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GS Paper: GS2

  • What is the Uniform Civil Code debate?

    Why in the News

    The Union Home Minister has indicated that the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) would be implemented in all 21 States ruled by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) by 2029. The statement builds on enactment that has already begun. Uttarakhand has had a UCC in force since January 2025, and UCC bills passed by the legislatures of Assam, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are awaiting Presidential assent. The tension the debate turns on is between two constitutional claims. Article 44 directs the State to endeavour to secure a UCC, while Article 25 guarantees the right to practise a religion of one’s choice and Article 29 protects the right of any section of citizens to conserve its distinct culture.

    What is a Uniform Civil Code?

    1. What it does: A UCC would apply the same set of secular personal laws to all people, irrespective of religion, caste or tribe.
    2. Its constitutional basis: Article 44 provides that the State shall endeavour to secure a UCC for citizens throughout India.
    3. What is already uniform: India already has uniform criminal laws, and common civil laws covering matters such as taxation, contracts and negotiable instruments.
    4. What is not: Marriage, divorce and inheritance of property remain governed by personal laws based on religious doctrines.

    How are personal matters governed today?

    1. Hindus: Governed by laws such as the Hindu Marriage Act (1955) and the Hindu Succession Act (1956).
    2. Tribals within the Hindu religion: Many may follow customary family laws under constitutional exceptions rather than the codified Hindu statutes.
    3. Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs: Covered by Hindu laws, with Sikh marriages also registrable under the Anand Marriage Act (2012).
    4. Christians and Parsis: Each community has its own personal laws.
    5. Muslims: Governed by the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act (1937).

    Why did the Constituent Assembly place the UCC in Part IV?

    1. The Assembly was divided: The framers did not reach agreement on whether a UCC belonged in the Constitution at all.
    2. The case for a Fundamental Right: Some members wanted it made a Fundamental Right, to ensure uniformity in civil laws and secure equal rights for women.
    3. The objection raised: Many members of the Muslim community opposed its inclusion, on the ground that a uniform civil code would violate the fundamental right to religion guaranteed in Part III.
    4. The settlement reached: The provision was placed in the non justiciable Part IV, the Directive Principles of State Policy, so it directs the State without being enforceable in a court.

    What are the arguments in favour of a UCC?

    1. Secularism in substance: Subjecting all citizens to the same personal laws would make India secular in the true sense, rather than leaving the State to administer a different law for each community.
    2. Gender justice: A UCC would ensure equal rights for women across religions in the matters governed by personal laws, which is described as the most vital argument for it.

    What are the arguments against a UCC?

    1. Conflict with the right to religion: Article 25 guarantees every person a fundamental right to practise a religion of one’s choice, and a UCC’s provisions on personal matters may run contrary to the scriptures of a religion.
    2. Conflict with cultural rights: Article 29 gives any section of citizens a fundamental right to conserve its distinct culture, which the codification of family matters may cut across.
    3. The tribal exemption: All four States that have enacted a UCC have exempted the tribal population from its ambit, on the grounds of constitutional safeguards protecting tribal culture and the belief that many tribal customs already provide adequate rights to women.
    4. Why that exemption is contested: Exempting one section of society while making the code compulsory for all other groups, including religious minorities, is discriminatory on its face.

    How have the courts and the Law Commission framed the way forward?

    1. Article 25 is not unqualified: The right to religion is subject to constitutional morality and to other fundamental rights, including equality.
    2. The Supreme Court on cultural protection: In the Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (2024) case, the Court held that practices such as casteism and gender discrimination, which run against the spirit of the Constitution, would not receive protection under Article 29.
    3. Ambedkar’s voluntary route: In the Constituent Assembly, B.R. Ambedkar advocated a UCC but suggested it could remain voluntary, with Parliament providing for it to apply to citizens who declare they are willing to be bound by it.
    4. The Law Commission’s position: Its Consultation Paper on Reform of Family Law (2018) held that a UCC was neither necessary nor desirable at this stage, and argued instead for reforming discriminatory provisions across personal laws.
    5. The standard it proposed: The emphasis should be on achieving “equality within communities” between men and women, rather than “equality between communities”, through legislative reform of marriage, divorce, custody, adoption, maintenance, succession and inheritance.

    Challenges to a Uniform Civil Code

    1. No published draft to debate: The argument runs on positions rather than on text, because no model code has been placed in the public domain for the country as a whole. Eg. The 22nd Law Commission sought public views on the UCC in 2023 without circulating a draft code alongside the notice.
      The Fix: Publish a model draft code for consultation before further State enactments, so objections attach to clauses rather than to the idea.
    2. State by State enactment fragments uniformity: Personal law sits in the Concurrent List, so separate State codes can produce different rules on the same subject and defeat the uniformity the code is named for. Eg. Entry 5 of the Concurrent List covers marriage, divorce, infants and minors, adoption, wills and succession.
      The Fix: Anchor the State codes to a central framework law so the substantive rules converge even where each State enacts its own.
    3. Scope creep beyond family law: A code enacted to equalise rights in marriage and succession can extend into regulating private arrangements that no personal law governed. Eg. Uttarakhand’s code makes registration of a live in relationship compulsory, with a penalty for failure to register.
      The Fix: Confine the code to marriage, divorce, maintenance, adoption and succession, and drop registration duties that create fresh offences.
    4. Adjudication capacity: Codification moves disputes into family courts that already carry long pendency, so a new right delivers slowly in practice. Eg. Family courts constituted under the Family Courts Act, 1984 carry pendency running into lakhs of cases.
      The Fix: Expand family court benches and statutory mediation capacity before any commencement date is notified.

    Conclusion

    The debate is no longer only about Article 44 in the abstract, since four States have already legislated and the stated target is all 21 NDA ruled States by 2029. The unresolved question is whether equality in personal law is better reached by replacing the personal laws or by reforming the discriminatory provisions inside each of them, which is the choice between the State codes and the Law Commission’s 2018 position. The immediate marker is Presidential assent for the codes passed by the legislatures of Assam, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

    Back2Basics: Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP)

    1. Where they sit: Part IV of the Constitution, Articles 36 to 51, setting out goals the State is to pursue in making law and policy.
    2. Their legal force: Article 37 makes them non justiciable, so no court can enforce them, while declaring them fundamental in the governance of the country.
    3. Their source: The idea was drawn from the Irish Constitution, which in turn borrowed it from the Spanish Constitution.
    4. Their relationship with rights: They are read alongside the Fundamental Rights in Part III, and courts use them to interpret the scope of those rights rather than to override them.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2015, GS2, 12] Discuss the possible factors that inhibit India from enacting for its citizens a uniform civil code as provided for in the Directive Principles of State Policy.”

  • India softens EU steel import curbs hit, secures 80% exports

    Why in the News

    India has safeguarded more than 80% of its steel supplies to the European Union (EU) by negotiating that the steel concessions contained in the free trade agreement between India and the EU be front loaded, so they apply before the agreement comes into force. The step answers a curb the EU has already imposed. Since July 2026 the EU has run an amended quota based system for certain steel imports that sharply cut country wise quotas in order to reduce overall steel imports. The tension is that the quota relief does not remove the cost barrier. Indian steelmakers will still have to pay the EU’s separate Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) charge even where their exports fall within the quota.

    What is the EU’s steel quota system?

