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GS Paper: GS2

  • At BRICS, India must bank on the NDB

    Why in the News

    The 18th BRICS Summit, chaired by India at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on 12 September, closed without a meaningful agreement on mobilising the New Development Bank (NDB), the grouping’s one tangible financial instrument and one that has under delivered for a decade. The grouping’s economic weight has grown without its institutional weight following. When BRICS came together in 2011 its five members contributed 20% of global GDP but held just 11% of the voting share at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The expanded grouping now accounts for nearly 40% of global GDP and 55% of the world’s population, and the voting share has barely expanded. The contest is over what India should do with that gap. Russia and China press a de dollarisation agenda that India cannot join without damaging its ties with Washington.

    What is the New Development Bank?

    1. The New Development Bank: The NDB was established by the BRICS countries in 2015 to “mobilise resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging markets and developing countries”.
    2. Headquarters in Shanghai: It is headquartered in Shanghai.
    3. Equal voting among the five founders: The bank’s rules mandate equal voting shares among the five founders, so no founder can outvote another whatever it contributes.
    4. The floor on founder control: The bank has opened its doors to new members, and the founders’ collective voting share cannot fall below 55%.

    Why can India not join the de dollarisation push?

    1. The grouping has no single geopolitical identity: Russia, China and Iran would like BRICS to be anti West, while India, Brazil and South Africa insist it is better understood as non West.
    2. India United States ties: Lending itself to the Beijing and Moscow de dollarisation campaign would add to strain in India United States ties at a moment when those ties are already strained.
    3. Medium term sustainability of the position: De dollarisation is an unsustainable proposition to advocate in the medium term.
    4. Maximising the grouping without strengthening Beijing: India’s approach has to maximise the grouping’s potential without strengthening Beijing’s overall strategic position.

    What is de dollarisation?

    1. What the term claims: De dollarisation is the effort to cut the dollar’s role as the currency in which trade is invoiced, cross border payments are settled and reserves are held, and to move that role to another currency or to a basket of them.
    2. What displacing the dollar would require: A substitute has to be fully convertible, deep enough to absorb reserve holdings, and served by a clearing system that sits outside dollar correspondent banking, and no member currency of the grouping meets all three conditions.
    3. Why sanctioned economies press it hardest: A settlement route outside dollar clearing removes the leverage sanctions exercise through correspondent banks, which is what makes the campaign valuable to Moscow and Beijing. Eg. The NDB itself has extended no new credit to Russia since March 2022 in order to protect its own credit rating and dollar funding costs.
    4. Contrast with local currency lending: Local currency lending denominates a loan in the borrower’s own currency to cut exchange rate risk, and it leaves the dollar’s invoicing role intact, so a member that will not join a displacement campaign can still use it.

    How far behind its counterpart is the NDB, and where does its money go?

    1. A decade of approvals: The NDB has approved only 139 projects worth about $43 billion since 2015, distributed mostly among its core members.
    2. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank comparison: The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), established around the same time, has gathered 111 approved members and committed about $69 billion across 350 projects.
    3. The credit rating gap: The AIIB is backed by a AAA credit rating that the NDB cannot easily attain.
    4. Money approved is not money moved: Only about $20 billion of approved loans had been disbursed, according to the bank’s own count.
    5. The balance sheet is not growing: Stagnant asset growth continues to restrict the bank’s lending capacity.
    6. The active portfolio: The active portfolio stands at $35.6 billion across 115 projects, since 24 projects and about $7.4 billion have been fully repaid or cancelled.
    7. China and India as the two largest borrowers: China holds $9.41 billion at 26% and India $8.86 billion at 25%, together 51% of the active portfolio.
    8. The remaining founders: Brazil holds $6.69 billion at 19%, South Africa $6.41 billion at 18% and Russia $3.78 billion at 11%, with Bangladesh the only non founder at $445 million.
    9. Transport infrastructure and COVID-19 assistance: Transport infrastructure takes $13.5 billion at 38%, followed by COVID-19 emergency assistance at $9.00 billion and 25%.
    10. The clean energy, water and digital shares: Clean energy and energy efficiency accounts for $3.69 billion at 10%, water and sanitation $3.22 billion at 9.1%, social infrastructure $1.28 billion at 3.6% and digital infrastructure $300 million at 0.8%.

    Why can the founders not simply put in more capital?

    1. Paid up capital as the route: Breaking the asset bottleneck would require the five founders to increase their paid up capital.
    2. Russia’s constrained contribution: Severe domestic and geopolitical constraints mean not all founders can match higher commitments, most notably Russia, which is heavily sanctioned.
    3. Sanctions reach the bank itself: Sanctions have strained the bank’s credit standing and its dollar funding costs.
    4. Suspension of new credit to Russia: The NDB has extended no new credit to Russia since March 2022 to protect its AA/AA+ credit rating, even as Moscow and Beijing champion de dollarisation through the bank.
    5. Equal voting as a veto on capital expansion: Any capital expansion is effectively held hostage by the financially weakest founder, because of the bank’s equal voting rule.

    What has the NDB delivered for India?

    1. The scale of commitments: The bank has secured commitments of nearly $10 billion across 32 projects for India.
    2. Metro rail and the RRTS corridor: These include metro rail systems and the Delhi Ghaziabad Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) corridor.
    3. The case for a wider borrower base: Expanding the bank’s operations to be on par with other multilateral lenders requires extending the same bargain to many more emerging markets and developing countries.

    Why is local currency lending the more practical goal, and what does the rupee bond show?

    1. The bank’s declared preference: The NDB has a marked preference for local currency lending, which appeals to emerging economies while volatility in foreign exchange markets is sustained by wars that are both military and economic.
    2. Local currency lending against dollar replacement: Local currency lending reduces reliance on the dollar without replacing it as the currency for trade invoicing.
    3. The 30% local currency target: The bank’s 2022-26 General Strategy commits 30% of its lending and borrowing to member countries’ local currencies, and the bulk of both still remains in dollars.
    4. Renminbi skew in the local currency book: What local currency lending exists is skewed heavily in favour of the Renminbi.
    5. The ¥7 billion Panda bond: The NDB priced a ¥7 billion three year Panda bond, meaning a Renminbi denominated bond issued in China by a foreign issuer, in the China Interbank bond market, and issuance of such bonds in 2026 has risen approximately 91% year on year.
    6. A rupee bond deferred since 2016: The rupee bond was first discussed in 2016, then slated for October 2023 and then for end March 2026, and has still not been issued.
    7. The Rs 25,000 crore rupee bond programme: The bank floated a rupee bond programme to mobilise around Rs 25,000 crore over five years, and the NDB President described the debut issuance in May as being at its “final stage”.
    8. The 2026 New Delhi Declaration: The 2026 New Delhi Declaration did not feature a meaningful agreement on mobilising the NDB.
    9. India’s focus on simpler local currency fixes: India’s focus in BRICS next year should be on simpler fixes to local currency challenges rather than on a currency project.

    Challenges to the New Development Bank

    1. Most of its capital cannot be lent: The bank’s authorised capital is largely callable rather than paid in, so its usable balance sheet is a fraction of the headline figure. Eg. Of an initial subscribed capital of $50 billion, only $10 billion was paid in, phased over seven years.
      The Fix: Fix a dated schedule for the remaining paid in tranches, so the lending capacity is set by a calendar rather than by each founder’s fiscal position in a given year.
    2. Absence of a concessional window: The bank lends on near market terms, which prices out the low income borrowers a development bank exists to reach. Eg. The World Bank runs the International Development Association as a separate concessional arm, and the NDB has no equivalent.
      The Fix: Create a concessional facility inside the bank, funded by grant contributions from its larger members, so the poorest borrowers have a window they can actually use.
    3. Membership growth has been slow and shallow: A narrow membership keeps both the capital base and the political constituency small, which is what limits a multilateral lender’s reach. Eg. Only Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Algeria have been admitted beyond the five founders.
      The Fix: Publish an accession timetable with stated capital subscription terms, so a prospective member can plan its entry instead of waiting on a founders’ decision.
    4. Borrowers outside the founding five have no voice: New members join without altering founder control, so a borrowing country cannot shape the terms on which it borrows. Eg. The AIIB scales voting power to capital subscription, so a new member’s stake translates into influence.
      The Fix: Reserve a fixed bloc of Board seats for non founder borrowing members, so the terms of lending are set with the borrowers in the room.

    Conclusion

    The grouping’s problem is not that it lacks instruments but that its most usable one has been left idle. A bank whose disbursement runs at under half its approvals, and whose capital expansion is blocked by its own voting rule, is not a challenge to anyone’s financial order. India chairs the grouping and holds a quarter of the bank’s active book, which is the position from which a governance change can be pressed. The marker to watch is the debut rupee issuance, since a programme deferred three times will only be believable once the paper is priced.

    About BRICS

    1. Origins of the grouping: The acronym BRIC was coined in 2001 by a Goldman Sachs economist to identify high growth emerging economies, the first meeting of Foreign Ministers took place on the United Nations General Assembly margins in 2006, and the first formal Leaders’ Summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 2009.
    2. Expansion and the Partner Country category: South Africa joined in 2011, expansion was decided at the 2023 Johannesburg Summit with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE joining in 2024 and Indonesia in 2025, and a Partner Country category was introduced in 2024 for states such as Malaysia, Thailand and Nigeria.
    3. Stated objectives: Its stated objectives are reform of the UNSC, IMF and World Bank for equitable representation, a multipolar order, financial autonomy from the dollar and SWIFT, sustainable development and synchronised stances on counter terrorism and cybersecurity.
    4. The Contingent Reserve Arrangement and BRICS Pay: Beyond the NDB, the grouping runs the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, a $100 billion short term liquidity backstop, BRICS Pay as a cross border payments pilot, a remote sensing satellite constellation and the Partnership on New Industrial Revolution.

    Back2Basics: Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

    1. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: A multilateral development bank that finances infrastructure and other productive sectors across Asia and beyond.
    2. Proposed 2013, operational January 2016: It was proposed in 2013 and began operations in January 2016, with its headquarters in Beijing.
    3. India’s shareholding: India is a founding member and its second largest shareholder after China.
    4. AIIB as the benchmark for the NDB: It was established at the same time as the NDB and is the standard against which the NDB’s approvals, membership and credit rating are measured.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2014, GS2, 12 marks] India has recently signed to become founding a New Development Bank (NDB) and also the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) .How will the role of the two Banks be different? Discuss the significance of these two Banks for India.”

