Consent and benefit sharing for community level data: Genomic data from an endogamous or tribal group carries group level implications that individual consent does not cover. Eg. The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 governs access and benefit sharing for biological resources, and its application to human genomic data drawn from identified communities is unsettled.
    3. Sustained financing beyond donor cycles: Climate and health workforce experience across the region shows that capacity built on project funding disappears when the project ends. Eg. Genomic surveillance capacity expanded rapidly during the pandemic and contracted once the emergency funding lapsed.
    4. Cross border data transfer rules: Regional pooling requires moving identifiable health data across national jurisdictions with differing data protection regimes. Eg. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 permits the Central Government to restrict transfer of personal data to notified countries.
    5. Shortage of trained personnel: Bioinformatics, genetic counselling and biobank management skills are scarce relative to the sequencing capacity being installed. Eg. Genetic counsellors in India number in the low hundreds against a population carrying a large inherited disease burden.
    6. Risk of genetic discrimination: Widening genomic data collection without a statutory bar exposes participants to insurance and employment consequences. Eg. The Delhi High Court in United India Insurance vs Jai Parkash Tayal, 2018 held the exclusion of genetic disorders from health insurance cover unconstitutional, in the absence of any general anti discrimination statute.
    7. Sampling reaching only urban cohorts: Recruitment gravitates to tertiary hospitals and metropolitan volunteers, reproducing inside India the same skew the region objects to globally. Eg. Inclusion of distinct endogamous and tribal groups has been identified as the specific gap in Indian sampling, not the overall sample size.

    Conclusion

    The under representation of South Asians in global genomic databases is no longer only an equity problem in research, it is becoming an engineering problem in clinical artificial intelligence. With more than 86 per cent of genome wide association study participants of European ancestry and South Asians below 1 per cent, the reference atlases now being used as training data carry that skew forward at scale. The response has shifted from asking for inclusion in datasets built elsewhere to building interoperable regional infrastructure that keeps control and benefit with the researchers generating the data. What remains unresolved is financing, since the region must fund a decade long investment against infectious disease, maternal and child health and non communicable disease needs that compete for the same budget.

    “[2026] Which of the following statements with regard to Genome India Project is/are correct?

    1. It is a part of the Human Genome Project.

    2. The project is funded by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India.

    3. Its primary aim is to build a catalogue of genetic diversity of the Indian population.

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 and 3 only

    (c) 1 and 2 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

  • Iran war pushes India’s oil & gas import bill up 43%

    Why in the News

    India’s net oil and gas imports rose 43.4 percent in value in April to July of the current financial year, to $57.8 billion from $40.3 billion a year earlier. Import volumes barely moved, so the increase is almost entirely a price effect created by supply tightness and stifled energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz. With 88.3 percent of crude requirement met by imports, India has prioritised supply security over price, and the cost of that choice lands on the trade balance.

    What are net oil and gas imports?

    1. How the figure is built: Net oil and gas imports are arrived at by deducting petroleum product exports from oil, natural gas and petroleum product imports.
    2. Why the deduction matters: India is a net exporter of petroleum products because of its refining capacity, so gross import figures overstate the true external drain.
    3. What it still includes: India also imports some petroleum products, notably liquefied petroleum gas, so the netting does not remove product imports entirely.
    4. Why it is the tracked number: It measures the actual foreign exchange outgo on energy, which is what feeds into the trade balance and the current account.

    What is the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell?

    1. What it is: The Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) is the data and analysis body under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. It compiles India’s official import, consumption, production and pricing statistics for petroleum and natural gas.

    What is liquefied natural gas?

    1. What it is: Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas, primarily methane, cooled to minus 162 degrees C so that it becomes liquid and can be shipped in cryogenic carriers. It must be regasified at a terminal in the importing country before use.
    2. How it is priced: Spot LNG in Asia is priced against the Japan Korea Marker, with Henry Hub and the Title Transfer Facility serving the American and European markets.

    What is liquefied petroleum gas?

    1. What it is: Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is propane and butane, produced as a byproduct of oil refining or natural gas processing, and used for domestic cooking, industrial heating and autogas.
    2. How it is priced: It is priced against the Saudi Aramco Contract Price, which is loosely linked to Brent crude.

    Why did the import bill rise 43 percent when volumes barely moved?

