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GS Paper: GS2

  • Our healthcare boom hides a public-system deficit

    Why in the News

    The most revealing number in India’s healthcare record is government health expenditure at 1.43 per cent of GDP in 2022 to 2023, against the 2.5 per cent target set by the National Health Policy 2017. Almost every visible measure of healthcare has expanded, with medical colleges and seats multiplied, the footprint of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) network widened, and Ayushman Bharat established as one of the world’s largest publicly funded health insurance programmes. The latest report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare finds a system still struggling with basic capacity, affordability and regulation. The tension is that expansion has been measured in inputs the state can count, while the outcome that decides the result, whether a family is less exposed when illness strikes, is set by financing the state has not provided.

    What does government health expenditure as a share of GDP measure?

    1. What the ratio counts: It measures spending on health by the Centre, the states and local bodies, set against the size of the economy, so it rises only when health spending grows faster than output does.
    2. Why the share and not the amount: An absolute figure grows every year with prices and with the economy, so only the share shows whether health is gaining or losing ground against competing claims on public money.
    3. The benchmark it is read against: The National Health Policy 2017 fixed 2.5 per cent of GDP as the target, and the distance between that and the actual figure is what the public system’s shortfall is measured by.

    Why has expanding medical education not fixed the distribution of care?

    1. The expansion is real: The number of medical colleges has risen to 818, and undergraduate medical seats have reached 1,28,875.
    2. The problem was never the count of doctors: It was where they practise, who can afford them, and whether the system has the infrastructure to use them.
    3. Specialists are missing where they are most needed: The Committee finds specialist shortages at rural community health centres of roughly 70 to 80 per cent.
    4. Facilities without a building: There are 17,788 sub centres with no building of their own.
    5. Education as a commercial sector: Medical education has itself become a major commercial sector, with private and public private partnership models playing an important role, and once medical seats become valuable commercial assets the integrity of the regulator becomes the live question.

    What does the private sector’s share of care cost a patient?

    1. Where care actually happens: Citing the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) 80th round of 2025, more than 60 per cent of hospitalisations and around 70 per cent of outpatient care are serviced by the private sector.
    2. The price difference: Average hospitalisation expenditure is approximately Rs 6,631 in government hospitals, against Rs 50,508 in private hospitals.
    3. How the state imposes a cost without charging one: The state does not have to bill a patient to place the cost of private treatment on them, and only has to fail to provide a realistic public alternative.

    Why does insurance leave both prices and the missing middle unaddressed?

    1. What insurance has delivered: Ayushman Bharat has helped millions of families obtain hospital care they might otherwise have been unable to afford.
    2. Insurance pays the bill without controlling the price: If treatment costs Rs 5 lakh and insurance pays that amount, the patient is protected from immediate financial ruin while the healthcare system has still consumed the same sum.
    3. Someone eventually pays: If prices continue rising, the cost falls somewhere, on the government, the insurer, the employer or the patient.
    4. The missing middle: More than 40 crore Indians remain outside comprehensive financial protection, being too well off for the scheme and too poor for private cover.
    5. Out of pocket spending stays high: Such spending has fallen substantially and still accounted for 43.4 per cent of total health expenditure in 2022 to 2023.

    What is private capital buying, and what should the test of it be?

    1. Where the capital is going: Major transactions involving Manipal Health Enterprises, CARE Hospitals, KIMS, Rainbow Children’s Hospital and several diagnostic chains illustrate the growing appetite for healthcare assets.
    2. What attracts investors: Recurring demand, consolidation opportunities and the ability to build scalable chains.
    3. Capital is not the problem: India needs enormous investment, and the open question is what that investment actually produces.
    4. The tests to apply: Whether it creates capacity in under served districts, makes treatment cheaper and strengthens primary care, or instead acquires existing businesses, consolidates markets and pursues the most profitable segments.
    5. The standard proposed: The 2026 Lancet Commission Report on a Citizen-Centred Health System for India argues for a stronger publicly financed and publicly provided health system as the foundation of universal healthcare.

    Challenges to a publicly financed health system

    1. Spending is stuck below the policy’s own target: The share of public money reaching health has not moved to the level the policy set, so every other reform runs into a financing ceiling. Eg. Only around 40 per cent of public health funds go to primary care, against the National Health Policy 2017 target of two thirds.
      The Fix: Ring fence a rising share of the health budget for primary and preventive care, with an annual reporting requirement against the two thirds target.
    2. Health is a State subject and capacity varies sharply: Delivery depends on the state, so a single national design lands on very different administrative systems. Eg. Kerala’s decentralised public health system and Tamil Nadu’s doorstep care programme for the elderly and for patients with non communicable diseases have no counterpart in many states.
      The Fix: Tie central health transfers to state level outcome indicators rather than to expenditure alone, so building capacity is what gets rewarded.
    3. Public beds sit where the patients are not: Public capacity is concentrated in cities while most of the population is rural, so proximity rather than price decides who reaches care. Eg. 73 per cent of public hospital beds are in urban areas.
      The Fix: Make rural service a condition of subsidised medical education, with the posting tied to the district that lacks that specialty.
    4. Money collected for health does not reach health: A cess raised for a stated purpose does not arrive in the fund built for it, so the shortfall persists even where the revenue exists. Eg. The Comptroller and Auditor General has reported a gap of over Rs 43,000 crore in the transfer of health cess to the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Nidhi.
      The Fix: Make the transfer of the health cess to that fund automatic, and report the closing balance in the annual budget documents.
    5. Regulation of a commercialised sector is weak: Where private providers deliver most of the care, the state’s only lever over price and quality is a regulatory capacity it has not built. Eg. There is no national mechanism that caps the cost of high cost private procedures.
      The Fix: Enforce the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010 across states, with published standard treatment guidelines and rate ranges.

    Conclusion

    The expansion is real and it is being measured against the wrong thing. Counting colleges, seats, cards and institutions records what the state has built, and records nothing about whether a household can reach care it can pay for. The unresolved tension is that the public system is being asked to carry a universal promise on a share of national income that has not risen to meet it, while the private system it defers to sets the price. What to watch is whether that financing share moves, because every other reform in this area sits downstream of it.

    Public Healthcare System in India

    1. Constitutional placement: Public health and hospitals are a State subject in the Seventh Schedule, with the Centre acting through centrally sponsored schemes and coordination rather than direct delivery.
    2. How delivery is organised: Rural care runs in three tiers, the sub centre, the primary health centre and the community health centre, with district hospitals and medical college hospitals above them.
    3. Where the disease burden now sits: Non communicable diseases account for around 66 per cent of total deaths, with cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory disease the leading causes.
    4. Scale of the primary care network: More than 1,85,000 Ayushman Arogya Mandirs, formerly health and wellness centres, are operational.

    Government Initiatives for Public Healthcare

    1. National Health Mission: It is the umbrella programme funding rural and urban public health delivery through the states, and it created the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) cadre in 2005.
    2. Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana: It addresses regional imbalance in tertiary care by setting up new AIIMS institutions and upgrading existing government medical colleges.
    3. Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission: It builds the digital health record layer, with Ayushman Bharat Health Accounts giving each person a portable health identifier.
    4. eSanjeevani: The national telemedicine service links primary health facilities to specialists on a hub and spoke model, extending specialist advice to remote and tribal areas.
    5. Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana: Its Janaushadhi Kendras supply quality generic medicines at low prices, reducing the medicines share of household health spending.

    Back2Basics

    1. What it is: The Committee on Health and Family Welfare is one of the 24 department related standing committees of Parliament.
    2. Composition: Each such committee has 31 members, 21 from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha, all nominated rather than elected, for a tenure of one year.
    3. Origin: The system of 17 such committees was constituted with effect from 8 April 1993, and was restructured in July 2004 to the present 24.
    4. Weight of its reports: It examines the ministry’s demands for grants, bills and policy, and its recommendations are advisory rather than binding on the government.