  • ‘Distorted power relations in the world make Security Council non-operational’

    Why in the News

    The United Nations Secretary General has stated that distorted power relations have rendered the Security Council completely non operational, and that global superpowers have not recognised that there are limits to their power. The same assessment was extended to the Bretton Woods institutions, on the ground that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) do not correspond to the reality of emerging economies that remain underrepresented in them. The prescription put on record is not reform but an overhaul, meaning a readjustment of the power systems and governance mechanisms of the world to the reality of today rather than that of 1945. The tension is that the officeholder making the diagnosis also holds that the organisation is not broken, since its humanitarian machinery continues to function, so the failure is located precisely in the one organ with coercive authority.

    What is the Secretary General’s diagnosis of the Security Council?

    1. Eighty one years without a world war: The United Nations has guaranteed that there has been no third World War in 81 years, and the absence of two superpowers fighting each other is attributed largely to its work.
    2. The geopolitical divide inside the organisation: A strong geopolitical divide now runs through the organisation, and superpowers that have not accepted the limits of their power enter adventures that produce damaging results.
    3. Legitimacy and effectiveness as separate failures: A Council that no longer corresponds to the world of today creates a problem of legitimacy and a separate problem of effectiveness.
    4. Distorted power relations: The question is power, and power relations in the world being distorted is what makes the Council, the central entity for the preservation of peace and security, completely non operational.

    Why is the prescription an overhaul rather than reform?

    1. Operational reform is already under way: A significant amount of reform is being carried out in the operational aspects of the organisation, which is not what is at issue.
    2. Bretton Woods representation of emerging economies: The Bretton Woods system does not correspond to the reality of the emerging economies, which remain underrepresented in the World Bank, the IMF and several other institutions.
    3. Governance mechanisms still set to 1945: Power systems and governance mechanisms need to be readjusted to the reality of today’s world instead of the reality of 1945.
    4. Overhaul against reform: What is being recommended is described as more than a simple reform, and as an overhaul, meaning a change to the distribution of authority rather than to procedures inside it.

    What does the organisation still do?

    1. Institutional survival after the funding cuts: No United Nations institution has collapsed, even with fewer resources and after the funding cuts that were made.
    2. Humanitarian delivery continues: Its agencies go on working and supporting people in the most dangerous places in the world.
    3. Self reform of working methods and structures: The organisation is described as able to inclusively reform its own ways of work and its own structures, which is precisely what it cannot do to the Council.

    Where does the enforcement gap lie?

    1. Absence of a punishment mechanism: No instrument exists in the international community to guarantee that violations of international law are effectively punished.
    2. Divided major powers and state calculation: With the major powers divided, individual states calculate that they can act without consequence.
    3. No power to stop the exclusion of officials: Asked what happens when a state excludes United Nations officials and tens of thousands die, including large numbers of children, the stated position is that the organisation does not have the power to stop it.
    4. Israel’s exit and the persona non grata declaration: Israel has exited many United Nations institutions and declared the Secretary General persona non grata, which means no visa would be issued to him, and he did not request one.
    5. Genocide as a determination for the courts: Genocide is a legal definition belonging to the courts and in principle to the International Criminal Court (ICC), so the organisation describes events in Gaza as a dramatic violation of all principles under international law without offering that legal definition itself.

    What is being attempted on freedom of navigation?

    1. Capture of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait: Houthi and other groups have captured the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and oil prices are expected to rise sharply as a result.
    2. Freedom of navigation: Freedom of navigation is fundamental and must be respected.
    3. The Black Sea Grain Initiative precedent: The organisation has proposed mechanisms under which a blockade makes exceptions at least for the transport of food and fertilizers, as was done through the Black Sea Grain Initiative in the Russia Ukraine conflict.
    4. The Strait of Hormuz fertilizer offer: A similar offer has been made for the Strait of Hormuz to allow fertilizers through, and Iran has not accepted it.

    Where does India figure in this assessment?

    1. Ukraine and the Gulf in the India discussion: Both the war in Ukraine and the situation in the Gulf were discussed with the Indian Prime Minister, on a common perspective that peace and absolute freedom of navigation are needed.
    2. The assessment of India’s mediation: India’s mediation efforts and its contacts with Moscow and Kyiv, aimed at creating conditions for trust to be re established, were described as valuable, with the position taken that no country is better placed to act as a bridge builder.
    3. No mediation between India and Pakistan: The organisation is not directly involved in any mediation process between India and Pakistan, since mediation requires the agreement of both parties and that agreement does not exist.

    What was said about the United Nations map controversy?

    1. The disclaimer on United Nations maps: There is no such thing as a United Nations map with borders, and it is not for the organisation to define borders.
    2. The “Correct the Map” resolution: The “Correct the Map” resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on 3 September is not a map. It records that there are distortions in the representation of landmasses, traces those distortions to power relations of the past, and seeks to replace the Mercator projection with maps following the “equal area” principle.
    3. The status of the disputed document: The map published by UN Geospatial on 1 July and later discussed at the General Assembly remains on the organisation’s website, and is described as not an official map but the contribution of a non governmental organisation, indicative rather than definitional.
    4. The Line of Control and Aksai Chin depiction: That map showed the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir as a dotted line with an explanatory note, while depicting Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin without the Indian and Chinese claim lines that earlier maps carried, and with no note explaining the omission.
    5. India’s recorded position: India voted for the resolution in support of the principle of equal area representation, has taken note of the anomaly in the map, and is taking it up with the organisation.

    Challenges to reform of the United Nations Security Council

    1. The permanent members hold a veto over their own dilution: Any change to the Council’s composition requires an amendment to the Charter ratified by all five permanent members, so the beneficiaries of the current structure control the exit from it. Eg. Charter amendment under Articles 108 and 109 requires ratification by all permanent members.
      The Fix: Pursue working method reform inside the existing Charter first, such as a binding commitment to withhold the veto in mass atrocity situations, since that route does not require ratification.
    2. The claimants cannot agree among themselves: Aspirants for permanent seats are blocked as much by regional rivals as by the incumbents. Eg. The Uniting for Consensus group opposes new permanent seats in the same round in which the G4 countries press for them.
      The Fix: Negotiate on an intermediate model of longer term renewable seats without veto, which separates the question of representation from the question of privilege.
    3. Text based negotiation has never begun: The Intergovernmental Negotiations process has run for over a decade without producing a single negotiating text to amend. Eg. The process continues to operate on convened position papers rather than on a draft resolution.
      The Fix: Fix a deadline by which the General Assembly President must table a consolidated single negotiating text, so positions are recorded against clauses rather than restated annually.
    4. Regional representation gaps are structural, not incidental: Africa and Latin America have no permanent seat, which is the specific defect the 1945 composition has carried forward. Eg. The Ezulwini Consensus records Africa’s claim to two permanent seats with veto and five non permanent seats, and has been outstanding since 2005.
      The Fix: Settle the African allocation first as a distinct package, since it is the one claim with an agreed continental position behind it.
    5. A reformed Council changes nothing without an enforcement instrument: Enlarging the membership does not create any means of penalising a state that ignores a Council decision. Eg. There is no instrument in the international community to guarantee that violations of international law are punished.
      The Fix: Strengthen the General Assembly’s residual authority through the Uniting for Peace route and link non compliance to automatic referral to the International Criminal Court.
    6. Financial leverage sits with the states least interested in change: Assessed contributions are concentrated among a few members, so budget pressure can be applied against reform. Eg. Cuts to the organisation’s resources have already forced its agencies to operate on reduced funding.
      The Fix: Broaden the assessed contribution base and build a reserve fund from voluntary contributions by emerging economies, so operational continuity is not hostage to a single contributor.

    Conclusion

    The assessment on record separates two things that are usually argued together: the organisation’s capacity to deliver, which is defended, and the Council’s capacity to decide, which is written off. That separation narrows the reform question from the institution as a whole to the single organ where authority and legitimacy have come apart. An outgoing officeholder’s recommendation carries no procedural weight, and the change he describes requires the assent of the states it would constrain. The thing to watch is the selection of the next Secretary General, since the terms on which that appointment is settled will show whether the membership treats the Council’s composition as a live question or a closed one.

    Back2Basics: Black Sea Grain Initiative

    1. The Black Sea Grain Initiative: An arrangement permitting the export of grain and foodstuffs from Ukrainian Black Sea ports during the Russia Ukraine conflict, negotiated in July 2022.
    2. United Nations and Turkey as brokers: It was agreed through the United Nations and Turkey, with Russia and Ukraine signing parallel agreements rather than a single joint text.
    3. The Istanbul joint coordination centre: A joint coordination centre in Istanbul inspected vessels in both directions along an agreed maritime corridor, so cargo could move without either party treating the ships as combatants.
    4. Precedent for a humanitarian exception to a blockade: It is the working precedent for carving a humanitarian exception out of a blockade, and it is the model behind the offer made for the Strait of Hormuz.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2015, GS2, 12 marks] Discuss the impediments India is facing in its pursuit of a permanent seat in UN Security Council.”

  • PM Modi flags weaponisation of technology and critical minerals

    Why in the News

    Closing the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, the Prime Minister warned that the weaponisation of technology and of access to critical minerals can hinder the grouping’s shared progress, and set against it a commitment to inclusivity in the adoption of technology. The summit ran under the theme “Resilience, cooperation and sustainability” and issued the New Delhi Declaration, and India used its chair position to launch a set of standing mechanisms covering disease surveillance, disaster data, logistics, startup finance, small enterprise linkage and clean energy. The stated framing was that as BRICS enters its third decade the world expects concrete results from it rather than “merely ideas and commitments”. The tension inside the summit is that the members diagnosing the same problem, an order that disadvantages them, arrived with different remedies, from India’s delivery mechanisms to Russia’s sanctions workarounds and China’s call to rally the Global South.

    What did India’s chair position argue?

