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  • Distinguished jurist: The unused route to appoint an SC judge

    Why in the News

    A sitting Supreme Court judge has called the “distinguished jurist” route to the Supreme Court under Article 124(3) an “unused mandate” of the Constitution that “needs our serious attention”. The provision has existed since the Constitution came into force, and in more than seven decades no one has been appointed under it. The judge argued that a jurist on the Bench would “diversify the Bench” and would not be “constricted by narrow technicalities”, leaving the Court better placed on public law questions. The tension is that the text permits the appointment while the process, a collegium of judges recommending candidates and Bar rules that keep academics out of practice, has never produced one.

    What is the distinguished jurist route under Article 124(3)?

    1. Three routes to the Court: Article 124(3) allows the appointment of a citizen of India who has served as a High Court judge for five years, practised as an advocate for ten years, or “is, in the opinion of the President, a distinguished jurist”.
    2. Two routes have staffed it: Most judges have been elevated from the High Courts, and a smaller number of lawyers have been appointed directly from the Bar.
    3. The third has never been used: No distinguished jurist has been appointed to the Supreme Court since 1950.

    Where did the clause come from?

    1. A Constituent Assembly amendment: H.V. Kamath moved the clause on 24 May 1949, arguing that the pool of candidates should not be “necessarily confined to Judges or Advocates”.
    2. The case he made: India needed a way to bring in men or women “possessed of outstanding legal and juristic learning” even if they had never practised law, and judges of the International Court of Justice at The Hague are chosen on similar terms.
    3. Ambedkar’s only reservation: B.R. Ambedkar did not object to the idea, wondered whether “eminent” would fit better than “distinguished”, and left the wording to the Drafting Committee, after which the amendment went through.
    4. The High Court parallel was repealed: The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, enacted during the Emergency, added a distinguished jurist route for High Court judges under Article 217, and the Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978 removed it.

    What would a jurist on the Bench change?

    1. Diversity of the Bench: The judge’s argument is that a jurist brings a background the Court’s present composition, drawn from High Courts and the Bar, does not.
    2. Public law capacity: A jurist would not remain constricted by narrow technicalities and would be in a stronger position to deal with public law issues.
    3. Academia’s influence on judging: The participation of legal academia and scholars would have a defining impact on the judicial functioning of the Supreme Court.

    Why has the route never been used?

    1. Two explanations from the judge: First, the central government and later the collegium took the view that Indian academia lacks the depth for elevation to the Supreme Court; second, neither the central government nor the collegium has seriously explored the provision.
    2. Who counts as a jurist: The term is generally understood to cover anyone engaged in serious work in the practice, teaching or research of law, including those without courtroom experience.
    3. The Bar rules shut the practice door: Bar Council rules generally prevent full-time law teachers from practising law, so an academic cannot accumulate the ten years at the Bar that the second route needs.
    4. The collegium is the gate: Appointments are initiated through the collegium (the Chief Justice of India and the senior-most judges who recommend names), so a jurist must first be recommended by the Supreme Court collegium before the appointment reaches the government.
    5. The one near miss: Upendra Baxi recalled in 2015 being addressed as “Judge Baxi” by a professor whom Justice P.N. Bhagwati had told that Baxi would be made a judge within months, an appointment that never materialised.
    6. Baxi’s verdict: “The Presidents of India have been looking with a telescope and have not found any jurist worth appointing”, which led him to call the route “a dead issue”.
    7. The Bar route still works: The most recent appointment from the Bar was Justice V. Mohana, recommended by the collegium in May 2026 and sworn in the following month.

    Challenges to using the distinguished jurist route

    1. The collegium evaluates what it knows: A body of judges assesses candidates on judgments written and cases argued, which an academic does not have. Eg. The Memorandum of Procedure for Supreme Court appointments sets out consultation for High Court judges and advocates and carries no chapter on jurists.
      The Fix: Add published criteria for the jurist route to the Memorandum of Procedure, covering scholarship, public law expertise and professional standing.
    2. The President’s “opinion” has no test: The clause leaves the standard undefined, so any appointment invites challenge as arbitrary. Eg. Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India (2015) struck down the National Judicial Appointments Commission, leaving no body outside the judiciary to frame such a test.
      The Fix: Let the collegium adopt and publish a reasoned selection note for any jurist it recommends, as it now does for some elevations.
    3. Tenure would be short: A scholar considered at the age judges are elevated would retire at 65 within a few years, which limits the institutional gain. Eg. Justice Indu Malhotra, appointed from the Bar in 2018, served three years.
      The Fix: Consider jurists in their early fifties, matching the age at which High Court judges are elevated.
    4. The depth objection is asserted, not tested: The claim that Indian academia lacks depth has never been tested against a shortlist, and other supreme courts have seated academics without judicial or Bar seniority. Eg. The United States Supreme Court seated Felix Frankfurter from Harvard Law School in 1939 and Elena Kagan, who had never been a judge, in 2010.
      The Fix: Have the collegium consider a named shortlist of jurists at least once, so the objection rests on an assessment rather than an assumption.

    Conclusion

    The route is alive in the text and dead in practice, and the reason is procedural rather than constitutional. The status is a public call from within the Court, with no proposal from the collegium or the government to act on it. The marker to watch is whether the collegium or the Memorandum of Procedure names any criterion for the route, since without one the clause stays a dead letter.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS2, 15 marks] Explain the reasons for the growth of public interest litigation in India. As a result of it, has the Indian Supreme Court emerged as the world’s most powerful judiciary?”

  • The south’s muted voice as political power shifts north

    Why in the News

    The five southern States failed to speak with one voice on delimitation at the recently concluded 31st meeting of the Southern Zonal Council. The Karnataka Chief Minister demanded that the 1971 Census remain the basis for delimitation for another 25 years, and no other Chief Minister matched that position. The south’s “political retreat” from its once-influential national role comes amid growing anxieties over representation and federalism. The tension is between a structural shift, a Lok Sabha that a few Hindi heartland States can dominate, and a self-inflicted one, southern Chief Ministers whose dependence on New Delhi for funds has turned them into supplicants.

    Why has national politics tilted north since Independence?

    1. The national movement itself was north-led: Gandhi, Nehru, Netaji and Patel were the tallest leaders, and C. Rajagopalachari of Madras, T. Prakasam of Andhra and E.M.S. Namboodiripad of Keralam never had comparable national presence.
    2. Southern resistance is not part of the national memory: The resistance movements and anti-British revolts of the south are not valorised across the country, least of all in northern India.
    3. The early Congress was still inclusive: A galaxy of southern leaders in its leadership ranks let the original Indian National Congress be seen as an all-inclusive umbrella party.
    4. Demographics and language did the rest: Blame demographics or the penchant for a “national” language, parliamentary politics has produced northern domination, and both the Congress and the Jana Sangh and its successor the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been led from the north.
    5. Only one full-term southern Prime Minister: In nearly eight decades of independence, only one Prime Minister from the south completed a full term, and other southern Prime Ministers were seen as placeholders.
    6. Party structures reinforce it: The domination of the Nehru-Gandhi family in the Congress, and the ideological dominance of Hindi and political dominance of the Hindi heartland in the BJP, have overshadowed southern leadership.

    Where have southern leaders of stature come from, and why not from national parties?