    Matching Previous Year Question

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

  • Public trust & public approval not same; trust demands fairness: CJI

    Why in the News

    The Chief Justice of India has said that public trust in the judiciary is not the same thing as public approval, because trust is not earned by giving people the outcomes they want but by ensuring fairness of process. The remarks answered concerns raised at the same event by senior counsel about the administrative reforms the judiciary needs in order to deal with challenges such as the appointment of judges. The stated position was that reform must be the rule, and that no institution can survive or take pride in remaining static. The tension is that the same address defended two internal mechanisms, judicial appointments through the Collegium and the handling of complaints against judges, while grounding institutional confidence in a court’s willingness to be examined, questioned and, where necessary, criticised.

    What is the Collegium system?

    1. What it is: The Collegium is the mechanism by which judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts are selected by judges themselves rather than by the executive.
    2. Where it comes from: It has no textual basis in the Constitution, and was created by judicial interpretation of Articles 124 and 217 across the three judges cases of 1981, 1993 and 1998.
    3. Composition: For a Supreme Court appointment it comprises the Chief Justice of India and the four senior most judges of the Court, whose recommendation then goes to the Union government for the warrant of appointment.
    4. The failed alternative: The National Judicial Appointments Commission, created by the Ninety ninth Constitutional Amendment Act, 2014, was struck down by a five judge Constitution Bench in 2015, which restored the Collegium.

    What does transparency mean for a court?

    1. Not only open doors: Transparency is not simply a matter of open doors and public hearings, though it certainly includes those things.
    2. The reasoning, not the result: It means the reasoning behind a decision, and not merely its result, can be examined by anyone who cares to look, including the very people the decision goes against.
    3. A verdict without reasoning is not transparency: A court that announces its verdicts but keeps its reasoning to itself has not really been transparent, whatever else it may have done.
    4. What the phrase demands: “Seen to be done” means a fair hearing conducted honestly in the open, and a system that remains willing to be examined on whether it has kept its own word.

    How is public trust different from public approval?

    1. The difference matters a great deal: A court does not earn trust by being liked, or by handing out the outcomes people wanted.
    2. The test is the losing party: Trust is earned when the people who lost, who wanted an entirely different result, still walk away believing that the process which decided against them was fair.
    3. Harder and more valuable: That is a far harder thing to earn than approval, and far more valuable than it.
    4. What trust is for: Public trust is not decoration for the judiciary, and is the only currency in which authority is ever paid.

    What was said on judicial appointments?

    1. Reform as the standing rule: No institution can survive or take pride in remaining static, so reform is treated as a welcome step rather than a concession.
    2. Limits of a public answer: Some questions may not be prudent to respond to from a public platform, and the answers to them are legal answers set in the historical background of how the Collegium developed and how successfully it has worked.
    3. The record of appointments: There is hardly any impediment between the appointments by the Union of India and the recommendations of the Collegium, which itself indicates the kind of deliberation that goes into a final recommendation.

    How are complaints against judges handled?

    1. The internal mechanism: The mechanism the Supreme Court and the High Courts have developed for complaints against judges is described as robust, responsive and very timely.
    2. The misuse risk: Given a choice, a judicial officer will invite a complaint at every stage, whether passing an interlocutory order, adjourning a case or passing a final decree.
    3. The open question: Whether every such complaint should be brought onto a public platform or a website, or whether a strong internal mechanism should deal with it with complete objectivity and a dispassionate approach, is treated as a seriously debatable issue.
    4. Not treated as settled: The mechanism is described as well established, and as always subject to reforms and qualitative improvements.

    Why is criticism treated as compatible with institutional confidence?

    1. Exposure keeps institutions clean: Recalling Justice Krishna Iyer, institutions do not stay clean by being shielded from scrutiny, and stay clean by being repeatedly exposed to it and repeatedly surviving that exposure.
    2. The textbook proceedings: Suo motu proceedings concerning a National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbook, which carried a chapter on corruption in the judiciary, became an occasion to consider the relationship between legitimate criticism and public confidence in the institution.
    3. What the order said: The order reiterated that the judiciary, as an institution, is not and cannot be averse to criticism.
    4. Why that follows: A court cannot seek the confidence of the public by placing itself beyond scrutiny, and must remain willing to be examined, questioned and, where necessary, criticised.

    Challenges to public trust in the judiciary

    1. Opacity of the appointment process: The Collegium publishes its resolutions but not the material or the comparative assessment behind a name, so the standard of examinable reasoning is weaker for appointments than for judgments. Eg. Reiterated recommendations have been left unacted by the government, with no published reason recorded on either side.
      The Fix: Publish an anonymised assessment memorandum with every recommendation, recording seniority, disposal record and the ground for any supersession.
    2. The internal complaints procedure has no statutory footing: Complaints against judges are handled under a procedure the judiciary framed for itself, so its outcome rests on institutional discipline rather than on law. Eg. Removal remains the only statutory route, under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, and no Supreme Court judge has ever been removed through it.
      The Fix: Give the internal procedure statutory backing with defined timelines and a published outcome summary that names no complainant.
    3. Pendency erodes trust faster than any single verdict: A litigant who waits years for a hearing experiences the process as unfair regardless of how the case is eventually reasoned. Eg. Cases pending before the district judiciary are counted in crores on the National Judicial Data Grid.
      The Fix: Publish court wise disposal and case ageing data against listed targets, so delay is attributable to a court rather than to the system in general.
    4. Vacancies outrun appointments: A sanctioned strength that is never filled turns an appointment mechanism into a bottleneck whatever its design. Eg. High Court vacancies have run into hundreds of posts for years together.
      The Fix: Fix a time limit for each stage from High Court proposal to warrant of appointment, with any delay recorded against the stage that caused it.

    Conclusion

    The address settles nothing about how judges are appointed or how complaints against them are decided, and it was not meant to. What it does is state the standard the institution asks to be judged by, which is the fairness of the process rather than the popularity of the result. That standard is testable only against the things the judiciary itself controls and publishes. The concrete thing to watch is whether the two mechanisms defended here acquire published reasons and fixed timelines, since a standard of examinable reasoning applied everywhere except to the institution’s own administration is precisely the gap the criticism turns on.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS2, 15 marks] “Constitutional morality is the fulcrum which acts as an essential check upon the high functionaries and citizens alike…” In view of the above observation of the Supreme Court, explain the concept of constitutional morality and its application to ensure balance between judicial independence and judicial accountability in India.”

  • Government trusts Aadhaar on welfare. It needs to rely on it to make voter lists

    Why in the News

    The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls has stopped being a one off event. Rolling out in phases since June 2025, it now extends to almost the entire country and has already deleted over 13 crore names. The Supreme Court has upheld the exercise while holding that the final determination of citizenship belongs to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) under the Citizenship Act, 1955, and not to the Election Commission (EC). The goal of clean, accurate and inclusive rolls is not in dispute; the method is. That method revives a document intensive, house to house verification mothballed for over two decades and applies it on a near national scale, while the one question it is most often defended by, citizenship, is the question the Court has just said cannot be answered by an electoral officer at the doorstep.

    What is the Special Intensive Revision?

    1. What it does: It is a time bound, house to house enumeration in which Booth Level Officers (BLOs) physically visit households and verify every single voter entry.
    2. How it differs from the routine revision: The annual Summary Revision updates additions, deletions and corrections against a qualifying date, while an intensive revision re verifies every entry through fresh enumeration forms and document checks.
    3. Statutory basis: Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 authorises a special revision of the roll at any time, for reasons recorded in writing.
    4. Procedure: The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 lay down the framework for house to house enumeration and verification.

    Why does the method impose its heaviest cost on the poorest voters?

