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  • Mental health must anchor public health

    Mental health must anchor public health

    Why in the News

    Mental health has been placed at the centre of India’s public health agenda as a determinant of every other health goal rather than as a separate specialty. India’s Viksit Bharat 2047 vision carries a Healthcare for All pillar built on strengthening Ayushman Bharat, expanding primary healthcare, reducing out of pocket expenditure and promoting preventive care.

    How wide is the gap between mental illness and mental healthcare?

    1. Prevalence: Mental illness affects one in seven Indians, with nearly 200 million people living with a diagnosable mental health condition.
    2. A rising share of total disease burden: The contribution of mental disorders to India’s total disease burden has doubled over the past three decades.
    3. The treatment gap: The national treatment gap stands at 84.5%, so more than four out of five people who need care do not receive it.
    4. Specialist density: India has 0.3 psychiatrists per 1,00,000 population.
    5. The shortage runs across the whole care team: Clinical psychologists, psychiatric social workers and psychiatric nurses are all in significant short supply, the result of decades of insufficient attention to the field.

    Why does neglecting mental health weaken physical health programmes?

    1. The risk runs both ways: Mental disorders significantly raise the risk of chronic disease, and chronic disease in turn raises the risk of mental illness.
    2. Most primary care patients are already affected: More than 60% of people attending primary care facilities have a diagnosable mental disorder.
    3. Specific comorbidities are worse: Rates of anxiety and depression are substantially higher among people living with diabetes, hypertension, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
    4. The cost falls on disease control programmes: Ignoring mental health undermines efforts to control non communicable diseases and to reduce healthcare expenditure.

    What is the economic case for universal screening?

    1. The study: A 2025 modelling study by researchers from the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) and the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) examined integrating universal depression screening into India’s primary healthcare system.
    2. The estimated saving: It put net savings at ₹291 billion to ₹482 billion annually.
    3. The scale relative to the economy: That is equivalent to as much as 0.32% of GDP.
    4. The framing that follows: On those numbers mental health is a human capital investment and an economic growth strategy, not a social welfare issue alone.

    What delivery foundation already exists?

    1. Primary care conversion: More than 1.73 lakh sub centres and primary health centres have been converted into Ayushman Bharat Arogya Mandirs.
    2. Mental health sits inside the service package: Mental healthcare is included among the essential service packages those centres are meant to deliver.
    3. District coverage: The District Mental Health Programme now covers more than 90% of districts.
    4. A national tele service: Tele-MANAS (Tele Mental Health Assistance and Networking Across States), launched in 2022, has expanded across all States and Union Territories.

    What three priorities does scaling this foundation require?

    1. Make frontline workers the backbone of community mental healthcare: India’s one million Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) form the world’s largest community health workforce, and with training and supervision they can identify, support and refer individuals with common mental disorders. Validated screening tools, digital learning platforms and performance linked incentives are the levers that would scale the model. Eg. Evidence from Madhya Pradesh and other States shows ASHAs already performing that role.
    2. Invest systematically in community based care: Trained community workers bridge the gap between awareness and treatment, particularly in rural and underserved populations, and these approaches improve access while reducing costs. Eg. Zimbabwe’s Friendship Bench, Atmiyata in India and programmes run by The Live Love Laugh Foundation all operate on this model.
    3. Complete the promise of financial protection: Extending outpatient mental health benefits under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana would cover the continuous care that mental illness actually needs. Strengthening implementation of insurance parity under the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 would make that care affordable for people currently going without it.