    1. Volumes were nearly flat: Oil and LNG imports were only marginally higher in volume terms across April to July.
    2. Crude price did the work: The average landed price of imported crude was about $106 per barrel in April to July, sharply higher than about $68 per barrel in the corresponding period of last year.
    3. Value rose without volume: The crude oil import bill surged by over 56 percent year on year to $63.4 billion even as volumes rose only slightly, to 81.9 million tonnes or about 600 million barrels, from 81.5 million tonnes.
    4. The stated priority: India has been prioritising supply security over price considerations, so it imported at extremely high rates rather than curtail volumes.
    5. Product trade moved the same way: Petroleum product export volumes fell while export value rose, and product import volumes fell faster than product import value, both reflecting high international prices.

    How did each component of the energy trade basket move?

    1. Crude oil imports, volume: 81.9 million tonnes against 81.5 million tonnes a year earlier, a rise of 0.5 percent.
    2. Crude oil imports, value: $63.4 billion against $40.5 billion, a rise of 56.5 percent.
    3. Petroleum product imports, volume: 9.0 million tonnes against 16.4 million tonnes, a fall of 45.1 percent.
    4. Petroleum product imports, value: $5.6 billion against $7.6 billion, a fall of 26.3 percent.
    5. LNG imports, volume: 11,867 million standard cubic metres against 11,269 million standard cubic metres, a rise of 5.3 percent.
    6. LNG imports, value: $5.6 billion against $4.5 billion, a rise of 24.4 percent.
    7. Petroleum product exports, volume: 16.5 million tonnes against 20.1 million tonnes, a fall of 17.9 percent.
    8. Petroleum product exports, value: $16.7 billion against $12.4 billion, a rise of 34.7 percent.
    9. Net oil and gas imports: $57.8 billion against $40.3 billion, a rise of 43.4 percent.

    How exposed is India’s energy basket to the Strait of Hormuz?

    1. Crude dependence: India depends on imports to meet over 88 percent of its crude oil requirement, and its dependence on imported oil for the four months ended July was 88.3 percent, almost flat year on year.
    2. Gas dependence: About half of India’s natural gas consumption is met by imports, brought in as LNG.
    3. Share routed through the strait: Around 40 percent of India’s crude oil imports, 60 percent of its LNG imports and 90 percent of its LPG imports came from West Asia through the strait.
    4. Where the disruption showed: Petroleum product imports declined 45.1 percent in volume to 9.0 million tonnes because supply of major products India imports, such as LPG, was hit by the West Asia conflict.
    5. Why exports fell: India’s petroleum product export volumes fell almost 18 percent year on year to 16.5 million tonnes as domestic fuel supplies were prioritised amid the global supply crunch.

    Why does an oil price shock transmit into the wider economy?

    1. The volume multiplier: India annually imports 1.8 to 2 billion barrels of oil, so every $1 per barrel increase raises the oil import bill by up to $2 billion on an annualised basis.
    2. Share of total imports: Energy imports are a major component of India’s overall imports, so any meaningful increase moves the aggregate import number.
    3. Trade balance and current account: A higher energy bill widens the merchandise trade deficit and feeds directly into the current account deficit.
    4. Inflation channel: Higher landed crude costs pass into transport and freight costs and into the prices of petroleum linked goods.
    5. Exchange rate channel: A larger dollar outgo on energy adds to demand for foreign exchange and weighs on the rupee’s exchange rate.

    Challenges to managing India’s oil and gas import bill

    1. Demand is price inelastic in the short run: Refiners cannot cut crude intake without cutting fuel supply, so a price shock passes straight into the bill. Eg. Crude import volumes rose 0.5 percent even as the crude bill rose 56.5 percent in April to July.
    2. Concentration of LPG sourcing: A single region supplies almost the entire LPG import basket, leaving no substitute route in a disruption. Eg. The West Asian share of India’s LPG imports moves entirely through the Strait of Hormuz, with no second corridor available if the strait closes.
    3. Fixed rupee excise blocks pass through of relief: Central excise duty is levied as a fixed amount per litre rather than as a percentage, so falling crude prices accrue to revenue rather than to consumers. Eg. When Brent fell from $80 to $60 per barrel in early 2025, Delhi petrol fell by only about Rs 2 to 3 per litre.
    4. Strategic reserve cover below international norms: The buffer available to ride out a supply interruption is short of the accepted benchmark. Eg. India’s total crude cover of 74 days sits below the International Energy Agency norm of 90 days of net import cover.
    5. No strategic reserve for gas at all: The gas basket has an operational buffer but no strategic cushion. Eg. India’s LNG storage tanks at regasification terminals give roughly 10 days of operational buffer, with no strategic LNG reserve in existence.
    6. Spot LNG volatility deters utilisation: When spot prices spike, importers switch to coal or fuel oil, stranding regasification capacity. Eg. India’s roughly 42.5 million tonnes per annum of LNG regasification capacity runs at 60 to 65 percent utilisation because switching becomes rational above $15 per MMBtu.
    7. Refinery configuration ties India to sour crude sources: Indian refineries have invested in desulphurisation capacity built around Middle Eastern grades, which limits how fast the basket can be re-sourced. Eg. Most Middle Eastern crude India buys is priced against Dubai and Oman, and Saudi, Iraqi and UAE grades track that benchmark.