    1. The burden of proof shifts to the voter: Lakhs of officials go door to door, and crores of citizens must prove their eligibility on paper within compressed deadlines.
    2. Who carries that burden: It falls hardest on the poor, the elderly, migrants and women, who are the least likely to hold a continuous documentary record of themselves.
    3. Welfare linkage raises the price of an error: Orders in some states link roll deletions to welfare records, so a wrongful removal can cost a family its rations and its pension.
    4. Redress is slow where deletions are largest: The Supreme Court is pressing the EC over the slow disposal of appeals against deletions in West Bengal, where voters struck off are still waiting to be heard.
    5. The cost recurs by design: The exercise mobilises around 10 lakh public servants, mostly schoolteachers, and costs the exchequer thousands of crores every cycle.

    Why can citizenship not be settled in the field?

    1. The documents are not universal: A passport is held by under 8 per cent of Indians, and was clarified in June by the Ministry of External Affairs to be a travel document rather than proof of citizenship.
    2. What the common records actually prove: Aadhaar proves identity and residence by statute and not citizenship, while the voter identity card and the Permanent Account Number (PAN) prove none of it.
    3. Birth registration was patchy: For decades the registration of births was incomplete for the poor, for women and for rural India.
    4. The abandoned pilot: The Multipurpose National Identity Card pilot was abandoned as unworkable.
    5. The Assam precedent: The National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam excluded 19 lakh people, caused enormous distress and resolved nothing.
    6. The register that followed counted residents: The National Population Register enumerated “usual residents”, citizens and non citizens alike, because a field test of citizenship was found impractical.

    What would an Aadhaar based revision actually do?

    1. The application: A voluntary application on mobile or web would let a voter link Aadhaar to the Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) and complete face authentication in one step, with no document and no visit to any office.
    2. What a single authentication settles: The act proves the voter is alive, removes duplicates because each Aadhaar is unique, and removes ghosts because a non existent person cannot authenticate.
    3. Age without a date of birth: Biometrics are not captured below the age of five, so a person whose fingerprints and iris were recorded in an enrolment around 2013 or earlier was at least five then and is at least 18 now.
    4. Why the record has no motive to lie: Aadhaar was created as a bare identity carrying no benefit or entitlement, so nothing was gained by misstating age, and the address had to be genuine because the Aadhaar letter was posted to it.
    5. Voluntariness and the residue: Linkage stays voluntary, and those who decline use the ordinary manual route, a small residue given near universal coverage.
    6. Citizenship handled as the Court requires: Everyone is identified first, analytics flag the few genuine outliers, and only those are referred to the MHA.

    Does the existing record of face authentication support the claim?

    1. Coverage: Aadhaar covers 1.36 billion residents, making it the largest and most carefully audited enrolment in existence.
    2. Proven at scale in welfare: De duplicating PAN, closing benami accounts and removing crores of ghost beneficiaries from welfare have together saved over Rs 2.7 lakh crore.
    3. Face authentication at the airport gate: More than 10 crore Aadhaar face authentication transactions have been completed in Digi Yatra through more than 100 airports, with as many as 500 crore face authentications completed in all to date.
    4. Face authentication for pensions: Jeevan Pramaan lets 1.47 crore pensioners prove from a phone, by their face alone, that they are alive.
    5. Privacy design: Aadhaar authentication returns only a yes or no answer, and never the underlying data.

    Challenges to an Aadhaar based electoral roll revision

    1. It cannot answer the question the revision is defended by: Aadhaar proves residence, so it leaves citizenship exactly where the Court left it, with the MHA. Eg. The same statutory limit that disqualifies Aadhaar as proof of citizenship applies to the proposed application.
      The Fix: Separate the two tasks in law, using the application only for de duplication and proof of life, and routing citizenship doubts to a statutory MHA process carrying notice and hearing.
    2. Authentication failure excludes the people it is meant to protect: Biometric and face authentication fails for manual labourers, for the elderly and where connectivity is poor, and a failure at the roll stage removes a vote rather than a ration. Eg. Ration denials following biometric authentication failure were reported in Jharkhand.
      The Fix: Make manual verification a guaranteed fallback with a statutory timeline, so no name is ever deleted on an authentication failure alone.
    3. Seeding Aadhaar into rolls has been halted once already: An earlier programme was stopped on legal rather than technical grounds, and the same objection can be raised against a fresh attempt. Eg. The National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme of 2015 was halted after the Supreme Court’s interim orders restricting the use of Aadhaar.
      The Fix: Ground the application in an express statutory provision carrying defined purpose limitation, so linkage rests on law rather than on an administrative circular.
    4. Deletion by analytics carries no hearing: Flagging an outlier produces an administrative suspicion the voter must then rebut, which returns the burden of proof to the individual. Eg. Rule 18 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 requires individual notice before a deletion, and its observance has been contested in petitions against the current revision.
      The Fix: Require a reasoned notice, a hearing and an appeal decided within a fixed period before any flagged name is removed.
    5. Privacy and proportionality: Building the electoral roll on a national biometric identity concentrates a population wide database against a constitutional right. Eg. Any state intrusion into privacy must satisfy legality, a legitimate aim and proportionality between the means and that aim.
      The Fix: Subject the application to a published proportionality assessment and to independent audit of every authentication log.

    Conclusion

    The revision and the alternative are not two methods for the same task. One tries to settle a legal status in the field, which the Court has already held the field cannot settle, and the other cleans the roll of the dead, the duplicated and the departed, which is the part a machine can actually do. Keeping the two apart is what would allow the roll to be cleaned without a citizenship test attached to it. The thing to watch is whether the Election Commission is given an express statutory basis for face authentication, because without one the alternative inherits the same legal fragility that stopped the last attempt.

    Electoral Roll Management in India

    1. One roll for all: Article 325 mandates one general electoral roll for every territorial constituency, and bars exclusion from it on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex.
    2. Universal adult suffrage: Article 326 guarantees the vote to every citizen of 18 years and above, the age fixed by the Sixty first Amendment.
    3. Who qualifies for registration: Section 19 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 requires a voter to be 18 or above and “ordinarily resident” in the constituency, while Section 16 lists the disqualifications for registration, including non citizenship.
    4. The machinery: Sections 13A to 13CC set the administrative hierarchy of the Chief Electoral Officer at state level, the District Election Officer at district level and the Electoral Registration Officer at constituency level.

    Government Initiatives on Electoral Roll Management

    1. Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021: It permits the Electoral Registration Officer to seek a voter’s Aadhaar number on a voluntary basis, through Form 6B, to establish identity and to identify duplicate entries.
    2. National Voters’ Service Portal: It allows voters to register, modify and confirm their electoral details online without visiting an office.
    3. ECINET: Launched in 2026, it is a single digital interface integrating more than 40 mobile and web applications for voters and election officials.
    4. Faster delivery of the identity card: A standard operating procedure requires the Electors Photo Identity Card to be delivered within 15 days of an update.

    Back2Basics

    1. What Aadhaar is: It is a 12 digit random number issued to a resident of India after biometric and demographic de duplication, and it establishes identity rather than citizenship.
    2. Governing law: It rests on the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.
    3. Issuing authority: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is the statutory authority under that Act, functioning under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
    4. Judicial limits: In K S Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2018) a five judge Constitution Bench upheld the Act and struck down Section 57, so a private entity cannot demand Aadhaar authentication under a contract.

    Matching Previous Year Question

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

  • BJP’s states route to UCC, over one central law

    Why in the News

    The Union Home Minister has said the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) will be introduced in all 21 Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance ruled states before the 2029 Lok Sabha elections. The abolition of triple talaq was cited in the same statement as part of the effort to provide equal rights to Muslim women. The commitment follows a settled preference within the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since 2023 that states enact their own codes first, with the Centre considering an overarching law later, so what had been a state first strategy now carries a date. The tension is constitutional as much as political: Entry 5 of the Concurrent List lets every state legislate its own code, so a promise of uniformity is being delivered through four statutes that are similar but not identical, and none of which is literally universal.

    What is the Uniform Civil Code?