    Challenges to integrating mental health into primary care

    1. Stigma stops care seeking before any service is reached: A diagnosis treated as a family reputational risk rather than as an illness keeps the patient out of the system entirely. Eg. Tele-MANAS was built as an anonymous telephone service precisely because anonymity lowers a barrier that in person help seeking raises.
      The Fix: Fund sustained district level anti stigma communication through the same channels that already carry immunisation and tuberculosis messaging.
    2. District coverage is counted in districts, not in staff: Sanctioned psychiatrist, psychologist and psychiatric social worker posts at district level frequently remain vacant, so a covered district may still have no functioning team. Eg. District hospitals must recruit specialists against private practice pay, which is why the posts stay open.
      The Fix: Allow districts to contract trained mid level providers against unfilled specialist posts rather than carry the vacancy.
    3. The rights framework depends on authorities that were slow to appear: The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 requires every State to constitute a State Mental Health Authority and to register mental health establishments, and several States were late in doing so. Eg. The Act’s advance directive and nominated representative provisions cannot be exercised without a functioning State authority.
      The Fix: Tie a State’s central mental health funding to a constituted and staffed State Mental Health Authority.
    4. Psychotropic medicines are not reliably stocked below district level: Treatment breaks when a patient stabilised at a district hospital cannot refill medication at the primary health centre. Eg. Antipsychotics and mood stabilisers sit outside the routine stock lists many sub district facilities actually maintain.
      The Fix: Place the core psychotropic list on the essential drug list procured for every Ayushman Bharat Arogya Mandir.
    5. Suicide prevention has no single accountable owner: Prevention needs police, education, agriculture and health departments to act together, and none of them is answerable for the outcome. Eg. The National Suicide Prevention Strategy, released in 2022, set a target of reducing suicide mortality by 10% by 2030 and relies on voluntary departmental convergence.
      The Fix: Give the strategy a named nodal authority in each State reporting against annual targets.

    Conclusion

    Mental health is not a missing programme in India. It is a programme that exists at scale and does not reach people. The binding constraint is who delivers care at the point a person first presents, and that is a workforce question before it is a financing question. Closing the gap therefore turns on whether frontline and community workers are trained, supervised and paid to do the work, and on whether the payment system follows the patient out of the hospital. Until those two move together, coverage will keep expanding without treatment expanding with it.

    Back2Basics

    1. What it is: Tele-MANAS is a national round the clock tele mental health service providing free counselling and psychiatric support by telephone, run under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
    2. Origin: It was announced in the Union Budget for 2022-23 as the National Tele Mental Health Programme and launched in October 2022.
    3. How it is organised: It works in two tiers, with State level cells staffed by trained counsellors and a second tier of specialists and district programme resources for escalation.
    4. Nodal institution: NIMHANS is the nodal centre for the programme, with technical support from the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore.

    [2024] With reference to the ‘Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan’, consider the following statements:

    1. This scheme guarantees a minimum package of antenatal care services to women in their second and third trimesters of pregnancy and six months post-delivery health care service in any government health facility.

    2. Under this scheme, private sector health care providers of certain specialities can volunteer to provide services at nearby government health facilities.

    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

  • SC orders oversight of Bar Council decisions

    SC orders oversight of Bar Council decisions

    Why in the News

    The Supreme Court has held that the Bar Council of India (BCI) chairperson is serving only as a pro tem office holder whose term ends with the next election.

    What is the Bar Council of India?

    1. Statutory regulator of the legal profession: The BCI is constituted under the Advocates Act, 1961 to regulate advocates, legal education and professional conduct across India.
    2. Its legitimacy runs through bar elections: Its members are elected by the State Bar Councils from among their own members, so a lapsed election cycle at the State level freezes the central body too.
    3. The two law officers sit on it by office: The Attorney General and the Solicitor General are permanent ex officio members of the Council.
    4. A continuity provision guards against a vacuum: The proviso to Section 4(3) of the Advocates Act, 1961 allows the last chairperson or vice chairperson to continue until a new Council is in place.

    Why is the chairperson’s continuance in question?

    1. The Rules cap the term at two years: Rule 12(2), Chapter I, Part II of the Bar Council of India Rules fixes the maximum tenure of the BCI chairperson at two years, and the current term began on 17 April 2025.
    2. A notification stretched it to 2030: A gazette notification of 21 April 2025 notified the tenure of the chairperson and vice chairperson until 16 April 2030.
    3. A notification cannot override the parent statute: The Bench observed that a notification cannot go beyond the Rules or empower a body to grant itself additional tenure.
    4. Continuity has run for over a decade: Petitioners questioned an uninterrupted term as BCI chairperson of more than 12 years since November 2014.
    5. The anti vacuum proviso has been used to postpone elections: Petitioners argued that a provision meant to prevent an administrative vacuum has instead been used to avoid holding fresh elections and to perpetuate the existing office holders.

    What allegations were placed before the Court?

