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

Civilsdaily

Login

Search results for: “”

  • Geothermal Energy

    Why in News

    A PIB Backgrounder on geothermal energy set out the resource, its potential in India, and its place in the clean energy transition.

    Core facts

    1. Definition: Geothermal energy is heat stored within the earth. It is drawn from hot rocks and hot water reservoirs below the surface and used for power generation and direct heating.
    2. Nature of the resource: Geothermal energy is a renewable and baseload source. It supplies power around the clock, unlike solar and wind, which vary with weather and time of day.

    Static Context

    1. India’s potential: The Geological Survey of India (GSI) has identified about 340 geothermal hot spring sites. The estimated geothermal power potential is placed around 10,600 megawatts (MW).
    2. Key geothermal provinces: Major sites include Puga and Chhumathang in Ladakh, Tattapani in Chhattisgarh, Manikaran in Himachal Pradesh, and the Godavari and Cambay basins.
    3. How it works: A geothermal plant taps steam or hot water from a well. The steam drives a turbine. The turbine drives a generator to produce electricity.
    4. Uses beyond power: Direct use includes space heating, greenhouse warming, aquaculture and cold storage. Ladakh has seen pilot efforts for geothermal power and heating.
    5. Nodal ministry: The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) is the nodal ministry for renewable energy sources, including geothermal.
    6. Global comparison: Countries with high geothermal output include the United States, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iceland and Kenya. India’s geothermal capacity remains at an early stage.

    Prelims angle

    1. The location of Puga, Tattapani, Manikaran and other geothermal sites, and the role of the Geological Survey of India in resource mapping.
    2. The classification of geothermal as a renewable and baseload source, and the nodal ministry. Site to state matching is a common format.

    Mains angle

    1. GS Paper 3, infrastructure and energy, and India’s renewable energy mix.
    2. A question can ask how baseload renewable sources such as geothermal complement variable solar and wind in the path to energy security.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2022, GS3, 15] Do you think India will meet 50 percent of its energy needs from renewable energy by 2030 ? Justify your answer. How will the shift of subsidies from fossil fuels to renewables help achieve the above objective? Explain.”

  • Ten-sided wave undulates around Saturn’s south pole

    Why in the News

    Scientists have found a decagonal wave, a standing pattern with ten sides, around Saturn’s south pole. It is the first time such a feature has been reported at that pole. The finding rests on images taken from space and ground telescopes between 2023 and 2025. Saturn’s north pole has been known for decades to carry a long-lasting hexagonal wave, so the planet now presents two polar polygons with different numbers of sides. The question that follows is why one atmosphere produces two different wave patterns at its two poles.

    What has been observed at Saturn’s south pole?

    1. The shape: A wave with ten sides encircles the south pole, the counterpart of the six-sided pattern long known at the north.
    2. The evidence base: It was identified from images taken by space and ground telescopes across 2023 to 2025, so it has been seen over a span of years rather than in a single observation.
    3. The motion: The whole pattern drifts slowly eastward around the pole.
    4. The oscillation: The decagon’s vertices, the ten corners where the sides meet, move back and forth on a cycle of 32 days.

    What do researchers think the feature is?

    1. It has depth, not just outline: The wave is treated as a vertical structure extending into the atmosphere, not a pattern confined to the visible cloud tops.
    2. The first candidate cause: Unstable winds are one proposed origin, meaning a fast circumpolar flow that breaks into a regular wave pattern rather than running smooth.
    3. The second candidate cause: A nearby anticyclone, a high-pressure rotating storm system, is the other proposed origin, forcing the wave from outside.

    How does this compare with the north-polar hexagon?

    1. The hexagon is old and stable: It was first seen in Voyager images in the early 1980s and observed again from Saturn orbit two decades later, so it has persisted across most of a Saturnian year.
    2. It is very large: The hexagon spans of the order of 30,000 km, wider than the Earth, and is understood as the path of a fast jet stream circling the pole.
    3. The wave number is what differs: A six-sided and a ten-sided pattern imply different jet speeds and different shear across the jet, so the two poles are not mirror images of each other.
    4. The south pole already carried a distinct feature: A hurricane-like polar vortex with a well-defined eyewall was imaged there in the previous decade, which is a different phenomenon from a polygonal jet.

    Why is Saturn’s south pole harder to study?

    1. No spacecraft is there now: The only orbiter to have studied Saturn from close range ended its mission in 2017, so all current work depends on remote imaging from Earth orbit and from the ground.
    2. Season controls the view: Saturn is tilted about 27 degrees and takes roughly 29 Earth years to orbit the Sun, so each pole is favourably lit only for part of that cycle, and the planet passed its most recent equinox in 2025.
    3. Resolution is the limiting factor: Telescopes hundreds of millions of kilometres away resolve polar detail far less finely than an orbiting camera, which is why a repeated pattern is easier to detect than its internal structure.

    Conclusion

    Two polar polygons with different side counts on the same planet is a constraint on any model of Saturn’s atmospheric circulation, because a single explanation now has to produce both. Whether the southern feature holds for decades as the northern one has, or decays within a few years, is the question the next stretch of telescope observation will settle. No dedicated mission to Saturn’s atmosphere is scheduled, so that answer will come from the ground and from Earth-orbiting instruments rather than from a return visit.

    Back2Basics: Cassini-Huygens

    1. It was a joint mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency to study Saturn, its rings and its moons.
    2. It was launched in 1997 and entered orbit around Saturn in 2004, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit the planet.
    3. It carried the Huygens probe, which landed on Titan in 2005, the first landing in the outer solar system.
    4. The mission ended in September 2017 with a deliberate plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, chosen to avoid contaminating potentially habitable moons.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “Which one of the following planets has largest number of natural satellites or moons ? (a) Jupiter (b) Mars (c) Saturn (d) Venus”

  • What is ‘One Nation, One Time’?

    Why in the News

    The Centre has notified the Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2026, making Indian Standard Time (IST) the single reference for legal, administrative, commercial and other official purposes across the country. The Rules follow a draft notified by the Department of Consumer Affairs in January 2025, and the work of a high-power inter-ministerial committee constituted to build a policy, regulatory and legislative framework for adopting IST under the Legal Metrology Act, 2009. IST already existed and was already maintained by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Physical Laboratory (CSIR-NPL). It was not mandatorily adopted, and many telecom and internet service providers continued to take their time from foreign satellite sources such as the Global Positioning System (GPS). The change is about legal compulsion, and about where critical infrastructure gets its time from, not about setting the clock.

    What do the Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2026 do?

    1. They make one time reference legally binding: IST becomes the single reference for legal, administrative, commercial and other official purposes across the country.
    2. They allow a transition period: The Rules come into force 180 days from the date of their publication in the Official Gazette, so departments, businesses and institutions can change their systems first.
    3. They name the permitted domestic sources: The Rules enable the use of the Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC), India’s own satellite navigation system, along with other approved Indian timing sources for time dissemination.

    Why does India need a legally fixed time reference?

    1. Digital systems record events by timestamp: Banking and digital payments, telecommunications, railways, power systems, computer networks and government records all depend on accurate time and time stamps.
    2. Divergent sources corrupt sequence: Differences between time sources affect the coordination and the recording of these activities, so two systems can disagree about the order in which events happened.
    3. The listed users are the critical ones: The common reference is meant to support time-stamping of banking and digital payment transactions, coordination among railways, airports and other transport systems, reliable functioning of telecommunication and internet networks, precise time-keeping in power systems, the upkeep of government and legal records, and coordination of emergency services.

    How is IST generated and distributed?