    1. Constitutional source: The promise stems from Article 44, which says the State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.
    2. Adoption: The Constituent Assembly adopted the Article on 23 November 1948 after a spirited debate, and had no consensus on what such a code would actually contain.
    3. Enforceability: The Article sits among the Directive Principles of State Policy, and under Article 37 those principles are fundamental to governance but are not enforceable by any court.

    Why is the code being legislated state by state rather than through one central law?

    1. Legislative competence: Marriage, divorce, adoption, wills, intestacy, succession and joint family matters fall under Entry 5 of the Concurrent List, giving both Parliament and state legislatures competence over them.
    2. Variation in personal law: A single national code would have to negotiate enormous variation in personal laws and customary practices, particularly among tribal communities and in the Northeast.
    3. Codification is not like criminal law: The recorded objection in 2023 was that a civil code could not simply be codified the way criminal law was, because a tribal community in Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh practises very differently from one in Chhattisgarh or the Northeast.
    4. Political utility of the state route: Legislating state by state allows different models to be tested, local customs to be accommodated and implementation to be demonstrated, without first confronting the full political and constitutional complexity of a nationwide law.
    5. The Sangh’s stated caution: The RSS position in 2023 was that the subject required deeper study and wider consultation because it affected every section of society. The RSS general secretary welcomed the Uttarakhand model in March 2024 and said it should be studied and implemented across the country.

    What do the four enacted state codes actually contain?

    1. Uttarakhand: The only code currently in force, implemented in January 2025, it provides common rules on marriage, divorce, inheritance and succession, prohibits polygamy and mandates marriage registration.
    2. Regulation of live in relationships: Its most distinctive feature requires couples to register the relationship and its termination, while recognising children born of such relationships as legitimate.
    3. Gujarat: The Assembly passed its Bill in March 2026, broadly following the Uttarakhand model on marriage, divorce, succession and live in relationships, and prohibiting bigamy.
    4. Assam: The Bill was passed in May, covering marriage, divorce, succession and live in relationships, prohibiting polygamy and making live in registration compulsory.
    5. Madhya Pradesh: The Bill was passed in July and additionally covers adoption, with provisions relating to triple talaq and nikah halala, alongside live in registration and a bar on polygamy.
    6. Scheduled Tribes are excluded: All four laws exclude Scheduled Tribes, and Uttarakhand also exempts certain communities protected by constitutional customary law provisions.

    What has the Law Commission said?

    1. The 2018 position: The 21st Law Commission, in its Consultation Paper on Reform of Family Law (2018), said a uniform civil code was “neither necessary nor desirable at this stage”.
    2. Equality within over equality between: Its emphasis was on achieving “equality within communities” between men and women rather than “equality between” communities, reforming discriminatory provisions across personal laws while preserving diversity.
    3. Piecemeal change over absolute uniformity: It preferred making piecemeal changes to imposing absolute uniformity, and flagged the constitutional protections enjoyed by tribal and northeastern communities as a complication.
    4. The issue reopened: The 22nd Law Commission reopened the matter in 2023, seeking fresh views from the public and from recognised religious organisations, on the ground that more than three years had elapsed since the 2018 consultation and that developments including court orders warranted fresh examination.

    Where do the Opposition and the NDA allies stand?

    1. The Opposition’s framing: Opposition parties have questioned whether the code is genuinely a gender equality reform or an attempt to alter the personal laws of minorities through a majoritarian framework.
    2. State level opposition: The Congress opposed the Gujarat Bill as directed against Muslims, and in Madhya Pradesh criticised the legislation as an RSS agenda.
    3. Assam’s Opposition: Opposition parties there sought wider consultation and raised concerns over the tribal exemption and the regulation of live in relationships.
    4. Janata Dal (United): The party has consistently said it is not opposed to a uniform code but wants it to emerge through consensus rather than imposition. Its president told the Law Commission that such a code should respect India’s “delicate balance” between different religious and ethnic groups.
    5. Telugu Desam Party: The party has called for discussion and consensus, and in 2024 said it would ensure that Muslim interests were protected.

    Challenges to the Uniform Civil Code

    1. Four codes do not produce one code: Legislating separately in each state produces similar but not identical statutes, so uniformity is not what the project delivers. Eg. Madhya Pradesh’s law covers adoption, triple talaq and nikah halala, while Uttarakhand’s does not.
      The Fix: Anchor state enactments to a model law drafted by the Law Commission, so the substantive rules converge even where the enacting legislature differs.
    2. Exclusion of Scheduled Tribes: A code that exempts Scheduled Tribes leaves the customary law of a large population outside the very uniformity it is named for. Eg. All four enacted codes carry the exclusion, and Uttarakhand exempts further protected communities.
      The Fix: State the constitutional basis of the exemption openly, in the Fifth and Sixth Schedule protections, rather than leaving it as a silent exception.
    3. Directive Principles create no claimable right: Article 44 gives a citizen nothing to enforce, so the pace and the content of the code are settled entirely by political choice. Eg. The Article has stood since the Constitution commenced without any central statute enacted under it.
      The Fix: Route the contested questions through parliamentary scrutiny of a draft bill, so the content is debated before it binds anyone.
    4. Registration of private relationships: Compulsory registration of a live in relationship and of its termination extends the state into conduct that was previously unregulated. Eg. Uttarakhand’s code requires both the registration and the recorded termination of such a relationship.
      The Fix: Limit registration to the consequences the state must settle, namely the legitimacy of children and maintenance, rather than the existence of the relationship itself.
    5. Federal friction on a Concurrent List subject: A later central law can override a state code on the same entry, so the states legislating first face the prospect of their statutes being displaced. Eg. Article 254 gives a central law precedence over a repugnant state law on a Concurrent List subject.
      The Fix: Reserve state codes for Presidential assent under Article 254(2), which protects them until Parliament legislates on the same matter.

    Conclusion

    The commitment now carries a date, and the instrument chosen to meet it remains the state legislature rather than Parliament. That choice buys the ability to work around customary law without arguing a national case, and it also guarantees the codes keep diverging as each state adds subjects of its own. What is unresolved is whether uniformity describes the outcome or only the ambition. The thing to watch is whether an overarching central law is eventually brought, because the moment it is, the enacted state codes become the question rather than the answer.

    Back2Basics

    1. What it is: The Law Commission of India is a non statutory executive body constituted by the Ministry of Law and Justice, and it is not created by any Act of Parliament.
    2. Term and composition: It is constituted afresh for a fixed term, normally three years, and is headed by a chairperson who is usually a retired judge, with full time and part time members.
    3. First Commission: The first Law Commission of independent India was constituted in 1955, chaired by the then Attorney General for India.
    4. Weight of its output: Its reports and consultation papers are recommendatory, so the government is free to act on them, to act against them, or to leave them unacted.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2015, GS2, 12.5 marks] 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.”

  • BRICS backs an Expert Group on Traditional Medicine [Examples]

    Why in News

    BRICS members agreed to support an Expert Working Group on Traditional Medicine and called for cooperation grounded in evidence. AYUSH stands for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy, the traditional and complementary systems of medicine promoted by the Ministry of AYUSH.

    Core facts

    The outcome advances a standing BRICS track on Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine (TCIM). The proposed expert group aims to build a shared, evidence based approach to traditional medicine across member states. The nodal ministry on the Indian side is the Ministry of AYUSH.

    Static Context

    India hosts the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Traditional Medicine Centre at Jamnagar, Gujarat, established under a host country agreement with the WHO. The Ministry of AYUSH signed a project collaboration agreement with the WHO on traditional and complementary medicine. Traditional medicine cooperation is a recurring instrument of India’s health diplomacy within plurilateral groupings.

    Prelims angle

    Remember the full form of AYUSH, the location of the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre at Jamnagar, and that BRICS runs sectoral working groups beyond trade and finance.