    1. The Congress once had strong regional leaders: K. Kamaraj and C. Subramaniam in Tamil Nadu; Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, Kasu Brahmananda Reddy, Marri Chenna Reddy and Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy in Andhra Pradesh; S. Nijalingappa, Devaraj Urs and S.M. Krishna in Karnataka; and K. Karunakaran in Keralam.
    2. The BJP has none: The party has no south Indian leader of stature in its leadership ranks, and the one who rose from within, B.S. Yediyurappa, quickly faded.
    3. Distinction came from regional parties: M.G. Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, Namboodiripad in Keralam, N.T. Rama Rao in Andhra Pradesh, K. Chandrashekar Rao in Telangana, and H.D. Deve Gowda, Ramakrishna Hegde and Siddaramaiah in Karnataka all rose through regional parties or national parties with a markedly regional presence.
    4. National parties deny the space: They have rarely let southern leaders acquire a national profile, and P.V. Narasimha Rao, the first south Indian Prime Minister, owed the office largely to his Hindi-speaking skills and was denied his due place in the Congress pantheon.

    What did the Southern Zonal Council reveal about the south’s stand on delimitation?

    1. One strong intervention: The Karnataka Chief Minister also called for the Lok Sabha’s strength to be retained at the present 543 seats and for women’s reservation to be implemented.
    2. One tepid mention: The Keralam Chief Minister made only a passing reference to delimitation.
    3. One retreat: The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister revised his earlier strong opposition and sought only an assurance that States would not be denied their present proportional share of representation in the Lok Sabha.
    4. One absence: The Telangana Chief Minister missed the meeting and deputed the Deputy Chief Minister.
    5. The rest was administrative: The other demands concerned financial devolution, river water disputes and administrative issues, and the most politically consequential issue did not compel the five Chief Ministers onto a common platform.

    How has dependence on New Delhi muted the southern States?

    1. Supplication for funds: Varying degrees of dependence on the Centre make each southern State supplicate for funds and echo some of the BJP’s ideological obsessions.
    2. Andhra Pradesh as the sharpest case: The Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister have become more communal in their political articulation than some of the BJP’s allies in the National Democratic Alliance, and the Chief Minister’s need for central funds has diminished his stature as a representative of the Telugu people, a role his party, the Telugu Desam Party, once embodied.
    3. A Centre-State committee ignored: The committee on Centre-State relations chaired by Justice Kurian Joseph, appointed last year by the then Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government in Tamil Nadu, received little attention in the media or among the southern leadership, a silence that amounts to Chief Ministers abdicating their responsibility.
    4. Keralam’s leadership has weakened: The former Chief Minister from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) took a submissive approach to the Union government, and over two decades both the CPI(M)-led and Congress-led alliances have been unable to make their presence felt nationally.
    5. A silent forum, and silence about it: The National Development Council (NDC) has not met even once under the present Prime Minister, and hardly anyone across the political spectrum has expressed disquiet.

    What did an assertive south once extract from Delhi?

    1. A Commission from a slogan: N.T. Rama Rao’s declaration that “The Centre is a conceptual myth”, alongside other Opposition Chief Ministers, prompted the Prime Minister to appoint the Sarkaria Commission on Centre-State relations in June 1983, and its report was widely reported and discussed.
    2. A funding formula from a coalition of States: In 1968-69, Namboodiripad mobilised the Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan to get the NDC to endorse the Gadgil Formula (the population-weighted formula for distributing Plan assistance among States).
    3. Earlier national leaderships listened: The Congress, the Janata Party and the Janata Parivar coalitions were not dismissive of southern concerns on language, Centre-State relations, allocation of funds or railway lines, and policy direction was less Hindi-heartland-centric.
    4. Those parties had a southern base: They had a consequential presence in the southern States and included influential leaders from the region, so the south did not feel its voice was stifled whatever the outcome.

    Is the south’s muted voice a product of arithmetic or of abdication?

    1. The arithmetic is already against the south: Peninsular India’s political presence in the federation is weak even under the present distribution of Lok Sabha seats.
    2. A few States can decide: The entire southern region could be rendered politically inconsequential by the strength of two and a half to three Hindi heartland States in the Lok Sabha.
    3. The delimitation design will sharpen the fear: If such scenarios enter southern political discourse, the delimitation design the Union government is pushing will only heighten political anxieties in the region.
    4. Anxiety will outrun the supplicants: Those anxieties will overwhelm the present crop of supplicant Chief Ministers, the point at which abdication stops being an option.

    Challenges to the south’s voice in national politics

    1. The seat freeze has a sunset: The freeze on Lok Sabha seat allocation lasts only until the first Census after 2026, after which a population-based readjustment reallocates seats northward. Eg. Tamil Nadu’s share of the House could fall from 7.1 percent to 6.3 percent under a population-based expansion.
      The Fix: Fix each State’s share of the Lok Sabha rather than its seat count, so any expansion preserves present proportions.
    2. Fiscal transfers also weight population: Finance Commission formulas that weight 2011 population reduce the share of States that controlled fertility early. Eg. Karnataka’s share of the divisible pool fell from 4.713 percent under the Fourteenth Finance Commission to 3.647 percent under the Fifteenth.
      The Fix: Raise the weight for demographic performance in the devolution formula so fertility decline is rewarded, not penalised.
    3. The Rajya Sabha does not protect States: Seats in the Council of States are allotted by population under the Fourth Schedule, so the second chamber replicates rather than offsets the north’s numerical weight. Eg. Uttar Pradesh holds 31 Rajya Sabha seats against Keralam’s 9.
      The Fix: Give State governments a weighted vote on Bills affecting Centre-State relations, on the model of Germany’s Bundesrat.
    4. Language policy is set centrally: Central education policy carries a language design southern States have resisted for six decades, and funds are tied to its adoption. Eg. Tamil Nadu’s two-language policy against the three-language formula of the National Education Policy, 2020, with Samagra Shiksha funds withheld over the dispute.
      The Fix: Delink scheme funding from acceptance of the language formula and leave the choice to the State, as the Constitution’s State List entry on education once did.

    Conclusion

    The south’s weakness has two sources and both are real. The seat arithmetic is beyond any Chief Minister’s control, but the failure to build a common platform is not. What to watch is whether the five southern Chief Ministers table a joint position on the basis for delimitation before the Union government’s design is legislated. Until they do, the region’s anxiety over representation has no political vehicle.

    What is the current status of Centre-State relations in India?

    1. Two commissions frame the agenda: The Sarkaria Commission, appointed in 1983 and reporting in 1988, and the Punchhi Commission of 2010 remain the reference points for reform of Centre-State relations.
    2. Plan bargaining has ended: The Planning Commission was replaced by NITI Aayog in 2015, and the NDC, the forum where States once negotiated Plan funds, has fallen dormant.
    3. Devolution stands at 41 percent: The Sixteenth Finance Commission retained the States’ share of the divisible pool at 41 percent.
    4. A delimitation design is on the table: The Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-first Amendment) Bill, 2026 proposed expanding the Lok Sabha from 543 to 850 seats (815 for States, 35 for Union Territories) on 2011 Census data, linked the 33 percent women’s quota to that exercise, and would shift the Lok Sabha to Rajya Sabha ratio from 2.2:1 to 3.3:1.