    1. Weaponisation of technology and critical minerals: Technology and access to critical minerals can both be used as instruments of pressure, and that use obstructs the development of the grouping’s members.
    2. Inclusivity in technology adoption: Inclusivity in the adoption of technology was placed as the answer, meaning access on terms that do not depend on the supplier’s political posture.
    3. Rising number of global conflicts: The rising number of global conflicts has an increasingly negative and far reaching effect on the lives of ordinary people.
    4. Resilience as the organising idea: Pandemics, climate disasters and supply chain disruptions have all shown that no crisis stays confined to one region, so the work was framed around identifying challenges in time, being prepared and acting promptly.
    5. The delivery test for the third decade: Entering its third decade, BRICS is expected to produce concrete results rather than ideas and commitments.

    What new BRICS mechanisms were announced?

    1. BRICS Integrated Early Warning System: Agreed for the prevention of and response to infectious diseases.
    2. Early Warning Data Integration Guidelines: Prepared for disaster management across member states.
    3. BRICS Logistics Supply Chain Cooperation Framework: Intended to make member supply chains more reliable and resilient.
    4. BRICS Incubator Network and BRICS Startup Innovation Fund: The network connects startups and incubators across member states, and the fund has been proposed to back innovative and scalable solutions.
    5. BRICS Network on Digital Agriculture: Connects artificial intelligence, geospatial technology and Digital Public Infrastructure, meaning shared open digital platforms for identity, payments and data exchange, to the working needs of farmers.
    6. BRICS CONNECT: Aimed at skills, employability, women in the workforce, social security and capacity building.
    7. BRICS MSME Cooperation Portal: Set up to link small enterprises to knowledge, finance and new markets.
    8. BRICS Urban Mobility Hub: Established to share urban transport practices between member cities.
    9. BRICS Digital Centre of Excellence: Established for smart grids and energy storage under the sustainability pillar of India’s strategy for the grouping.
    10. Agriculture and climate centres: Centres of Excellence for Agro Ecology and Regenerative Agriculture were set up, alongside agreed principles for community based climate adaptation that treat indigenous knowledge as a foundation for climate action.

    What did the other members put on the table?

    1. China called for rallying the Global South: The Chinese President urged BRICS to rally the Global South so that an increasingly volatile international order is “free from double standards”, and stated that the logic of might makes right does not hold.
    2. The norms China named: Global South countries were asked to defend sovereign equality, non interference in internal affairs and the peaceful settlement of disputes, and to insist that international law applies to all.
    3. China’s five technology initiatives: An artificial intelligence open source community, an open ecosystem for artificial intelligence, a special economic zone partnership, a digital ecosystem cloud platform, and science and technology talent development.
    4. Russia proposed two instruments against sanctions: The Russian President proposed a BRICS insurance mechanism and a collaborative BRICS grain market, and noted the grouping has independent routes for moving capital, labour and technologies.
    5. The Western insurance bar on Russian crude: The G7, the European Union and the United Kingdom barred Western companies from insuring any ship carrying Russian crude unless the oil was bought at or below a specified price cap, which directly restricted Russian crude exports.
    6. The New Development Bank was cited as the working asset: The multilateral development bank established by BRICS is handling projects worth $140 billion.
    7. Iran pressed for national currency trade: The Iranian President argued that excessive dependence on existing financial and trade systems leaves emerging economies exposed to political shocks, backed expanded trade in national currencies and a strengthened New Development Bank, and said unilateral sanctions directly affect global food security.

    What did the New Delhi Declaration record?

    1. Historical racial injustice: The declaration took note of the racial injustice Africans have suffered historically.
    2. A new inequality instrument: It noted the Brazilian and South African plan to start an “international panel on inequality”.
    3. The historical frame invoked: It referred to decolonisation and to Asian African solidarity as displayed at the Bandung conference of 1955.
    4. The Gaza proceedings: It named the South Africa initiated legal process at the International Court of Justice against Israel over its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, recording that those proceedings reaffirmed Israel’s legal obligation to ensure the provision of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

    Challenges to BRICS as a delivery platform

    1. Announced mechanisms have no compliance machinery behind them: A framework, a portal or a network created by summit declaration binds no member and carries no penalty for non participation. Eg. Eleven separate initiatives were announced in one closing session, none attached to a dated implementation milestone.
      The Fix: Attach each mechanism to a named lead member, a secretariat line and an annual reporting obligation to the next summit, so progress is recorded rather than assumed.
    2. The membership no longer shares an economic interest: An expanded grouping now contains net oil exporters and net importers, and sanctioned and unsanctioned economies, so a single position on trade or energy is difficult to reach. Eg. Russia’s proposals at this summit were sanctions workarounds, while other members trade freely with the economies imposing them.
      The Fix: Move substantive work to plurilateral coalitions of the willing inside BRICS, so a mechanism is not held to the pace of its least interested member.
    3. Two members carry an unresolved bilateral dispute: India and China sit inside the same grouping while an unsettled boundary question and a wide trade imbalance run between them. Eg. India’s trade deficit with China reached a record $112.6 billion in 2025-26.
      The Fix: Keep the grouping’s agenda to functional cooperation where the two members’ interests already align, such as disease surveillance and logistics, rather than to security coordination.
    4. The de dollarisation agenda outruns the settlement infrastructure: Trade in national currencies requires convertibility, a clearing arrangement and an accepted reserve asset, and the grouping has none of the three at scale. Eg. Iran’s call for expanded national currency trade rests on the New Development Bank, which is capitalised in a fraction of the size of the trade flows involved.
      The Fix: Build a bilateral local currency settlement network with published reference rates before pursuing a common instrument, so the mechanism follows the trade rather than preceding it.
    5. A larger grouping dilutes decision making: Expansion has raised the grouping’s representational claim while lowering the odds of consensus on anything contested. Eg. The grouping now runs to eleven members with a widening set of partner countries attending its summits.
      The Fix: Adopt a variable geometry rule under which an initiative proceeds with a stated minimum number of members rather than requiring unanimity.
    6. Critical mineral security cannot be built by declaration: Processing capacity, not deposits, is the choke point, and it is concentrated outside most of the membership. Eg. The summit warned against the weaponisation of access to critical minerals without announcing any joint processing or stockpiling arrangement.
      The Fix: Create a joint BRICS strategic reserve and a shared processing investment vehicle for named minerals, so the warning is backed by capacity.

    Conclusion

    India’s chair year has ended with a set of standing mechanisms rather than a communique alone, which is the specific test the chair set for the grouping at the opening of its third decade. Those mechanisms are administrative rather than binding, and each one now needs a host institution, a budget line and a reporting schedule before it can be judged. The markers to watch are whether the proposed Startup Innovation Fund is capitalised and whether the Integrated Early Warning System is stood up with named national focal points before the next summit, since those two are the initiatives that require money and institutional commitment rather than agreement alone.

    Back2Basics: New Development Bank

    1. New Development Bank: A multilateral development bank established by the BRICS countries to finance infrastructure and sustainable development projects in member states and other emerging economies.
    2. Headquarters in Shanghai: Its headquarters is in Shanghai, and it operates regional offices in member countries.
    3. Equal shareholding among founders: Founding members hold equal shareholding, which distinguishes it from the weighted voting used by the Bretton Woods institutions.
    4. A project book of $140 billion: It is handling projects worth about $140 billion.

    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)”

  • The rebuilding of the city must begin, after Satya Niketan

    Why in the News

    A building collapse at Satya Niketan in Delhi killed seven of the 50 Delhi University students living in a makeshift arrangement inside an unauthorised structure, with many others hospitalised in serious condition. The collapse followed monsoon water reaching the basement and foundations of a structure almost half a century old, in which alterations were being carried out at basement level at the time. Given the building’s age, its condition, its unauthorised status and its position in a dense neighbourhood, the event was not preventable at the moment it happened. The tension is that almost 60 per cent of Delhi’s population lives in structures of this kind, and the city will hold nearly 40 million people by 2030, so the response has to be a documentation and licensing regime rather than an inquiry into one building.

    What is a Lal Dora area?

    1. Lal Dora, the village habitation core: A Lal Dora area is the settled habitation core of a village that was recorded separately from its agricultural land, and which municipal planning and building regulation historically did not reach.
    2. Shadow pockets outside municipal planning: These are shadow pockets that evade municipal planning, and they exist in virtually all large Indian cities rather than in Delhi alone.
    3. High density construction in urbanised villages: Urbanised villages of this kind now carry high density four and five storey buildings put up outside the building bye laws that apply elsewhere in the city.

    Why is the city’s building stock undocumented?

    1. The scale of the unregulated stock: Almost 60 per cent of Delhi’s population lives in unauthorised structures, mostly slums, low rise makeshift tenements, or high density four and five storey buildings in urbanised villages.
    2. Existing street maps of illegal colonies: Street maps of most illegal colonies already exist, so the gap is not location but the building itself.
    3. The missing building by building record: There is no building by building documentation of the type and size of each structure, no assessment of its physical condition, and no enumeration of who lives inside it.
    4. Infra red structural imaging: Advanced infra red and other imaging techniques allow a reasonably accurate assessment of a building’s structural condition without dismantling it.

    Why does the age of the stock make documentation urgent?

    1. Buildings are no longer built to last: The lifespan of structures built in this century is barely 30 to 40 years, against the generational life expected of older construction.
    2. Non compliant buildings last less: Structures such as those at Satya Niketan follow none of the required safety codes, which shortens that span further.
    3. A finite lifespan and the inspection cycle: A building stock with a known expiry has to be checked on a cycle, and partially or wholly demolished and replaced when it fails, rather than inspected only after a collapse.

    Why does the use of a building matter as much as its construction?

    1. A structure is designed for one function: Every building is engineered for a specific use, and inappropriate use with heavy loads on floors weakens and damages the structure.
    2. Residential to commercial conversion: In unauthorised colonies, blocks of flats designed for domestic use are converted into stores and restaurants, which raises the number of occupants and alters the weight carried by the floors.
    3. Makeshift student hostels: Makeshift hostels compress living space to raise the return to the property owner, which is the arrangement the Satya Niketan students were housed under.
    4. Occupancy permit tied to a designated function: No occupancy permit should be issued unless the building authority has approved a designated function for the building and allocated a minimum floor space per person.

    What does the layout of a colony do to the water?