    Mains angle

    GS2, groupings and India’s soft power. Useful as an illustration of how India uses sectoral cooperation within BRICS to project traditional knowledge systems and health diplomacy.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “No direct PYQ traced in the provided files for traditional medicine cooperation. Closest tracked Microthemes are GroupingsXRegional (International Relations) for the BRICS dimension and SchemeXHealth (Governance) for the health systems dimension.”

    PIB Link

    https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2309695&reg=3&lang=1

  • 18th BRICS Summit concludes in New Delhi with the New Delhi Declaration

    Why in News

    The 18th BRICS Summit was held in New Delhi on 12 and 13 September 2026 under India’s BRICS Chairship. The grouping adopted the New Delhi Declaration on 12 September 2026.

    Core facts

    BRICS is a plurilateral grouping originally of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, now expanded to 11 members. India’s presidency theme is “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”. The PIB Backgrounder records the bloc’s weight as 49.5% of global population, 40% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 26% of global trade. Named institutional outcomes across ministerial tracks include a BRICS Centre of Excellence on Agro Ecology and a Digital Agriculture Network, a BRICS Mission for Healthy Lifestyle (2026 to 2029), BRICS CONNECT for Skilling, a Smart Grids and Energy Storage Digital Centre of Excellence, an MSME Cooperation Portal, a Startup Innovation Fund and a Logistics Supply Chain Cooperation Framework. Alongside the summit, the BRICS Bharat Innovates Exposition at Bharat Mandapam showcased 37 Indian deep technology startups.

    Static Context

    The first BRICS summit was held in 2009 at Yekaterinburg, Russia, as BRIC. South Africa joined in 2010, making it BRICS. The bloc runs the New Development Bank (NDB), headquartered in Shanghai, and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), a currency swap facility for members facing balance of payments pressure. The 2014 Fortaleza Declaration established the NDB. India previously chaired the grouping in 2012, 2016 and 2021. Membership expansion has added Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia in recent cycles, with a separate partner country category.

    Prelims angle

    Track the host city and chair of each recent summit, the members added in the latest expansion, the theme wording, and the two BRICS institutions (NDB and CRA) with their headquarters and functions. Fortaleza links to the NDB.

    Mains angle

    GS2, groupings involving or affecting India. Frame BRICS as a counterweight in global governance that amplifies the Global South, its role in multilateral reform, and the friction between expansion and cohesion. India’s bilateral engagements with African and Global South leaders on the summit sidelines illustrate the outreach dimension.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025] Consider the following statements with regard to BRICS:
    I. The 16th BRICS Summit was held under the Chairship of Russia in Kazan.
    II. Indonesia has become a full member of BRICS.
    III. The theme of the 16th BRICS Summit was Strengthening Multiculturalism for Just Global Development and Security.
    Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
    (a) I and II
    (b) II and III
    (c) I and III
    (d) I only
    Answer: (a)”

    “[2026, GS2, 10 marks] BRICS acts as a powerful counterweight in global governance, actively amplifying the voice and influence of the Global South. Explain the role of BRICS in projecting itself as an alternative to other groupings.”

    PIB Link

    https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2309642&reg=3&lang=1 and the BRICS PIB Backgrounder https://www.pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?NoteId=159946&ModuleId=3&reg=3&lang=1

  • Members call for cooperation over pathogen research, access

    Why in the News

    The New Delhi Declaration adopted at the 18th BRICS Summit calls for constructive engagement in negotiations for the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS) Annex to the World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic agreement. The Declaration attaches a condition to that call, reaffirming the sovereign rights of States over their biological resources and the sovereign right to legislate and implement laws, including national access and benefit sharing legislation. The pandemic agreement itself was adopted at last year’s World Health Assembly, and this one annex is what still holds it short of ratification. The unresolved question is whether a country that shares a dangerous pathogen sample must be guaranteed a share of whatever is developed from it.

    What is the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing Annex?

    1. Purpose of the Annex: The PABS Annex will set out a roadmap for the sharing of dangerous pathogens and of the medicines, diagnostics or vaccines developed from them.
    2. Status as an annex to the pandemic agreement: It is an annex to the WHO pandemic agreement rather than a standalone instrument, so it has no effect independent of that agreement.
    3. The remaining bar to ratification: Once agreement is reached on the PABS Annex, the pandemic agreement can be approved or ratified by member states.

    Why is one annex holding up an adopted agreement?

    1. The parent agreement was already negotiated: Amid the Covid-19 pandemic the WHO planned a legally binding pandemic agreement for better response to any future pandemic, and it was adopted during last year’s World Health Assembly.
    2. Adoption is not ratification: One annex continues to hold the agreement hostage, and member states cannot approve or ratify until it is settled.
    3. The single disputed question: Countries are yet to agree on whether the sharing of pathogen samples should be linked mandatorily with the sharing of the benefits developed.

    What position did the New Delhi Declaration take?

    1. Call for constructive engagement: The Declaration calls for constructive engagement in the PABS negotiations rather than endorsing either side of the mandatory linkage question.
    2. Sovereign rights over biological resources: It reaffirms the sovereign rights of States over their biological resources.
    3. The right to national access and benefit sharing law: It reaffirms the sovereign right of States to legislate and implement laws, including national access and benefit sharing legislation.
    4. Effect of the combined position: A call for engagement paired with an assertion of sovereign control keeps the option of conditioning sample sharing on domestic law open.

    Challenges to the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing Annex

    1. Sharing and benefit are separated in time: A sample is needed within days of an outbreak while a vaccine takes many months, so a country is asked to give first and trust later. Eg. Indonesia withheld H5N1 avian influenza samples from the WHO network in 2007 after finding that vaccines developed from them were priced beyond its reach.
      The Fix: Write a pre agreed allocation percentage of real time production into the Annex itself, so entitlement is fixed before the sample is shared rather than negotiated after a product exists.
    2. Genetic sequence data escapes any physical sharing rule: A pathogen’s genome can be uploaded and used to design a product without the physical sample ever changing hands, which makes a sample based obligation easy to bypass. Eg. Covid-19 vaccine design began from a published genome sequence rather than from a transferred isolate.
      The Fix: Bring genetic sequence information expressly within the Annex’s definition of pathogen material, with database access conditioned on the same benefit sharing terms.
    3. Manufacturing capacity is concentrated in a few countries: A guaranteed share of output is worth little to a state that cannot produce, fill or distribute the product it is promised. Eg. Most African countries imported nearly all Covid-19 vaccines rather than producing any.
      The Fix: Pair the benefit share with a technology transfer obligation through the WHO mRNA technology transfer hub model, so capacity is built alongside the entitlement.
    4. A sovereignty first reading can slow outbreak response: Treating pathogens as national property lets a state delay sharing while it negotiates terms, and an outbreak does not wait for that negotiation. Eg. The Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing was drafted for genetic resources generally and its permit procedures were not designed for an epidemic timeline.
      The Fix: Create a standing fast track permit under the Annex, valid on notification of a public health emergency, so sharing proceeds while the commercial terms are settled separately.
    5. Compliance rests on no enforcement mechanism: A treaty annex binds only those who ratify it, and a manufacturer outside a ratifying state carries no obligation at all. Eg. The pandemic agreement takes effect only once member states ratify it, and ratification is voluntary.
      The Fix: Route access to the WHO coordinated laboratory network through a binding contract with each participating manufacturer, so the obligation attaches to the user of the sample rather than only to its government.

    Conclusion

    The agreement is complete except for the one question that decides who benefits from it, which is why the annex and not the treaty is where the negotiation now sits. The grouping’s formal position does not resolve that question, since a call for constructive engagement alongside an assertion of sovereign control over biological resources is compatible with either outcome. What it does record is that a large bloc of developing countries will not accept an unconditional sharing obligation. The marker to watch is the next World Health Assembly, since the annex has to be settled there before any state can ratify the pandemic agreement.