    1. The definition: IST is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the international reference time, with a plus five hours thirty minutes offset, and it is maintained by CSIR-NPL.
    2. The precision claimed: IST is generated using advanced atomic clocks and satellite links to ensure traceability to UTC with an uncertainty of less than 3 nanoseconds.
    3. How users receive it today: It is widely disseminated at millisecond accuracy through Network Time Protocol servers at CSIR-NPL.
    4. The satellite path: ISRO has been given traceability to IST at nanosecond accuracy through satellite links to NavIC.

    How did the push for a common time begin?

    1. The draft stage: The Department of Consumer Affairs notified draft Rules in January 2025 proposing to synchronise time across India, working with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to disseminate IST with millisecond to microsecond accuracy from the five legal metrology laboratories.
    2. The gap it identified: The trademark for IST had been registered in 2024, and the time itself had not been legalised in India.
    3. The committee that framed it: A high-power inter-ministerial committee headed by the Secretary (Consumer Affairs) drew in NPL, ISRO, IIT Kanpur, the National Informatics Centre, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the Securities and Exchange Board of India, and the railways and telecom departments.

    What is the security case for cutting reliance on foreign time sources?

    1. The stated national security ground: The government’s position is that synchronising all networks and systems to IST is essential for national security, for real-time applications and for the smooth operation of critical infrastructure.
    2. The demonstration already built: Under the One Nation, One Time initiative, a White Rabbit Technology-based IST Dissemination Demonstration Network was commissioned in July 2026 at the Regional Reference Standard Laboratory in Bengaluru, using a fibre-based method that distributes time at sub-nanosecond accuracy.
    3. The claim made for it: The network is described as upholding the sovereignty of the nation’s digital infrastructure by eliminating reliance on foreign time sources like GPS, and as giving critical sectors maximum protection against cyber-attacks and data manipulation.

    Challenges to a single legal time reference

    1. One clock across a wide longitudinal span: India stretches across roughly 30 degrees of longitude, so sunrise and sunset in the far east of the country run close to two hours ahead of the far west against the same clock. Eg. Assam has repeatedly pressed for a separate time an hour ahead, and its tea estates already run on such a working clock informally.
      The Fix: Stagger office and school hours administratively in the north-eastern States, which captures the daylight gain without splitting the legal time reference the Rules have just unified.
    2. Compliance across private networks is unaudited: Telecom and internet operators must re-point their time servers, and no published mechanism verifies that they have. Eg. Network equipment commonly synchronises to satellite-derived time by default in its firmware, without the operator making an active choice.
      The Fix: Require licensed operators to file an annual traceability certificate against CSIR-NPL time as a licence condition.
    3. Internet-delivered time is too coarse for the highest-precision users: Time delivered over the public internet is accurate to milliseconds, and grid protection and trade sequencing are specified in microseconds. Eg. Synchrophasor measurement in power systems and order sequencing on securities exchanges both need microsecond-level agreement between distant nodes.
      The Fix: Extend the fibre-based distribution path from the reference laboratories to grid control centres and exchange data centres before the Rules take effect.
    4. A domestic chain still needs local fallback: A node cut off from its time source drifts unless it holds an independent clock of its own. Eg. A ground segment error in the Global Positioning System in 2016 broadcast an offset of about 13 microseconds and disrupted telecom and broadcast equipment across several countries.
      The Fix: Mandate local holdover clocks at critical nodes, rated to hold accuracy for a defined outage duration.

    Conclusion

    Notifying a legal time reference is the easy half of the exercise. The harder half is re-pointing the equipment inside banks, exchanges, grid control centres and telecom networks that currently takes its time from a foreign satellite by default, and none of that follows automatically from a notification. The marker to watch is whether the Department of Consumer Affairs publishes a compliance and audit mechanism, naming who certifies traceability and at what interval, before the transition window closes.

    Back2Basics: Legal Metrology Act, 2009

    1. It is the law governing weights, measures and units of measurement in India, administered by the Department of Consumer Affairs.
    2. It replaced the Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1976 and the Standards of Weights and Measures (Enforcement) Act, 1985.
    3. It establishes the International System of Units as the basis for standard units, and provides for verification and stamping of weights and measuring instruments.
    4. Enforcement rests largely with State legal metrology departments, with the Centre setting the standards and framing the Rules.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “In which of the following areas can GPS technology be used ? 1. Mobile phone operations 2. Banking operations 3. Controlling the power grids Select the correct answer using the code given below : (a) 1 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3”

  • ISRO staff question trajectory of space privatisation, want chief to clarify

    Why in the News

    Key employee associations at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have written to the ISRO chairperson seeking a written clarification on whether ISRO’s exit from launch vehicle manufacture is an approved decision of the Government of India, the Space Commission or the Department of Space. The letter follows a public statement by the chairperson of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe), the nodal body under the Department of Space set up in 2020 to open India’s space sector to private participation, that ISRO will eventually not manufacture any launch vehicles. The associations say the statement was never followed by any formal communication from the Department of Space explaining the policy, its legal basis, its timeline or its effect on staff. The letter was sent hours after ISRO launched an earth observation satellite aboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), ending a months-long hiatus. The dispute is between a promotion body announcing the direction of travel in public and a workforce with no document to read it in.

    What did the statement claim about ISRO’s future work?

    1. Launch vehicles move out: ISRO will eventually not manufacture any launch vehicles, and that work will be done by the private sector or a public sector undertaking.
    2. Routine satellites move out too: ISRO will not build what were described as day in day out satellites.
    3. What is retained is narrowly drawn: ISRO will build satellites for special purposes, for orbits meant for scientific research, or to develop new technology that is then transferred to the private sector.

    What are the employee associations asking for?

    1. The status of the statement: The letter asks the chairperson to issue a written clarification on whether the statements represent an approved decision of the Government of India, the Space Commission or the Department of Space.
    2. Who has signed it: It carries signatures of representatives from across ISRO’s centres, including the Space Applications Centre and the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre.
    3. What the letter asks to be defined: It seeks answers on ISRO’s future role as a public organisation, on whether public sector undertakings will also be excluded from manufacturing work, on the safeguards available to current employees, and on how publicly funded technologies are being transferred to private companies.
    4. A consultation demand: It asks whether employee associations will be consulted before any irreversible decision affecting the agency’s structure, mandate or staffing is finalised.

    Why do the associations treat this as a threat to the organisation?

    1. The activities named are the core, not the periphery: The associations describe those activities as ISRO’s core competence, and say withdrawing from them threatens the organisation’s long-term viability.
    2. Career expectations are unsettled: Employees who built careers around ISRO’s stability and public character now face uncertainty about what the organisation will be.
    3. Recruitment is the compounding effect: Recruitment is already limited by vacancies and attrition, and a shrinking intake discourages young professionals who see ISRO as a respected public sector career path.

    How far has the transfer to industry already gone?

    1. The stated policy since 2020: The government’s approach has been for ISRO to mentor emerging companies and gradually shift routine work to them, with ISRO focusing on missions of scientific and strategic significance.
    2. The transfers already made: ISRO has transferred around 120 technologies to industry, including the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle and the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
    3. Infrastructure is being built for the same segment: The new spaceport at Kulasekharapatnam is expected to focus on small satellite launches, a segment where private capability is already fairly advanced.

    Where does expert opinion sit on the direction?