    1. A trust holding the Council’s assets: Petitioners questioned the formation of the BCI Pearl First Trust in 2020, in which the chairperson and other BCI office bearers are described as “permanent managing trustees”.
    2. The earlier trust’s finances were moved into it: The financial assets and incomes of the earlier BCI Trust were transferred to the new Trust.
    3. Trusteeship outlasts elected office: The office bearers would continue as permanent managing trustees even after their Council tenures expire, which the Bench questioned as elected members becoming permanent trustees beyond their capacity.
    4. A land arrangement with a State government: A tie up between the Trust and the Goa government proposes a university on 56 acres of land in that State.
    5. Expenditure on felicitations: Counsel described the financial expenditures pulled from BCI records on felicitations, running into crores, as “jolting”.
    6. Concentration of power over successive terms: Counsel for the petitioners argued that what the record shows over the years is a concentration of powers in the same office bearers.

    What did the NALSAR episode expose?

    1. An enrolment ban aimed at one graduating batch: The BCI made an aborted attempt to bar the professional enrolment of the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) batch of 2026.
    2. The trigger was student dissent: The students had objected to the Chief Justice of India attending their convocation, dissenting against oral remarks that termed youths “cockroaches” and “parasites”.
    3. The reaction spread across national law universities: Students of the National Law Universities at Delhi and Bengaluru expressed solidarity with their NALSAR counterparts.
    4. The Court itself backed the protest: The Chief Justice of India supported the students’ right to protest, and questions arose over whether the chairperson had acted on his own.
    5. The measure was withdrawn: An apology was eventually issued and the enrolment bar did not take effect.

    Why has the Court chosen supervision over removal?

    1. The Bench declined to adjudicate the allegations now: The Court said it did not want to encourage “shadow boxing” around the allegations at this stage.
    2. The stated ground is institutional: It said it would intervene to maintain the “institutional integrity and credibility” of the BCI until the next bar body elections.
    3. Routine functioning is left undisturbed: The incumbent office bearers continue pro tem so that the Council’s day to day functioning is not interrupted.
    4. The check is prior and external, not appellate: Policy decisions now require prior notice to the two law officers and an invitation to them to participate, rather than review after a decision is taken.
    5. The regulator did not resist: Counsel for the BCI told the Court they welcomed the direction to take the concurrence of the highest law officers in policy matters.

    What does the election timetable require?

    1. Women members are co opted first: The Chief Justices of the High Courts must complete the co option of two women members to the State Bar Councils within a fortnight.
    2. Composition is notified next: Each State Bar Council must then notify its new composition within a week.
    3. Office bearers and BCI representatives follow: The newly constituted State Bar Councils must elect their chairperson, vice chairperson, other office bearers and one representative to the BCI within three weeks of notification of their composition.
    4. The central body is reconstituted last: The BCI is formed from those State representatives, so the pro tem arrangement ends only once the State level cycle finishes.

    Challenges to the Bar Council of India

    1. Elections are not self executing: Nothing in the statutory scheme compels the Council to go to the polls on schedule, so a continuity proviso can substitute for a mandate indefinitely. Eg. The present dispute reached the Supreme Court only because petitioners moved it, not because any internal trigger fired.
      The Fix: Write a fixed election calendar into the Advocates Act, 1961, with the continuity proviso lapsing automatically on a stated date.
    2. The regulator writes the rules it is bound by: The BCI frames the Rules governing tenure, enrolment and legal education, and no external body vets them before they take effect. Eg. The instrument extending the chairperson’s tenure was issued by the Council itself.
      The Fix: Require prior publication and a stated objection window for any Rule affecting tenure, enrolment or recognition.
    3. Legal education answers to two regulators: BCI control over law school recognition sits alongside the University Grants Commission’s authority over degree granting universities, so institutions face two sets of standards. Eg. National Law Universities are created by State Acts and funded as universities, yet their graduates’ right to practise depends on BCI enrolment.
      The Fix: Constitute a single joint standard setting body for legal education, with the BCI confined to professional entry.
    4. Discipline moves slowly by design: Complaints against advocates go to State Bar Council disciplinary committees, and a case not decided within a year transfers to the BCI, which lengthens the process rather than shortening it. Eg. Section 36B of the Advocates Act, 1961 provides for that transfer on the expiry of one year.
      The Fix: Publish disposal timelines and pendency data for every disciplinary committee, State and central.
    5. Entry testing does not feed back into approval: The All India Bar Examination tests an individual’s eligibility to practise, and it does not evaluate the law college that produced the candidate. Eg. Colleges retain BCI approval regardless of how their graduates perform in that examination.
      The Fix: Link a law college’s continued approval to the disclosed performance of its graduates in the Bar examination.