    Constitutional Provisions Related to Centre-State Relations

    1. Article 3: Parliament may form, merge or alter States and their names without the consent of the State concerned.
    2. Article 80 and the Fourth Schedule: Rajya Sabha seats are allotted to States by population, not equally.
    3. Article 81: Fixes the composition of the Lok Sabha and the proportionality of seats to population across States.
    4. Article 82: Requires readjustment of seats after every Census by a law of Parliament.
    5. Article 263: Empowers the President to establish an Inter-State Council to inquire into and advise on inter-State disputes and common interests.
    6. Article 280: Constitutes the Finance Commission to recommend the distribution of tax proceeds between the Union and the States.
    7. Article 356: Allows President’s Rule where a State’s constitutional machinery fails.

    Laws and Rules Governing Centre-State Relations

    1. States Reorganisation Act, 1956: Creates the five Zonal Councils (Northern, Central, Eastern, Western and Southern), statutory advisory bodies chaired by the Union Home Minister with State Chief Ministers as rotating Vice-Chairpersons.
    2. Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956: Lets a State request the Centre to refer a water dispute to a tribunal whose award, once gazetted, has the force of a Supreme Court order.
    3. Inter-State Council Order, 1990: Constituted the Inter-State Council under Article 263 on the Sarkaria Commission’s recommendation.
    4. Delimitation Act, 2002: Governed the last readjustment of constituency boundaries, which was done without altering any State’s seat total.

    Challenges in Centre-State Relations

    1. Politicisation of the Governor’s office: Governors from the ruling party at the Centre have withheld assent to State Bills for years. Eg. Tamil Nadu and Kerala took their Governors to the Supreme Court over delayed assent.
      The Fix: Adopt the Punchhi Commission’s fixed five-year tenure for Governors, with appointment after consulting the Chief Minister.
    2. A dormant coordination forum: The Inter-State Council has no binding authority and meets rarely, so Centre-State disputes go to court instead of to dialogue. Eg. The Council has met only 11 times since 1990, most recently in 2016.
      The Fix: Implement the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution’s recommendation of at least three Council meetings a year, with a dedicated secretariat.
    3. Centralisation through the fiscal channel: The Centre raises revenue through cesses and surcharges that are not shared, and delays transfers that are owed. Eg. GST compensation cess payments to States were delayed between 2019 and 2022.
      The Fix: Cap cesses and surcharges at 10 percent of gross tax revenue so the divisible pool is not artificially shrunk.
    4. Rigid Centrally Sponsored Schemes: Uniform scheme parameters ignore geographic and ecological variation across States. Eg. Recent changes to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme’s funding shifted burden onto States.
      The Fix: Allow States to customise 25 to 30 percent of scheme parameters to local needs.

    [2026, GS2, 15 marks] How far has the Indian federal framework been successful in accommodating regional and cultural diversities? Highlight the role of asymmetric federalism and suggest measures to make dispute resolution mechanisms more effective.”

  • Majority of India’s gig workers remain out of govt’s reach

    Majority of India’s gig workers remain out of govt’s reach

    Why in the News

    Only 8.58 lakh gig workers stood registered on the e-Shram portal as of the Ministry of Labour and Employment’s reply in the Rajya Sabha in January 2026, the latest publicly available figure.

    How far has the Budget’s health cover promise actually reached?

    1. Registration against the promise: The Budget’s beneficiary figure of over one crore compares with 8.58 lakh registrations on e-Shram, the figure the Ministry gave Parliament in January 2026.
    2. The optimistic case still falls short: A doubling of registrations since January would still cover only around 15 percent of the estimated gig workforce.
    3. The promise itself drove enrolment: Registrations of gig workers on e-Shram rose sharply from 2025, and the health cover announcement is the visible cause of that surge.
    4. Registration is the gate to every benefit: Registration on e-Shram is a prerequisite for availing benefits, so an unregistered gig worker is invisible to the scheme by design.

    Why does the government not know how many gig workers India has?

    1. One source for every estimate: The figure of over one crore gig workers, quoted in many government replies in Parliament last year, comes from a single document, the NITI Aayog report “India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy” released in June 2022.
    2. What that report estimated: It put the gig workforce at around 77 lakh in 2020-21 and projected 1.27 crore in 2024-25 and 1.43 crore in the year after.
    3. No dedicated measurement effort exists: In the absence of any effort to measure the gig workforce, official estimates rely solely on this NITI Aayog report.
    4. The national labour survey does not count them: The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) reports do not capture gig workers as a distinct category, even though the estimated gig workforce is about 2 percent of India’s total workforce of 61.6 crore as cited by the 2025 PLFS report.

    What has the government built for gig workers, and what has not arrived?

    1. e-Shram as the single register: The portal, launched in 2021, is conceptualised as an Aadhaar-seeded National Database of Unorganised Workers (NDUW) and has become the unified platform for tracking the unorganised workforce, including gig workers.
    2. A legal definition came only in 2020: The government officially defined a gig worker only in the Code on Social Security, 2020, which came into force last year.
    3. The Code’s promises remain largely on paper: The Code promised accident insurance, maternity benefits and a dedicated social security fund for gig workers, and most of these are yet to materialise.

    Where are the registered gig workers, by State and by sector?

    1. Registrations are uneven across States: The ten States with the most registered gig workers as of January 2026 are led by West Bengal (54,734), Delhi (49,479), Andhra Pradesh (39,212), Rajasthan (38,205), Karnataka (37,871), Gujarat (34,756) and Madhya Pradesh (34,351), with Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar completing the list.
    2. Urbanised southern States are missing from the top ten: Tamil Nadu (31,654), Telangana (29,951) and Keralam (11,219) are not among the ten States with the highest registrations, despite their high urbanisation.
    3. Twenty one sectors on paper, three in practice: NITI Aayog’s 2022 report listed 21 sectors with gig workers, including agriculture, healthcare, education and retail, but e-Shram registrations concentrate in the food industry, transportation, and domestic and household work.
    4. The sector shares are lopsided: The largest single sector accounts for 32.8 percent of registered gig workers, and construction (3.6 percent) and agriculture (3.4 percent) are the smallest of the top five sectors.

    Challenges to e-Shram as the gateway for gig worker welfare

    1. Enrolment depends on the worker, not the platform: e-Shram is a self-registration portal, and no aggregator is obliged to enrol the workers it engages. Eg. The Rajasthan Platform Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act, 2023 instead makes aggregators register their workers with a State welfare board.
      The Fix: Require aggregators to push worker data into e-Shram at onboarding under the Code on Social Security, 2020, so registration stops depending on individual initiative.
    2. No survey category means no target to measure against: Without a gig work module in the labour survey, the government cannot say what share of the workforce any scheme covers. Eg. The Ministry’s January 2026 reply to Parliament could cite portal registrations but no survey count.
      The Fix: Add a platform and gig work classification to the PLFS questionnaire so coverage is measured against a surveyed denominator.
    3. The funding source has not been built: The Code provides for aggregator contributions of 1 to 2 percent of annual turnover, capped at 5 percent of payments to workers, and the fund those contributions were to feed has not materialised. Eg. Karnataka’s Platform Based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Act, 2025 levies its own transaction fee because no central fund is flowing.
      The Fix: Notify the contribution rules and the social security fund so central benefits do not depend on Budget-by-Budget announcements.
    4. State schemes fragment portability: State-level gig worker boards create separate registrations and benefits for a workforce that moves across State lines. Eg. A delivery worker registered in Rajasthan gains nothing from Karnataka’s fund on relocating.
      The Fix: Make e-Shram the single identifier that State boards read from, so benefits follow the worker across States.