    1. The opening is defended as overdue: The Deputy Director General of the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses said the sector’s opening up was overdue and could have helped India capture a larger share of the global market sooner.
    2. Some shifting is treated as natural: With ISRO focused on Gaganyaan, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station and a crewed lunar mission, some functions would move to private players as a matter of course.
    3. The limit drawn is on launch: Launch services and vehicle development remain core to ISRO’s mandate, and ISRO should remain capable of launching some of its own satellites, especially the strategic ones.
    4. The counter-example cited is American: The stated caution is that India should not reach the position of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which is completely dependent on a single commercial provider for its launches.

    Challenges to India’s space sector privatisation

    1. The opening rests on policy, not statute: Authorisation, liability and licensing of private space activity are governed by executive policy documents rather than by a law passed by Parliament. Eg. A draft Space Activities Bill was circulated for comment in 2017 and was never introduced, and the Indian Space Policy, 2023 has filled that space instead.
      The Fix: Enact a space activities law fixing licensing conditions, third-party liability and government indemnity, so operators and the regulator work to statutory terms.
    2. Promotion and authorisation sit in the same body: The agency that promotes private entry also authorises it, and the incumbent it is displacing reports to the same department. Eg. IN-SPACe, ISRO and NewSpace India Limited all sit under the Department of Space.
      The Fix: Separate the authorisation function into a body with its own statutory mandate, leaving promotion and hand-holding with IN-SPACe.
    3. Publicly funded designs move out without a published valuation: Technology developed at public cost is handed to firms without the consideration or the continuing support obligations being disclosed. Eg. Production of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle was transferred through a competitive bid won by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.
      The Fix: Publish the consideration, the support commitment and the reciprocal obligations for every transfer above a stated value.
    4. Capability decays when it is not exercised: Launch vehicle engineering skill is retained by building vehicles, not by supervising others building them. Eg. India’s cryogenic upper stage took roughly two decades to reach operational service after technology transfer from Russia was blocked in the 1990s.
      The Fix: Attach a minimum in-house build and integration requirement to each new vehicle programme so design teams retain hands-on work.

    Conclusion

    A structural change of this size is being read off a public remark rather than a departmental order, and that is the substance of the objection rather than the policy direction itself. Employees can contest a document. They cannot contest a statement that nobody has confirmed to be policy. The written clarification the letter seeks is the marker to watch. Whether it names the Space Commission as the deciding authority, or declines to, will show where the decision on ISRO’s manufacturing role actually sits.

    Back2Basics: IN-SPACe

    1. It is an autonomous single-window agency under the Department of Space, announced in 2020 and set up to enable private participation in space activities.
    2. It authorises and supervises space activities carried out by non-government entities in India.
    3. It arranges the sharing of ISRO’s facilities, expertise and technical data with private operators.
    4. It is distinct from NewSpace India Limited, which is the commercial arm that markets and sells ISRO’s products and services.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “Consider the following statements about involvement of private entities in India’s space programme: 1. IN-SPACe is an autonomous agency formed to facilitate participation of private entities. 2. Agnikul Cosmos launched the world’s first flight using 3D-printed rocket engine. 3. Skyroot Aerospace has developed liquid fuel for GSLV. (a) 1 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 2 only (d) 1, 2 and 3”

  • Glacial collapse unlikely to halt China’s mega dam plan

    Why in the News

    China is going ahead with construction of a mega dam on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo, the Brahmaputra, in a seismically active part of Tibet near the border with India. Fresh concerns raised by the glacial collapse along the Nepal-China border have not changed that plan. A month before those flash floods and mudslides, China released its 15th Five-Year Plan for renewable energy, which called for advancing construction of major projects including the Yarlung Zangbo Lower Reaches Hydropower Project. India’s concern is how much water the project will store and how its diversion tunnel will alter downstream flows. Almost nothing about either has been made public, and the one channel through which India receives hydrological data from China has worked irregularly.

    What is the Yarlung Zangbo Lower Reaches Hydropower Project?

    1. What it is: It is a hydropower complex of five power stations on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo in Tibet, referred to in China as the mega dam project.
    2. How the water is used: Water is taken out of the river at the top of the Great Bend, where the river’s course falls steeply and turns towards India, and carried through a tunnel of about 40 km before rejoining the river below.
    3. The scale committed: A total investment of 1.2 trillion Yuan, around ₹14 lakh crore, was announced for the construction of the five power stations at the groundbreaking in July 2025.
    4. Who builds and runs it: A new State-run entity, the China Yajiang Group, was set up to run the entire project.

    Why has the glacial collapse not changed Beijing’s calculation?

    1. The project sits in a standing plan: The renewable energy Five-Year Plan named the project for advancement before the collapse occurred, so the collapse arrived against a target already fixed.
    2. Political weight is attached to it: China’s Vice Premier visited Nyingchi in Tibet in April and described it as a landmark mega project of the new era. The Premier had called it the project of the century at the groundbreaking.
    3. The safety response is procedural, not a pause: The stated answer to risk is strict enforcement of construction standards and of ecological and environmental protection requirements, with construction progress kept subordinate to quality and safety.
    4. Information has been withheld since the start: There has been little public information about the project since the groundbreaking, and the Vice Premier’s visit is what disclosed the new operating company.

    What exactly is India concerned about?

    1. Storage volume is unknown: How much water will be held in the reservoir is not published, and storage determines how far the timing of downstream flows can be controlled.
    2. The tunnel’s effect on flow is unknown: Diverting the river at the top of the bend and returning it below means the natural channel around the bend carries only what the tunnel does not.
    3. Wider ecological impact is unassessed: No assessment of downstream ecological effects has been released.
    4. The absence of information is itself the obstacle: The lack of published detail prevents India from assessing the impact at all, rather than merely disagreeing with China’s assessment of it.

    Why is the run-of-the-river description contested?

    1. The label implies no storage: A run-of-the-river scheme passes flow through without holding it back, so it carries limited power to change the timing of water reaching a downstream State.
    2. A reservoir is part of the design: The project involves the construction of a reservoir, which a Shanghai-based energy analyst places at the town of Mainling, upstream of Nyingchi, on the basis of reported relocations.
    3. The generating configuration is built around drop: The descending force of the diverted water powers five 12-GW powerhouses, which concentrates head rather than passing the river through unchanged.

    What does China’s earlier dam on the same river show?

    1. The precedent: China has already opened one major dam on the middle reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo at Zangmu, on which construction began in 2010, and a final acceptance meeting was held in June.
    2. The output claimed: Zangmu has generated 22.2 billion kilowatt-hours, described as equivalent to saving approximately 7.4 million tonnes of standard coal and cutting carbon dioxide emissions by around 22.2 million tonnes.
    3. The regional case made for it: State media said the dam had provided a solution to nearly 26 per cent of electricity demand in the Xizang Autonomous Region, and detailed an elaborate fishway designed to move fish between upstream and downstream sections. The project’s design engineer said the fishway would likely be used for future projects.
    4. The new project is of a different order: Chinese analysts project 60 GW of installed capacity and 300 billion kilowatt-hours a year, over three times the Three Gorges, against which Zangmu is small.

    How well does the India-China channel on rivers work?

    1. The forum exists and is about to meet: India and China will hold a meeting of the Expert-Level Mechanism on Trans-border Rivers later this month.
    2. Transmission has been intermittent: The sharing of hydrological data has not been regular and has on occasion been suspended during difficult periods in relations.
    3. China’s stated position denies downstream harm: China’s Foreign Ministry has said it maintains a highly responsible attitude toward transboundary river development, that construction is beneficial for disaster prevention and mitigation throughout the entire river basin, and that it will not have adverse effects on downstream areas.
    4. Cooperation is described in reporting terms: The Ministry cites hydrological reporting, flood control and disaster reduction cooperation with downstream countries, rather than any joint assessment or consent mechanism.