    1. The mechanism: It caps the volume of specified steel products that may enter the EU from each country at a preferential duty, with shipments beyond the cap facing a higher duty.
    2. Country wise quotas: Each supplying country receives a named tonnage for the product categories inside the quota mechanism.
    3. Residual quotas: Beyond the country specific allocation, a residual pool is available, and India’s access to that pool comes from the free trade agreement.

    How much did India’s quota actually move?

    1. The negotiated text: The trade deal text set India’s quota at 16.5 lakh tonnes for the items within the quota mechanism.
    2. The implemented figure: When the system was finally implemented in July, India’s quota was expanded to 19 lakh tonnes.
    3. With residual access: Counting the residual quotas India receives under the free trade agreement, the total potential quota for Indian steel exports now stands at 28 lakh tonnes.
    4. Measured against past trade: India exported an average of 30 lakh tonnes of steel products falling under the quota regime over 2022 to 2024, so full use of the residual quotas secures more than 80% of quota based steel exports.

    Why does front loading matter before the agreement is in force?

    1. The timing problem: The EU’s amended quota system took effect in July 2026, while the free trade agreement had not yet come into effect, which would have left India inside the tightened country quota with no concession to draw on.
    2. The concession obtained: The EU agreed to make the steel concessions applicable from July 2026, ahead of the agreement’s own entry into force.
    3. Where the agreement stands: The text is currently with the European Commission to sign, which the government expects to take place in December.

    Why does CBAM still bite despite the quota gain?

    1. A separate instrument: CBAM is a carbon charge on imports and operates independently of the quota, so quota compliant steel is not exempt from it.
    2. Verification as the practical cost: Exporters must have their embedded carbon figures verified, and Indian exporters currently have to look abroad for that service.
    3. The response under way: India is working with the EU to build domestic capacity for CBAM verification, including recognition of Indian verification agencies, with the government trying to get at least 10 agencies verified.

    Challenges to India’s steel exports to the EU

    1. Carbon intensity of the production route: Indian steel is made largely through the coal based blast furnace route, so its declared embedded carbon sits above that of EU producers and the levy scales with that gap. Eg. Coal based production accounts for the bulk of India’s crude steel output.
      The Fix: Route export grade capacity through electric arc furnaces and direct reduced iron so the verified carbon content falls at source.
    2. Residual quota exhaustion: Residual pools are allotted on a first come first served basis within each period, so an exporter shipping late in the period can find the pool used up. Eg. Steel entering the EU outside the safeguard quota faces a duty of 25%.
      The Fix: Publish a shipment calendar allocating the residual pool across Indian exporters within each quarter, rather than leaving it to who files first.
    3. Concentration on a single destination: Securing 80% of quota based exports to one bloc leaves that volume exposed to a single regulator’s next revision. Eg. The EU cut country wise quotas in July 2026 without a corresponding change in Indian production plans.
      The Fix: Build parallel quota and tariff access in other markets so a single revision does not move the whole export book.
    4. Compliance capacity in smaller mills: Carbon accounting at installation level requires measurement systems that secondary and smaller producers do not maintain. Eg. Much of India’s steel capacity sits with secondary producers operating induction furnaces.
      The Fix: Fund a shared carbon measurement and reporting facility for secondary producers at the cluster level.

    Conclusion

    The quota outcome is real but partial. India has converted a tightening safeguard into slightly more room than the trade deal text promised, and has done it before the deal is signed. The cost barrier has simply moved from the quota to the carbon charge, which no volume concession addresses. The next marker is the European Commission’s signature, expected in December, and the number of Indian verification agencies the EU actually recognises.

    Back2Basics: Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)

    1. What it is: An EU measure that charges imports of specified goods for the greenhouse gas emissions embedded in their production, so imported goods bear a carbon cost comparable to EU produced goods.
    2. Sectors covered: Iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen.
    3. How it operates: Importers must report the embedded emissions of each consignment and surrender certificates priced against the EU’s own carbon market.
    4. Timeline: A transitional reporting only phase began in October 2023, with the financial obligation on importers beginning from 2026.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2017] ‘Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA)’ is sometimes seen in the news in the context of negotiations held between India and (a) European Union (b) Gulf Cooperation Council (c) Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (d) Shanghai Cooperation Organization Answer: (a)”

  • Mining amendment is unfair to States

    Mining amendment is unfair to States

    Why in the News

    Section 9D of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2026 restricts State governments from imposing taxes, cesses or other levies on mineral rights or mineral-bearing land, except in accordance with conditions prescribed by the Centre. The provision follows Mineral Area Development Authority vs. Steel Authority of India (2024), in which a nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that royalty payable on minerals is not a tax. The same Bench recognised the States’ legislative power to tax mineral rights and held that mineral-bearing land falls within the States’ taxation power over land. The tension is that Entry 50 of the State List lets Parliament limit State taxation of mineral rights, while the new section extends its restriction to levies on mineral-bearing land, a separate power under Entry 49 of the State List. What is contested is not the revenue States receive today but the levies they may be barred from raising tomorrow.

    What does Section 9D do?

    1. Scope of the restriction: It bars States from imposing taxes, cesses or other levies on mineral rights or on mineral-bearing land except as the Centre prescribes.
    2. Where the discretion sits: The conditions under which a State may levy are set by the Central government, so future State levies depend on a framework the Centre controls.
    3. What it does not touch: Royalty, the auction premium and the other mineral revenues States currently receive are not altered by the section.

    What is the Centre’s case for a uniform levy framework?

    1. Predictability for investors: The stated objective is to create a predictable tax environment, prevent excessive levies and encourage long-term investment in mining.
    2. Project horizons: Mining projects involve enormous investment and operate over decades, so investors need assurance that financial rules will not change unpredictably from one year to the next.
    3. Revenue assurance offered: The Centre’s position is that 90% of mining sector revenue accrues to the States and that this will continue.

    Why do mineral-rich States object?

    1. Uneven distribution of the resource: India’s mineral wealth is concentrated rather than spread evenly. Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka hold enormous reserves of coal, iron ore and other minerals that feed industries across the country.
    2. Costs land on the host State: The host State handles resettlement of displaced groups, environmental damage, pressure on public infrastructure and the long-term consequences of extracting minerals that can never be replaced.
    3. Budgets tied to mining receipts: NITI Aayog’s Fiscal Health Index has recognised the role mining receipts play in the strong revenue mobilisation performance of Odisha and Chhattisgarh. Mining accounts for a large proportion of Odisha’s non-tax revenue.
    4. Higher spending needs in mineral districts: Mineral producing districts require greater public expenditure precisely because they bear the costs of mining.
    5. Loss of a natural advantage: A mineral-rich State ordinarily expects some ability to convert that advantage into resources for its own development, and the section substantially reduces that freedom.

    What is the constitutional objection to Section 9D?

    1. Entry 50 and its built-in limit: The Constitution gives States the power to tax mineral rights under Entry 50 of the State List, subject to limitations Parliament may impose through laws relating to mineral development.
    2. Entry 49 is a separate power: The power to tax lands and buildings under Entry 49 of the State List is a distinct constitutional head and carries no equivalent parliamentary limitation clause.
    3. Where the section goes further: By extending the restriction to taxes or levies on mineral-bearing land, the section reaches a power Entry 50 does not authorise Parliament to limit.
    4. Risk to the 2024 ruling: The amendment risks rendering the impact of the nine-judge ruling nugatory, since a power the Court affirmed can be neutralised by prescription rather than by overruling.
    5. The question it raises: How far can a Central law dealing with mineral development restrict a State’s exclusive power to tax land is now a live constitutional question rather than a mining policy dispute.