    Conclusion

    The health cover promise has produced registrations faster than any earlier measure, but the register still holds a fraction of the workforce the promise was made for. The deeper problem is a denominator the state has never measured. The next e-Shram registration figure released to Parliament, and whether the Code’s social security fund is finally notified, are the two markers to watch.

    Back2Basics: Gig worker and platform worker under the Code on Social Security, 2020

    1. Gig worker: A person who performs work or participates in a work arrangement and earns from such activities outside the traditional employer-employee relationship.
    2. Platform worker: A person in platform work, meaning work arranged through an online platform that connects organisations or individuals with workers to provide specific services for payment.
    3. Aggregator: A digital intermediary or marketplace through which a buyer or user connects with a seller or service provider, the entity the Code identifies for contributions.
    4. Why the definitions matter: They are the first statutory recognition of gig work in India, and eligibility for the Code’s social security schemes is tied to them.

    [2024, GS3, 15 marks] Discuss the merits and demerits of the four ‘Labour Codes’ in the context of labour market reforms in India. What has been the progress so far in this regard?”

  • Foreign Assets Disclosure Scheme: Concerns rise over high fee on ESOPs, small investments

    Why in the News

    The Foreign Assets of Small Taxpayers – Disclosure Scheme (FAST-DS), launched on 16 August, charges a flat Rs 1 lakh fee to disclose a foreign asset that was already taxed or acquired as a non-resident but was not declared in the income tax return. Salaried employees holding unreported employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and restricted stock units (RSUs) (shares granted by an employer as part of pay, vesting over time) must pay the fee even where they made no gain. The scheme was proposed in this year’s Budget to address the “practical issues of small taxpayers like students, young professionals, tech employees, relocated NRIs”. The tension is between a fee designed as a low-cost route to compliance and a flat amount that exceeds the value of many of the assets it is meant to regularise.

    What are the two categories under FAST-DS?

    1. Where the complaints sit: The dispute is entirely about Category (ii), where the asset was never untaxed and the only lapse is non-disclosure in the return.
    2. The alternative the Act blocks: The Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015 does not recognise an updated return for income that was never taxed or disclosed, so an updated return does not cure the lapse.

    Why does a flat fee fall hardest on the smallest disclosers?

    1. Fee exceeding the asset: A salaried individual who invested Rs 90,000 in United States-listed stocks, now trading at a loss, must pay Rs 1 lakh upfront to disclose the loss-making holding. The transfer already appeared in the Annual Information Statement (AIS) of his return; only the separate Schedule FA entry was missing.
    2. Fee on salary already reported: An employee of a foreign company operating in India had the vesting details of his ESOPs in his salary but not in Schedule FA. He must pay Rs 1 lakh as a disclosure charge on income that was already part of his taxed pay.
    3. The employee’s objection: ESOPs are part of salary, and Rs 1 lakh for disclosure alone is too high a price for a reporting omission.
    4. The materiality test: Materiality is the maximum error allowed in financial statements before they are considered wrong. Where the amounts fall below any reasonable materiality threshold, a Rs 1 lakh penalty is disproportionate to the error.

    Why are ESOPs and residency status at the centre of the dispute?

    1. Non-residents who became residents: Many employees received ESOPs from their global companies as non-resident Indians (NRIs) and were later deputed to India, becoming residents. They did not disclose the old grants earlier and are disclosing them now.
    2. Disclosure invites a notice: After disclosure, the discloser receives a notice asking how the asset was acquired. The position put to the authorities is that the change from non-resident to resident status must be recorded before such notices issue.
    3. ESOPs as a mainstream pay component: ESOPs are a key salary component in the technology sector, startups and foreign companies. The scale shows in the Balance of Payments (BoP) line for “financial derivatives (other than reserves) and employee stock options”.
    4. The outflow figures: Net outflows under that BoP line stood at just under $24 billion in 2025-26, up 8 per cent from about $22 billion in 2024-25. The 2024-25 figure had itself almost tripled from nearly $8 billion in 2023-24.

    Is the updated return a way around the scheme?

    1. What employees are considering: Many employees are weighing an updated return for such anomalies instead of disclosing under the scheme, with greater scrutiny after disclosure the key concern.
    2. The tax department’s position: Even if an updated return is filed, the discloser remains liable to tax and penalty under the Black Money Act, because the Act does not recognise updated returns for income never taxed or disclosed. Disclosure under FAST-DS is therefore the safer route, and the department states there is no intention of additional scrutiny of such declarations.

    Challenges to FAST-DS

    1. A flat fee suppresses uptake: A disclosure window succeeds only if the cost of using it is below the cost of staying hidden, and a fee larger than the asset inverts that calculation for small holders. Eg. The 90-day compliance window under the Black Money Act in 2015 drew only 644 declarations totalling Rs 4,164 crore.
      The Fix: Slab the Category (ii) fee by asset value, with a nominal fee below a stated threshold.
    2. The department already holds the data: For many disclosers the asset is visible in the AIS or through automatic exchange of financial account information, so the fee is charged for reporting what the department can see. Eg. India receives account data on residents’ foreign holdings under the Common Reporting Standard, with exchanges running since 2017.
      The Fix: Pre-fill Schedule FA from AIS and exchanged data and treat a confirmed pre-filled entry as compliance without a separate fee.
    3. Post-disclosure notices deter the target group: Relocated professionals who disclose and then receive an acquisition notice signal to others that disclosure invites inquiry. Eg. Notices asking how an ESOP grant was acquired reach employees whose grant date predates their residency.
      The Fix: Issue a standing instruction that Category (ii) disclosures carrying non-resident acquisition dates close without notice unless a third-party data mismatch exists.

    Conclusion

    The scheme’s design assumes the small taxpayer’s problem is fear of the Black Money Act, when for ESOP holders the problem is a fee unrelated to the size of the lapse. That mismatch is unresolved and no revision of the fee has been announced. The scheme is open and the source states no closing date. What to watch is whether the Central Board of Direct Taxes slabs the Category (ii) fee or clarifies the treatment of grants acquired as a non-resident.

    Back2Basics

    1. Schedule FA: Schedule FA (Foreign Assets) is the part of the income tax return in which a resident and ordinarily resident taxpayer must list every foreign asset held at any time in the year, including shares, ESOPs, bank accounts and immovable property, whether or not it produced income.
    2. Who must file it: The obligation applies to residents only, so a non-resident who acquired an asset abroad first becomes liable to report it in the year he becomes resident.
    3. The penalty it carries: Failure to report attracts a penalty of Rs 10 lakh under the Black Money Act, relaxed from 2024 for movable foreign assets, other than immovable property, of up to Rs 20 lakh in aggregate.

    [2026] Which one of the following best describes the ‘Crowding Out Effect’ in the context of fiscal policy?

    (a) A situation where private investment increases due to increased Government spending

    (b) A situation where Government borrowing leads to higher interest rates, which reduces private investment

    (c) A situation where an increase in taxes leads to increased private sector investment

    (d) A situation where Government spending has no impact on aggregate demand

  • India’s data centre boom is colliding with its climate reality

    Why in the News

    India’s data centre capacity is set to grow from about 1.5 gigawatts (GW) today to 6.5 GW by 2030, a fourfold expansion in four years, on investment the government estimates at nearly $200 billion over the coming decade. Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft have committed billions to build facilities, and States are competing for them with tax exemptions, cheap land and duty waivers. No policy document at the Central or State level has assessed what guaranteed power costs a grid already strained under 45 degree Celsius heat, where cooling water will come from, or what the thermal load of thousands of servers does to regions already near dangerous temperatures. The tension is that the facilities are clustering in exactly the regions where water and grid stress are most acute, and State policies attach almost no conditions to the incentives they offer.