    Challenges to the Yarlung Zangbo Lower Reaches Hydropower Project

    1. Seismic exposure at the Eastern Himalayan syntaxis: The Great Bend sits where the Indian and Eurasian plates converge most sharply, which is among the most earthquake-prone locations in Asia. Eg. The 1950 Assam-Tibet earthquake, of magnitude 8.6, struck this same zone and triggered landslides that blocked and then burst Himalayan river channels.
      The Fix: Publish the seismic design basis and the dam-break inundation modelling for the reach below the project, so downstream authorities can plan against a stated failure scenario.
    2. Sediment trapping changes the floodplain downstream: The Brahmaputra carries one of the world’s heaviest sediment loads, and any storage structure holds back part of it. Eg. Majuli, the river island in Assam, has lost a large part of its area to bank erosion as the balance between deposition and scouring has shifted.
      The Fix: Fix a sediment flushing schedule and share the release calendar with the downstream riparian in advance of each flushing operation.
    3. There is no treaty, only renewable memoranda: India and China share no water-sharing treaty, and data supply rests on memoranda of understanding that expire and must be renewed. Eg. Flood-season hydrological data for the Brahmaputra was not supplied in 2017, the year of the Doklam standoff.
      The Fix: Convert the memoranda into a standing basin instrument with automatic data transmission that does not lapse with the state of political relations.
    4. India’s own detection capacity is thin at the entry point: An anomalous release is useful information only if it is detected before it reaches populated reaches. Eg. Sudden rises and sudden discolouration in the Siang in Arunachal Pradesh have been attributed to upstream activity without independent measurement to confirm the cause.
      The Fix: Build a telemetered gauging network on the Siang and the Lohit reporting in near real time to the Central Water Commission.
    5. The gorge is an ecological zone of its own: The Great Bend gorge holds an unusual altitudinal range of habitat compressed into a short distance, and diversion removes water from that reach. Eg. The Yarlung Tsangpo canyon is among the deepest in the world and carries forest types from subtropical to alpine within a few kilometres.
      The Fix: Require publication of an environmental flow regime for the bypassed reach, stating the minimum discharge to be maintained through the year.

    Conclusion

    The dispute is not yet about water, it is about disclosure. India cannot contest a projection it has not been given. A downstream State that learns a reservoir’s capacity only after commissioning has lost the one point at which design can still be influenced. The meeting of the Expert-Level Mechanism this month is the marker to watch, and the test of it is narrow: whether operating rules are put on the table, or whether the meeting produces another reaffirmation of responsible conduct.

    Back2Basics: Expert-Level Mechanism on Trans-border Rivers

    1. It is the standing India-China official channel on shared rivers, established in 2006 following an agreement between the two governments.
    2. Its declared business is the provision of hydrological information by China during the flood season, and cooperation on emergency management of trans-border rivers.
    3. It covers the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej, the two rivers on which separate memoranda of understanding govern data supply.
    4. It is a consultative forum with no adjudicatory power, and it does not allocate water between the two countries.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “Identify the river of the Indian sub-continent on the basis of the following information: 1. Antecedent drainage system. 2. Flows through three countries. 3. Originates in the Tibetan Plateau; important for irrigation. 4. Does not form distributaries. Select the answer from the following: (a) Brahmaputra (b) Indus (c) Sutlej (d) Teesta”

  • Fear revisits residents of Western Ghats

    Why in the News

    The Centre has issued its seventh draft notification proposing to declare 56,825.7 sq km of the Western Ghats an Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA). Of that, 29,668 sq km spread across 1,449 villages in ten Karnataka districts falls in the State. Hundreds of farmers in the Malnad region have marched against the draft, and their central demand is not that the notification be dropped. They want the Karnataka government to conduct a physical survey of the land and to exclude human settlements and cultivated areas from the proposed ESA boundary. The tension is that the people most opposed to the notification already live under forest restrictions that deny them roads, schools, electricity and clear title, and they read the ESA as freezing those unsettled claims permanently.

    What is an Ecologically Sensitive Area?

    1. The legal basis: An ESA is an area notified under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, within which specified activities are prohibited, restricted or made subject to closer scrutiny.
    2. How it is created: The Centre issues a draft notification proposing the boundary and the restrictions, and allows a fixed period for objections before a final notification can issue. The seventh draft allows 60 days.
    3. What it is not: An ESA is a land use regime layered over existing ownership, so it does not by itself transfer land or extinguish a title.

    How did the Western Ghats ESA proposal originate?

    1. A march, not a ministry: On 1 November 1987 two groups of scientists, ecologists, environmentalists and activists began walking simultaneously from Navapur in Maharashtra’s Dhule district and from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu towards a common meeting point in Goa, documenting the ecological condition of the landscape along the route.
    2. The Goa conference: The effort culminated in a conference in Goa in February 1988, where the ecologist Madhav Gadgil of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru chaired the technical session on the region’s ecological status.
    3. The demand for an expert panel: The group stayed active through a 1998 yatra and meetings in 2009 and on 18 February 2010 at the Keystone Foundation in Kotagiri, Nilgiris, where the then Union Minister for Environment and Forests was asked to constitute an expert panel on the Western Ghats.
    4. The panel: On 4 March 2010 the Ministry of Environment and Forests set up the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) under Gadgil, with nine non-government and five official members, to assess the ecological status of the Ghats, demarcate areas to be notified as ecologically sensitive, and recommend conservation measures through wide consultation.

    What did the WGEEP recommend, and how was its report handled?

    1. A people-oriented model: The report went beyond regulation to propose science-based incentives, including financial rewards for individual farmers and payments for ecosystem services to communities. It cited the Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation Scheme, under which farmers were paid retrospectively for verified increases in soil carbon on regeneratively managed farmland.
    2. The restrictions it proposed: These included a complete ban on mining and sand extraction with existing operations phased out within five years or on expiry of lease, restrictions on housing and construction projects exceeding 20,000 sq m, a ban on all “red category” highly polluting industries with existing units to close or relocate within five years, encouragement of organic farming, and closer scrutiny of other development activities.
    3. The report was withheld for months: The panel submitted its final report on 31 August 2011. The Ministry resisted disclosure through repeated applications under the Right to Information Act, 2005 and an order of the Central Information Commission, and approached the Delhi High Court seeking a stay, before uploading the report on its website on 23 May 2012.
    4. Every State government objected: All the States concerned, including Karnataka and Kerala, opposed the recommendations, and elected representatives particularly in Kerala argued they would severely disrupt local livelihoods.

    What did the Kasturirangan High-Level Working Group change?

    1. Why it was constituted: Taking the criticism of the WGEEP report into account, the Union Ministry set up a High-Level Working Group (HLWG) under K. Kasturirangan to prepare a “workable and implementable” report on conserving the Western Ghats.
    2. What it recommended: The panel visited several places, including Sakleshpur in Hassan district, and submitted its report on 15 April 2013. It recommended that about 37 per cent of the Western Ghats, 59,940 sq km forming a continuous band of natural vegetation stretching roughly 1,500 km across six States, be declared an ESA. Karnataka accounted for the largest share, around 20,668 sq km.
    3. The objection from the earlier panel: Gadgil objected strongly in an open letter, stating that the WGEEP had proposed a graded, participatory approach with a major role for grassroots input.
    4. What the letter said the HLWG did instead: It had effectively partitioned the landscape, with roughly a third to be protected by “funds and guards” as natural landscape and the remaining two-thirds labelled cultural landscape and left open to development.

    What does the seventh draft propose for Karnataka?