    Back2Basics: World Health Assembly

    1. The WHO’s decision making body: The decision making body of the World Health Organization, attended by delegations from all WHO member states.
    2. Meeting schedule and venue: It meets annually, usually in May, at Geneva.
    3. Functions of the Assembly: It determines WHO policies, appoints the Director General, supervises financial policies and reviews and approves the programme budget.
    4. Relevance to the PABS Annex: It is the forum that adopted the pandemic agreement and the forum in which the PABS Annex has to be settled.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2020, GS2, 10 marks] Critically examine the role of WHO in providing global health security during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

  • Pakistan’s westward turn – strategic depth or overstretch

    Why in the News

    Pakistan and Kuwait signed a defence cooperation agreement on 27 August 2026, the latest step in a rapidly expanding Pakistani strategic footprint in West Asia. It follows the Makkah Agreement of 7 August, under which Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan agreed that an armed attack against one member would be regarded as an attack against all. Pakistan has also acted recently as an intermediary between Iran and the United States. What is new is not Pakistani involvement in West Asia, which is decades old, but its institutionalisation into standing commitments with a secretariat behind them. The contest is over what those commitments actually buy: strategic depth against India, or an overstretch that ties Pakistan into rivalries it cannot control.

    What is the Makkah Agreement?

    1. Signatories and the collective defence clause: Signed on 7 August among Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan, it stipulates that an armed attack against one member would be regarded as an attack against all.
    2. The permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia: At a meeting in Istanbul on 31 August, the three countries’ Foreign and Defence Ministers and military chiefs decided to establish a permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia.
    3. The Secretary General post: A Pakistani will serve as its first Secretary General for three years.
    4. Interoperability and defence industrial cooperation: The three agreed to strengthen military interoperability and to pursue defence industrial cooperation, including joint technology development and production.

    What are the historical roots of Pakistan’s West Asian orientation?

    1. A dual identity from the start: From its inception Pakistan attempted to combine its South Asian geopolitical identity with that of a major Muslim power.
    2. The Cold War architecture: Pakistan, Iran and Türkiye were linked through the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and subsequently through the Regional Cooperation for Development.
    3. The 1971 defeat as the turning point: Pakistan’s defeat and dismemberment in 1971 pushed it towards the Arab world, as it sought to compensate for its diminished position in South Asia by emphasising its Islamic identity.
    4. The Lahore Islamic summit of 1974: The Islamic summit held in Lahore in 1974 marked the reorientation, and Pakistan simultaneously developed extensive military relationships with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies.

    What contradictions does the new arrangement already face?

    1. Houthi attacks as the first test: Renewed Houthi missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia created the first serious test of the Makkah pact.
    2. The Houthis have improved their position at sea: Their capture of Mocha port and Perim island has added to their capability to choke off Saudi shipping through the Bab al-Mandab.
    3. Closure of the Strait of Hormuz: With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed by Iran, a frustrated Saudi Arabia may relaunch a full scale war against the Houthis.
    4. The collective defence clause dilemma: Such a war would create a major dilemma for Pakistan if Riyadh decided to invoke the collective defence provision of the Makkah agreement.
    5. Pakistan is holding five roles at once: It wants to be Saudi Arabia’s security partner, Türkiye’s strategic ally, Iran’s friend and interlocutor, Washington’s useful intermediary and a security provider to the Gulf monarchies, and these roles are compatible only when regional tensions are manageable.

    What does the westward turn give Pakistan against India?

    1. Defence in depth through a security network: A Pakistan embedded in a web of West Asian security relationships may acquire defence in depth.
    2. Saudi finance, Turkish technology and Gulf access: Saudi financial resources, Turkish defence technology and Pakistan’s expanding relationships with Gulf militaries can in theory increase Islamabad’s resilience in a confrontation with India.
    3. Türkiye’s position on Kashmir: Türkiye is Pakistan’s most vocal major supporter on Kashmir.
    4. Pakistan’s nuclear status as currency: Pakistan’s nuclear status enhances its strategic value to Arab states concerned about an unstable regional order created by a nuclear armed Israel’s policies.

    Why could the same turn weaken Pakistan against India?

    1. Pakistan’s India centric security establishment: Pakistan’s security establishment has historically concentrated overwhelmingly on India.
    2. The new commitments pull resources away: Diplomatic, military and intelligence resources now have to be devoted to Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, Yemen and the Red Sea, leaving fewer to concentrate on India.
    3. Entanglement is the price of entry: The deeper Pakistan becomes embedded in West Asian security arrangements, the harder it becomes to remain aloof from the region’s conflicts.
    4. The Riyadh versus Tehran choice: If the Houthi Saudi confrontation escalates, Islamabad may have to choose between honouring the credibility of its collective defence commitments and maintaining its relationship with Tehran, the Houthis’ principal ally.

    How should India read it?

    1. Exposure that comes with the new role: Pakistan’s growing West Asian role should not be interpreted in purely negative terms, because the same relationships expose it to some of the world’s most combustible rivalries.
    2. The Gulf states have their own stake in India: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the other Gulf states hold major economic and strategic relationships with India that they are unlikely to sacrifice for Pakistan.
    3. India’s response, deeper Gulf engagement: New Delhi should continue deepening those relationships as the counter to Pakistan’s expanding footprint in West Asia.

    Challenges to the Makkah Agreement

    1. A collective defence clause invites the very conflict it deters: A guarantee that is credible draws its guarantor into wars it did not choose, and a guarantee that is not credible is worthless. Eg. The pact’s first test arrived within weeks, through Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia.
      The Fix: Define the triggering threshold in writing, naming what constitutes an armed attack and what response is owed, so the guarantee is bounded rather than open ended.
    2. The three signatories do not share an adversary: Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan each face different threats, and a pact without a common opponent has no agreed contingency to plan against. Eg. Türkiye’s principal security concerns lie in the eastern Mediterranean and northern Syria, not in the Red Sea.
      The Fix: Restrict joint planning to the functional areas already agreed, meaning interoperability and defence industrial production, rather than to a shared war plan that does not exist.
    3. A permanent secretariat does not create a command: Standing staff can coordinate procurement and exercises, and none of that generates a force able to act on the clause. Eg. The secretariat’s first Secretary General holds a three year term with no operational forces assigned to the arrangement.
      The Fix: Establish a standing combined planning cell with earmarked national units, so the commitment has a force attached to it rather than an office.
    4. Pakistan’s fiscal position limits what it can actually provide: A security guarantor needs sustained defence spending, and Pakistan’s is constrained by repeated recourse to external financing. Eg. Pakistan has been a recurring borrower from the International Monetary Fund across successive programmes.
      The Fix: Convert the arrangement’s defence industrial pillar into Saudi and Turkish funded production inside Pakistan, so the commitment generates revenue rather than consuming it.
    5. The arrangement cuts across Pakistan’s Iran relationship: A pact aimed at protecting Saudi Arabia from an Iran aligned force is difficult to reconcile with an intermediary role between Tehran and Washington. Eg. Pakistan shares a long land border with Iran, across which both states have previously conducted strikes.
      The Fix: Keep the intermediary role at the level of the Foreign Ministry and separate from the pact’s military structures, so one function does not discredit the other.

    Conclusion

    The institutional step taken in August converts a long standing set of bilateral military relationships into a commitment Pakistan can be called on to honour, at a moment when the region is already at war. That is a different proposition from the financial and manpower arrangements it has run with the Gulf for fifty years, because those could be scaled back quietly and a collective defence clause cannot. For India the reading should be neither alarm nor relief, since the same arrangement that adds to Pakistan’s depth also adds to the claims on its attention. The marker to watch is whether Riyadh invokes the clause against the Houthis, because that is the point at which the commitment stops being a document.

    West Asia in India’s Foreign Policy

    1. Evolution of India’s West Asia policy: Guided after Independence by non alignment and a pro Arab position, it moved to full diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992, a Look West launch in 2005 centred on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and a Think West approach from 2014 extending to maritime security, counter terrorism and investment.
    2. The energy dependence: The region supplies nearly 60% of India’s crude and about 70% of its liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas needs.
    3. The economic weight: India GCC bilateral trade stood at $178 billion in FY 2024-25, making the GCC India’s largest trading partner bloc, and the region contributes about 38% of India’s global remittances.
    4. The human stake: A diaspora of about 10 million people works across the region, which makes West Asian stability a domestic political question in India.