    1. Nobody owns the shared ground: Builders take no responsibility for the ground they share with neighbouring buildings, so no one assesses the plot as part of a layout.
    2. Permeable ground and drain capacity: Whether there is adequate natural ground around a structure to absorb rainwater, and whether there are enough wide mouth drains to move water away quickly.
    3. The mechanism of failure: Too much building in too small a ground area traps excess water, directs it into basements and foundations, and destabilises the structure from below.
    4. Climate change and drainage capacity: Climate change is altering weather patterns, producing flash floods and sudden very large volumes of rain, so drainage capacity has become a structural safety question rather than a convenience one.

    Why does enforcement fail even where rules exist?

    1. The bye laws are not the binding constraint: A battery of building bye laws carries no value if it cannot be enforced, and the enforcement machinery is the part that has not been built.
    2. Inspection is purchasable: Structural evaluation of buildings achieves nothing where inspectors and site engineers can be bribed to record a passing assessment.
    3. The Bengaluru apartment collapse: A newly completed apartment building in Bengaluru collapsed after the builder added two floors beyond the three approved, weakening the structural capacity of the columns. The collapse killed 12 people.
    4. Authority is split across agencies: Control of roads, buildings, transport and other infrastructure sits with different political parties and municipal agencies, which raises the question of whether all of it should be brought under one legal entity such as the mayor.

    Challenges to regulating unauthorised construction in Delhi

    1. Regularisation has become the expected endpoint: Repeated amnesty for unauthorised colonies teaches builders and residents that non compliance is a delay rather than a risk, so the next structure is also built outside the code. Eg. Delhi has run successive rounds of recognition and regularisation of unauthorised colonies over decades.
      The Fix: Tie any future regularisation to a passed structural assessment and a registered occupancy function, so recognition follows safety rather than substituting for it.
    2. Enforcement is fragmented across agencies with no single accountable office: Land, building approval, drainage and services sit with separate bodies, so no one authority can be held responsible for a collapse. Eg. The proposal on the table is to bring roads, buildings, transport and infrastructure under one legal entity such as the mayor.
      The Fix: Vest building safety, drainage and occupancy licensing in one municipal office with statutory liability for a structural failure in its jurisdiction.
    3. The inspector’s incentive runs against the resident’s safety: A single site engineer signs off on a structure whose owner gains directly from an extra floor, and detection is unlikely. Eg. A Bengaluru apartment approved for three storeys was completed with five and collapsed, killing 12 people.
      The Fix: Move structural certification to empanelled third party engineers who are randomly assigned to sites and carry personal liability for their certificate.
    4. A hostel or a paying guest establishment sits outside the licensing net entirely: Converting a residential flat to shared student accommodation multiplies occupancy without triggering any approval. Eg. Fifty students were living in a makeshift arrangement inside one unauthorised Satya Niketan building.
      The Fix: Require a separate occupancy licence keyed to persons per unit for any shared residential use, renewable annually against a fire and structural check.
    5. Drainage capacity is planned at city scale while the failure happens at plot scale: Storm water design covers arterial drains, and the ground condition immediately around a building is nobody’s design responsibility. Eg. Water reaching a basement and foundation is what destabilised an almost fifty year old structure.
      The Fix: Make a layout level permeable ground and drainage assessment a condition of building approval, so the plot’s water behaviour is fixed before construction rather than after flooding.
    6. Demolition is politically impossible at the scale the stock requires: Sixty per cent of the population cannot be displaced, so unsafe structures stay occupied while the enforcement file remains open. Eg. Delhi will approach 40 million people by 2030, with continued in migration from nearby towns.
      The Fix: Pair every condemnation order with an in situ rental rehousing entitlement, so removing an unsafe structure does not require removing the household from the city.

    Conclusion

    The city’s governing problem is not that its bye laws are wrong but that most of its building stock sits outside any record that a bye law could be applied to. Documentation, a licensed function with a stated occupancy, a plot level drainage assessment and a single accountable authority are four separate instruments, and none of them requires a new law before it can begin. Delhi is heading towards nearly 40 million residents and the stock it will house them in has a working life measured in decades, not generations. The thing to watch is whether any municipal agency begins building by building documentation of a single Lal Dora pocket, since every other measure depends on that record existing first.

    Urban Local Bodies in India

    1. Urban local bodies: Urban local bodies (ULBs) are the elected municipal governments of Indian cities and towns, governed by Part IX-A of the Constitution as introduced by the 74th Amendment Act, 1992.
    2. Municipal planning and service functions: They prepare master plans, regulate land use, provide basic services and guide urban growth, with reserved seats for women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes built into their composition.
    3. Own revenue and property tax collection: Own revenue of Indian ULBs is under 1 per cent of GDP, against 6 per cent to 7 per cent in Brazil and South Africa, and property tax collection efficiency stays at 35 per cent to 40 per cent.
    4. The planning deficit: About 65 per cent of Indian cities operate without an updated master plan, per NITI Aayog.

    Government Initiatives for Urban Local Bodies

    1. AMRUT 2.0: Targets 100 per cent water tap coverage in all 4,800 and more ULBs and 100 per cent sewerage coverage in 500 major cities, with mandatory rejuvenation of at least one water body in every city.
    2. Swachh Bharat Mission Urban 2.0: Works to a Garbage Free City star rating, requires material recovery facilities in cities above five lakh population, and targets remediation of all 2,400 and more legacy dumpsites by 2027.
    3. Urban Challenge Fund: Rs 1,00,000 crore of central assistance aimed at catalysing Rs 4 lakh crore of investment, with the Centre funding 25 per cent of a project only where the ULB raises 50 per cent from the market.
    4. Urban Infrastructure Development Fund: Managed by the National Housing Bank, it lends to Tier 2 and Tier 3 ULBs at low interest for water supply, sanitation and storm water drainage.
    5. City Economic Regions: A Budget 2026-27 framework linking a core city with its satellite towns and industrial hubs into one labour market, with Rs 5,000 crore per region for 14 identified regions.
    6. Smart Cities Mission legacy: The mission concluded on 31 March 2025, and its Integrated Command and Control Centres now operate in all 100 cities as traffic and emergency monitoring hubs.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2023, GS2, 10 marks] “The states in India seem reluctant to empower urban local bodies both functionally as well as financially.” Comment.”

  • The evidence gap in dole politics

    Why in the News

    Unconditional cash transfers to women have spread from two States in 2022-23 to 12 States in 2025-26, at an estimated annual cost of Rs 1.68 lakh crore, about 0.5 per cent of GDP, per PRS Legislative Research. Governments attach purposes such as dignity and empowerment to these payments but publish no model linking the payment to an outcome, and a study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) prepared for the 16th Finance Commission found that India has no systematic dataset of government expenditure on cash transfer schemes at all. The comparison drawn is the Speenhamland system of 1795, under which English parishes topped up agricultural wages from public funds and folded wage support, poor relief and public finance into a single instrument. The tension is that the fewer the conditions attached to a transfer, the heavier the obligation to prove what it does, and Indian cash transfer politics has grown in exactly the opposite direction.

    What was the Speenhamland system?

    1. The 1795 Speenhamland resolution: English magistrates meeting at Speenhamland in Berkshire in May 1795 resolved to top up agricultural wages from parish funds, with the payout linked to bread prices and to family size.
    2. Rising bread prices and political unrest: Food prices were rising and the French Revolution had unsettled the English establishment, so relief was framed as social stabilisation rather than as poverty policy.
    3. Polanyi’s reading against the critics’ reading: The economic historian Karl Polanyi treated it as an early assertion of a human “right to live” against the harshness of the market. Critics held that folding wage support, poor relief and public finance into one instrument blurred price signals and weakened incentives.
    4. The merged purposes problem: Once the three purposes were merged, it became unclear whether the system was protecting poor families, the wage structure, employers, or social peace, which is the test any relief instrument still has to meet.

    How large has India’s cash transfer commitment become?

    1. The spread across States: Unconditional transfers to women alone moved from two States to 12 States in three years, per PRS Legislative Research.
    2. West Bengal: The State has moved from Lakshmir Bhandar to Annapurna Yojana, budgeting Rs 36,000 crore for a Rs 3,000 monthly transfer to about 1.3 crore women.
    3. Tamil Nadu: The State allocated Rs 14,412 crore for the Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thogai in its 2026-27 interim budget.
    4. Assam: The State set aside Rs 5,000 crore for Orunodoi.
    5. The wider family of instruments: Cash transfers sit alongside free electricity, free bus travel, subsidised food and utility subsidies, so the monthly payment is one line inside a larger recurring claim on State finances.

    What does the transfer actually do for the recipient?

    1. Transfer as a share of a woman’s monthly income: Transfers to women amount to 11 per cent to 24 per cent of the monthly income of women daily wage workers, and 11 per cent to 87 per cent of that of self employed women, per the Economic Survey 2025-26.
    2. Cash is genuinely useful in an informal economy: In a poor economy with irregular earnings, a predictable monthly payment does work that no in kind benefit can.
    3. Services a transfer cannot substitute for: The same woman who values Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 a month also needs a functioning health centre, childcare, a good government school and access to better work, and a transfer softens the strain created by weak institutions without addressing them.
    4. Relief hardening into a permanent commitment: A transfer that begins as relief turns into a permanent fiscal commitment unless there is a clear account of who receives it, what it changes and what it displaces.

    Where exactly is the evidence gap?

    1. No published model connects payment to outcome: Governments state social purposes for these transfers but do not publish the model that links the payment to the result claimed for it.
    2. The design questions are unanswered: Who is being targeted, and what baseline data justifies the scheme, are not established before rollout.
    3. The outcome questions are unmeasured: No anticipated effect is stated for consumption, debt, nutrition, schooling, health spending, labour supply or women’s bargaining power.
    4. Expenditure data on cash transfer schemes: The ADB study for the 16th Finance Commission found that India lacks a systematic dataset of government expenditure on cash transfer schemes.
    5. Moral language in place of evidence: With those answers missing, cash transfer politics is defended through the moral language of welfare rather than through evidence.

    What do other democracies attach to their transfers?

    1. Unemployment insurance: Payment is tied to a contribution record, so entitlement is earned through prior participation in the formal labour market rather than asserted by category.
    2. Food support: Eligibility rules govern who qualifies, and the benefit is reassessed periodically rather than treated as permanent.
    3. Healthcare subsidies: Support is conditioned on stated eligibility criteria that can be tested against a household’s circumstances.
    4. Job search obligations: Several systems attach a continuing behavioural requirement to receipt, which creates a record of what the benefit is meant to be bridging.
    5. Limits of the comparison: These systems are not immune to welfare politics, and India need not copy them mechanically, since transfers to women in poor households may be better left unconditional. The conditions in those systems generate evidence as a by product, and where India drops the conditions it has to generate that evidence directly.