    1. Seven drafts, none finalised: The Ministry has issued seven draft notifications since 2014. All six earlier drafts were opposed by the States concerned, and residents of the affected regions filed numerous objections against them.
    2. The Karnataka share: The 29,668 sq km proposed in the State is spread across 1,449 villages in Belagavi, Chamarajanagar, Chikkamagaluru, Dakshina Kannada, Hassan, Kodagu, Mysuru, Shivamogga, Udupi and Uttara Kannada districts.
    3. The instrument has not changed: The draft still rests on the boundary the HLWG proposed, which is why the objection filed against it is the same objection filed against the six drafts before it.

    What are the Malnad protests demanding?

    1. The march: On 29 August hundreds of farmers from Hosanagara taluk in Shivamogga district marched about nine kilometres from the Ganesha temple in Karanagiri to Hosanagara town, and farmers across Shivamogga and neighbouring Malnad districts are planning similar protests.
    2. The demand has narrowed: The central demand is a physical survey of the land by the State government and the exclusion of human settlements and cultivated areas from the proposed boundary.
    3. The Kerala model they cite: Kerala reduced its proposed ESA area from 13,108 sq km to 9,937 sq km, comprising 9,107 sq km of forest and 886.7 sq km of non-forest land, after conducting a physical survey. That reduction of more than 3,000 sq km has since been incorporated into the revised notification.
    4. The organising vehicle: A large section of farmers has been brought together under the banner of the Western Ghats Raitha Sahakari Vedike, which has launched a website with a tool to help the public file objections online.
    5. The shift in position: The organisation is not opposing the notification outright this time, and is instead demanding that the State government follow the Kerala model to minimise the impact.

    How has the Karnataka political establishment responded?

    1. The stated concerns: The Member of Parliament from Shivamogga, who joined the protest marches, said restrictions on township projects and the push for organic farming were the primary concerns in the Malnad region.
    2. The plantation economy’s objection: Many farmers in Shivamogga, Uttara Kannada, Chikkamagaluru and Kodagu who grow plantation crops such as coffee and areca use chemical fertilizers to protect their crops from disease, and ask how plantations are to be protected if such inputs are restricted. Restrictions on house construction are the second stated objection.
    3. A legislative airing: The Karnataka Cabinet announced on 3 September 2026 a three-day special session of the legislature from 21 September to discuss drought, which will also take up a detailed discussion on the Kasturirangan report. The Chief Minister agreed to convene it after leaders across parties urged a physical survey, and the decision was welcomed across party lines.
    4. The State’s declared position: The Minister for School Education, who is also in charge of Shivamogga district, has said the State government will oppose the draft notification. A former Minister and Congress leader burnt a copy of the Kasturirangan report at a press conference in Tirthahalli.

    Why is the fear about existing forest rules rather than the ESA?

    1. A displaced village still without power: Uralagallu in Sagar taluk of Shivamogga district houses families displaced by the Linganamakki dam across the Sharavathi river in the 1960s. The village has roughly 50 to 56 families and a population of 150 to 200, with no proper road, school or primary health centre, its nearest bus stop about 10 km away, and no ambulance visit in recent years. It still has no electricity, because the Forest Department has repeatedly denied clearance for road and power-supply works.
    2. Children leave the village to study: A majority of parents there send their children to hostels or to relatives’ homes early. One resident’s two children stay about 50 km away at Mavinagundi, and villagers walk 10 km to Kanuru to catch a bus.
    3. Roads are blocked in conflict-prone stretches: At Byrapura in N.R. Pura taluk of Chikkamagaluru district, schoolchildren recently encountered a leopard on their way home, and stayed away from school for several days. Parents say a proper road would allow safer transport, and forest regulations continue to block it.
    4. Even the local government has no title: In Karimane village of Hosanagara taluk, large parts of the settlement including the gram panchayat building stand on forest land, leaving the panchayat office without an official khata, or title, and the community in administrative limbo.
    5. Unsettled claims are the real anxiety: Bagair hukum, or unauthorised, cultivators and people displaced by dam projects are yet to receive the compensatory land promised to them under existing rules, and they fear that an ESA in force would leave those claims unresolved indefinitely.

    What is the case for the notification?

    1. The rejected report is held to be the better one: Several environmentalists argue that the Kasturirangan report was a “diluted version” of the WGEEP report, which they consider better suited to conserving the Ghats with active local participation.
    2. The argument surfaces only after a disaster: Whenever landslips or flash floods strike Kerala or Kodagu, environmentalists blame policymakers for ignoring the WGEEP recommendations. The debate typically subsides within days, as routine concerns over access, amenities, roads and electricity take over.
    3. Much of the proposed area is already forest: An environmentalist based in Sagar taluk states that a major portion of the area proposed for the ESA in Karnataka is already notified forest, that the remainder is small, and that there should be no opposition to including it.
    4. The restrictions are said to be misread: The same view holds that people with vested interests are misleading the public with false information about the restrictions, that ordinary people have no reason to fear a ban on mining or on red-category industries, and that the push for organic farming benefits everyone.

    Challenges to the Western Ghats ESA notification

    1. A draft that never becomes a notification produces neither protection nor certainty: Each draft lapses and is reissued, so landowners cannot plan and the ecologically sensitive designation has no legal force in the interim. Eg. The proposal has now run through more than a decade of successive drafts without a single final notification issuing.
      The Fix: Fix a statutory outer limit within which a draft issued under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 must be finalised or formally withdrawn.
    2. ESA status does not stop the land use changes that do the most damage: Large hydel, transmission and road projects are cleared through separate forest and wildlife clearance processes that an ESA notification does not displace. Eg. The Athirappilly hydel project in Kerala’s Chalakudy basin has been proposed and revived repeatedly in a stretch the ecology panel placed in its highest sensitivity zone.
      The Fix: Write the prohibition on new hydel and mining leases into the notification itself, rather than leaving each project to a case-by-case clearance.
    3. Forest rights claims in the same landscape are unsettled: Restricting land use before individual and community claims are decided converts a pending claim into a permanent denial. Eg. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 requires gram sabha verification of every claim, and recognition remains incomplete across the Western Ghats States.
      The Fix: Settle pending claims before the final notification takes effect, and attach the gram sabha resolution to the boundary record for each village.
    4. Tighter protection without habitat management raises human-wildlife conflict: Restricting access and infrastructure inside a landscape does nothing about crop raiding and encounters on the forest edge, which is what residents experience daily. Eg. Kodagu and Hassan districts record repeated elephant crop damage and human casualties, and conflict compensation in Karnataka runs among the highest in the country.
      The Fix: Fund a dedicated conflict mitigation line inside the ESA framework, covering barriers, rapid response teams and time-bound ex gratia payment.

    Conclusion

    The dispute is no longer about whether the Western Ghats need protection. It is about who verifies the boundary, and on what evidence. A line drawn from remote sensing and contested for over a decade has delivered neither conservation on the ground nor certainty for the people living inside it, and each reissued draft resets the argument to where it began. The question that decides the outcome is whether Karnataka answers this draft with a completed ground survey or with another objection.