    Conclusion

    The Court has not removed the incumbent. It has bounded him. A regulator whose elections had lapsed is now supervised by the two law officers who already sat on it by office, and its bar elections have been put on a calendar the Court set. The unresolved part is structural. Judicial supervision arrived because the profession’s own rules carried no consequence for a Council that simply did not go to the polls. The marker to watch is whether the fresh Councils are constituted on that timetable, or the interim arrangement outlasts it.

    [2022] With reference to India, consider the following statements :

    1. Government law officers and legal firms are recognised as advocates, but corporate lawyers and patent attorneys are excluded from recognition as advocates.

    2. Bar Councils have the power to lay down the rules relating to legal education and recognition of law colleges.

    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

  • Cauvery needs a distress-sharing pact

    Cauvery needs a distress-sharing pact

    Why in the News

    The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister has opened the sluice gates of the Mettur Dam, giving some relief to Cauvery Delta farmers after a delayed irrigation season. The Tamil Nadu government has ascribed the delay to a deficit in the southwest monsoon and to Karnataka’s failure to honour its water sharing obligation under the Supreme Court’s 2018 verdict.

    What is the Cauvery Management Authority?

    1. What it was set up to do: The Authority was constituted to oversee the implementation of the Supreme Court’s 2018 verdict on the sharing of the Cauvery’s waters.
    2. Its statutory basis: It was created under the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956, following the Court’s direction that a scheme be framed to give effect to the award.
    3. How it operates: A regulation committee assesses storage, inflows and crop water requirements and advises the Authority, which then directs releases between the basin States.
    4. Where it works: The Authority has functioned during normal monsoon years, when the allocation the verdict fixed can simply be applied.

    Why did this year’s Mettur schedule slip?

    1. The normal calendar: In a normal year the dam opens on 12 June and its gates are shut on 28 January, giving the region’s agriculturists a 230 day irrigation window.
    2. The schedule is not self executing: That calendar is contingent on the monsoon and on the release of water in the Cauvery’s upstream by Karnataka.
    3. What went wrong this year: The Tamil Nadu government attributed the delay to the southwest monsoon deficit and to Karnataka not meeting its release obligation.
    4. What the opening actually buys: With the rainfall deficit narrowing in August, the Tamil Nadu government has leeway to release water for 45 days, well short of a full season.

    What does the 2018 verdict not settle?

    1. No distress sharing formula: The Court did not codify a formula for water sharing in years when the rains play truant, so a deficit year has no rule to fall back on.
    2. The sustainability direction did not bind: The Court’s emphasis on sustainable water use was lost on the two States, which continued to plan as though the allocation were guaranteed.
    3. The gap shows up on the first bad monsoon: The dispute flared again in 2023, the first below par monsoon after 2018, and the same pattern has repeated this year.
    4. Litigation is the default, not the exception: Tamil Nadu has said it will continue legal efforts to secure its share, which returns the question to a forum that has already declined to write a distress rule.

    Why has the Mekedatu proposal deepened the deadlock?

    1. The proposal: Karnataka’s push for the Mekedatu Dam on the river has reignited old fears downstream.
    2. Karnataka’s case: The Karnataka government argues the dam would primarily serve Bengaluru’s water needs while allowing better regulation of releases.
    3. Why it has not landed: That argument has found no takers in Tamil Nadu, where a storage structure upstream reads as an instrument of control rather than of regulation.
    4. The underlying shift: The Cauvery today has to meet the competing demands of agriculture and urbanisation, and the two States sit on opposite sides of that shift.

    What would a negotiated settlement have to contain?

    1. A move away from the courtroom: Rather than lean on the judiciary, the Cauvery dependent States would do well to come together and plan for the efficient use of the river’s waters.
    2. Demand side measures: Solutions range from disincentivising water intensive crops to encouraging decentralised water management.
    3. The expertise required: Any such plan will need inputs from hydrologists, economists, agricultural scientists and farmers’ organisations.
    4. The political precondition: Representatives of the two States will need to sit together, understand each other’s fears and shed confrontationist attitudes.