    What would a welfare impact statement require?

    1. Pre rollout welfare impact statement: A large recurring transfer should carry a published statement setting out the objective, the eligibility rule, the expected coverage, the five year fiscal cost, the alternatives considered, the likely leakage and exclusion errors, and the measurable outcomes.
    2. Post rollout household survey: Household surveys should record not only whether the transfer was received but how it affected consumption, debt, health spending, schooling, mobility, work incentives, control over household expenditure and subjective well being.
    3. Open microdata: Anonymised microdata from those surveys should be released so that independent researchers can test the claims made for the scheme.
    4. Evidence as a check on the political claim: Evidence will not remove politics from welfare, and it is not intended to, but it makes the political claim about a scheme checkable rather than merely asserted.

    Challenges to India’s unconditional cash transfer regime

    1. A recurring transfer is politically irreversible: Once a monthly payment reaches a large identifiable group, no government can withdraw or shrink it, so the fiscal commitment compounds regardless of performance. Eg. West Bengal replaced Lakshmir Bhandar with a larger transfer under Annapurna Yojana rather than reviewing it.
      The Fix: Legislate a sunset clause and a mandatory reauthorisation vote on every large transfer, so continuation requires a positive decision rather than inertia.
    2. Transfers compete with the capital spending that builds public goods: State budgets are constrained, and a revenue commitment of this size crowds out the schools, health centres and childcare the same recipients need. Eg. Transfers to women alone now cost about 0.5 per cent of GDP a year across 12 States.
      The Fix: Require every transfer proposal to state the capital expenditure it displaces in the same budget document, so the trade off is visible at the point of approval.
    3. Category based targeting is not the same as need based targeting: A transfer keyed to gender or to a possession based exclusion reaches many households that do not need it and misses poor households outside the category. Eg. The National Food Security Act, 2013 still allocates State quotas on the 2011 Census, which has left later entrants to poverty outside the ration net.
      The Fix: Build eligibility on a periodically updated deprivation register rather than on a one time category list, and publish the exclusion error rate with each disbursal cycle.
    4. Digital delivery excludes at the last step: A transfer credited to an account still fails where the account is dormant, the seeding is wrong or the recipient cannot reach a banking point. Eg. Rejected and failed Direct Benefit Transfer credits arising from incorrect account seeding are a recurring finding in scheme audits.
      The Fix: Publish a failed credit register by block with a fixed resolution deadline, so a failure is a tracked case rather than a statistic.
    5. No independent evaluator exists for State transfers: State schemes are designed, disbursed and assessed by the same department, so there is no institution positioned to contradict the claim made for a scheme. Eg. The ADB study for the 16th Finance Commission had to record the absence of even an expenditure dataset before any evaluation could begin.
      The Fix: Route evaluation of large State transfers through an independent statutory evaluation office reporting to the State legislature, on the model applied to performance audit.
    6. Wage subsidies distort the labour market they operate in: A public top up to household income changes reservation wages and employer incentives, which is the specific mechanism the Speenhamland critics identified. Eg. The transfer equals up to 87 per cent of the monthly income of a self employed woman.
      The Fix: Track labour force participation and wage rates for recipient households in the post rollout survey, so the labour market effect is measured rather than argued about.

    Conclusion

    The instrument at issue is not indefensible, and cash in a poor informal economy does real work no in kind benefit does. What is missing is the apparatus that would let anyone, including the government paying for it, say whether a given transfer changed anything. The obligation runs in proportion to the freedom taken: a transfer with no conditions attached carries the heaviest evidentiary duty, not the lightest. The concrete marker is whether the 16th Finance Commission’s award period opens with a standard expenditure reporting format for State cash transfer schemes, since the dataset the ADB found missing has to exist before any evaluation can be built on it.

    Welfare Cash Transfers in India

    1. Welfare cash transfer: A welfare cash transfer pays money directly into a beneficiary’s bank account in place of a subsidised good or a price subsidy, so the State’s support reaches the household as purchasing power rather than as a commodity.
    2. The JAM trinity: Transfers move through the JAM trinity, meaning the Jan Dhan bank account, the Aadhaar identity number and the mobile phone, which together allow a payment to be authenticated and credited without an intermediary.
    3. Scale of the delivery system: More than 55 crore Jan Dhan accounts now exist, which is what makes near universal direct crediting technically possible.
    4. Claimed Direct Benefit Transfer savings: Aadhaar linked Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) is credited with cumulative savings of about Rs 3.48 lakh crore from removing duplicate and ghost beneficiaries across fertiliser, cooking gas and food subsidies.

    Government Initiatives for Welfare Transfers

    1. Direct Benefit Transfer, 2013: The umbrella architecture that routes scheme payments straight to beneficiary accounts, now covering several hundred central and State schemes.
    2. PM Jan Dhan Yojana, 2014: The financial inclusion mission that created the zero balance accounts into which transfers are credited.
    3. PM Kisan Samman Nidhi: An income support transfer paying landholding farmer families a fixed annual sum in three instalments.
    4. PM Ujjwala Yojana: A connection plus subsidy scheme for cooking gas, which distributed over 10 crore connections and moved the subsidy itself to the beneficiary’s account.
    5. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005: A rights based wage programme guaranteeing 100 days of work, with wages paid electronically into the worker’s own account.
    6. National Food Security Act, 2013: The statutory entitlement to subsidised grain, which also permits a State to substitute a cash transfer for the grain entitlement.

    Back2Basics: 16th Finance Commission

    1. Constitutional basis under Article 280: A constitutional body appointed under Article 280 to recommend how Union tax revenue is shared with the States and among them.
    2. Award period from 2026-27: Its recommendations cover the five years beginning 2026-27.
    3. Grants in aid and local body funds: It recommends the principles governing grants in aid to States from the Consolidated Fund of India, and the measures needed to augment State funds for panchayats and municipalities.
    4. Commissioned studies as the evidence base: Commissioned studies form part of the evidence base on which the transfer and grant architecture for the award period is fixed.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2022, GS2, 10 marks] Reforming the government delivery system through the Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme is a progressive step, but it has its limitations too. Comment.”

  • SIR: Glaring oddities in Maharashtra’s deletion patterns

    Why in the News

    The draft roll published on 31 August under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has dropped 2.07 crore electors from Maharashtra’s 288 Assembly Constituencies (ACs), which is 21.14 per cent of the 9.79 crore electors carried on the rolls before the revision. That single State figure is larger than the entire electorate of Chhattisgarh, and larger than the 2.04 crore deletions recorded during the same revision in Uttar Pradesh, a State with 13.4 crore electors. The Election Commission of India (EC) has not released the Elector to Population (EP) ratio for any State during the revision, though its own Manual on Electoral Rolls requires that disclosure during and after every revision. The contest is therefore not over whether a roll needed cleaning but over whether a deletion of one in five electors, justified largely by two blanket reasons, can be checked at all while the one ratio designed to check it is withheld.

    What is the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls?

    1. Rebuilding the roll by fresh enumeration: An intensive revision rebuilds the electoral roll through a fresh house to house enumeration rather than adding and removing names against the existing roll, so every elector has to be re accounted for.
    2. The enumeration phase and the draft roll: The enumeration phase collects forms from electors, and the draft roll published at the end of it shows who survived enumeration and who was deleted, with a reason recorded against each deletion.

    What is the Elector to Population ratio?

    1. What the ratio measures: The Elector to Population ratio expresses enrolled electors as a share of the population old enough to vote in the same area, so it converts a raw roll count into a figure that can be compared across constituencies of different sizes.
    2. The benchmark it is read against: Official projections for the 18 plus age group give an expected number of electors for an area, which supplies a comparison derived independently of the roll being tested.
    3. What a low ratio signals: A roll sitting far below the ratio implied by those projections is evidence of under enrolment rather than of a cleaner roll, since removing duplicate and deceased entries does not pull the total below the eligible population.
    4. The disclosure obligation attached to it: The Election Commission’s Manual on Electoral Rolls requires the ratio to be disclosed during and after every revision, which makes it the audit built into the revision rather than an external check on it.

    How large is the deletion, measured against the roll itself?

    1. Names deleted and names retained: 2,06,88,487 names were deleted from a pre revision roll of 9,78,54,049, leaving 7,71,65,562 electors in the draft roll.
    2. Comparison with Uttar Pradesh: The deletion exceeds Uttar Pradesh’s, and the draft rolls of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi combined hold fewer electors than Uttar Pradesh alone.
    3. The gap against projected population: Set against a projected voter population of 9,65,00,000, the draft roll is short by 1,93,34,438 electors, about 20 per cent.
    4. The Technical Group on Population Projections: That population estimate is the 18 plus age group projection from the Government of India’s Technical Group on Population Projections, not an independent construction.
    5. Deletion size against shortfall size: The shortfall against projected population is roughly the same size as the deletion, so the revision has removed almost exactly the number of electors that a demographic estimate says the roll should have retained.

    Where are the deletions concentrated?

    1. Urban concentration of the deletions: About 75 per cent of all deletions occurred in the 147 constituencies classified as highly or moderately urban.
    2. The clustering by district: Almost all of the heaviest deleting constituencies lie in and around Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Nashik.
    3. Constituencies at the extremes: 58 ACs lost at least a third of their names and 25 ACs lost 40 per cent or more, with Bhiwandi East in Thane the highest at 49.1 per cent.
    4. Night time light classification of constituencies: Constituencies were sorted into urban and rural using night time light intensity from the Socio economic High resolution Rural Urban Geographic Platform for India (SHRUG), a public geographic database maintained by the Development Data Lab, read off 2023 satellite data.
    5. Akole, the lowest deleting constituency: Akole in Ahmednagar recorded the lowest share of deletions against its pre revision roll.

    What do the recorded reasons for deletion show?