    Back2Basics: Western Ghats

    1. What it is: The Western Ghats is a chain of hills running parallel to India’s western coast, older than the Himalaya, and it intercepts the south-west monsoon to produce the heavy orographic rainfall of the west coast.
    2. Global recognition: It is one of the world’s recognised biodiversity hotspots, a designation given to regions with exceptional endemism and severe habitat loss.
    3. World Heritage status: UNESCO inscribed a serial property of 39 sites across the Western Ghats on the World Heritage List in 2012.
    4. Why endemism matters here: A large share of its amphibians, fish and flowering plants are found nowhere else, and species such as the lion-tailed macaque and the Nilgiri tahr are restricted to this range.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “Gadgil Committee Report’ and ‘Kasturirangan Committee Report’, sometimes seen in the news, are related to (a) constitutional reforms (b) Ganga Action Plan (c) linking of rivers (d) protection of Western Ghats”

  • India votes in favour of UNGA resolution on new world map

    Why in the News

    India has voted in favour of a United Nations General Assembly resolution aimed at correcting the world map to promote a “more accurate representation” of continental landmasses. The 193-member Assembly adopted the resolution “Correct the map: rebalancing global cartographic representation and promoting equitable representation of the world’s regions, particularly Africa”, which was sponsored by Togo. It encourages governments and institutions around the world to replace the traditional Mercator map with the Equal Earth projection, which “shows locations more accurately”. The resolution carried 164 votes in favour, with a lone vote against from the United States. The question the vote raises is whether a projection designed in the sixteenth century for navigation should continue to set how the world’s regions are seen.

    What is a map projection, and what does the Mercator do to area?

    1. The underlying problem: A projection is the rule for transferring a curved surface onto a flat sheet, and no flat map can preserve shape, area, distance and direction at the same time. Every projection therefore chooses which property to keep and which to sacrifice.
    2. What the Mercator keeps: It preserves angles, so a line of constant compass bearing plots as a straight line. That property is what made it a navigator’s map.
    3. What it sacrifices: Scale grows with distance from the equator, so landmasses near the poles are inflated and those near the equator are compressed. Eg. Greenland reads as roughly the size of Africa, though Africa is about 14 times larger.
    4. What Equal Earth does instead: It is an equal-area projection, so every region occupies its true share of the map’s surface. The cost is a controlled distortion of shape rather than of size.

    What did the Assembly actually adopt?

    1. The instrument is a recommendation: The resolution encourages governments and institutions to switch projection. A General Assembly resolution of this kind carries no binding force on any member state.
    2. The sponsor and the stated purpose: Togo sponsored the text, and its stated aim is the equitable representation of the world’s regions, and of Africa in particular.
    3. The campaign behind it: It carries forward an African Union-backed campaign to limit use of the Mercator map on the ground that visual under-representation reinforces a perception of the continent as peripheral.
    4. India’s vote: India voted in favour, placing it with the large majority rather than with the abstaining or dissenting group.

    What does the voting pattern show?

    1. The scale of support: 164 of the 193 members voted in favour, which is an overwhelming margin for a text with a contested premise.
    2. The single dissent: The United States cast the lone vote against.
    3. The abstentions: Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine abstained.
    4. What a wide margin does not settle: Adoption records agreement on a principle. It creates no obligation on any national mapping agency, publisher or platform to change what it prints.

    Challenges to replacing the Mercator projection

    1. No projection is politically neutral, and equal-area maps distort in their own way: Preserving area forces a distortion of shape, so a switch trades one visual misrepresentation for another. Eg. The Gall-Peters projection was promoted on the same equity argument in the 1970s and 1980s, and it stretched Africa vertically enough that seven North American geographic bodies passed a joint resolution in 1989 against rectangular projections of that kind.
      The Fix: Pair any recommendation with published guidance on which projection suits which purpose, so a navigation chart and a thematic world map are not held to one standard.
    2. The digital map layer is locked into Mercator by design: Web mapping tiles use a Mercator variant because it keeps north upward and shapes locally correct at every zoom level, which is what makes seamless zooming possible. Eg. Web Mercator underlies the standard tile schemes of the major online mapping services.
      The Fix: Require default map interfaces to switch to an equal-area view at continental and global zoom levels, where the distortion is largest and the navigation property is not being used.
    3. The change has to travel through textbooks and curricula, which move slowly: School atlases, examination material and classroom wall maps are procured on multi-year cycles, so a resolution adopted in one year reaches a classroom several later. Eg. Boston’s public school district switched its classroom maps to an equal-area projection in 2017, and the change stayed confined to that district.
      The Fix: Route the recommendation through national survey agencies and curriculum bodies, which specify the base maps that textbook publishers are obliged to reproduce.

    Conclusion

    The vote settles a question of principle that was never seriously contested and leaves the operative one untouched. What people actually see is set by the default projection of a handful of digital mapping services and by the atlases that education departments procure, and none of them is bound by this text. The measure of the resolution is therefore not the margin it passed by. It is whether a national mapping agency or a major platform changes its default in the year that follows.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “With reference to the United Nations General Assembly, consider the following statements : 1. The UN General Assembly can grant observer status to the non-member States. 2. Inter-governmental organisations can seek observer status in the UN General Assembly. 3. Permanent Observers in the UN General Assembly can maintain missions at the UN headquarters. Which of the statements given above are correct ? (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3”

  • 128 countries agree text on lethal autonomous weapons

    Why in the News

    Nearly 130 countries have agreed on a text defining lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), called “killer robots” by their critics. The agreement, announced by 128 countries at Geneva, is a first step towards talks on a possible international treaty to regulate them. The text agreed upon has not yet been made public. Campaign groups following the talks say the definition and the measures meant to reduce harm to civilians were watered down before agreement was reached. The contest is between a definition that now exists on paper and a negotiating mandate that several of the largest military powers are resisting.

    What is a lethal autonomous weapons system?

    1. The defining capability: It is a weapon capable of selecting targets and using force against them without human intervention.
    2. The name its critics use: Campaign groups call these systems “killer robots”, and that label has framed the public argument around them.
    3. The category is not hypothetical: Countries are already developing and using weapons with this capability, which is why the definition is being written now rather than ahead of deployment.

    What was agreed at Geneva, and what was left open?

    1. Who agreed: The Dutch Foreign Minister announced the agreement by 128 countries, and the Netherlands has been overseeing the talks.
    2. What the text does: It defines the category of weapon and sets out measures to reduce the possible harmful effects of such weapons on civilians.
    3. What it does not do: It creates no obligation on any state, and it is described only as a first step towards talks on a possible treaty.
    4. Where the decision sits: UN member states will decide at the November talks of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) whether to move towards a treaty regulating such weapons.

    Why do campaign groups say the outcome is already weakened?

    1. The substance was diluted: One rights group said the text’s definition of an autonomous weapon, and the measures to reduce their possible harmful effects on civilians, appeared to have been watered down.
    2. The named obstruction: The executive director of Stop Killer Robots, an international alliance of campaign groups, accused the United States, Russia and their allies of trying to weaken the agreed text.
    3. The named opponents: Lex International, a Geneva-based philanthropic group that funds work on key policy issues, said the U.S., Russia, India and Israel are among the key opponents of negotiations.
    4. The named sponsors: The same group said the governments of Brazil, Ireland and Norway are leading efforts to get such negotiations started in November.

    What do humanitarian bodies want instead?

    1. The stated warning: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the unconstrained development and use of autonomous weapon systems pose serious legal, ethical and humanitarian challenges.
    2. The demand: The ICRC and several campaigning groups have called for international legally binding rules to restrict and regulate the use of these weapons.
    3. Why a definition alone will not deliver that: The CCW works by consensus, so a single state party can block the opening of treaty negotiations whatever the size of the majority behind them.