    Why is the scale of the build-out itself the problem?

    1. A fourfold expansion in four years: Capacity nearly tripled from 520 megawatts (MW) in 2020 to nearly 1.5 GW today. The 6.5 GW projected for 2030 compresses the next round of growth into four years.
    2. Electricity demand more than quadruples: Demand from data centres is expected to rise from about 13 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024 to roughly 57 TWh by 2030. The Union Ministry of Power estimates that artificial intelligence alone will add 26.3 GW of new demand by 2031-32.
    3. States compete on incentives, not conditions: Maharashtra wants to be the data centre capital. Telangana has declared data centres “essential services”. Karnataka is reviewing its policy to attract more, and Rajasthan is offering tax exemptions and cheap land.

    Why does data centre water use collide with groundwater stress?

    1. The volume per facility: A 100 MW data centre consumes about 2 million litres of water daily, equal to the daily use of roughly 6,500 households. India’s data centres consumed an estimated 150 billion litres in 2024-25, projected to more than double to 358 billion litres annually by 2030.
    2. Clustering in the most stressed regions: Rajasthan extracts 147.11 per cent of its annual groundwater recharge, the second highest rate in the country. Several groundwater assessment units in Maharashtra are classified as semi-critical. Telangana’s Irrigation Minister confirmed in May 2026 that 16 districts were under groundwater stress.
    3. Cities already rationing: Hyderabad’s surface water supply dropped 20 per cent in the summer of 2024 on poor monsoon recharge, forcing the water board to ration supply. Mumbai’s reservoirs stood at 44.5 per cent of capacity in March 2026.
    4. Unaccounted in every State policy: No State policy requires public disclosure of daily water consumption. None requires a hydrogeological assessment before approval. None mandates that water sourcing must not compete with agriculture or municipal supply.

    Why can the grid not deliver the power the boom needs?

    1. Record peaks and interconnection queues: Maharashtra’s peak demand hit 27,230 MW in April 2026, the highest ever handled by the State utility. Two-year waits for 220 kV grid interconnections across the country are lengthening project timelines.
    2. Renewable power is being thrown away: India curtailed 300 gigawatt-hours of renewable energy in the first quarter of 2026 alone because the grid could not carry it, per an Ember Energy analysis of Central Electricity Authority data. Over five years India has met only about 80 per cent of its annual transmission targets, one in four major transmission schemes runs a year or more behind schedule, and 20 GW of renewable capacity faces connectivity delays of more than four months.
    3. Wires lag panels: Rajasthan and Gujarat house the bulk of utility-scale solar and wind. Both face the longest queues at pooling stations (substations where several renewable plants aggregate output before it enters the transmission grid). Solar projects are being built faster than the lines to carry their power.
    4. The coal default: Data centres need reliable, uninterrupted electricity. If renewable power cannot reach them, the power comes from coal, adding to the emissions India is trying to curtail.

    How do data centres make their surroundings hotter?

    1. The satellite evidence: A March 2026 University of Cambridge study of 20 years of NASA satellite data found that data centres raise land surface temperatures by an average of 2 degree Celsius within a 10 km radius, with extreme cases reaching 9.1 degree Celsius. About 340 million people globally live within these affected zones.
    2. Indian cities are already at the edge: Mumbai’s land surface temperature rose from 40.9 degree Celsius in 2003 to 47.3 degree Celsius in 2023, driven largely by urbanisation and heat-trapping infrastructure. Hyderabad’s urban heat island intensity ranges from 5.74 to 6.82 degree Celsius, its urban area doubled between 2001 and 2020, and it recorded temperatures above 43 degree Celsius in the summer of 2024.
    3. The feedback loop: Data centres generate heat, and that heat raises ambient temperature. Higher ambient temperature increases cooling demand. Higher cooling demand raises electricity consumption. Unless that electricity is fully renewable, emissions rise and feed the climate change that is making India hotter.

    Do State policies ask for anything in return for their incentives?

    1. Generous on incentives: State policies offer electricity duty exemptions, transmission charge waivers, stamp duty relief and fast-track clearances.
    2. Silent on conditions: None of the major State policies requires a grid impact assessment before commissioning, mandatory renewable energy sourcing, or a thermal load assessment for surrounding communities.
    3. Telangana guarantees power in a stressed State: The “essential services” classification guarantees data centres uninterrupted power even during shortages, in a State where 16 districts face groundwater stress and temperatures have reached 47 degree Celsius.
    4. Maharashtra diluted its own mandate: The State’s policy originally required 100 per cent renewable energy for core operations. In June 2026 it cut the requirement to 51 per cent, framed as improving project viability.
    5. The exceptions, and their limit: Gujarat’s Data Centre Policy 2026-29 mandates at least 51 per cent green energy sourcing. Karnataka’s IT Minister told the Assembly in March 2026 that the State was reviewing its policy over water and energy concerns, and Tamil Nadu has linked incentives to renewable compliance. Even where mandates exist, enforcement and verification remain weak.

    Why is the constraint market design rather than generation capacity?

    1. Capacity is not the bottleneck: The Union Ministry of Power holds that India’s generation pipeline can absorb the additional demand from data centres. The constraint is market design and transmission infrastructure.
    2. Price grid services separately: The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) argues for climate-intelligent power markets in which short-term markets pay separately for ramping, storage and demand response.
    3. Storage at the pooling station: Ember calculates that roughly 3 to 4 GW of two-hour battery storage at renewable pooling stations could have absorbed most of the generation curtailed in early 2026. The technical pieces exist; the gap is regulatory and commercial.

    What should a national sustainability framework contain?

    1. Enforceable use standards: CEEW proposes phased power and water use standards with enforceable benchmarks, and a national AI Energy Star rating that lets buyers and regulators compare how energy efficient a facility or model actually is.
    2. Who pays for the grid: The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) warns that a significant part of the associated infrastructure cost could be socialised. Where wider grid infrastructure is required, government support or dedicated financing should stop the cost being passed to consumers through higher tariffs.
    3. Siting away from stressed hubs: IEEFA points to coastal locations. These offer proximity to near-shore wind and solar, and seawater cooling without desalination. Most facilities instead cluster around Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and the National Capital Region, where water and grid stress are most acute.
    4. Four minimum standards: A national framework would set minimum standards for renewable energy sourcing, water consumption disclosure, grid impact assessment and thermal load evaluation. It would give investors one set of expectations and consumers one set of protections, on the premise that environmental constraints are economic constraints.

    Challenges to a national data centre framework

    1. Split jurisdiction: Water is a State List subject and electricity sits on the Concurrent List, so a Central standard on water sourcing or grid impact binds no State unless the State adopts it. Eg. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s draft National Data Centre Policy of 2020 addressed infrastructure status and single-window clearance, not resource standards.
      The Fix: Route the standards through the Central Electricity Authority’s technical standards and the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, which already bind connected consumers, and tie Central incentive money to State adoption.
    2. Mandates without metering: A renewable sourcing mandate is only as good as the verification behind it, and discoms already miss the obligations they carry. Eg. State distribution companies have missed Renewable Purchase Obligation targets for years, forcing the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy to renotify trajectories.
      The Fix: Require third-party audited reporting of power usage effectiveness and water usage effectiveness (ratios of total facility energy and water to that used by computing equipment) as a condition of every incentive.
    3. Cooling technology is a trade-off, not a free fix: Liquid and immersion cooling cut water use but raise capital cost and still dump heat locally. Eg. Evaporative cooling, the cheapest option at 45 degree Celsius, is also the most water intensive.
      The Fix: Set the water standard by climate zone rather than one national number, so a coastal seawater-cooled site and an inland Rajasthan site face different limits.