    Conclusion

    India’s net oil and gas import bill rose to $57.8 billion in April to July from $40.3 billion a year earlier, a 43.4 percent increase driven almost wholly by price rather than volume. At 88.3 percent crude import dependence and with the West Asian shares of crude, LNG and LPG all routed through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint disruption converts directly into a macroeconomic shock. The figures are provisional data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, and the next reading will show whether the price effect persists once Hormuz flows normalise.

    About India’s Crude Oil Procurement and Pricing

    1. Who buys: State owned refiners account for 73 percent of India’s procurement through Indian Oil Corporation Limited, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, with private refiners Reliance Industries and Nayara Energy accounting for 27 percent.
    2. How buying works: Each refiner independently forecasts demand two to three months ahead and negotiates bilaterally with suppliers such as Rosneft, Saudi Aramco and Iraq’s State Organisation for Marketing of Oil.
    3. How it is priced: All contracts are priced as Brent plus or minus a negotiated discount, and Middle Eastern grades track the Dubai and Oman benchmark.
    4. Where crude lands: Crude is received by tanker at Paradip, Mumbai, Kochi and Vadinar.
    5. Quality determines price: Sulphur content and American Petroleum Institute (API) gravity, the measure of a crude’s density, together determine refining cost and product yield, with sweet crude defined as sulphur content below 0.5 percent and sour crude requiring additional processing.

    Regulatory Framework Governing India’s Petroleum and Natural Gas Sector

    1. Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas: The apex policy body, which sets the framework for exploration, refining, marketing, pricing and strategic reserves, awards production sharing contracts, and exercises ownership over the public sector oil companies.
    2. Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board: Regulates refining, processing, storage, transportation, distribution, marketing and sale of petroleum products and natural gas, authorises City Gas Distribution networks, and determines pipeline tariffs on a common carrier basis.
    3. Directorate General of Hydrocarbons: The technical regulator for upstream exploration and production, which manages block allocations, monitors production sharing contracts, verifies reserves, approves field development plans and maintains the National Data Repository.
    4. Oil Industry Development Board: Funded by a statutory cess on domestic crude production, it finances oil industry development and wholly owns Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited, which operates the underground reserve caverns.
    5. Deregulated retail pricing: Petrol was deregulated in 2010 and diesel in 2014, so the Ministry does not directly set retail pump prices.

    Government Initiatives in the Petroleum and Gas Sector

    1. Strategic Petroleum Reserve: Phase I comprises 5.33 million tonnes of crude across three underground rock caverns at Visakhapatnam, Mangaluru and Padur, with a Phase II commercial cum strategic expansion under public private partnership models.
    2. Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy, 2016: Replaced the earlier New Exploration Licensing Policy with a uniform licence covering all hydrocarbons, open acreage licensing and revenue sharing in place of production sharing.
    3. Administered Price Mechanism for domestic gas: The Ministry sets the administered price for domestic natural gas indexed monthly at 10 percent of the Indian Crude Basket price, following the Kirit Parikh Committee recommendations, subject to a floor and ceiling for legacy fields.
    4. Direct Benefit Transfer for LPG: LPG is subsidised through direct transfer, with Rs 300 per cylinder for Ujjwala beneficiaries.
    5. City Gas Distribution expansion: India’s city gas distribution network now covers 98 cities, supplying compressed natural gas for vehicles and piped natural gas for households from a mix of domestic gas and regasified LNG.