    Challenges to regulating lethal autonomous weapons

    1. Nobody is clearly answerable when the machine chooses wrongly: Responsibility for an unlawful strike is split between the commander, the operator, the programmer and the manufacturer, and no existing rule allocates it. Eg. Article 36 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, 1977 requires a state to legally review every new weapon, and there is no shared standard for reviewing software whose behaviour changes after deployment.
      The Fix: Require states to publish the methodology of their Article 36 reviews for autonomous systems, so the review becomes checkable rather than declaratory.
    2. States do not agree on how much human control is enough: The negotiations have run for a decade on competing formulations, and a treaty cannot be drafted around a threshold nobody has fixed. Eg. “Meaningful human control”, “appropriate human judgement” and “human-machine interaction” have all been advanced as the operative test at the Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS.
      The Fix: Settle one operative term in the agreed text before the negotiating mandate is voted on, rather than after.
    3. Verification cannot see software: Arms control regimes are built to count and inspect physical objects, and autonomy is a line of code that can be loaded or removed before an inspection. Eg. The Chemical Weapons Convention, 1993 verifies a declared substance at a declared facility, and the same inspection tells an inspector nothing about a targeting algorithm.
      The Fix: Shift verification onto declared doctrine, test logs and procurement records, which are documentary and can be audited.
    4. The technology diffuses through civilian supply chains: Autonomy rides on commercial drones, cameras and machine vision software that no arms control list covers. Eg. Commercially available quadcopters have been modified for strike use at scale in the Russia-Ukraine war.
      The Fix: Add autonomous targeting software and machine vision payloads to the dual-use control lists of the Wassenaar Arrangement, so transfers are licensed rather than untracked.

    Conclusion

    A definition is the cheapest thing a negotiation can produce, and it has taken a decade to produce this one. The states that field the most advanced autonomous systems are the ones resisting a mandate to negotiate, which means the majority behind the text does not translate into a treaty. The next meeting of the Convention’s states parties is where that gap is either closed or carried forward. Whether the agreed definition survives publication intact is the first thing to check when the text is released.

    Back2Basics: Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons

    1. What it is: The Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects was adopted at Geneva in 1980 and entered into force in 1983.
    2. How it is structured: It is a framework convention that carries no prohibitions itself, and the substantive bans sit in protocols that states join separately.
    3. The protocols: Five protocols cover non-detectable fragments, mines and booby-traps, incendiary weapons, blinding laser weapons and explosive remnants of war.
    4. India’s position: India is a party to the Convention, and the LAWS discussion has been conducted within its Group of Governmental Experts rather than in a separate forum.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “With reference to ‘Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)’, consider the following statements: 1. It is an organization of European Union in working relation with NATO and WHO. 2. It monitors chemical industry to prevent new weapons from emerging. 3. It provides assistance and protection to States (Parties) against chemical weapons threats. 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”

  • The house of multilaterals

    Why in the News

    The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has held its 26th summit at Bishkek in the Kyrgyz Republic, marking the completion of 25 years since its launch. The Bishkek Declaration expressed deep concern at and condemned the military strikes on Iran, and reaffirmed support for its sovereignty and territorial integrity. It named the United States and Israel as having violated the principles of international law and the UN Charter. The summit was the first since the U.S. and Israel began their war on Iran on 28 February 2026, which killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a number of senior officials. The tension is that a grouping able to speak in one voice against outside powers closed the summit by handing its chair to Pakistan.

    What is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation?

    1. Founding: The SCO was launched on 15 June 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan, together known as the Shanghai Five, as its founding members. India and Pakistan joined the group in 2017.
    2. Institutional machinery: The grouping has 29 charter bodies, including the Council of Heads of State, the Council of Heads of Government, the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, meetings of heads of ministries and agencies, and the Council of National Coordinators, alongside over 40 working mechanisms.
    3. What the machinery is for: These bodies meet through the year and serve as formal channels of communication between member states. They give members a standing consultation route in a sudden conflict or a cross-border natural calamity.
    4. No collective defence: The SCO carries no collective defence component, and several of its members have disputes with one another.

    What did the declaration say on West Asia?

    1. Condolence and a peace process: Member states condoled the assassination of Ali Khamenei and welcomed the peace process supported and mediated by several countries, including SCO member Pakistan.
    2. Indirect backing on the nuclear question: The summit advocated the “inalienable right” of member countries to develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes, which reads as support for Iran in its nuclear negotiations with the U.S.
    3. Palestine named as the root question: The declaration asserted that lasting stability in West Asia can be secured only through a just settlement of the Palestine question.
    4. Silence on Ukraine: Member states maintained silence on Russia’s role in the Ukraine war.

    Where did the declaration push back against the prevailing order?

    1. Missile defence: The declaration held that the “unilateral and unlimited build-up of global missile defence systems by groups of states” has a negative impact on international security and stability.
    2. Satellite Internet: It stated that “unauthorised satellite Internet services on the territory of Member States” violate international law, an evident reference to Starlink supplying Internet services in parts of eastern Ukraine and in Iran.
    3. Trade in local currencies: SCO leaders have periodically called for greater use of local currencies in trade, a practice viewed with scepticism in the West and particularly by the current U.S. leadership.
    4. A bank of its own: The announcement of the establishment of an SCO Development Bank is a further step in that direction.

    What did India press at Bishkek, and where did it diverge?

    1. No double standards on terrorism: The Prime Minister, who led the Indian delegation, spoke on ensuring that there is “no double standards” in fighting terrorism and called for peace and stability in Afghanistan.
    2. India’s Afghanistan record: He highlighted India’s role in supplying relief materials to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan over the years, and the declaration separately called on Afghanistan to form an “inclusive government”.
    3. Connectivity with a condition: He spoke for greater connectivity between the markets of SCO members, and for respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. That formulation is an apparent reference to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which India has criticised for years.
    4. The Belt and Road split: India stayed away from endorsing the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Other member states expressed support for it and advocated alignment between the BRI and the Eurasian Economic Union, a customs union of Russia and four post-Soviet states.
    5. The troika language: The declaration carried strong language on the troika of challenges, “terrorism, separatism and extremism”, and “strongly condemned” terrorism, reflecting India’s concerns and those of other members.

    Why does the next chair create a problem for New Delhi?

    1. Pakistan takes the chair: With the conclusion of the summit, Pakistan has assumed the chair of the SCO, and the group’s next summit will be held in that country.
    2. The level of attendance is undecided: The Ministry of External Affairs has not clarified whether the Prime Minister will travel to Pakistan for it. The External Affairs Minister had visited Islamabad in 2024 for the 23rd meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of Government.
    3. What has intervened since: The Pahalgam terror attack of 22 April 2025, the subsequent Operation Sindoor, and India’s decision to place the Indus Waters Treaty, the 1960 arrangement sharing the Indus system between India and Pakistan, “in abeyance” have further complicated relations.
    4. A decision, not a formality: These developments will be a factor in the level at which the government sends representatives to next year’s summit.

    What has India got out of the grouping since 2017?

    1. A route back to China after Galwan: India and China began to re-engage at the 2024 Kazan Summit in Russia, where the Prime Minister met the Chinese President.
    2. A concrete boundary outcome: A further meeting between the two leaders at Tianjin in 2025 produced an “Early Harvest” proposal on boundary delimitation and the resumption of border trade through three points.
    3. Political will survived a military crisis: The Tianjin meeting showed that both sides retained the will to meet despite the strain following Operation Sindoor in May 2025, when China supported Pakistan as India targeted terror camps in Pakistani territory.
    4. A multilateral setting for hard subjects: The SCO gives the world an opportunity to engage China multilaterally on issues such as freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and gives India and Pakistan a platform for sustained engagement inside a broader framework.
    5. Leverage in an uncertain phase with Washington: With the U.S. President imposing punitive tariffs on Indian goods, the grouping let New Delhi engage all major stakeholders and maintain diplomatic dialogue.