    Back2Basics: Central Treaty Organization

    1. CENTO’s origin as the Baghdad Pact: A Cold War defence pact, originally the Baghdad Pact of 1955, renamed CENTO after Iraq withdrew in 1959.
    2. Membership: Its members were Iran, Türkiye, Pakistan and the United Kingdom, with the United States as an associate rather than a full member.
    3. Purpose, containment of Soviet expansion: It was built to contain Soviet expansion along its southern periphery, linking the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.
    4. Dissolution in 1979: It dissolved in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution, and Pakistan’s withdrawal followed.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS2, 10 marks] With the waning of globalization, post-Cold War world is becoming a site of sovereign nationalism. Elucidate.”

  • India & China are at a Nash equilibrium. Will it hold – that’s the question

    Why in the News

    India and China issued an Eight Points of Outcomes and Consensus statement on the border on 25 August 2026, directing their negotiators to seek an early and substantial harvest on the boundary question. The Prime Minister and the Chinese President then met at the just concluded 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi. Read together, the statement and the two national readouts indicate that the two sides have settled into a Nash equilibrium on the border. The assessment is that neither can improve its position by negotiation and neither can improve it by force, so the current line holds by default rather than by agreement. The tension is that a stable outcome nobody chose is also an outcome nobody is defending, and two specific contingencies could remove it.

    What is a Nash equilibrium?

    1. Nash equilibrium, defined: A Nash equilibrium is an outcome in a non cooperative game in which no player’s expected outcome can be improved by changing one’s own strategy.
    2. Application to the India China border: India and China at least tacitly recognise that in any foreseeable future neither can aspire to or achieve a better position in the border quarrel.
    3. Room left for friction along the LAC: The two sides may still spar diplomatically and militarily on occasion, as they have since 2013, and the intermittent exchange of words and of hardware over the high Himalaya can only move the Line of Actual Control (LAC) slightly.

    Why has 45 years of negotiation produced only one agreement?

    1. Continuity of negotiation since 1981: India and China have been negotiating a border deal almost without interruption since 1981.
    2. The three negotiating mechanisms: The Secretary and Vice Minister level talks (1981-88), the Joint Working Group (1989-2005) and the Special Representative Mechanism (2003 to the present).
    3. The pace of engagement: Over more than 45 years the two sides have met once a year on average.
    4. The 2005 agreement as the single substantive outcome: The 2005 Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India China Boundary Question is the single substantive outcome of that entire period.

    What did the 2005 agreement actually fix?

    1. A package deal principle: A settlement would be reached as a package, meaning nothing is settled until everything on the border is settled.
    2. The political settlement standard: The final agreement would be a political settlement.
    3. Criteria the settlement must weigh: It would consider strategic concerns, history, national sentiment, practicality, geography and the interests of settled populations in the borderlands.

    What is the package deal principle?

    1. The rule itself: A package deal principle requires that every sector of a disputed boundary be settled in a single agreement, so no stretch of the border is treated as closed on its own.
    2. Why a package rule was adopted: It stops either side from banking a concession in an easy sector and then reopening a hard one, since a party that has already pocketed a gain has no reason to compromise on what is left. Eg. The 2005 agreement applies the principle across the western, middle and eastern sectors together.
    3. What an early harvest does inside it: An early harvest lets negotiators work one sector at a time, and the result stays provisional until the remaining sectors are agreed. Eg. The August 2026 eight point statement directs an early and substantial harvest without altering the ratification condition.
    4. What the principle rules out: A standalone sectoral treaty, a partial exchange of territory, and any agreed line that takes legal effect before the whole boundary is settled.

    What does the August 2026 eight point statement change?

    1. Early harvest and the package rule: The statement directs negotiators to seek an early and substantial harvest on the border, and this does not violate the package deal idea.
    2. Sector by sector sequencing: It suggests the two sides focus on success in one area instead of negotiating everything everywhere at once, and then move on to another section of the border.
    3. The ratification condition: Under the 2005 agreement, each sectional success would only be finally accepted and ratified when the entire border is settled.
    4. The BRICS summit readouts: Nothing in the two readouts from the leaders’ meeting alters either the 2005 agreement or the eight point early harvest statement.

    Why can neither side improve its position by negotiation or by force?

    1. India’s maximal objective: India seeks to recover Aksai Chin up to its original claim and to keep everything it holds in the other sectors.
    2. China’s maximal objective: China seeks Arunachal Pradesh all the way to the southern slopes, which is most of the State, and to keep everything else it holds.
    3. Limits of diplomatic bargaining: It is inconceivable that Indian or Chinese negotiators can achieve their maximal objectives, so diplomatic bargaining now or in the future cannot close the gap.
    4. Conquest as an unavailable option: India cannot conquer Aksai Chin up to its original claim line, and China cannot conquer Arunachal Pradesh up to the southern slopes.
    5. Terrain, climate and logistics: Terrain, climate, logistics and military defences make any dramatic and lasting military gain almost impossible.
    6. Basis of the current stability: Short of extremely bad strategy by commanders or internal political chaos that distracts from deterrence, the status quo on the border is stable.

    What could break the equilibrium?

    1. The succession to the Dalai Lama: Beijing will eventually appoint its preferred Dalai Lama and the Tibetans will almost certainly choose their own, leaving New Delhi caught in the middle.
    2. The 1962 precedent: India China tensions could consequently spiral, and China could lash out as it did in 1962, when instabilities in Tibet were a factor leading to war.
    3. An India Pakistan conflict that pulls China in: In 2025 New Delhi detected a Chinese helping hand to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, and in a future South Asian confrontation China might be more openly involved.
    4. A two front war for India: New Delhi or Beijing could then be drawn into a fight that threatens the status quo, and for India that means a two front war.
    5. Insulation offered by the present détente: The current détente promises trade, visas, supply chain resilience and river water cooperation, and the open question is whether those gains can insulate the relationship from a Tibet transition or a South Asian conflict.

    Challenges to a settlement of the India China boundary

    1. The line itself is undefined on the ground: The 3,488 km LAC has never been mutually delineated, so patrolling limits rather than a map decide where each side believes it may go. Eg. Friction points such as the Depsang Plains and Charding Ninglung Nala remain unresolved even after disengagement elsewhere.
      The Fix: Complete the exchange of maps sector by sector as a technical exercise separated from the sovereignty claim, so incidents arise from choice rather than from ambiguity.
    2. The two sides inherit different colonial alignments: In the western sector India relies on the Johnson Line of 1865 while China claims the Macartney MacDonald Line of 1899, so each reads the same ground from a different document. Eg. In the eastern sector the LAC follows the McMahon Line drawn at the Simla Convention of 1914, which China does not accept.
      The Fix: Anchor the negotiation on the 2005 agreement’s own criteria of settled populations and practicality, since neither colonial line can be conceded by the other side.
    3. Ground realities are being changed while talks continue: Incremental construction alters what a future settlement would have to ratify, which reduces the incentive to conclude one. Eg. Dual use border villages and road networks shift the position on the ground without a single formal claim being advanced.
      The Fix: Extend the confidence building agreements to cover permanent construction within an agreed depth of the LAC, with mutual verification.
    4. Economic dependence cuts against leverage: A widening trade imbalance gives the larger supplier a channel of pressure that has nothing to do with the border. Eg. India’s trade deficit with China reached an all time high of about $112.16 billion in March 2026, with the bulk of imports being industrial goods.
      The Fix: Convert the China plus one opening into domestic capacity in the specific intermediate goods where import dependence is highest, so the deficit narrows at the source.
    5. China Pakistan axis as an embedded third party: China’s relationship with Pakistan turns any India Pakistan conflict into a potential two front problem, which is the precise contingency the article identifies. Eg. Infrastructure built under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor runs through territory India claims.
      The Fix: Build the capability and the deployment posture for a simultaneous two front contingency, so the possibility does not itself become a bargaining lever.