    Challenges to the Cauvery Management Authority

    1. No enforcement machinery of its own: The Authority depends on the two State governments to execute its release directions and holds no independent field administration. Eg. Its directions in the deficit year of 2023 were contested by Karnataka and taken back to the Supreme Court.
      The Fix: Give the Authority operational control over gate operations at specified control points for the duration of a declared distress period.
    2. Storage and inflow data are State reported and contested: Each State submits its own figures on realisable flows, so the Authority arbitrates between rival datasets before it can decide anything. Eg. The two States have filed conflicting inflow estimates for the same periods at Biligundlu, the inter State measuring point.
      The Fix: Place telemetry at every control point under a jointly audited third party gauge network publishing real time readings.
    3. Groundwater sits outside the allocation: The award divides surface flows alone, so competing extraction continues unregulated on both sides of the border. Eg. The Central Ground Water Board classifies several assessment units in the Cauvery basin as over exploited.
      The Fix: Notify a joint basin wide extraction cap alongside the surface allocation, so a shortfall in releases is not simply pumped out of the aquifer.
    4. Electoral cycles set State positions: Water release becomes an electoral question in both States, which raises the political cost of any concession to the point where none is offered. Eg. Assembly resolutions and shutdowns in Karnataka have followed release orders in successive dispute years.
      The Fix: Shift the release decision to a pre agreed rule curve triggered by reservoir storage, so no government has to announce a discretionary concession.

    Conclusion

    A river shared by two States needs a rule for the bad years, not only for the good ones. The Cauvery has one for the good years, and every deficit season is therefore litigated afresh. The forward step is a negotiated distress sharing pact between the basin States, agreed before the next failed monsoon rather than during it, and covering the cities as well as the fields. Until such a pact exists, each shortfall will keep arriving at a court that has already declined to supply the formula the States will not write for themselves.

    Back2Basics: Mettur Dam

    1. Where it is: The dam is built across the Cauvery at Mettur in the Salem district of Tamil Nadu, at the point where the river enters the plains.
    2. When it was built: It was completed in 1934 and is one of the oldest large dams in India.
    3. What it holds: Its reservoir is known as the Stanley Reservoir, and it serves irrigation, drinking water and hydroelectric generation.
    4. What it commands: Releases from Mettur irrigate the Cauvery delta districts, which is why the date on which its gates open sets the cropping calendar for the region.

    [2013, GS2, 10 marks] Constitutional mechanisms to resolve the inter-state water disputes have failed to address and solve the problems. Is the failure due to structural or process inadequacy or both? Discuss.”

  • Private players seek ‘green energy’ status for N-power to raise funds

    Private players seek ‘green energy’ status for N-power to raise funds

    Why in the News

    Private players have sought green energy status for nuclear power so that nuclear projects can access green bonds, green loans and blended financing. The demand was made at a stakeholder consultation held by NITI Aayog, attended by around 150 participants from 60 organisations. India opened its tightly regulated civil nuclear sector to private participation last year and targets 100 gigawatt electric (GWe) of nuclear capacity by 2047, a target that needs at least $228 billion of investment. The instruments that supply the cheapest climate capital are closed to the technology, because the Ministry of Finance’s Sovereign Green Bond Framework does not include nuclear energy.

    What are India’s green finance frameworks?

    1. Sovereign Green Bond Framework: Maintained by the Ministry of Finance, it defines which project categories the proceeds of a sovereign green bond may be applied to, and nuclear energy is not among them.
    2. RBI framework for green deposits: It sets the conditions under which a bank or deposit taking institution may raise and deploy deposits labelled green.
    3. SEBI framework for green debt securities: It governs disclosure and use of proceeds for green bonds issued in the Indian securities market.

    Why do private players want nuclear classified as green energy?

    1. Access to a cheaper pool of capital: Green status would open green bonds, green loans and blended financing schemes to nuclear projects, which is the specific relief sought.
    2. The three frameworks are the gatekeepers: Industry participants asked for a review of all three, because exclusion from any one of them closes a distinct funding channel.
    3. The multilateral position is already moving: The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are reviewing their own restrictions on nuclear investments, which is the precedent cited for a domestic review.

    What is the infrastructure status demand, and where does it stand?

    1. The demand: Private players separately suggested that nuclear power projects be accorded infrastructure status.
    2. The official reading: In NITI Aayog’s view nuclear power is already covered under the infrastructure framework, because the Harmonised Master List of Infrastructure Sub-sectors maintained by the Department of Economic Affairs includes electricity generation.
    3. What is actually being asked for: The gap is one of certainty rather than of category, and a clarification in this regard may be needed.