    Challenges to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

    1. Consensus decision-making lets one member stall an agenda: Every substantive document needs unanimity, so an economic or connectivity text is reduced to language all ten members can sign. Eg. India declined to endorse the Belt and Road paragraph at successive summits, and the connectivity language in SCO declarations has stayed generic as a result.
      The Fix: Adopt a consensus-minus-one procedure for economic annexures, so a project document can proceed without binding a dissenting member.
    2. Enlargement has widened the internal contradictions: Membership has grown from the original five to include India and Pakistan in 2017, Iran in 2023 and Belarus in 2024, and each addition brings its own quarrels into the room. Eg. Two pairs of members, India and Pakistan and India and China, carry live disputes with each other.
      The Fix: Tier the agenda, so security cooperation runs among members with no active bilateral dispute and the full membership meets on economic and connectivity subjects.
    3. Members do not share a definition of terrorism: The counter-terrorism arm works from a list members interpret differently, so a summit can condemn terrorism in general and fail on any specific incident. Eg. The SCO defence ministers’ meeting at Qingdao in June 2025 ended without a joint communique after India refused to sign a text that omitted the Pahalgam attack.
      The Fix: Attach a standing annexure of entities already designated by the UN Security Council, so the counter-terrorism text is not renegotiated at every summit.
    4. Connectivity runs through bilateral corridors rather than a common framework: The grouping has no transit and customs instrument of its own, so trade routes are governed by separate bilateral or plurilateral agreements. Eg. The International North-South Transport Corridor, used by India, Iran and Russia, rests on a 2000 agreement signed outside the SCO entirely.
      The Fix: Bring the corridor’s customs, transit and insurance protocols under an SCO transport facilitation agreement, so members trade on one rulebook.

    Conclusion

    The grouping’s value to India has always been access rather than agreement. It is the one table where New Delhi can sit with Beijing and Islamabad without the meeting itself being the story. That access now comes attached to a host India has no ordinary diplomatic traffic with. The decision to watch is the level at which India is represented at the next summit, because it will show whether access is still worth the price of attending.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “Critically examine the aims and objectives of SCO. What importance does it hold for India?”

  • Bihar makes consent mandatory for CBI to probe public servants

    Why in the News

    The Bihar Home Department has issued a notification regulating the jurisdiction of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the State under Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946. It widens the agency’s standing general consent over offences involving employees of the Government of India, central Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) and private persons implicated alongside them. A proviso then removes that automatic authority over public servants appointed in connection with the affairs of the Bihar government and over State-owned, State-controlled and State-aided bodies. The notification supersedes every previous notification on the subject. The result is a two-tier regime. The same agency needs no permission to investigate a central employee in Bihar. It needs case-by-case permission to investigate a State employee.

    What is consent under Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946?

    1. The statute is the CBI’s source of police powers: The CBI cannot ordinarily exercise its powers and jurisdiction inside a State without that State government’s consent.
    2. Two forms of consent: General consent allows the agency to investigate specified offences or categories of cases without seeking permission each time. Specific consent is granted for an individual case.
    3. Consent is tied to a notified offence list: The offences the agency may investigate are notified under Section 3 of the Act, so a State’s general consent operates only over that notified list.

    What does the Bihar notification alter on each side of the line?

    1. The offence list under general consent is widened: Consent now covers offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, the Information Technology Act, 2000, cybercrime, and the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 as amended.
    2. Whom the wider consent covers: It applies to employees of the Government of India, employees of PSUs under the Government of India, and private persons implicated alongside them.
    3. The proviso carves out the State’s own establishment: Prior consent of the Bihar government is mandatory for any probe of public servants appointed in connection with the affairs of the State, and of persons in any corporation, company or bank owned by, controlled by, or receiving financial assistance from the State.
    4. The State decides each request individually: On receiving a proposal from the Delhi Special Police Establishment, the State government considers it and takes a decision on granting powers of investigation case by case.

    Why is the order read as widening the agency’s reach rather than curbing it?

    1. The two-pronged reading inside the police establishment: The stated reading is that the first part of the order lets the CBI investigate cases that were the State’s prerogative, and the second part balances that by requiring the State’s permission.
    2. It is read as a template for other States: The assessment within the agency is that Bihar may have set a precedent for other States, and that the order gives the CBI more scope rather than less.
    3. The consent bar binds the executive alone: The requirement of State consent applies only to executive action by the CBI. It does not restrict a High Court or the Supreme Court from ordering a CBI investigation within a State without the State government’s consent.

    Challenges to the general consent mechanism

    1. Consent is revocable at will and leaves probes suspended: A State can withdraw general consent at any time, and the agency must then seek permission for every fresh case in that State. Eg. West Bengal withdrew its general consent in November 2018 and has required case-by-case permission since.
      The Fix: Prescribe a statutory period within which a State must decide a case-by-case request, with reasons recorded for a refusal.
    2. The agency has no charter of its own: The CBI rests on a 1946 police establishment law and a 1963 executive resolution, so its very constitution has been litigated. Eg. The Gauhati High Court in Navendra Kumar v. Union of India (2013) held the 1963 resolution constituting the CBI to be invalid, and the Supreme Court stayed that order within days.
      The Fix: Enact a dedicated CBI statute fixing its composition, its jurisdiction over notified central offences and the limits of State consent.
    3. Corruption probes against State officials face two separate gates: Consent under Section 6 is only the first permission, and a further approval is needed before an inquiry into a public servant’s official decisions can begin. Eg. Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, inserted in 2018, requires prior approval of the competent authority before any enquiry into a recommendation made or decision taken by a public servant in discharge of official functions.
      The Fix: Run both approvals through a single time-bound window, so a refusal at either gate is recorded once and is appealable.
    4. Selective consent invites a political reading of every case: The State controls access to its own officials, so each grant or refusal is readable as a political act rather than a legal one. Eg. The Supreme Court described the agency as a “caged parrot speaking in its master’s voice” in the coal blocks allocation matter in 2013.
      The Fix: Publish an annual statement of consent requests received, granted, refused and pending, State by State, so the pattern is visible rather than inferred.
    5. Joint cases now straddle two consent regimes: One case involving a central employee and a State public servant is fully open on one accused and permission-dependent on the other, which splits a single investigation. Eg. A corruption case in a centrally funded scheme executed by a State department typically names officials of both.
      The Fix: Provide that where a case includes even one accused covered by general consent, the State decides on the whole case within a fixed period rather than on each accused separately.

    Conclusion

    The notification is in force and it supersedes every earlier consent order in the State. It settles nothing about the underlying arrangement, which lets the same agency be widened and fenced by a single executive order that no legislature debated. What is worth watching is whether other States adopt the split model, and whether Bihar attaches any timeline to the permissions it has now reserved to itself. A permission with no deadline is a refusal that never has to be written down.

    Back2Basics: Central Bureau of Investigation

    1. Constitution: The CBI was set up by a resolution of the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1963, and it is not a statutory body created by its own Act.
    2. Administrative control: It functions under the Department of Personnel and Training in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.
    3. Superintendence is split: For offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, superintendence vests in the Central Vigilance Commission. For all other matters it vests in the Central Government.
    4. Appointment of the Director: The Director is appointed on the recommendation of a committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India or a Supreme Court judge nominated by the Chief Justice.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “The jurisdiction of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) regarding lodging an FIR and conducting probe within a particular State is being questioned by various States. However, the power of the States to withhold consent to the CBI is not absolute. Explain with special reference to the federal character of India.”

More posts