    Key Facts about Global Oil Benchmarks and India’s Reserves

    1. Brent crude: North Sea origin, 38 API and 0.37 percent sulphur, traded on the Intercontinental Exchange in London, accounting for 75 to 80 percent of global oil trade and serving as the reference against which all other grades are a premium or discount.
    2. West Texas Intermediate: Cushing, Oklahoma origin, 39.6 API and 0.24 percent sulphur, traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, accounting for 15 to 20 percent of global trade and typically Brent minus $0 to $5 per barrel.
    3. Dubai and Oman: Persian Gulf origin, 31 to 33 API and 1.0 to 2.0 percent sulphur, traded on the Dubai Mercantile Exchange, accounting for 5 to 10 percent of global trade and typically Brent minus $5 to $15 per barrel.
    4. Why OPEC does not set the price: OPEC controls 40 percent of production but Brent sets 75 to 80 percent of global prices, since markets price oil hundreds of thousands of times a day while OPEC announces targets once and has no enforcement mechanism against quota cheating.
    5. Reserve position: India’s total crude cover is 74 days, made up of 9.5 days from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and 64.5 days of oil marketing company commercial stocks, against the International Energy Agency norm of 90 days.
    6. LPG and LNG cover: LPG cavern capacity of about 140,000 tonnes gives roughly 22 days of cover against consumption of about 3 million tonnes a month, while LNG has about 10 days of operational buffer and no strategic reserve.
    7. Volatility of spot gas: The Japan Korea Marker swung from $3 per MMBtu in mid 2020 to $70 per MMBtu in August 2022.
    8. Committee recommendation on storage: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Petroleum in December 2023 recommended equipping refineries with two to three days of smaller strategic storage at five to six additional locations, which could add 15 to 20 days of capacity.

    Back2Basics: Strait of Hormuz

    1. Location: A narrow sea passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and onward to the Arabian Sea.
    2. Control: Iran controls the northern shore and seven of the eight islands in the strait, Oman controls the southern entrance, and the United States Fifth Fleet acts as the external guarantor of transit.
    3. Oil traffic: About 20 million barrels a day pass through it, amounting to 20 percent of global oil movement.
    4. Gas traffic: It carries 20 percent of global LNG trade, which makes closure hit gas hardest given Qatar’s dominance in LNG supply.
    5. Strategic character: It carries the highest concentration of energy flow of any maritime chokepoint in the world.

    Challenges in India’s Energy Security

    1. Stagnant domestic crude production: Falling domestic output pushes import dependence upward regardless of demand. Eg. Cess collections of the Oil Industry Development Board have declined in real terms because domestic crude production has stagnated.
    2. Regulatory conflict of interest: The same ministry sets the pricing environment and owns the companies whose losses that environment creates. Eg. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas simultaneously regulates the sector and holds ownership rights over Indian Oil Corporation Limited, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited.
    3. Gaps in the regulatory perimeter: No single regulator covers the full chain from wellhead to pump. Eg. The Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board has no jurisdiction over upstream exploration, wellhead gas pricing or LPG retail pricing.
    4. Upstream reservoir disputes slow output: Technical disputes between operators delay field development and carry royalty implications. Eg. The gas migration dispute between ONGC and Reliance Industries in the Krishna Godavari basin required adjudication by the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons.
    5. Chokepoint concentration across all three fuels: Crude, LPG and LNG share the same maritime chokepoint, so diversification of supplier does not diversify route. Eg. LPG moves with crude tankers or on dedicated carriers through the same Strait of Hormuz.
    6. Tax structure blunts price signals: Taxes form roughly 60 percent of the retail pump price, weakening the link between global prices and consumer behaviour. Eg. Delhi petrol at Rs 96 to 97 per litre carried Rs 13 of central excise and Rs 15 to 18 of State value added tax before the crisis.
    7. Storage build out lags the exposure: Reserve expansion depends on capital and cavern geology, both of which take years. Eg. Phase II of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is being pursued through public private partnership because budgetary funding alone has not delivered the capacity.

    Way Forward

    1. Complete Phase II of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve: Bring the commercial cum strategic caverns on stream to move total cover towards the 90 day International Energy Agency norm.
    2. Adopt the refinery level storage recommendation: Implement the Parliamentary Standing Committee’s December 2023 proposal on refinery level storage, which remains a recommendation rather than sanctioned capacity.
    3. Create a strategic gas reserve: Extend the reserve architecture to LNG, which today has only an operational buffer at regasification terminals.
    4. Shift excise from a fixed levy to an ad valorem levy: This would let consumers receive part of the benefit when crude prices fall, restoring the price signal.
    5. Diversify sourcing away from a single chokepoint: Expand term contracts with Atlantic basin, West African and North American suppliers so that a Hormuz disruption does not strike crude, LNG and LPG supply simultaneously.
    6. Raise domestic production through open acreage: Accelerate block awards under the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy to arrest the decline in domestic output.
    7. Separate ownership from regulation: Move ownership of the public sector oil companies out of the administering ministry so that pricing policy is not set by their shareholder.

    “[2025, GS2, 15] “Energy security constitutes the dominant kingpin of India’s foreign policy, and is linked with India’s overarching influence in Middle Eastern countries.” How would you integrate energy security with India’s foreign policy trajectories in the coming years?”