    1. Permanently Shifted and Untraceable or Absent: Permanently Shifted and Untraceable or Absent were applied as blanket categories across large numbers of names.
    2. Kalyan Rural in Thane: Kalyan Rural in Thane lost 2,52,247 names, 46 per cent of its roll, of which 2.39 lakh, or 96.5 per cent, were marked shifted or absent, against only 4,882 marked Deceased.
    3. The 85 constituency cluster: In 85 ACs shifted and absent accounted for between 75 per cent and 96.5 per cent of all deletions. Those 85 constituencies held 3.21 crore electors before the revision and lost 1.17 crore, of which 97.9 lakh were marked shifted or absent.
    4. The Manual’s bar on deleting an absentee: The EC’s own manual states that an absentee voter cannot be deleted, because that elector continues to be an ordinary resident of the place where enrolled.
    5. The Chief Electoral Officer’s definition of Absent: An explanatory note issued by the Chief Electoral Officer of Maharashtra defines Absent as meaning that the elector was unavailable, which is a condition of the enumerator’s visit rather than a finding about residence.

    Why does the variation between similar constituencies matter?

    1. Pune’s 21 constituencies: In Pune’s 21 ACs, the share of deletions marked Absent ranged from 0.4 per cent to 88.3 per cent.
    2. Nashik, Palghar, Aurangabad and Nagpur: Nashik’s 15 ACs ranged from 8.1 per cent to 86.5 per cent, Palghar’s six from 3.3 per cent to 85.5 per cent, Aurangabad’s nine from 7.3 per cent to 67.3 per cent and Nagpur’s 12 from 4.4 per cent to 59.7 per cent.
    3. Maval and Hadapsar: Maval marked just 322 names, 0.4 per cent, as Absent while marking over 77,000 as shifted, and Hadapsar marked 86 per cent of its 2.98 lakh deleted voters as absent.
    4. The Deceased and Duplicate shares: Across a sample of constituencies the share of deletions recorded as Deceased runs from 1.9 per cent to nearly 45 per cent, and the share recorded as Duplicate from 1.3 per cent to about 25 per cent.
    5. Enumerator practice as the source of the spread: Constituencies of similar urban or rural character, inside one district, were processed under reasons applied arbitrarily and interchangeably, which points to the enumerator’s practice rather than to any underlying difference in the electors.

    Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls

    1. Deletion is the default outcome of a re enumeration: Rebuilding a roll from scratch places the burden of proof on the elector, so anyone missed at the door is removed rather than retained. Eg. In 85 Maharashtra constituencies, shifted and absent together accounted for up to 96.5 per cent of all deletions.
      The Fix: Require a second visit and a recorded notice to the elector’s address before any name is deleted for absence, so a missed visit cannot by itself end an enrolment.
    2. The categories used are not verifiable after the fact: Shifted and Untraceable record what the enumerator could not find, not a fact about the elector, so a wrongly recorded deletion leaves no trace to audit. Eg. The Chief Electoral Officer’s own note defines Absent as the elector being unavailable.
      The Fix: Publish the booth level list of deletions with the reason and the date of the enumerator’s visit, so a deletion can be contested against a record rather than against a category.
    3. Withholding the mandated ratio removes the only aggregate check: The Elector to Population ratio is what tells a reader whether a revision corrected the roll or thinned it, and no substitute measure exists. Eg. The estimated ratio for Maharashtra shows the draft roll short by 1.92 crore electors.
      The Fix: Release the ratio constituency by constituency at draft publication, as the Manual on Electoral Rolls already requires, rather than after the claims and objections period closes.
    4. Urban electors are structurally easier to delete: Rented accommodation, migrant work and multi storey buildings make an occupant harder to locate on a single visit than a settled rural household. Eg. About 75 per cent of Maharashtra’s deletions fell in the 147 highly or moderately urban constituencies.
      The Fix: Allow urban electors to complete enumeration through a self service digital submission verified against an existing identity record, so presence at the door is not the only route to staying on the roll.
    5. The claims and objections window assumes the deleted elector knows: A person removed from the roll usually discovers it at the polling station, by which time the remedy has expired. Eg. Deletions in Maharashtra ran to 2.07 crore names, which no individual notice system currently covers.
      The Fix: Send a mandatory individual intimation by post and message to every deleted elector at the address on record, with the reason and the deadline for restoration stated.
    6. Roll revision decides delimitation and reservation downstream: Electoral rolls feed constituency sizes, reserved seat calculations and future revision baselines, so an error does not stay inside one election. Eg. The Maharashtra draft roll now sits 20 per cent below the projected 18 plus population used by official population projections.
      The Fix: Freeze the revised roll as a baseline only after an independent statistical audit against the Technical Group’s population projections has been published.

    Conclusion

    The revision has produced a roll that is smaller than the population estimate by almost exactly the number of names it removed, and the reasons recorded for those removals swing from near zero to near universal between constituencies that are otherwise alike. What settles the dispute is not another analysis of the draft but a single disclosure the revising authority is already obliged to make. The marker to watch is whether the Elector to Population ratio is published constituency by constituency before the claims and objections period closes, since restoration after the final roll is published is a different and far harder remedy.

    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?”

  • Uniform Civil Code in all 21 NDA states before 2029: Shah

    Why in the News

    The Union Home Minister has stated that the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) will be implemented across all 21 NDA ruled states before the 2029 Lok Sabha elections. The announcement completes a shift the Sangh Parivar first expressed in 2022-23, away from a single national code enacted by Parliament and towards state by state legislation, with Uttarakhand’s code as the template. Gujarat and Assam have already followed with similar laws and Madhya Pradesh’s Bill awaits assent. The tension is that a code whose entire claim is uniformity is being built through separate state statutes that already differ from each other, and all of which exclude Scheduled Tribes.

    What is a Uniform Civil Code?

    1. The scope of a uniform civil code: A UCC is a single set of civil laws on marriage, divorce, maintenance, succession and adoption applying to all citizens, in place of the separate personal laws that currently apply by religious community.
    2. Where the Constitution places it: Article 44, a Directive Principle of State Policy, directs the State to endeavour to secure a uniform civil code for citizens throughout the territory of India. A Directive Principle is not enforceable by any court.
    3. Why a state can enact one: Marriage, divorce, succession and related civil matters fall under Entry 5 of the Concurrent List, so a state legislature is competent to legislate on them.

    What does the state led approach change?

    1. The route has changed, not the objective: The stated resolve is to enforce the UCC in all 21 alliance ruled states before the 2029 Lok Sabha polls, rather than to enact one national statute.
    2. The Sangh Parivar position of 2022-23: The shift from a national push to a state led approach is a position the Sangh Parivar expressed in 2022-23.
    3. The template already exists: Uttarakhand’s code has been in force since last year and is the model the other states have worked from.
    4. Three states have followed: Gujarat, Assam and Madhya Pradesh have brought similar legislation, and Madhya Pradesh’s Bill is awaiting assent.

    What do the four state codes have in common?

    1. Polygamy is prohibited: All four state laws ban polygamy.
    2. Marriage must be registered: All four require registration of marriage.
    3. Divorce and inheritance are standardised: The laws apply common rules for divorce and for inheritance across communities.
    4. Women get equal inheritance rights: All four grant women equal inheritance rights.
    5. Live in relationships must be registered: All four mandate registration of live in relationships.

    Where do the state codes diverge?

    1. Uttarakhand builds in an exit and a protection: Its code allows deregistration of a live in relationship and recognises children born from such a relationship.
    2. Assam attaches a penalty instead: Its code penalises non registration of a live in relationship.
    3. The consequence of divergent state codes: Two codes drawn from the same template already treat the same relationship differently, which is the outcome a national statute was meant to prevent.

    Why are Scheduled Tribes excluded?

    1. The exclusion is common to all four: All four state laws exclude Scheduled Tribes from their application.
    2. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh concerns behind the exclusion: The exclusion was written in response to concerns raised by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
    3. Two states go further: Uttarakhand and Assam add explicit protections for specific tribal customs.

    What else was placed on record as the government’s reform list?

    1. Personal law: The abolition of Triple Talaq is cited as having given equal rights to Muslim women.
    2. Constitutional change: The reading down of Article 370 is cited as having been done without violence.
    3. Criminal law: The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) has been enforced, with a conviction rate of 30 per cent recorded in one year.
    4. Citizenship registration: The government is in discussion with alliance partners and various groups on implementing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Manipur.
    5. Enforcement drives: A drive to identify and deport illegal immigrants was reiterated, alongside a zero tolerance position on Naxalism and terrorism.

    Challenges to a state led Uniform Civil Code

    1. State by state enactment produces the opposite of uniformity: Each legislature settles its own definitions and penalties, so a citizen’s civil status changes at a state border. Eg. Uttarakhand permits deregistration of a live in relationship while Assam penalises failure to register one.
      The Fix: Enact a central model code under Entry 5 of the Concurrent List that states adopt with limited variation, so Article 254 resolves conflicts instead of leaving them to accumulate.
    2. A code that exempts a category is not uniform: Excluding Scheduled Tribes preserves exactly the community specific personal law regime the code was framed to end. Eg. All four enacted or pending state codes exclude Scheduled Tribes.
      The Fix: Convert the blanket exclusion into an opt in mechanism exercisable by an Autonomous District Council under the Sixth Schedule, so the exemption is a community’s decision rather than a permanent carve out.
    3. Compulsory registration of live in relationships raises a privacy question: Registration converts a private arrangement into a state record with penal consequences for failure to file. Eg. Justice K S Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), a nine judge Bench, held informational privacy and decisional autonomy to be part of the right to life under Article 21.
      The Fix: Make registration voluntary and tie the statutory benefits of maintenance and legitimacy of children to it, so the incentive to register replaces the penalty for not registering.
    4. Freedom of religion sits against the directive: Article 25 guarantees the freedom to profess, practise and propagate religion, and every personal law reform is contested on that ground. Eg. The Supreme Court in Shayara Bano v. Union of India (2017) set aside instant triple talaq by a majority, and the decision was argued through the religious practice test rather than through Article 44.
      The Fix: Legislate reform head by head, on succession, on registration, on the grounds of divorce, so each provision is defended on its own constitutional footing rather than as a single omnibus code.
    5. Enforcement capacity is assumed rather than built: Universal marriage and relationship registration requires a functioning registry down to the block level, and civil registration coverage is already uneven. Eg. Registration of marriage was made a general requirement only after Seema v. Ashwani Kumar (2006), and compliance still varies widely across states.
      The Fix: Fund a digital civil registry linked to the existing birth and death registration system before a registration mandate takes effect, so the obligation lands on a system that can receive it.