    What else must fall into place for the 100 GWe target?

    1. The rules are not final: The final rules under the SHANTI Act, the statute governing the opening of the sector, are likely to be ready in the next two to three months, with stakeholder consultations on the draft rules currently underway.
    2. Project timelines: The gestation period of nuclear power projects in India needs to be reduced if capacity is to be added at the pace the target implies.
    3. Site selection is a binding constraint: Identifying sites will be a major challenge as capacity scales, and site selection committees are working with the States.
    4. Fuel security beyond uranium: Thorium based technologies need to be developed to strengthen India’s long term energy security.

    Challenges to green energy status for nuclear power

    1. Taxonomies elsewhere have attached conditions rather than granting blanket inclusion: Where nuclear has been admitted to a green classification, it has come with waste and safety conditions that projects must meet continuously. Eg. The European Union’s taxonomy admitted nuclear only as a transitional activity with disposal facility and accident tolerant fuel conditions.
      The Fix: Draft any Indian inclusion as a conditional category tied to disclosed waste management and decommissioning provisioning, so the label survives investor scrutiny.
    2. Green bond investors price on verifiability, not on carbon content alone: A large share of green mandates screen out nuclear by policy, so a taxonomy change does not by itself create demand. Eg. Several sovereign and pension fund mandates exclude nuclear on exclusion lists set independently of national taxonomies.
      The Fix: Pair inclusion with a certified external review of use of proceeds, so a nuclear tranche can be assessed on the same evidence as a renewable one.
    3. Liability exposure sits ahead of the financing question: Supplier liability under India’s civil nuclear liability law has deterred private and foreign participation for over a decade. Eg. The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 gives the operator a right of recourse against the supplier, which foreign vendors have cited as a barrier.
      The Fix: Settle the recourse position by statute or by a capped insurance pool before private capital is asked to price a project.
    4. Long gestation makes debt tenors mismatch: Nuclear construction periods run well beyond the tenor of most Indian debt instruments, so refinancing risk sits with the developer. Eg. Domestic bank lending to power projects is typically structured over tenors far shorter than a nuclear build cycle.
      The Fix: Create a dedicated long tenor refinancing window for nuclear projects, on the model used for other long gestation infrastructure.
    5. Public acceptance decides sites, not policy: Land acquisition and local consent have delayed nuclear sites regardless of the financing available. Eg. Protests at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu delayed commissioning of the plant by years.
      The Fix: Build a statutory local benefit sharing entitlement into site notification, so host districts hold a stake before construction begins.

    Conclusion

    The nuclear expansion has moved past the question of whether private capital is allowed in and reached the question of what that capital will cost. A taxonomy is the cheapest lever the government holds, because reclassification requires no new outlay and changes the interest rate on every subsequent rupee borrowed. Two decision points are dated and worth watching: the final rules under the SHANTI Act in the next two to three months, and whether the Ministry of Finance, the RBI and SEBI open their frameworks for review together or separately.

    Back2Basics: Harmonised Master List of Infrastructure Sub-sectors

    1. What it is: A list maintained by the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance that defines which activities count as infrastructure for policy purposes.
    2. Why the label matters: Inclusion gives a project access to infrastructure lending norms, longer tenor bank finance and easier external commercial borrowing.
    3. How it is organised: Activities are grouped under broad categories such as transport, energy, water and sanitation, communication and social and commercial infrastructure.
    4. How it changes: An institutional mechanism under the Department of Economic Affairs reviews and updates the list, with electricity generation already among the listed sub sectors.

    [2018, GS3, 15 marks] With growing energy needs should India keep on expanding its nuclear energy programme? Discuss the facts and fears associated with nuclear energy.”

  • Govt rejects GDP criticism, expects ‘informed debate’ once methods understood

    Govt rejects GDP criticism, expects ‘informed debate’ once methods understood

    Why in the News

    The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has issued a six point rebuttal asserting that its methods and its recently released quarterly numbers are correct. Data showed India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 7.8 per cent in April to June, significantly higher than the Reserve Bank of India’s forecast of 7 per cent. Economists, former bureaucrats and politicians then questioned the figure, one claim putting nominal growth at 2.6 per cent and real growth “close to 0”. The dispute turns on a single technical point. A number from the old 2011-12 base series and a number from the new 2022-23 base series are being compared with each other, and the ministry’s position is that they cannot be.