    Challenges to Section 9D

    1. Responsibility without fiscal capacity: A federal system cannot function where States carry obligations they have no independent means to fund. Eg. Mineral districts must fund resettlement and infrastructure repair from receipts the Centre may now condition.
      The Fix: Confine the prescribed conditions to levies on mineral rights under Entry 50 and leave the Entry 49 land taxation power untouched.
    2. Predictability purchased by narrowing State choice: Uniformity makes taxation more predictable for investors and reduces the fiscal options available to States. Eg. A State cannot design a mineral-linked levy to fund a district-specific rehabilitation programme without Central prescription.
      The Fix: Set a ceiling on State mineral levies in the statute itself rather than routing each levy through Central approval, so investors get the certainty without the States losing the power.
    3. Litigation risk over a settled question: A provision that neutralises a nine-judge ruling by executive prescription invites a fresh round of constitutional challenge. Eg. Mineral Area Development Authority vs. Steel Authority of India itself ran for decades before it was settled in 2024.
      The Fix: Refer the scope of Section 9D to the Inter-State Council under Article 263 before conditions are prescribed, so the levy framework is negotiated rather than litigated.
    4. Concentration of the burden on a few States: The section’s cost is borne almost entirely by a handful of mineral-bearing States rather than spread across the Union. Eg. Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka carry the bulk of the country’s coal and iron ore output.
      The Fix: Weight mineral-bearing districts explicitly in the next Finance Commission’s horizontal devolution formula, so extraction costs are recognised in transfers.

    Conclusion

    The minerals beneath a State’s soil serve the entire country, and the costs of extracting them are felt most directly by the people who live above them. A State that bears the infrastructural and social consequences of extraction must retain a meaningful stake in the economic value its natural resources generate. The unresolved point is whether a Central law on mineral development may condition a State’s power to tax land, a power the Constitution places under a separate entry and does not subject to parliamentary limitation. That question now sits between a statute in force and a nine-judge ruling that has not been overruled.

    What is Fiscal Federalism?

    1. About: It is the division of taxation powers, expenditure responsibilities and transfer arrangements between the levels of government in a federation.
    2. Rationale: It exists because the level of government best placed to raise a tax is often not the level that must spend on the service, so the design has to close that gap without destroying accountability.
    3. Vertical imbalance: The Union raises a larger share of revenue than it spends directly, while States carry the larger share of expenditure obligations, and transfers bridge the difference.
    4. Horizontal imbalance: Revenue capacity differs sharply across States of similar need, which is why devolution formulas weight income distance, area and population rather than collections alone.

    Back2Basics: NITI Aayog’s Fiscal Health Index

    1. What it is: A composite index published by NITI Aayog that ranks States on the quality of their public finances.
    2. What it measures: It scores States on sub-indices covering quality of expenditure, revenue mobilisation, fiscal prudence, debt index and debt sustainability.
    3. First edition: The maiden report was released in January 2025 and covered 18 major States.
    4. Why it matters here: It is the benchmark that records mining receipts as a driver of revenue mobilisation performance in mineral-bearing States.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    [2025] Examine the evolving pattern of Centre-State financial relations in the context of planned development in India. How far have the recent reforms impacted the fiscal federalism in India?

  • Special Campaign 6: Swachhata in Government Offices

    Special Campaign 6: Swachhata in Government Offices

    Why in the News?

    The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD) are preparing for Special Campaign 6, to be conducted from 2-31 October 2026.

    Key Highlights

    • Objective: Institutionalise Swachhata and reduce pendency in government offices.
    • Preparatory Phase: 15-30 September 2026.
    • Implementation Phase: 2-31 October 2026.
    • Major focus:
      • E-waste collection, segregation and disposal
      • Disposal of pending references
      • Record management
      • Space management
      • Cleanliness and beautification
    • E-waste activities will follow the E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022.
    • Special attention to field and outstation offices involved in public service delivery.

    Pending Matters Covered

    • MP and State Government references
    • Inter-Ministerial communications
    • Parliamentary Assurances
    • PMO references
    • Public Grievances and PG Appeals through CPGRAMS

    Special Campaign 5.0: DFPD Performance

    • 1,23,853 files weeded out.
    • 49,830 sq ft space freed.
    • ₹1.67 crore revenue generated.
    • Nov 2025-Aug 2026:
      • 72,577 sq ft space freed.
      • ₹25.95 lakh revenue from scrap disposal.
      • 1,493 cleanliness drives conducted.

    Important Full Forms

    • MoHUA: Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs
    • DFPD: Department of Food and Public Distribution
    • CPWD: Central Public Works Department
    • NBCC: National Buildings Construction Corporation
    • CPGRAMS: Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System
    • PMO: Prime Minister’s Office

    Prelims Quick Revision

    • Special Campaign 6: 2-31 October 2026.
    • Preparatory Phase: 15-30 September 2026.
    • Focus: Swachhata + pendency + records + space + e-waste.
    • E-waste management follows E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022.
    • Special Campaigns have been conducted since 2021.

  • SIR deletions: elector numbers in 1/3 of Delhi below poll turnout

    Why in the News

    In 24 of Delhi’s 70 Assembly constituencies, the draft roll produced by the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) now carries fewer electors than the number of people who actually voted in the February 2025 Assembly election. The 2025 election was conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI) itself on a roll of 1.56 crore electors, of whom 94.9 lakh voted. Roughly 58.5 lakh names have been removed since, leaving 97.5 lakh electors in the draft roll. The tension is arithmetical before it is legal: an electoral roll smaller than the last verified turnout implies either migration on an implausible scale or deletions that have removed electors who remain ordinarily resident.

    What is the Special Intensive Revision?

    1. What it is: It is a house-to-house re-verification of the electoral roll, conducted in phases across States and Union Territories, that rebuilds the roll rather than amending it at the margins.
    2. What an elector must do: The draft enumeration process requires electors to list their Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers and their eligibility to vote.
    3. Status of the output: What is published at the end of enumeration is a draft roll, not the final roll, so time remains for additions.
    4. Two routes to addition: Freshly eligible electors may be added, and electors erroneously deleted may seek restoration through claims and objections.

    What do the Delhi numbers show, and how thin is the buffer?

    1. The starting roll: The rolls carried 1.56 crore electors before the Delhi Assembly polls of February 2025, of whom 94.9 lakh voted.
    2. Two rounds of culling: Close to 11 lakh electors were deleted before the SIR, and nearly 47.6 lakh more during the draft SIR phase, a total of over 58.5 lakh names.
    3. What is left: The draft roll carries 97.5 lakh electors for the Union Territory.
    4. The buffer that remains: The 94.9 lakh who voted are 97% of the draft roll, leaving a “buffer” of only about 2.6 lakh electors, or 2.6%, to account for every ordinary resident who did not vote.
    5. The implied turnout: If every deletion since the Assembly polls is legitimate, the hypothetical turnout percentage on the draft roll works out to an implausible 97%.

    Which constituencies were cut deepest?