    Conclusion

    The position now on record converts a manifesto commitment into a dated legislative programme with a stated count of states and a stated deadline. Four codes exist or are pending, and their differences on live in relationships are already visible, so what is being built is a family of codes rather than one. The marker to watch is Madhya Pradesh’s Bill and the assent it awaits, followed by whether the remaining alliance ruled states legislate on the Uttarakhand template or draft their own variations.

    Back2Basics: Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023

    1. Indian Penal Code, 1860: The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 replaced the Indian Penal Code, 1860 as India’s substantive criminal law.
    2. When it took effect: It came into force on 1 July 2024.
    3. The three companion criminal statutes: It was enacted alongside the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, which replaced the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.
    4. New provisions added: It added community service as a form of punishment for specified minor offences and grouped offences against women and children into a dedicated chapter.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2015, GS2, 12 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.”

  • India gets 1.64 mt EU steel quota, imports of EU cars may rise 6-fold

    Why in the News

    The draft text of the India European Union (EU) Free Trade Agreement (FTA) gives India a country specific steel export quota of 1.64 million tonnes (mt) across 16 categories, including specialised items such as metallic coated sheets and stainless hot rolled quarto plates. The quota answers the tightening of EU steel entry through the Steel Overcapacity Regulation, which came into force on 1 July this year, and through the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), a levy that prices the carbon embedded in an imported good so that it carries the same carbon cost as an EU produced one. In exchange the EU has won a first year quota of 1,00,000 completely built up cars, close to six times what it currently ships to India. Only a part of India’s steel quota is actually reserved for India, while the automotive concession is the first of its kind India has given to a major economy after the United Kingdom.

    What is a Tariff Rate Quota?

    1. The instrument: A Tariff Rate Quota (TRQ) limits the quantity of a particular item that is eligible for a lower duty, so volume inside the quota enters cheap and volume beyond it pays the full tariff.
    2. Two components in India’s steel quota: The FTA component of 0.69 mt is reserved for India. The most favoured nation component of 0.95 mt is open to all partner countries.
    3. The assured component against the open component: Only the FTA component is assured, and India’s products must compete with other exporting countries for the remaining categories.

    How much steel market access has India actually secured?

    1. Breadth of the quota: The 1.64 mt covers 16 categories of steel, including specialised products such as metallic coated sheets and stainless hot rolled quarto plates.
    2. Value added lines are inside it: India has received quotas on several value added categories, which are the lines that carry a higher realisation per tonne.
    3. The assured share is small: The reserved FTA component is under half the headline quota, so the larger part of India’s access depends on outcompeting other suppliers for the same tonnage.
    4. The framing regulation: The TRQs follow the EU’s Steel Overcapacity Regulation, whose stated aim is to protect the EU steel industry against the effects of global overcapacity.

    What does the EU gain in India’s car market?

    1. A first year quota six times current trade: The EU has won a first year TRQ of 1,00,000 completely built up internal combustion and non plug in hybrid cars, against the 17,191 cars India imported from the EU in 2025.
    2. The ten year volume ramp: The quota rises to 1,60,000 cars by the 10th year of the agreement.
    3. A price floor protects the mass market: The concession applies only to cars priced above €15,000, and India has given no concession at all to cars below that price to protect Indian car manufacturers.
    4. The duty schedule for the mid segment: For cars priced between €15,000 and €35,000, the in quota duty falls from 110% to 35% in the first year and to 10% by the fifth year of the deal coming into effect.
    5. The duty schedule for the luxury segment: For cars priced above €35,000, tariffs decline from 66% to 30% in the first year and to 10% over the same period.
    6. A reserved luxury band: The quota is divided across three price bands, with 43,000 units reserved for cars priced above €50,000 from Year 5 onward.

    What does the separate electric vehicle schedule protect?

    1. Concessions begin later: Concessions on battery electric vehicles, plug in hybrids and cars using other technologies begin only in the fifth year of the agreement.
    2. A higher price floor applies: They apply only to vehicles priced at €20,000 or more, and electric and other eligible cars below that price get no concession.
    3. The volume ramp is slow: The completely built unit quota starts at 20,000 cars in the fifth year, rises to 50,000 in the tenth year and reaches 90,000 from the fourteenth year onwards.

    What must India do to use the steel quota?

    1. Move up the product ladder: Shifting toward higher value added steel products reduces the applicable CBAM tax burden and improves India’s competitive position in the EU market, per an Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) note.
    2. Pair the shift with industrial policy: The ICRIER note holds that this structural transition must be supported by industrial policies that integrate Production Linked Incentives with dedicated research and development funding.
    3. Carry the smallest firms through compliance: Targeted financial and technical assistance, including concessional financing, access to clean technology and investment guarantees, is treated as essential to ease the disproportionate compliance burden on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).

    What is the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism?

    1. The charge on embedded carbon: An importer of a covered good declares the greenhouse gas emissions released in producing it and surrenders certificates priced against the European Union’s own carbon market. The imported tonne therefore carries the same carbon cost as a tonne produced inside the EU.
    2. Covered goods: CBAM applies to emissions intensive goods traded in bulk, including iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen, which are the sectors where production is most easily relocated to a jurisdiction with no carbon price.
    3. Default values where data is absent: An exporter that cannot supply verified plant level emissions data is charged on a default value rather than on its actual emissions. Eg. A low emission Indian plant that does not document its emissions is charged as though it used the high emission route.
    4. Phasing: A transitional stage requires importers only to report embedded emissions, and the financial obligation attaches at the definitive stage, so the reporting burden arrives before the cost does.

    Challenges to the India EU Free Trade Agreement steel and auto package

    1. The quota covers well under half of existing trade: Most of what India already ships to the EU falls outside the country specific quota and meets the full tariff. Eg. India’s steel exports to the EU currently stand at 4 mt.
      The Fix: Concentrate the residual volume in categories where the per tonne realisation absorbs the out of quota duty, rather than treating the quota as the whole of the market.
    2. The out of quota wall is punitive: The Steel Overcapacity Regulation sets free of duty quotas at 18.3 mt overall with a 50% duty on out of quota imports, so exceeding the quota is close to a trade stop. Eg. The same regulation introduced a melt and pour regime that traces where steel was first cast, which narrows the scope for rerouting through third countries.
      The Fix: Seek an annual review clause that indexes the country specific quota to India’s realised shipments rather than fixing it at the level negotiated once.
    3. The carbon charge sits outside the quota: A tonne of steel that enters inside the quota still carries its CBAM liability, so tariff relief and carbon cost are two separate gates. Eg. CBAM prices embedded emissions per tonne, which penalises India’s coal based blast furnace and induction furnace routes regardless of quota access.
      The Fix: Build verified plant level emissions accounting into Indian steel exports so that lower carbon Indian output is recognised at the EU border instead of being charged on a default value.
    4. The automotive concession sets a precedent for other partners: The EU becomes the second major trade partner after the United Kingdom to secure automotive tariff concessions from India under an FTA. Eg. The Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) holds that these precedents could prompt other key trade partners such as Japan and South Korea to seek similar preferential market access and TRQs.
      The Fix: Fix a common automotive concession template across agreements, so each new negotiation starts from a stated ceiling rather than from the last deal signed.

    Conclusion

    The draft text is published rather than ratified, so the numbers in it are a negotiating position and not yet a schedule in force. What the package does settle is the shape of the bargain: India trades a widening opening of its passenger vehicle market for steel access that is only partly reserved and wholly separate from its carbon liability. The marker to watch is whether the reserved FTA component of the steel quota is enlarged in the final text, and whether India’s shipments move into the value added categories the quota already covers.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS3, 10 marks] What are the challenges before the Indian economy when the world is moving away from free trade and multilateralism to protectionism and bilateralism? How can these challenges be met?”

  • [12th September 2026] The Hindu OpED: A bigger BRICS, shaped by India’s vision

    [12th September 2026] The Hindu OpED: A bigger BRICS, shaped by India’s vision

    Question (2023, GS2): “‘Virus of Conflict is affecting the functioning of the SCO’. In the light of the above statement point out the role of India in mitigating problems.
    Linkage: This question directly mirrors the central tension of the New Delhi BRICS summit: holding a common line and delivering technical outputs when key member states are at war or experiencing severe conflict. It highlights India’s strategic role as a mediator and consensus-builder in multilateral forums

    Mentor Comment

    India has used its chairship of BRICS to convert the grouping’s agenda into a set of named functional outputs, and the New Delhi summit on 12 and 13 September 2026 is where those outputs are placed before the leaders. The chairship ran around 350 meetings across Indian cities, 22 of them at ministerial level, following the template India used for the G-20 Summit it hosted in New Delhi in 2023. India reframed the acronym around “building resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability”, and the deliverables track that framing: centres of excellence, a logistics framework, an enterprise portal and a set of research repositories. The grouping now carries 11 members and about 10 partner countries, and its collective output measured at purchasing power parity, meaning output adjusted for differences in domestic price levels, exceeds that of the G-7. The tension in the summit lies between the two things it is being asked to do at once, settle a set of technical cooperation outputs, and hold a common line among members several of whom are at war.

    Pillars of BRICS cooperation

    1. Political and security: The first pillar covers the grouping’s positions on conflicts, security cooperation and global governance questions.
    2. Finance and the economy: The second pillar covers trade, payments, development finance and economic cooperation among members.
    3. Culture and people-to-people exchanges: The third pillar covers education, health, skilling and social cooperation between member societies.
    4. Where India’s chairship agenda sits: The agenda India pursued relates more to the second and third pillars than to the first, since the leaders themselves settle the large geopolitical questions.

    Why is the Delhi summit a landmark?

    1. The backdrop: It takes place against geopolitical turbulence produced by a combination of forces, ongoing wars and conflicts, a breakdown in global governance, and the changing nature of global alliances.
    2. The grouping’s weight: BRICS now has 11 prominent members and about 10 partner countries, and its collective economic output in purchasing power parity terms outstrips that of the G-7, making it one of the largest and most important transcontinental groupings outside the West.
    3. The technology contest: Technological forces such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing are being weaponised, with both great powers trying to win the battle for tech supremacy.

    How did India prepare for the chairship?