    Conclusion

    The data centres will be built, and the only open question is on whose terms. The unresolved tension is between States competing on incentives and a resource base that no State policy has been made to account for. What to watch is whether the Centre converts the four standards, renewable sourcing, water disclosure, grid impact and thermal load, into an enforceable national framework before the projected capacity is locked in. The nearer marker is whether Karnataka’s policy review produces conditions or only more incentives.

    Back2Basics

    1. Urban heat island: An urban heat island is the difference in temperature between a built-up city and its rural surroundings, caused by concrete, asphalt and roofs absorbing and re-emitting heat that vegetation and soil would have released through evaporation.
    2. Intensity: Its intensity is that temperature gap in degrees, so Hyderabad’s 5.74 to 6.82 degree Celsius means the city runs that much hotter than its surroundings at the same hour.
    3. Why data centres add to it: Servers convert almost all the electricity they draw into heat, and cooling systems reject that heat into the surrounding air or water, so a large facility acts as a fixed heat source inside the island.

    “[2026] Which of the following statements with regard to Green Hydrogen is/are correct?

    1. It is decarbonized hydrogen obtained from natural gas reforming combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS).

    2. It is produced using electrolysis of water with electricity generated by renewable energy.

    3. National Green Hydrogen Mission of India aims for abatement of nearly 50 MMT of annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

    (a) 1 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 2 only (d) 1, 2 and 3

  • Economy is resilient, the road ahead will be less forgiving

    Why in the News

    India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 7.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2026-27, beating expectations for yet another quarter. The print exceeded the 6.8 per cent median forecast of professional forecasters and the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) revised projection of 7 per cent. The outperformance came from domestic drivers holding up in a global environment marked by conflict in West Asia and weather uncertainty. The tension is that the conditions that produced this print are turning. Crisil expects the growth-inflation mix to worsen through 2026-27, with growth moderating to 7 per cent and inflation rising to 5.1 per cent, and the balance of risks has shifted from rate cuts towards possible rate hikes.

    What is the growth-inflation mix?

    1. About: The growth-inflation mix is the combination of real output growth and the inflation rate an economy records in the same period. A favourable mix pairs high growth with inflation inside the RBI’s target band of 4 per cent, with a tolerance of 2 percentage points either side.
    2. Why it matters for policy: The RBI sets the policy rate against this mix. Rising inflation alongside slowing growth forces a choice between tightening to contain prices and holding rates to protect activity.

    What drove the first quarter outperformance?

    1. Broad based domestic momentum: Robust industrial activity, healthy consumption and strong goods exports combined with accelerating government investment to drive growth. High-frequency indicators had signalled this momentum in advance.
    2. Residual policy support and transfers: Policy measures introduced last fiscal continued to feed through, and direct benefit transfers expanded steadily. 17 States now provide cash transfers, primarily to women.
    3. Goods and Services Tax (GST) rate cuts, visible in automobiles: Dealer discounts and higher disposable incomes from income-tax relief added to the effect of GST rate cuts. Eg. The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) reported first quarter sales growth of 26 per cent for passenger vehicles, 20.3 per cent for commercial vehicles and 18.3 per cent for two-wheelers.
    4. Retail credit funding consumption: Other personal loans, a proxy for short-term consumption, grew 14.2 per cent.
    5. Households shielded from crude: The government and oil companies absorbed most of the sharp rise in crude prices, particularly in the initial phase of the West Asia conflict, so household budgets did not take the hit.

    Why will the growth-inflation mix turn less favourable in 2026-27?

    1. Four sources of moderation: Growth will slow on disruptions from the West Asia conflict, unresolved tariff issues with the United States, weather-related risks and a strong base effect in the second half of the year.
    2. Last year’s two tailwinds are gone: Low crude oil prices and a normal monsoon were the two exogenous factors that worked in India’s favour last year. Neither is expected to provide similar support this year.
    3. The conflict’s cost channel: The West Asia conflict has disrupted supply chains and raised insurance, freight and input costs. This weighs on global and domestic growth at the same time.

    Does a deficient monsoon still translate into food inflation?

    1. The El Nino signal: El Nino conditions (a periodic warming of the equatorial Pacific that weakens the Indian monsoon) are intensifying. Over the past 25 years, five of the six El Nino years produced below-normal rainfall.
    2. The deficit so far: Cumulative rainfall stood 14 per cent below the long-period average (LPA) at the end of August. July was 1 per cent above the LPA, and August recorded a deficit of 16 per cent. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has signalled below-normal rainfall in September.
    3. Irrigation has widened the cushion: India’s net irrigated area has risen by 10 percentage points to 59 per cent over the past decade, improving resilience to rainfall shocks.
    4. Stocks exceed buffer norms: The country holds ample rice and wheat stocks. Foodgrain stocks currently stand at more than twice the buffer norms. That cushion contains price spikes.
    5. Non-crop agriculture now carries the sector: Crop gross value added contracted by an average 0.5 per cent annually in the five years to 2023-24. Non-crop agriculture, now nearly 40 per cent of agricultural gross value added, expanded 6.5 per cent annually over the same period.
    6. The historical record is not linear: Deficient monsoons have not always led to higher food inflation.
    7. The vulnerability that remains: Crops without buffer stocks and perishable vegetables stay exposed to adverse weather. A weak monsoon also hurts rabi production by reducing soil moisture and lowering reservoir levels, so agricultural output and food inflation remain the key variables to watch.

    Why does benign core inflation understate the price risk?

    1. Headline eased, risks did not: Headline inflation eased in July and core inflation remained benign. Upside risks persist on three fronts, crude, input costs and demand.
    2. The crude assumption: Crisil’s base case assumes Brent crude averaging $82 to 87 per barrel this fiscal, with the unresolved West Asia conflict keeping prices volatile. Higher crude translates into slower growth, higher inflation and a wider current account deficit.
    3. Wholesale pressure is being passed on: Core inflation, a gauge of underlying demand pressure, appears deceptively low. Strong demand, rising fuel costs and other input pressures show up in near-double-digit wholesale price inflation, and are gradually being passed through to consumers.
    4. Automobiles show the pass-through: Vehicle prices are set to rise as manufacturers protect margins and dealer discounts are withdrawn. Combined with a high base effect, this moderates automobile growth in the second half.
    5. The rate cycle may reverse: Unlike last year, the balance of risks points towards possible interest rate hikes. Persistent inflationary pressure, the unresolved conflict and weather risk together bring monetary tightening back into consideration.

    What still supports activity through the moderation?

    1. External buffers: Foreign exchange reserves cover more than nine months of imports.
    2. Balance sheet strength: Corporate and banking-sector balance sheets are in robust health.
    3. Fiscal and wage support: Tax relief and public investment continue to support activity. The Pay Commission’s recommendations will add a further boost to consumption when implemented.
    4. The structural condition: Beyond cyclical tailwinds, sustained progress on structural reforms that enhance competitiveness is the condition for maintaining growth momentum.