    1. The worst case: Tughlakabad’s draft roll carries 1,00,386 electors against 1,14,961 who actually voted in 2025, a shortfall of 14,575.
    2. How many seats are affected: 24 constituencies show fewer electors than 2025 turnout, and 15 of them carry the largest shortfalls. Eg. Sangam Vihar with 1,25,723 actual voters, Badli with 1,50,889 and Dwarka with 1,39,564.
    3. Where they cluster: The pattern is most pronounced in the eastern, central and southern parts of Delhi, and is highest in the seats beyond the Yamuna on the east.

    What would have to be true for the deletions to hold?

    1. Universal turnout among residents: Everyone deemed an “ordinary resident” in these 24 constituencies would have to have voted in 2025.
    2. Mass departure of voters: A significant share of those who did vote would have to have left the constituency since.
    3. Non-voters never resident: Those who did not vote in 2025 would have to have been non-resident then, or to have ceased to be resident since.
    4. Migration on an implausible scale: Taken together, these constituencies would have to have seen inward and outward migration of enormous scale in the 17 months between the polls and the start of the SIR, and there are no signs any of that happened.
    5. Self-declared ineligibility: Since enumeration requires electors to state their EPIC number and their eligibility, it stretches reason to assume recent voters declared themselves ineligible.

    Does the pattern extend beyond Delhi?

    1. Buffer shrinks by phase: The practice of leaving a small buffer of electors is more marked for States and Union Territories revised in Phase 3 of the SIR than in the earlier phases.
    2. Phase 3 figures: Andhra Pradesh retains a buffer of 8.8%, Karnataka 13.1% and Maharashtra 16.2%.
    3. Delhi as the outlier: Delhi’s 2.6% buffer is the narrowest recorded, making it the worst case of the phase.
    4. What a narrow buffer indicates: A thin buffer points to aggressive deletion and to the potential disenfranchisement of eligible electors, since it leaves almost no room for residents who simply did not vote.

    Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

    1. Burden of proof shifted to the elector: A citizen already on a roll used for a completed election must re-establish eligibility or lose the vote. Eg. Delhi’s draft roll dropped 58.5 lakh names from a roll the Commission itself used in February 2025.
      The Fix: Require a recorded, individually served reason for every deletion, with the elector’s response window running from the date of service rather than from publication of the draft.
    2. Compressed timelines: Phase-wise revision on short schedules leaves little time for claims and objections to be heard on their merits. Eg. The buffer narrowed steadily from Phase 1 to Phase 3, with Delhi the narrowest at 2.6%.
      The Fix: Fix a minimum claims-and-objections period proportionate to the number of deletions in a constituency rather than a uniform calendar window.
    3. No published audit of deletion grounds: Aggregate deletion counts are released without a category-wise break-up of death, shifting or duplication. Eg. Delhi’s 58.5 lakh removals are reported as a pre-SIR figure and an SIR-phase figure with no stated ground-wise split.
      The Fix: Publish constituency-level deletion data disaggregated by statutory ground, so the roll can be audited against civil registration and migration records.
    4. Weak field verification capacity: Booth level officers handle large workloads within short revision cycles, so verification quality varies across constituencies. Eg. Deletions clustered in the eastern, central and southern parts of Delhi rather than spreading evenly.
      The Fix: Mandate supervisory re-verification of a random sample of deletions in every constituency before the draft roll is published.
    5. Contested scope of the exercise: Whether the revision may examine questions beyond ordinary residence is disputed and unsettled. Eg. The enumeration form requires electors to state both their EPIC number and their eligibility.
      The Fix: Issue a public instruction confining the Commission’s enquiry to the statutory grounds for inclusion and deletion under the Representation of the People Act, 1950.

    Conclusion

    A roll smaller than the last verified turnout is not evidence of one wrong deletion; it is evidence that the method that produced it needs auditing. The draft stage still allows both freshly eligible electors and wrongly deleted ones to be added, so the number that matters is the final roll and not this one. The measure to watch is the size of the buffer in Delhi’s final roll against the 2.6% the draft leaves, and whether the Phase 3 States now revising show the same narrowing.

    Back2Basics: Electoral Photo Identity Card

    1. What it is: A photo identity document issued by the Election Commission of India to a registered elector, carrying a unique EPIC number.
    2. When it began: Issue of the card started in 1993 to reduce impersonation and duplicate entries in electoral rolls.
    3. What it does not prove: It is proof of enrolment on a roll and is not proof of citizenship or of residence in itself.
    4. Use in this revision: The SIR enumeration form is keyed to the EPIC number, which is how an existing elector is matched to the rebuilt roll.

    Matching Previous Year Question

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

  • Let’s curb misuse of a legal relic that elevates the mob over the individual

    Why in the News

    Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, re-codified as Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), is under fresh criticism for converting subjective offence into a cognisable, non-bailable criminal charge. The provision was introduced by the British in 1927 during the “Rangeela Rasool” controversy, after a provocative Urdu pamphlet satirising the Prophet Muhammad’s personal life sparked widespread communal riots. It survives in independent India under Article 19(2) of the Constitution, which permits speech restrictions in the interests of public order. The tension is between a criminal provision built to preserve public order and a constitutional guarantee of expression that the provision’s procedure defeats before any court examines malice.

    What does Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita cover?

    1. The offence: It penalises deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings, which was the stated purpose when Section 295A was enacted in 1927.
    2. Colonial rationale: It was born of a colonial urge to police Indian subjects deemed too volatile to handle the friction of free and provocative speech.
    3. Procedural character: The offence is cognisable and non-bailable, so the police may register a case and arrest without a magistrate’s prior direction and bail is not a matter of right.
    4. Constitutional validity: Ramji Lal Modi vs State of Uttar Pradesh (1957) upheld Section 295A, reading the words “deliberate and malicious” as the narrowing element that keeps it within Article 19(2).

    How does the provision create a heckler’s veto?

    1. Offence converted into an offence in law: Translating the subjective and volatile idea of “emotional hurt” into a criminal charge hands a permanent “heckler’s veto” to the most intolerant segments of society.
    2. Inverted hierarchy of rights: It creates a perverse incentive for outrage by elevating “the right to be offended” above the right to free speech.
    3. Low threshold to trigger the state: One aggrieved individual filing a First Information Report (FIR) in a remote corner of the country instantly triggers the machinery of the state.
    4. Who it is triggered against: Writers, filmmakers, stand-up comedians and publishers face it for speech that a court often finds, years later, was never malicious at all.
    5. Incentive for entrepreneurs of grievance: Political entrepreneurs, religious zealots and competitive vigilante groups find that claiming wounded sentiment is the easiest path to public relevance.

    What does the resulting self-censorship look like?

    1. Withdrawal of a published work: Penguin Books India withdrew distribution of Joe Sacco’s graphic novel on the Muzaffarnagar riots.
    2. Pulping of an academic work: The same publisher had earlier pulped copies of Wendy Doniger’s *The Hindus*.
    3. Pre-emptive editing: Cuts were sought to Sonia Gandhi’s memoirs that the publisher’s global arm had not considered necessary for the international edition.
    4. None of it was legally required: None of these texts was legally proscribed, so each was a pre-emptive surrender in which commercial risk aversion replaced constitutional principle.
    5. Spread beyond publishing: Galleries pull provocative paintings, studios quietly cancel scripts and academics choose safer research topics, leaving a public square reduced to bland conformity.