    What is double deflation?

    1. Gross Value Added, first: To find the value added by a sector, the value of the inputs it uses is subtracted from the value of the output it produces. This gives Gross Value Added (GVA) in current prices, or nominal terms.
    2. Deflating twice: To reach real GVA, the output value and the input value are each adjusted by their own inflation rate rather than by a single common rate.
    3. Why a single rate distorts: Deflating inputs and outputs by the same number is problematic when input and output prices change at different rates, which is exactly when a sector’s real growth is hardest to read.

    What did the criticism of the quarterly numbers claim?

    1. The deflator objection: Some economists were unconvinced by the figure used to deflate the manufacturing sector’s GVA in current prices to arrive at the inflation adjusted estimate.
    2. The growth rate claim: A former Finance Secretary argued that nominal GDP growth for April to June should be 2.6 per cent, and in real terms close to zero.
    3. The allegation of manipulation: The same critic claimed that April to June 2025 nominal GDP was revised down from Rs 86 lakh crore to Rs 80 lakh crore in order to make growth in April to June 2026 look better.

    How did the statistics ministry answer the comparison?

    1. The two figures sit in different series: The ministry pointed out that the Rs 86.05 lakh crore figure belongs to the old GDP series, which had 2011-12 as its base year.
    2. The revision has a stated cause: The move to Rs 80.00 lakh crore in the new series arose from successive revisions to the GDP series following the change in base year, the incorporation of improved data sources and methodologies, and the updation of available indicators.
    3. The inference is rejected: The ministry held that it is “incorrect to interpret the difference as a deliberate downward revision of last year’s GDP to mechanically increase the current year’s growth rate”.
    4. The method objection: One cannot compare GDP numbers drawn from different series to arrive at a growth rate, which is what the critic had done.

    What changed in the new GDP series?

    1. A new base year: The series with 2022-23 as its base was released in February this year, bringing in new sources of data and several methodological changes in the calculation of GDP.
    2. Long sought changes: Those changes include ones that economists and international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been calling for over several years.
    3. Double deflation extended to all sectors: Before the new series, MoSPI applied double deflation only to agriculture and to mining and quarrying, deflating every other sector’s inputs and outputs by the same number using the Wholesale Price Index and the Consumer Price Index.
    4. A finer deflator set: The Producer Price Index now supplies more than 300 deflators for different parts of GDP, up from around 180 under the old series, which makes the new estimates more accurate.
    5. Other inputs behind the revisions: The updated Index of Industrial Production series and the Banking Services Price Index released earlier this year also fed the revisions, including the January to March growth rate being raised from 7.8 per cent to 8.6 per cent.

    Conclusion

    The disagreement is not about whether the economy grew. It is about whether a statistical office is entitled to change its base year, its data sources and its deflation method at the same time, and then publish a growth rate against a back series it has itself rebuilt. The ministry’s answer is that comparability lives within a series and not across two of them. The test of that answer is transparency, and what to watch is whether the full back series on the new base is published in a form that lets an outside statistician reproduce the quarterly numbers independently.

    Back2Basics: Producer Price Index

    1. What it measures: A Producer Price Index tracks the average change over time in prices received by domestic producers for their output, measured at the factory gate.
    2. How it differs from the Wholesale Price Index: It excludes trade margins, transport costs and indirect taxes, so it reflects the producer’s own realisation rather than the price at which a good changes hands in wholesale markets.
    3. Why it suits deflation: It covers services as well as goods, which a wholesale price measure does not, so it can deflate sectors a goods only index cannot reach.
    4. Status in India: India has worked towards a PPI on the recommendation of an official working group, with the wholesale index historically serving as the main producer side price measure.

    “[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.”

  • Forex swap rakes in over $136 bn

    Forex swap rakes in over $136 bn

    Why in the News

    Foreign exchange inflows under the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) special swap facility have crossed $136 billion, surpassing all projections. The facility was introduced on 8 June this year to deal with forex outflows caused by high oil prices and by the exit of Foreign Portfolio Investors from the stock market. The task has now shifted from raising dollars to managing what they release. Every dollar brought in creates rupee liquidity in the banking system, and the RBI has already begun absorbing it to stop call rates falling below the policy rate.

    What is the RBI’s special USD-INR swap facility?