    Challenges to sustaining the growth momentum

    1. Export exposure to United States tariff policy: Unresolved tariff issues leave goods exporters unable to price contracts beyond a quarter. Eg. In August 2025 the United States raised tariffs on Indian goods to 50 per cent, half of it as a penalty tied to Russian oil purchases.
      The Fix: Conclude the bilateral trade agreement under negotiation and operationalise the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the United Kingdom signed in 2025, so exposure to one market falls.
    2. Crude dependence transmits every West Asian shock: India imports over 85 per cent of its crude, so a supply disruption raises the import bill, the fiscal cost of absorbing it and consumer prices together. Eg. About 40 per cent of India’s crude imports normally transit the Strait of Hormuz, and a large part of that supply has been offline since the disruptions of March 2026.
      The Fix: Widen the import slate to African, North American and South American barrels under term contracts and expand strategic petroleum reserve capacity beyond the present three sites.
    3. Consumption leaning on one-off boosts: Income-tax relief, GST rate cuts and a Pay Commission award lift spending once, and the base effect then turns against growth. Eg. The HSBC India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to a five-year low of 52.8 in August 2026, with the survey recording job losses for the first time in over two years.
      The Fix: Tie the next round of support to employment, through the Employment Linked Incentive scheme, so that income growth rather than tax relief carries consumption.
    4. State cash transfers stretch State finances: A cash transfer to women is a recurring commitment that a State cannot withdraw without political cost. Eg. States’ aggregate fiscal deficit rose to 3.2 per cent of GDP in 2024-25, and only 11 States recorded a revenue surplus.
      The Fix: Ring-fence State capital expenditure under the Finance Commission’s fiscal roadmap so transfers do not crowd out investment.
    5. A rate hike would hit credit-led consumption first: Retail borrowing has been funding short-term consumption, and it is the most rate sensitive part of demand. Eg. The RBI raised risk weights on unsecured consumer credit in November 2023 to slow exactly this segment.
      The Fix: Use targeted macroprudential tools on unsecured lending before resorting to a policy rate hike that would also raise the cost of investment.

    Conclusion

    India enters 2026-27 with a strong quarter behind it and a weaker mix ahead. The thing that cannot be settled yet is whether inflation will rise faster than growth slows, because that decides whether the RBI tightens into a moderating economy. The Monetary Policy Committee’s October meeting is the first decision point. The monsoon’s September outcome and the rabi sowing that follows will decide the food inflation half of the equation.

    Key Facts about GDP Measurement

    1. New base year: The GDP base was revised from 2011-12 to 2022-23, with the new series released on 27 February 2026. The Consumer Price Index base moved to 2024 and the Index of Industrial Production base to 2022-23 alongside it.
    2. New data sources: GST data, the Public Financial Management System for central government accounts, e-Vahan for transport spending, and the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises and the Periodic Labour Force Survey replaced proxy indicators.
    3. Refined deflation: Double deflation (deflating output and inputs separately) now applies in manufacturing and agriculture, and single deflation has been discontinued.
    4. Global alignment: The series aligns with the System of National Accounts 2008 and prepares for the transition to SNA 2025 by 2029-30.

    Challenges in GDP Growth

    1. Weak private investment: Capacity expansion depends on private capital formation, which has stayed subdued. Eg. Gross Fixed Capital Formation is around 30 per cent of GDP.
      The Fix: Scale the Production Linked Incentive scheme’s second phase and adopt Vietnam’s plug-and-play industrial park model to cut the time from approval to production.
    2. Skill mismatch: Skills produced by the education system do not match what industry demands, so rising participation adds less output. Eg. Only about half of graduates are employable.
      The Fix: Expand Industry 4.0 training and emulate Germany’s dual education and apprenticeship system.
    3. Participation gap: A large share of working-age women stays outside the labour force, capping the demographic dividend. Eg. The labour force participation rate is 59.3 per cent (2025), but the female rate is 40.0 per cent.
      The Fix: Deploy working women’s hostels and subsidised childcare on the model of Japan’s Womenomics.
    4. Jobless growth: Output growth is concentrated in sectors that employ few people. Eg. Services contribute about 55 per cent of GDP but employ under 30 per cent of the workforce.
      The Fix: Implement Employment Linked Incentives and study China’s township and village enterprises for rural labour absorption.
    5. Regulatory cost: Contract enforcement, clearance times and regulatory instability keep the cost of doing business above competitors. Eg. Logistics cost is near 8 per cent of GDP.
      The Fix: Emulate Singapore’s TradeNet single-window system to slash clearance times.

    [2021, GS3, 10 marks] Explain the difference between computing methodology of India’s Gross Domestic Product(GDP) before the year 2015 and after the year 2015.”

  • National Biodiversity Authority disburses Rs. 5.68 Crore in Access and Benefit Sharing funds

    National Biodiversity Authority disburses Rs. 5.68 Crore in Access and Benefit Sharing funds

    Why in the News

    The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) disbursed Rs. 5.68 crore in Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) funds.

    Core facts

    1. Disbursing body: The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) released the funds.
    2. Amount: The verified headline figure is Rs. 5.68 crore, drawn from the release title.
    3. Mechanism: ABS returns a share of the commercial gains from biological resources to the communities and institutions that conserve them.
    4. Unverified detail: The recipient states, institutions and the per beneficiary split stated in the release body could not be verified this run. PRID 2304759.

    Static Context

    1. Biological Diversity Act, 2002: It gives effect to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It created a three tier structure.
    2. Three tier structure: The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) sits at the national level. State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) sit at the state level. Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) sit at the local body level.
    3. Access and Benefit Sharing: The principle flows from the Nagoya Protocol of 2010, a supplementary agreement to the CBD on fair and equitable sharing of benefits from genetic resources.
    4. Biopiracy check: The NBA regulates access to Indian biological resources by foreign entities. It clears Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) applications based on Indian biological material.
    5. 2023 amendment: The Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023 eased compliance for codified traditional knowledge and registered practitioners of Indian systems of medicine.

    Prelims angle

    The three tier NBA, SBB and BMC structure, the BMC role in ABS and the levy of collection fees, the Nagoya Protocol link, and the NBA gatekeeping of IPR applications are the testable static hooks.

    Mains angle

    GS Paper 3 (conservation, biodiversity governance). A question can assess whether the ABS mechanism delivers real incentives for community level conservation.

    “[2023] Consider the following statements:

    1. In India, the Biodiversity Management Committees are key to the realization of the objectives of the Nagoya Protocol.

    2. The Biodiversity Management Committees have important functions in determining access and benefit sharing, including the power to levy collection fees on the access of biological resources within its jurisdiction.

    Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 only

    (c) Both 1 and 2

    (d) Neither 1 nor 2

    “[2012] How does the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) help in protecting the Indian agriculture?

    1. NBA checks the biopiracy and protects the indigenous and traditional genetic resources.

    2. NBA directly monitors and supervises the scientific research on genetic modification of crop plants.

    3. Application for Intellectual Property Rights related to genetic/biological resources cannot be made without approval of NBA.

    Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

    (a) 1 Only

    (b) 2 and 3 only

    (c) 1 and 3 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

  • India and Uzbekistan issue Joint Statement during Prime Minister’s State Visit

    India and Uzbekistan issue Joint Statement during Prime Minister’s State Visit

    Why in the News

    India and Uzbekistan issued a Joint Statement during the State Visit of the Prime Minister to Uzbekistan.