    Why is the process itself the punishment?

    1. Arrest precedes any finding: The law allows arrest before a trial can establish whether malice existed, so the element that makes the act criminal is tested last.
    2. Cost of defending the case: Multi-city court appearances, jail time and financial ruin break the spirit of an artist or author irrespective of the eventual verdict.
    3. Behavioural consequence: When the cost of creative expression is the potential loss of personal liberty, most creators choose to pull their punches.

    What did the 2008 Delhi High Court ruling on M F Husain establish?

    1. What the judgment did: It quashed criminal proceedings against the self-exiled painter M F Husain and set out a defence of artistic liberty against intolerance.
    2. How the charges were answered: The ruling dismantled the obscenity and blasphemy charges by placing Husain’s abstract nude depiction of Bharat Mata within India’s four-millennia-old heritage of sacred, pluralistic and erotic iconography, from Khajuraho to Konark.
    3. The warning it recorded: It critiqued the “new puritanism” pursued by self-appointed guardians of cultural purity and warned that such a society would push India backward.
    4. The principle it fixed: One disapproving viewer cannot hold the right to restrict free expression, which is the constitutional shield the ruling established for creative dissent.

    What reforms would reverse the incentive structure?

    1. Prior sanction before the FIR: Government sanction should be required before an FIR under BNS 299 is registered, rather than after the accused has already endured an investigation and a chargesheet.
    2. Consolidation of parallel FIRs: Multiple FIRs on the same subject lodged in different States should be consolidated immediately into a single proceeding.
    3. Fast-tracking of quashing petitions: BNS 299 cases should be fast-tracked so that frivolous proceedings are quashed early rather than after years.
    4. Costs on vexatious complainants: Vexatious complainants should face costs or other punitive consequences, so the incentive structure of the provision is reversed rather than reinforced.

    Conclusion

    Scrutiny of intent currently arrives at the end of the process, by which point the prosecution has already imposed the cost the provision was never meant to impose. Moving that scrutiny to the point before registration is what separates a public order safeguard from a licence for organised offence-taking. The unresolved conflict is between a constitutional test that turns on deliberate malice and a procedure that reaches arrest before malice is examined at all. Until the procedure is changed, the outcome of a case will continue to matter less than the fact of one.

    What is freedom of speech and expression under the Constitution?

    1. About: Article 19(1)(a) guarantees every citizen the right to freedom of speech and expression, read to include the right to receive and circulate information.
    2. Rationale: The guarantee protects the process by which citizens form and contest opinions, so it exists to shield unpopular expression rather than agreeable expression.
    3. The restriction clause: Article 19(2) permits reasonable restrictions on eight grounds, the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, contempt of court, defamation and incitement to an offence.
    4. The reasonableness test: A restriction must fall within one of those eight grounds and must be reasonable, which is why Shreya Singhal vs Union of India (2015) struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 as vague and overbroad.

    Back2Basics: Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023

    1. What it is: The statute that replaced the Indian Penal Code, 1860 as India’s principal criminal law.
    2. When it took effect: It came into force on 1 July 2024, alongside the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.
    3. Structure: It carries 358 sections against the 511 of the Code it replaced, with several offences merged or renumbered.
    4. Relevance here: Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code is carried forward as Section 299, so the offence survives the recodification substantially unchanged.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “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.”

  • Currency conundrum

    Why in the News

    The BRICS New Delhi Declaration records only incremental progress on local currency trade. Its paragraph on the subject acknowledges the efforts of various task forces and committees and offers no concrete proposal. The Declaration promotes local currency trade “while respecting national priorities and acknowledging that there is no one-size-fits-all approach”, which is the language of a member that wanted its reservations placed on record. India’s rupee trade with its BRICS partners is limited to the United Arab Emirates and Russia, and even those volumes are small. The tension is that India gains from being paid in dollars as an exporter and from paying in cheaper local currencies as an importer, and it cannot hold both positions indefinitely.

    What is local currency trade settlement?

    1. Definition: Local currency trade settlement is the invoicing and payment of a cross border transaction in the currency of one of the two trading countries, rather than in a third currency such as the dollar. The exporter is paid in a currency that one of the two governments issues.
    2. Mechanism: The importing country’s bank credits the exporting country’s currency into a designated account held with a bank in the exporter’s country. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) operationalised this for India in July 2022 through Special Rupee Vostro Accounts, which hold a foreign bank’s rupee balances for settling trade.
    3. What it does not do: Settlement in a local currency changes the unit of account for a transaction and creates no new common currency and no shared central bank. The parties still have to agree an exchange rate and find uses for the balances that accumulate.

    Where does India’s rupee trade actually stand?

    1. Two partners only: Within BRICS, only the United Arab Emirates and Russia are engaged in rupee trade with India. The volumes involved are relatively small.
    2. Russia’s surplus problem: Russia struggled to dispose of the rupees it was accumulating from its exports to India. A surplus holder that cannot spend or invest a currency has no reason to keep accepting it.
    3. A partial opening: Some avenues have opened, with Russia importing petroleum products from India after Ukraine’s attacks on its refining capacity. That flow is small against the size of the bilateral trade imbalance.
    4. A third currency as ‘local’: Another option is to treat any BRICS currency as local. India has already been using the UAE Dirham to pay for Russian oil, which sidesteps the dollar without using the rupee.

    Why is this not a simple choice for India?

    1. The exporter’s interest: India would prefer to continue being paid for its exports in dollars. A depreciating rupee means every dollar received converts into a larger rupee amount, and a country pushing exports wants to retain that advantage.
    2. The importer’s interest: India is also a major importer, and it would prefer to pay in relatively cheaper local currencies. The two preferences point in opposite directions on the same policy.
    3. The choice is deferred, not avoided: A country cannot indefinitely invoice its exports in one currency and its imports in another without its partners noticing the asymmetry. India will eventually have to settle which of the two interests governs.

    Why does China’s share turn this into a question about the yuan?

    1. Concentration of BRICS trade: China accounts for about two-thirds of all BRICS exports. Local currency trade across the grouping will therefore largely be trade in the yuan.
    2. Political reluctance: Relations with China are thawing, and India would still be reluctant to conduct its business in the yuan. A settlement currency creates a standing dependence on the issuing country’s banking system and payment rails.
    3. Why the general language matters: A grouping whose largest exporter issues the default settlement currency cannot offer a single formula that suits every member. The Declaration’s rejection of a one-size-fits-all approach is the recorded consequence of that arithmetic.

    How does local currency trade differ from a BRICS currency?

    1. Local currency trade: This is a bilateral settlement arrangement between two members, with no common issuer. India has been cautiously supportive of it.
    2. A BRICS currency: This would be a shared unit requiring a common issuer, a reserve pool and agreed rules of issuance. India has been vocal in opposing it, largely because China would likely dominate such a currency.
    3. The external cost: The United States President has threatened 100% tariffs on countries adopting a BRICS currency. India has taken a pragmatic approach in dealing with the United States and will not court such tariff threats lightly.
    4. Different motivations across members: Countries such as Iran and Russia have pressing reasons to move away from the dollar, both being under extensive sanctions. India does not have a comparable compulsion, and the Declaration reflects that difference.