    Conclusion

    A stalemate that holds because neither side can improve on it is not the same thing as a settlement, and it carries no mechanism of its own to survive a shock. The whole of the negotiating record, from 1981 to the eight point statement, has produced one agreement on principles and no agreed line. What should now be examined is whether the gains from the present détente can be built into insulation against the two contingencies named, the succession in Tibet and a South Asian conflict that draws China in. The marker to watch is whether the early harvest approach produces a settled sector, since that is the first test of whether sequencing can do what package bargaining could not.

    India China Relations in Brief

    1. The diplomatic starting point: On 1 April 1950 India became the first country outside the socialist bloc to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.
    2. The founding framework: The Panchsheel Agreement of 29 April 1954 set out five principles, mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non aggression, mutual non interference, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.
    3. The rupture and the reopening: The 1962 border conflict was a serious setback, and the Prime Minister’s visit in 1988 began a phase of improvement in bilateral relations.
    4. The Peace and Tranquility Agreement of 1993: The Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility along the Line of Actual Control was signed in 1993.

    Back2Basics: Operation Sindoor

    1. Scope of the strikes: Indian armed forces strikes launched on 6 and 7 May 2025 against terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan occupied territory.
    2. Trigger, the Pahalgam attack: It followed the terror attack at Pahalgam on 22 April 2025.
    3. Targets struck: Leadership and headquarters of the Lashkar e Taiba and Jaish e Mohammed networks were targeted, along with Pakistani military assets.
    4. Policy declared after the operation: India declared that any future act of cross border terrorism emanating from Pakistan would be treated as an act of war, and that nuclear blackmail would no longer be a restraining factor.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026, GS2, 15 marks] “China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has transformed South Asia from a regional space into a theatre of great power competition.” Analyse the strategic implications of the BRI for India’s security and regional influence in South Asia.”

  • Defence to space, trade to tech: India, Philippines to deepen ties

    Why in the News

    A year after New Delhi and Manila elevated their relationship to a strategic partnership, the Prime Minister and the President of the Philippines agreed to deepen cooperation across defence and security, trade and investment, space, railway infrastructure, fintech and education. The Philippines also decided to join the India led Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI). The two leaders met on the sidelines of the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi. The Philippines President attended the Summit as the current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which places the meeting inside India’s Act East policy and its Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with ASEAN. Both sides are driven by shared concerns over China’s territorial assertiveness in the Indo Pacific and the South China Sea, and the engagement is therefore being built on defence supply and maritime law at the same time as on trade and technology.

    What does the partnership now cover?

    1. The declared breadth of cooperation: The two sides agreed to deepen collaboration across defence and security, trade and investment, space, railway infrastructure, fintech, education, tourism, science and technology, innovation and people to people ties.
    2. The 2025-29 defence roadmap: India and the Philippines adopted a 2025-29 roadmap to expand military training, staff talks and maritime security cooperation in the Indo Pacific.
    3. Philippine accession to the CDRI: The Philippines has decided to join the CDRI, which brings a highly disaster exposed archipelago into a coalition India created.
    4. The ASEAN chairship as the regional frame: The visit’s significance rests on the Philippines holding the ASEAN chair while India runs a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with the grouping.

    What anchors the defence relationship?

    1. The BrahMos supply deal of 2022: The 2022 deal to supply BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles to the Philippine Navy marked the major milestone in security ties.
    2. Tri service staff talks: Both countries hold regular staff talks for their Army, Navy and Air Force to improve joint security cooperation.
    3. The roadmap’s named focus areas: The roadmap’s focus is military training, staff talks and maritime security, which are the areas a supply relationship has to be converted into.

    Where does the economic relationship stand?

    1. Bilateral trade volume: Bilateral trade has grown past $3 billion.
    2. Drivers of the trade growth: The growth has been driven by Indian pharmaceutical exports, information technology services and agricultural cooperation.
    3. Space, railways and fintech as new areas: Space, railway infrastructure and fintech have been named as expansion areas, which are sectors with no existing trade base to build on.

    Why does the South China Sea frame the engagement?

    1. Shared assessment of Chinese assertiveness: Both sides are driven by shared concerns over China’s aggressive territorial assertiveness in the Indo Pacific and the South China Sea.
    2. India’s stated legal position: India has consistently supported a rules based maritime order in the South China Sea, based on international law and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the treaty that defines maritime zones and the rights of states within them.
    3. Value of the legal position to Manila: A legal position held by a large external power supports a claimant state that cannot match China’s naval weight on its own.

    Challenges to the India Philippines strategic partnership

    1. A defence supply relationship is narrow and slow to widen: One missile contract does not by itself create a standing industrial relationship, and follow on orders depend on the buyer’s budget cycle rather than on political intent. Eg. The BrahMos supply arrangement dates from 2022 and remains the single flagship item in the defence relationship.
      The Fix: Move from outright sale to a maintenance, repair and overhaul facility in the Philippines, so the relationship generates recurring work rather than a single delivery.
    2. Trade is small relative to both economies: A bilateral figure near $3 billion is a fraction of what either country trades with China, which limits the economic leverage either can bring. Eg. Indian pharmaceutical exports and information technology services carry most of the existing trade, and neither is a large employer in the Philippines.
      The Fix: Open negotiations on a preferential trade arrangement within the ASEAN framework, so tariff lines rather than announcements decide the growth rate.
    3. ASEAN itself does not hold a common line on the South China Sea: The grouping works by consensus, so a member with close economic ties to Beijing can block a collective position. Eg. The Code of Conduct negotiations between ASEAN and China have run since 2002 without a binding text.
      The Fix: Build the maritime agenda through bilateral and minilateral arrangements with individual claimant states, rather than waiting on a grouping wide position.
    4. Escalation risk sits in the same waters as the cooperation: Maritime security cooperation with a claimant state can be read by China as taking sides in a live dispute, which raises the cost of the relationship. Eg. Chinese and Philippine vessels have repeatedly come into contact around contested shoals in the South China Sea.
      The Fix: Frame cooperation as capacity building for coast guard and humanitarian response, so the activity is defensible in law and difficult to characterise as an alignment.
    5. Disaster exposure is a standing constraint on both economies: An archipelago that absorbs several typhoons a year loses infrastructure faster than it can add it, which limits the returns on any investment commitment. Eg. The Philippines is among the most disaster exposed countries in the world, which is why its accession to the CDRI matters.
      The Fix: Tie Indian infrastructure financing in the Philippines to resilience standards set through the CDRI, so the assets built survive the hazard they are built into.

    Conclusion

    The partnership is a year old and has moved from a single defence sale to a dated roadmap, a disaster resilience coalition and a list of new sectors. What it does not yet have is volume, since a trade relationship of about $3 billion and one missile contract cannot carry the strategic weight both sides describe. The measurable markers over the next year are whether the 2025-29 roadmap produces a second defence contract and whether India converts the Philippines’ ASEAN chairship into movement on the India ASEAN trade agreement review.

    Back2Basics: Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure

    1. Coalition membership and purpose: An international partnership of national governments, United Nations agencies, multilateral development banks, the private sector and academic institutions, working to make infrastructure systems resilient to disaster and climate risk.
    2. Launch at the 2019 United Nations Climate Action Summit: It was launched by India at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in September 2019.
    3. Secretariat location: Its secretariat is in New Delhi.
    4. The Infrastructure for Resilient Island States programme: Its flagship programme is the Infrastructure for Resilient Island States initiative, which supports small island developing states in building infrastructure that can withstand extreme events.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2020, GS2, 15 marks] What is the significance of Indo-US defence deals over Indo-Russian defence deals? Discuss with reference to stability in the Indo-Pacific region.”