    Core facts

    1. Event: A bilateral State Visit produced a Joint Statement, a List of Outcomes, and official talks. PRIDs 2304718, 2304704, 2304715.
    2. Track record: The relationship is a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
    3. Unverified detail: The specific agreements, Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) and quantified deliverables listed in the release body could not be verified this run. The signed outcomes should be confirmed once PIB pages resolve.

    Static Context

    1. Uzbekistan: It is a double landlocked country in Central Asia. It borders Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
    2. Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO): Both India and Uzbekistan are members. India became a full member in 2017. Tashkent is an early SCO capital in the grouping’s history.
    3. Connectivity: India reaches Central Asia through the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and the Chabahar Port in Iran. These routes bypass Pakistan.
    4. Ashgabat Agreement, 2018: India joined this transport and transit corridor connecting Central Asia with Iran and Oman.
    5. India Central Asia format: India engages the five Central Asian Republics (CARs) through a dedicated summit and dialogue mechanism.

    Prelims angle

    Uzbekistan’s Central Asian geography, its SCO membership, the INSTC end points, and the Ashgabat Agreement are the testable static hooks.

    Mains angle

    GS Paper 2 (India and its neighbourhood, bilateral and regional groupings). A question can assess India’s strategic and connectivity interests in Central Asia against the entrenchment of outside powers.

    “[2024, GS Paper 2, 15 marks] Critically analyse India’s evolving diplomatic, economic and strategic relations with the Central Asian Republics (CARs) highlighting their increasing significance in regional and global geopolitics.”

    “[2025] India is one of the founding members of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a multimodal transportation corridor, which will connect

    (a) India to Central Asia to Europe via Iran

    (b) India to Central Asia via China

    (c) India to South-East Asia through Bangladesh and Myanmar

    (d) India to Europe through Azerbaijan

    “[2022] Consider the following countries :

    1. Armenia

    2. Azerbaijan

    3. Croatia

    4. Romania

    5. Uzbekistan

    Which of the above are members of the Organization of Turkic States ?

    (a) 1, 2 and 4

    (b) 1 and 3

    (c) 2 and 5

    (d) 3, 4 and 5

  • Consumer Affairs notifies Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2026

    Consumer Affairs notifies Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2026

    Why in the News

    The Department of Consumer Affairs notified the Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2026.

    Core facts

    1. Notifying body: The Department of Consumer Affairs, under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, issued the notification.
    2. Instrument: The rules are framed under the Legal Metrology Act, 2009, the parent law governing weights, measures and units of measurement.
    3. Purpose: The rules set Indian Standard Time (IST) as the single reference time for official, legal, commercial and administrative use.
    4. Unverified detail: The compliance timeline, exempted sectors and penalty provisions stated in the release body could not be verified this run. PRID 2304613.

    Static Context

    1. Legal Metrology Act, 2009: It replaced the Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1976 and the enforcement Act of 1985. It standardises units, mandates verification of weighing and measuring instruments, and regulates packaged commodity declarations.
    2. Indian Standard Time: IST is fixed at the 82 degrees 30 minutes East standard meridian passing near Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh. It runs 5 hours 30 minutes ahead of Coordinated Universal Time.
    3. Time keeping authority: The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), maintains and disseminates IST.
    4. Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS): BIS is the national standards body under the BIS Act, 2016. Standardisation of time complements product and quality standardisation functions.

    Prelims angle

    The parent Act (Legal Metrology Act, 2009), the standard meridian (82 degrees 30 minutes East), the IST offset (UTC plus 5:30), and the custodian of IST (NPL under CSIR) are the testable static hooks.

    Mains angle

    GS Paper 2 (Governance, regulation of standards) and GS Paper 3 (standardisation and the economy). A question can frame the costs and benefits of a single legal time reference for a country of India’s longitudinal span.

    [2017] Consider the following statements:

    1. The Standard Mark of Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is mandatory for automotive tyres and tubes.

    2. AGMARK is a quality Certification Mark issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

    Which of the above statements is/are correct?

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 only

    (c) Both 1 and 2

    (d) Neither 1 nor 2

  • Magsaysay honour for Myanmar activist, Singapore lawyer, Bangladeshi aid giver

    Magsaysay honour for Myanmar activist, Singapore lawyer, Bangladeshi aid giver

    Why in the News

    The 2026 Ramon Magsaysay Awards have been announced for a Singaporean lawyer and diplomat, a Myanmar democracy activist and a Bangladeshi development worker. The award is administered from Manila and is commonly described as Asia’s Nobel Prize. The exam value of the announcement sits in the award’s origin and administering body and in the identity of its laureates rather than in the announcement itself.

    About the Ramon Magsaysay Award

    1. Instituted in 1957: It was created in memory of Ramon Magsaysay, the third President of the Philippines, who died in an aircraft crash that year.
    2. Founding body: The trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund established the award with the agreement of the Philippine government.
    3. Administering body: The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, based in Manila, selects and confers the awards each year.
    4. Scope: It honours individuals and organisations of Asian origin for greatness of spirit and transformative leadership in Asia.
    5. Presentation date: The awards are conferred around 31 August, the birth anniversary of Ramon Magsaysay.
    6. Categories were discontinued: The five original categories, including Government Service and Community Leadership, were set aside in 2009, and the Emergent Leadership category added in 2001 continued alongside awards given without a fixed category.

    Who are the 2026 laureates?

    1. Tommy Koh, Singapore: The 88 year old lawyer and diplomat was recognised for promoting international dialogue and the rule of law. He presided over the United Nations conference of more than 150 countries that adopted the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1982, described by the awards body as a “constitution for the oceans” that defined territorial waters and coastal economic rights.
    2. Bo Kyi, Myanmar: The 61 year old activist spent seven years in prison and was recognised for a life spent in resistance to human rights violations by Myanmar’s military. He organised the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in March 2000 with fellow former political prisoners, which documents political imprisonment and supports detainees and their families.
    3. Runa Khan, Bangladesh: The 67 year old was recognised for her empathy for the poorest in her country, having first taught poor children in 1979. She established Friendship Bangladesh in 2002, which works on climate change adaptation, education, women’s empowerment, livelihoods and social justice for excluded groups.

    Which Indians have received the award?

    1. The first Indian recipient: Vinoba Bhave received the award in 1958 for Community Leadership.
    2. Early Indian laureates: Mother Teresa in 1962, Verghese Kurien in 1963, Jayaprakash Narayan in 1965, Satyajit Ray in 1967 and M.S. Subbulakshmi in 1974 are among them.
    3. Later Indian laureates: Kiran Bedi in 1994, Arvind Kejriwal in 2006, T.M. Krishna and Bezwada Wilson in 2016, Sonam Wangchuk in 2018 and Ravish Kumar in 2019 have received it.
    4. India’s standing: India has more recipients of the award than any country other than the Philippines itself.

    Conclusion

    The 2026 laureates have been announced and the awards are conferred at a ceremony in Manila. The next milestone is that ceremony, and the testable content of this item is the award’s origin, its administering foundation and the identity and work of its laureates.

    [2025] Who amongst the following are members of the Jury to select the recipient of ‘Gandhi Peace Prize’?

    I. The President of India

    II. The Prime Minister of India

    III. The Chief Justice of India

    IV. The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha

    Select the correct answer using the code given below:

    (a) II and IV only

    (b) I, II and III

    (c) II, III and IV

    (d) I and III only