    Challenges to local currency trade in BRICS

    1. Limited convertibility of the rupee: The rupee is not fully convertible on the capital account, so a partner accumulating rupee balances has few assets to park them in. Eg. Russian banks accumulated rupee balances in Special Rupee Vostro Accounts that they could not deploy at scale.
      The Fix: Widen the permitted investment avenues for vostro balances, including government securities and corporate debt, so a surplus holder has a yield bearing use for them.
    2. Structural trade imbalance: Settlement currency follows the direction of the surplus, and a partner running a persistent surplus with India will not accept rupees indefinitely. Eg. India’s oil imports from Russia are far larger than its exports to Russia.
      The Fix: Pair settlement arrangements with targeted market access for the partner’s goods, so the imbalance narrows rather than being financed.
    3. Thin currency markets and hedging costs: Direct rupee to partner currency markets are shallow, so exchange rates are volatile and forward cover is expensive. Eg. Exporters settling in a partner currency carry a risk that a dollar contract would have passed to the market.
      The Fix: Build reference rate mechanisms and a bank led forward market for the main partner currency pairs before volumes are scaled up.
    4. Secondary sanctions and payment channel risk: Banks handling settlement for a sanctioned partner risk losing access to dollar clearing, so large lenders stay out and the business shifts to small institutions. Eg. Several Indian banks limited Russia related settlement business rather than risk their correspondent relationships.
      The Fix: Route sanctioned trade through designated institutions with no dollar clearing exposure, keeping the wider banking system insulated.
    5. Domestic monetary consequences: A widening use of the rupee abroad transmits offshore demand into the domestic money market and complicates exchange rate management. Eg. The RBI has intervened repeatedly to contain rupee volatility during periods of capital outflow.
      The Fix: Sequence internationalisation against clearly stated convertibility milestones, so the external use of the rupee grows with the depth of the domestic market rather than ahead of it.

    Conclusion

    India supports settlement in local currencies and opposes a common BRICS currency, and the New Delhi Declaration carries both positions without reconciling them. The reason is not drafting: the grouping’s trade runs through one member, and a shared settlement currency would hand that member the instrument. What India lacks is the compulsion its partners have, so its de-dollarisation is a hedge rather than a strategy. The unresolved point is whether India can keep collecting export receipts in dollars while asking its partners to accept rupees for the goods it buys.

    Matching Previous Year Question

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

  • ‘Has no legal basis’: India rejects Pakistan-China ‘boundary commission’

    Why in the News

    The Ministry of External Affairs has rejected the boundary joint commission constituted by Pakistan and China. Its stated ground is that the body has no legal basis to decide on arrangements related to Indian territory under illegal occupation. The rejection followed the first meeting of the Pakistan-China Boundary Joint Commission in Islamabad. India holds that it has never recognised the China-Pakistan Boundary Agreement of 1963, under which Pakistan handed over the Shaksgam Valley to China, and treats that agreement as illegal and invalid. The Ministry restated that the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are integral and inalienable parts of India, and called on Pakistan to vacate the areas under its illegal occupation. The tension is that a standing commission gives institutional form to a transfer India treats as void, while India’s non-recognition changes nothing about who administers the ground.

    What is the 1963 China-Pakistan Boundary Agreement?

    1. What it did: The agreement demarcated a boundary between China and the part of Kashmir under Pakistan’s control. Pakistan ceded about 5,180 sq km of the Shaksgam Valley, north of the Siachen region, to China.
    2. India’s legal objection: India holds that Pakistan has no sovereignty over the territory and therefore no capacity to transfer any part of it. On that reasoning there is no boundary between Pakistan and China at all.
    3. The agreement’s own provisional clause: The 1963 text itself records that the boundary is provisional, and provides for renegotiation with the sovereign authority once the Kashmir dispute is settled. Both signatories therefore acknowledged on the face of the document that the question of title was open.

    What exactly did India object to?

    1. Denial of a boundary: India’s position is that no boundary exists between Pakistan and China, so no commission can be constituted to administer one. The objection goes to the existence of the subject matter, not to the commission’s composition or procedure.
    2. Rejection of legitimisation attempts: India stated that it resolutely opposes attempts to alter the status of the occupied territories or to legitimise illegal occupation. Any so-called boundary cooperation between China and Pakistan concerning Indian territories would have no bearing whatsoever on India’s sovereignty.
    3. Demand for vacation: India called on Pakistan to immediately vacate the areas under its illegal and forcible occupation, rather than engage in such proceedings. The demand converts the rejection from a protest into a stated precondition.
    4. Consistency as the argument: India framed its position as clear and consistent rather than as a new response. Consistency is itself the legal point, since acquiescence over time is what would weaken a non-recognition claim.

    Why does the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor feature in this objection?

    1. Route through occupied territory: India has opposed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship connectivity and energy project linking Xinjiang to Gwadar port, because part of it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The objection is territorial rather than commercial.
    2. Infrastructure as evidence of control: Roads, power projects and administrative arrangements built along a disputed alignment create facts on the ground and a record of undisturbed use. A boundary commission performs the same function in legal form that the corridor performs in physical form.
    3. Link to the wider connectivity initiative: CPEC is the leading component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which India has declined to join on sovereignty grounds. India stayed away from the Belt and Road Forum held in Beijing in May 2017 for that reason.

    Challenges to India’s non-recognition position

    1. Non-recognition does not alter control: China has administered the Shaksgam Valley since 1963 and India’s objection has produced no change in possession. Eg. India’s sustained objection to CPEC since 2017 has not slowed construction along the corridor.
      The Fix: Pair the legal position with continued infrastructure and force posture development on the Indian side of the Siachen and Karakoram sector, so the claim is backed by presence.
    2. Institutional practice accumulates over time: A commission that meets periodically builds a documented record of bilateral practice that third parties may treat as settled. Eg. The 1963 agreement itself has been treated as operative for over six decades despite its own provisional clause.
      The Fix: Record a formal protest after each meeting of the commission, so the record shows continuous objection rather than a single statement.
    3. No forum adjudicates the claim: No international court or tribunal has jurisdiction over the question without the consent of all parties, and neither China nor Pakistan will give it. Eg. India has consistently treated Jammu and Kashmir as a bilateral matter and declined third party adjudication.
      The Fix: Build the position into bilateral and plurilateral documents India signs, so partners record the Indian claim rather than staying silent on it.
    4. Two front linkage in the same sector: The valley sits adjacent to the Siachen region, so Chinese presence there connects the Pakistan front and the China front in one theatre. Eg. The Siachen Glacier has been held by Indian forces since Operation Meghdoot in April 1984, at high cost in men and logistics.
      The Fix: Treat the northern Ladakh sector as a single operational theatre in planning, rather than as two separate bilateral borders.

    Conclusion

    India’s rejection restates a position of long standing, and it is the institutional form of the Pakistan-China arrangement that is new. A commission that sits, meets and records outcomes is an attempt to convert a contested transfer into ordinary bilateral administration. The next marker is whether the commission acquires a schedule of meetings and published outcomes, since a body that meets once is a statement and a body that meets regularly is a practice.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is viewed as a cardinal subset of China’s larger ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative. Give a brief description of CPEC and enumerate the reasons why India has distanced itself from the same.”