    1. The template: India followed the approach it had used for the 2023 G-20 Summit in New Delhi.
    2. The scale of the process: Around 350 meetings were conducted in cities across the country, with 22 held at the ministerial level.
    3. The stated focus: India announced that it would focus on “building resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability”, giving a new expansion to the BRICS acronym.
    4. The intent behind the framing: The reframing was used to refocus and recalibrate the BRICS agenda rather than to inherit the previous year’s priorities unchanged.

    What has the chairship delivered on resilience?

    1. A digital centre for grids and storage: The BRICS Digital Centre of Excellence for Smart Grids and Energy Storage was launched under India’s stewardship.
    2. A logistics framework: The BRICS Logistics Supply Chain Cooperation Framework was adopted.
    3. Centres on farming systems: Centres of Excellence on Agro-Ecology and Regenerative Agriculture were established.
    4. What they are expected to do: Once operationalised, these initiatives are intended to provide the ballast that would make member economies genuinely resilient.

    What is on the innovation agenda?

    1. Capital for new firms: A start-up innovation fund and an incubator network were proposed.
    2. A digital public infrastructure repository: Members would pool digital public infrastructure, meaning the shared digital systems for identity, payments and data exchange that public services run on.
    3. A science and research repository: A common repository for scientific and research material was proposed alongside it.
    4. A plan for large research facilities: The action plan of the BRICS Working Group on research infrastructures and mega science projects sits within this pillar.
    5. Why pooling matters here: Members are not all at the same level of development in scientific research, so shared facilities and repositories are worth more to some members than to others.

    What does the cooperation pillar carry?

    1. Trade rules: Leaders are expected to endorse recommendations on revitalising the multilateral trading system.
    2. Health: A network of centres of excellence on mental wellness is to be welcomed by the leaders.
    3. Cities: A BRICS urbanisation forum is to be established.
    4. Women and digital access: Enhancing the digital capacity of women forms part of the recommendations.
    5. Skills and small enterprise: Cooperation is to be intensified in education and youth skilling, and through the BRICS Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Cooperation Portal.

    What does the sustainability agenda add?

    1. It continues the previous chair’s priority: Sustainability was the centrepiece of Brazil’s agenda in the preceding year, and India built on that base rather than replacing it.
    2. Land and forests: Combating desertification, and guidelines for disaster management and forest-fire preparedness, are specific areas of cooperation under this head.
    3. Aviation fuel: A BRICS forum on sustainable aviation fuels forms part of the agenda.
    4. Adaptation rather than mitigation: Advancing climate resilience through people-centric and community-based adaptation is included, which matters because international fora tend to focus almost exclusively on mitigation.

    Can a functional agenda hold when summit level geopolitics pulls the other way?

    1. The two tracks belong to different pillars: The chairship’s outputs sit in the economic and people-to-people pillars, and the large geopolitical questions are settled by the leaders under the first.
    2. The functional track is the more predictable of the two: Substantive outcomes appear assured on the strength of the ministerial and working group meetings already chaired, independent of what the leaders’ session produces.
    3. The caveat on the grouping: BRICS has to avoid being caught in geopolitical currents that are not of its own making and carry no strategic value for its members.
    4. Why it survives the contradiction: The grouping is now too large to be either ignored or allowed to fail, which gives members an interest in a working agenda even where they diverge politically.
    5. What it is ultimately for: The grouping helps members enhance their strategic options and push geopolitics towards a multipolar order, both of which are organising principles of India’s foreign policy.

    Challenges to India’s BRICS chairship agenda

    1. The deliverables are institutions without budgets: A centre of excellence, a framework and a portal each need a host, staff and recurring funding, none of which a one year chairship can commit on the group’s behalf. Eg. The BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Centre, announced in 2020, functions as a virtual network of national institutions rather than a staffed facility.
      The Fix: Attach each new centre to a named host institution with a member funded budget line recorded in the summit declaration.
    2. Repositories hold only what members choose to deposit: A digital public infrastructure repository and a science repository depend on voluntary contribution, and members operate under differing national data and procurement rules. Eg. Members’ identity and payment systems sit under separate data laws, so specifications and code are not equally shareable.
      The Fix: Settle a common licence and a deposit obligation for contributed material before the repositories open.
    3. A declaration carries no review of the last one: Outcomes are recorded as commitments in a communique, and no member reports against them the following year. Eg. The Rio declaration of July 2025 ran to 126 points with no implementation review attached to it.
      The Fix: Require the incoming chair to publish an implementation report against the previous declaration alongside the new one.
    4. The enterprise agenda needs a payments channel that is not yet working: An MSME portal and a start-up fund assume a listed supplier in one member country can be paid from another without routing through third currency correspondent banking. Eg. The grouping’s own cross border payment initiative remains at pilot stage.
      The Fix: Sequence the portal behind a working local currency settlement arrangement for the member pairs that already trade at scale.

    Conclusion

    The chairship’s output is a set of centres, frameworks, repositories and portals, and their value is decided after the summit closes rather than in its declaration. What converts an announced centre into a working institution is a host, a staff and a recurring budget, and none of those is a summit level decision. The grouping’s own design works against this, since priorities reset annually with the rotating chair and nothing obliges the next one to carry a predecessor’s working groups forward. What to watch is whether the declaration names a host institution and a funding source for the new centres, and whether the chair that follows India adopts the research infrastructure action plan rather than substituting its own themes.

    About BRICS

    1. What it started as: The acronym was coined in 2001 by a Goldman Sachs economist to identify a set of high growth emerging economies, and it was an investment category before it was a forum.
    2. How it became a grouping: The first meeting of Foreign Ministers took place on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in 2006, and the first formal Leaders’ Summit was held at Yekaterinburg in Russia in 2009.
    3. How it expanded: South Africa joined in 2011. The 2023 Johannesburg Summit opened membership further, with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joining in 2024 and Indonesia in 2025.
    4. The partner tier: A Partner Country category was introduced in 2024 to engage states such as Malaysia, Thailand and Nigeria without conferring full membership.

    Institutions and Initiatives of BRICS

    1. New Development Bank: Headquartered in Shanghai, it lends for infrastructure and sustainable development, and has approved over $35 billion in loans.
    2. Contingent Reserve Arrangement: A $100 billion pool of member foreign exchange reserves providing short term liquidity support to a member under balance of payments pressure.
    3. BRICS Pay: A cross border payment initiative intended to settle trade among members in local currencies rather than through existing dollar based messaging channels.
    4. Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation: Six satellites contributed by member states, sharing earth observation data for disaster management and resource monitoring.

    Key Facts about BRICS

    1. Population weight: The grouping represents over 45 per cent of the world’s population, about 3.6 billion people.
    2. Energy weight: Members account for roughly 42 per cent of global oil production and exports, which is what the inclusion of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates added to the bloc.

    Challenges in BRICS

    1. Consensus across 11 members with different political systems: A joint declaration needs every member’s assent, so the text settles at the level the most reluctant member accepts. Eg. Declarations avoid language on human rights and democratic norms, since the membership spans elected governments and authoritarian ones.
      The Fix: Adopt a variable geometry, letting a subset of willing members carry an initiative under the BRICS name without requiring unanimity.
    2. One member’s economic weight shapes the agenda: China’s size gives it disproportionate influence over what the grouping prioritises and whom it admits. Eg. It has pushed for the inclusion of states carrying heavy Chinese debt exposure, which would tilt the bloc towards a China centred platform.
      The Fix: Publish membership criteria weighted to economic complementarity and regional balance rather than to any single member’s sponsorship.
    3. Reducing dollar dependence moves slower than the rhetoric: Settlement habits, contract law and reserve holdings all favour the incumbent currency. Eg. The US dollar still settles over 80 per cent of global trade.
      The Fix: Target local currency invoicing on the bilateral pairs that already have settlement arrangements, rather than pursuing a common currency.
    4. There is no permanent secretariat or charter: Each chair runs the calendar from its own foreign ministry, so institutional memory travels out with the chair. Eg. Working group records and unfinished action plans are held by the outgoing chair rather than by the grouping.
      The Fix: Create a small standing secretariat funded by member contributions to hold working group records and track commitments between summits.
    5. Trade within the bloc remains thin: Members trade more with the industrialised economies than with each other, which limits what economic cooperation can deliver. Eg. Most members still rely on G7 markets for high technology imports and for services exports.
      The Fix: Negotiate a tariff preference schedule among members on a limited list of manufactured goods, which is achievable without a full trade agreement.
  • BRICS: evolution, cooperation and India’s leadership ahead of the 18th Summit

    BRICS: evolution, cooperation and India’s leadership ahead of the 18th Summit

    Why in News

    India hosts the 18th BRICS Summit on 12 to 13 September 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. BRICS is a grouping of major emerging economies.

    Current stage and next milestone

    India chairs BRICS for the fourth time in 2026. The leaders’ sessions run on 12 to 13 September 2026. The chairship has already run over 350 ministerial meetings across 25 cities.

    Core facts

    1. Origin: The acronym BRIC was coined in 2001 by Goldman Sachs. It projected Brazil, Russia, India and China as future major economies.
    2. Formation: South Africa joined in 2010, forming BRICS.
    3. Membership now: The grouping has 11 full members: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. A Partner Country framework adds ten more nations.
    4. Weight: Members hold 49.5% of global population, 40% of global Gross Domestic Product and 26% of global trade.
    5. India’s chairships: They occurred in 2012, 2016, 2021 and 2026.
    6. Theme 2026: Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.
    7. Three pillars: Political and security cooperation, economic and financial cooperation, and cultural exchanges.
    8. 2026 agenda: Agriculture, health, urban infrastructure, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, supply chains and climate resilience.

    Static Context

    1. The New Development Bank (NDB) is the BRICS development bank. It was set up at the 6th Summit via the Fortaleza Declaration of 2014. Its headquarters is in Shanghai.
    2. The Contingent Reserve Arrangement is the BRICS currency swap framework for balance of payments support.
    3. The 16th Summit was held at Kazan, Russia, in 2024. The latest expansion admitted Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

    Prelims angle

    NDB headquarters at Shanghai and its Fortaleza Declaration origin; BRICS membership list and the 11 member count; India’s chairship years; the NDB is a BRICS body, not an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation body.

    Mains angle

    GS Paper 2, global groupings affecting India’s interests. BRICS suits a question on its role as a counterweight in global governance and a platform for the Global South.

    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.”