  • The 1991 treaty violated by Pak ship that collided with Indian vessel

    Why in the News

    A Pakistani ship closed on an Indian Navy vessel and collided with it in international waters. India has summoned Pakistan’s Charge d’Affaires over the conduct and placed it in direct contravention of Article 10 of the 1991 Agreement between India and Pakistan on Advance Notice on Military Exercises, Manoeuvres and Troop Movements. Article 10 bars naval ships and submarines of the two countries from closing within three nautical miles of each other while operating in international waters. The last comparable episode was in 2011, when the Pakistan Navy ship PNS Babur brushed past the Indian Navy frigate INS Godavari in the Gulf of Aden and damaged the frigate’s helicopter safety net. The contested point is whether a set of confidence building measures written in the late 1980s and early 1990s still restrains conduct at sea, when the only consequence of a breach is a diplomatic protest.

    What is the 1991 Agreement on Advance Notice on Military Exercises, Manoeuvres and Troop Movements?

    1. Purpose: The agreement establishes a standing mechanism for the two countries to inform each other about military exercises and troop movements. Its stated object is to prevent a crisis arising from a misreading of the other side’s intentions.
    2. Scope: It lays down rules for the land, naval and air forces of both countries. Major exercises close to the other’s territory are to be avoided, and where they take place the other party is to be informed.
    3. Naval threshold: A major naval exercise is defined as one involving six or more ships of destroyer or frigate size and above, exercising in company and crossing into the other country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (the maritime belt extending up to 200 nautical miles from the baseline, over which a coastal State holds resource rights).
    4. Article 10: Naval ships and submarines of the two countries are not to close less than three nautical miles from each other in international waters, so as to avoid an accident. One nautical mile is about 1.85 km.

    Why did the two countries build this agreement when they did?

    1. Nuclear weapons programmes: Accelerating weapons work on both sides through the 1980s raised the cost of any war to a level neither government could absorb. That escalation is what made a standing notification mechanism attractive to both.
    2. Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: The December 1979 invasion made Pakistan and the United States keen to avoid disturbance on Pakistan’s eastern border with India. Pakistan’s western commitment created the space for an eastern arrangement.
    3. Exercise Brass Tacks IV: India carried out a massive military exercise in Punjab and Rajasthan along the India-Pakistan border in January 1987, mobilising some 150,000 troops. The scale of the exercise alarmed Pakistan and produced the specific demand for advance notice that the 1991 treaty answers.
    4. Clarification rights: The agreement allows either side to seek clarification on the assembly of forces, and on the direction, extent and duration of an exercise. That right is the operative response to the uncertainty Brass Tacks IV created.

    What else does the confidence building architecture of this period contain?

    1. Joint commission, 1983: The Agreement for the establishment of a joint commission between India and Pakistan was signed on 10 March 1983. It was the first of the structured bilateral mechanisms of this phase.
    2. Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear Installations and Facilities, 1988: Finalised on 31 December 1988, it bars each country from attacking the other’s nuclear installations. The two sides exchange lists of their nuclear installations every 1 January, and that exchange has continued without a break since 1992.
    3. Cultural Cooperation Agreement, 1988: Signed on the same day as the nuclear installations agreement. It shows the period’s approach of pairing a military restraint measure with a civilian one.
    4. Agreement on Prevention of Air Space Violations, 1991: Signed on 6 April 1991, the same day as the advance notice agreement, it also permits over flights and landings by military aircraft. Air and land restraint were therefore settled together, and the naval rule sits inside the same package.

    What does the recurrence of naval incidents show about the agreement’s reach?

    1. Long gap between incidents: The previous close quarters episode was in 2011 in the Gulf of Aden, far from either country’s coast. The rule has held for long stretches, which is why each breach is treated as a signal rather than as routine.
    2. Distance from the exercise framework: Both incidents occurred during ordinary deployments, not during a notified major exercise. The agreement’s notification machinery is built for planned exercises and does not reach the day to day operations where contact actually happens.
    3. Response limited to protest: India’s recorded response in both cases was a diplomatic communication. No joint inquiry, shared navigational record or agreed finding of fault follows a breach.

    Challenges to the 1991 Agreement

    1. No verification or monitoring machinery: The agreement provides for notification and for clarification on request, and creates no inspection body or joint verification procedure. Eg. Neither side produced an agreed account of the 2011 PNS Babur and INS Godavari incident, which closed without a finding.
      The Fix: Attach a standing naval point of contact on each side with a fixed timeline for exchanging navigational data after a close quarters incident.
    2. No incidents at sea instrument: Article 10 fixes a separation distance and prescribes nothing about signalling, manoeuvring or harassment at close range. Eg. The United States and the Soviet Union addressed exactly these behaviours through the Incidents at Sea Agreement of 1972, which India and Pakistan have no equivalent of.
      The Fix: Negotiate a dedicated incidents at sea agreement covering signalling procedure and prohibited manoeuvres, separate from the exercise notification framework.
    3. Dependence on the political climate: Each measure in this architecture survives only while the wider relationship permits it, and none carries a self executing renewal. Eg. The composite dialogue that carried most bilateral confidence building work has been suspended for extended periods after terror attacks.
      The Fix: Insulate the technical measures from the political dialogue by giving the military to military channels their own standing mandate.
    4. Silence on non-state and hybrid activity: The instruments of this period address regular forces and declared exercises, and say nothing about maritime infiltration, unattributed vessels or fishing fleet incidents. Eg. The 26 November 2008 Mumbai attackers reached the city by sea after hijacking a fishing trawler.
      The Fix: Extend the notification framework to a maritime incident register covering non-naval vessels operating in the other country’s declared zones.
    5. Asymmetry in the dispute settlement route: A breach produces a summons, and the agreement names no arbiter, no penalty and no suspension clause. Eg. India’s protest in the present case ends with the summons, whatever the outcome of the collision.
      The Fix: Provide for a joint review at the level of the two naval headquarters within a fixed period of any reported breach of Article 10.

    Conclusion

    The 1991 Agreement remains in force, and both navies continue to operate in the same international waters. India’s response has stopped at a summons, which is the whole of what the instrument provides. The gap the collision exposes is procedural rather than political: the two countries have a rule on separation at sea and no shared means of establishing what happened when it is broken. What to watch is whether the exchange of nuclear installation lists due on the next 1 January proceeds as usual, since that is the one measure of this architecture that has run unbroken and is the readiest indicator of whether the rest still holds.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “Terrorist activities and mutual distrust have clouded India-Pakistan relations. To what extent the use of soft power like sports and cultural exchanges could help generate goodwill between the two countries? Discuss with suitable examples.”

  • China’s open AI advantage may not last forever

    China’s open AI advantage may not last forever

    Why in the News

    Indian startups are rebuilding their products on Chinese open weight foundation models, with Qwen, DeepSeek and Kimi delivering large cost savings and lagging the American frontier by about six months. Reporting from July 2026 records Indian companies increasingly switching to Chinese large language models (LLMs) to contain Artificial Intelligence (AI) costs, with startups cutting costs by an order of magnitude. This open weight release is neither charity nor a workaround for chip export controls, and rests on five reinforcing logics that make the strategy durable. The tension is that durable is not permanent, and the assessment set out here is that China will begin graduating access to its frontier open weight models around late 2028.

    What is an open weight model?

    1. What is released: The trained parameters of the model are published, so anyone can download the model and run it on their own hardware.
    2. How it differs from an interface: A proprietary model is reached through an interface the provider controls, and the provider can price it, restrict it or withdraw it. A downloaded model keeps working whatever the provider later decides.
    3. What it enables: The holder can fine tune the model on its own data and modify its behaviour, which a provider controlled interface does not permit.
    4. Why the distinction is strategic: The choice between the two forms decides whether capability sits with the user or with the supplier.

    How far have Indian firms moved onto Chinese models?

    1. Products rebuilt on Chinese foundations: Indian startups are constructing their products on Qwen, DeepSeek and Kimi rather than on American frontier models.
    2. Performance is close enough: These models run almost as well as the American frontier and trail it by roughly six months, which is within tolerance for most commercial applications.
    3. The cost difference is not marginal: One venture investor cited startups cutting costs by an order of magnitude, which changes what is affordable rather than trimming a bill.
    4. The switch is deliberate: The stated reason for the move is cost containment rather than any assessment of capability.

    What are the five logics behind China’s open weight strategy?

    1. Cost: DeepSeek trained its R1 model for $294,000, a fraction of what American frontier laboratories incur, with distillation from American models and architectural efficiency breakthroughs compressing research spending.
    2. Prestige: DeepSeek’s January 2025 release wiped roughly a trillion dollars off American technology stocks, and open weighting has since been converted into diplomacy through the 29 country World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) bloc and 5,000 training slots offered to developing countries.
    3. Commoditisation: American laboratories monetise proprietary weights, so free models good enough for most commercial work attack their pricing power. Chinese firms need not beat the competing product, only destroy the ability to charge for it.
    4. Capital: Financial repression traps household savings in state banks that lend cheaply to strategic sectors, producing the same subsidisation and overcapacity that flattened the global solar and electric vehicle markets. In AI it produced 820 LLMs registered with China’s cyberspace authority by early 2026.
    5. Infrastructure: Free models drive adoption, which drives demand for the complementary products China dominates in energy, cloud and physical infrastructure. Alibaba’s cloud revenue grew 34 percent year on year while it gave Qwen away.

    What conditions would make Beijing close the gates?

    1. The consultation is already under way: Chinese regulators led by the Ministry of Commerce have been consulting Alibaba, Bytedance and Zhipu on limiting the transfer of training data abroad and on whether foreign users should continue to freely download model weights.
    2. Consolidation: Beijing can coordinate five firms and cannot coordinate 800, and the state news agency has announced the shift from the “Hundred Model War” to the “Top Five Basic Models”. American export controls, by raising costs for Chinese laboratories, are accelerating the very consolidation that makes restriction feasible.
    3. Lock in: Restricting access before global developers are deeply embedded in the Chinese cloud stack would send them elsewhere and break the flywheel. That threshold is currently far from being reached.
    4. Saturation: Once the pricing power of frontier American laboratories is sufficiently commoditised, and open weight releases from Meta, Mistral, Nvidia and others sustain the pressure independently, further Chinese releases buy nothing. The gap here is narrowing and still exists.

    What would graduated restriction actually look like?

    1. Not a switch: The likely outcome is a set of graduated pathways rather than a single closure, appearing from around late 2028.
    2. Embargoed weights: Frontier models served through an interface first, with the weights released only after a six month embargo.
    3. Licensing above a capability threshold: Commercial licensing required beyond a stated capability level, with smaller distilled models left free as the entry route.
    4. Scaffolding withheld: Model weights released openly while tool use and agentic scaffolding, which is what turns a model into a working system, are held back.
    5. Preferential access: Members of the WAICO bloc receiving access on better terms than non members, which converts model access into a membership benefit.

    What should India do with the open window?

    1. Price in the switching costs: The open ecosystem should be used on the assumption that access terms will change, so the cost of moving between stacks is budgeted now rather than discovered later.
    2. Model agnostic architecture in the public sector: Government departments and regulated sectors should be built on abstraction layers and harnesses that work across stacks, so a change of supplier becomes a configuration change.
    3. A routing layer instead of hardware subsidies: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) should consider running a public sector routing service across models, in place of offering compute subsidies on slices of graphics processing units.
    4. Atmashakti rather than self sufficiency: Effort should concentrate where India can actually win, in applications, industrial and language data, edge inference silicon design and domain specific fine tuning. This is self strength built in a few selected segments, in place of full self sufficiency that India cannot afford and does not need.
    5. Use the window diplomatically: India should shape open weight norms in multilateral forums while the commons is still open and Beijing still needs legitimacy for it.

    Challenges to India’s reliance on open weight models

    1. Dependence is being built into production systems: Cost driven adoption embeds a foreign model in products that cannot be rewritten quickly when terms change. Eg. Startups rebuilding their core products on a single model family carry the switching cost inside their architecture.
      The Fix: Require an abstraction layer in any publicly funded AI deployment, so the model can be swapped without rebuilding the application.
    2. Diffusion is mistaken for capability: Rapid adoption of adequate models raises productivity and builds no domestic ability to produce the next model. Eg. Most Indian AI activity sits in applications rather than at the frontier.
      The Fix: Tie public procurement preference to firms that contribute datasets, evaluations or fine tuned models back into a shared national repository.
    3. Language and data coverage is thin: A model trained elsewhere performs worse on Indian languages and on Indian administrative data, which is where public sector value lies. Eg. Low resource Indian languages remain weakly represented in the training corpora of major open models.
      The Fix: Treat curated Indian language and sectoral datasets as the national asset to fund, since a data advantage survives a change of model supplier.
    4. Compute access is governed elsewhere: The hardware needed to fine tune or serve a large model at scale is subject to export controls set by other governments. Eg. Advanced processor supply to India and to China is determined by controls neither country sets.
      The Fix: Prioritise edge inference silicon design, where India can build a position that does not depend on access to frontier training hardware.
    5. Security review of downloaded models is weak: An openly released model can carry behaviour that surfaces only under specific conditions, and there is no standing capability to test for it. Eg. Backdoor behaviour triggered by particular inputs has been demonstrated in publicly released models.
      The Fix: Mandate evaluation of any model used in a regulated sector against a published test suite before deployment.

    Conclusion

    The open models now cutting Indian costs are being given away because a strategic competition is currently being fought that way, and that is the fact to plan against rather than the saving to celebrate. India can take the cost advantage and still owe itself an architecture that survives the moment the giving stops. The marker to watch is the Chinese consultation on foreign downloads of model weights, since a decision there arrives well before any formal restriction does.

    Government Initiatives for Artificial Intelligence in India

    1. IndiaAI Mission: Approved in 2024 with an outlay of Rs 10,371 crore and implemented by IndiaAI under MeitY, it builds compute, datasets, skills and startup financing as a single ecosystem programme.
    2. IndiaAI Compute: A national AI compute grid of over 38,000 graphics processing units, offering eligible users up to 40 percent lower compute costs.
    3. AIKosh: A national repository of non personal datasets and models, carrying thousands of datasets across sectors including agriculture, health, climate and governance.
    4. IndiaAI Safety Institute: The national trust framework within the mission, covering bias mitigation, privacy, explainability and AI governance.
    5. India AI Impact Summit 2026: Hosted by India under the mission, it repositions the global discussion from AI safety towards AI for development and convenes Global South participation.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    [2023] “Introduce the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI). How does AI help clinical diagnosis? Do you perceive any threat to privacy of the individual in the use of AI in healthcare?”