    1. What it does: The facility lets a bank exchange dollars raised abroad for rupees with the RBI at a concessional rate, with a commitment to reverse the exchange at a future date.
    2. What it covers: It applies to three instruments, Foreign Currency Non-Resident (Bank) or FCNR(B) deposits, Overseas Foreign Currency Borrowings (OFCBs), and External Commercial Borrowings (ECBs).
    3. Why it was opened: It was designed to attract fresh foreign currency at a time when the rupee and India’s reserves were under pressure from oil prices and portfolio outflows.

    Where did the $136 billion come from?

    1. The total mobilised: A total of $1,36,377 million has been mobilised, according to data released by the RBI.
    2. FCNR(B) deposits dominate: Deposits by overseas Indians accounted for $1,27,226 million, the overwhelming share of the mobilisation.
    3. Corporate borrowing contributed little: OFCBs brought in $5,260 million and ECBs a further $3,891 million.

    Why does the RBI’s short forward dollar position matter now?

    1. What a short forward position is: Short forward dollars are currency derivative contracts in which the RBI commits to sell dollars at a future date at a predetermined rate.
    2. Why the RBI built one: The instrument defends the rupee without drawing down spot reserves immediately, so the headline reserve figure holds while the commitment sits in the forward book.
    3. The size of the book: The RBI carries an outstanding short forward position of $137 billion, close to the entire mobilisation under the swap facility.
    4. How the two connect: If the RBI decides not to roll over those positions, it may use the excess reserves generated from the FCNR(B) scheme to deliver the dollars it has contracted to sell.

    What does the inflow do to domestic liquidity?

    1. Rupees enter as dollars arrive: Delivering on the forward book absorbs rupee liquidity from the banking system, which is why the RBI has begun draining it before call rates slip under the policy rate.
    2. The surplus is large: Banking system liquidity stood at Rs 6.5 lakh crore, and the RBI may absorb part of it so short term money supply does not feed into inflation and borrowing costs stay aligned with the policy rate.
    3. Banks gain a cheap funding base: In the immediate term banks are inclined to use the inflow to strengthen their asset side books and cut their dependence on wholesale deposits.
    4. The longer use is credit: Over a longer horizon the same liquidity can be deployed to fund credit growth.

    Conclusion

    The facility has done more than it was designed to do, and the constraint has moved from the external account to the domestic money market. The decision that now matters is whether the central bank rolls its forward commitments over or lets them run off against the deposits it has raised. Rolling over keeps the liquidity in the system; delivering drains it. That choice, and the pace at which it is made, is what will determine short term rates over the coming quarter.

    Back2Basics: External Commercial Borrowings

    1. What they are: ECBs are loans raised by eligible Indian entities from recognised non resident lenders, denominated in foreign currency or in rupees.
    2. Forms they take: They cover bank loans, buyers’ and suppliers’ credit, and instruments such as foreign currency convertible bonds.
    3. How they are regulated: The RBI governs them under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, through the automatic route up to prescribed limits and the approval route beyond them.
    4. What the framework controls: The rules set the minimum average maturity, the all in cost ceiling and the end uses for which the borrowed money may be applied.

    [2022] With reference to the Indian economy, consider the following statements :

    1. An increase in Nominal Effective Exchange Rate (NEER) indicates the appreciation of rupee.

    2. An increase in the Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) indicates an improvement in trade competitiveness.

    3. An increasing trend in domestic inflation relative to inflation in other countries is likely to cause an increasing divergence between NEER and REER.

    Which of the above statements are correct ?

    (a) 1 and 2 only

    (b) 2 and 3 only

    (c) 1 and 3 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

  • Chinese overcapacity is a problem for the world

    Chinese overcapacity is a problem for the world

    Why in the News

    Chinese manufacturing overcapacity is being framed as a global structural challenge rather than a bilateral trade irritant. China is the world’s largest trade surplus economy, with a surplus valued at $1.2 trillion, and accounts for roughly 30 per cent of global manufacturing output. Cheap Chinese supply lowers input and consumer prices everywhere it lands. The same supply also removes the space in which importing economies would build their own manufacturing capability. What is contested is whether import dependence on the world’s most competitive producer thwarts capability building and upgradation in manufacturing value chains.

    What is Chinese overcapacity?

    1. Capacity built beyond profitable demand: Chinese industry carries production capacity well past what commercial returns justify, sustained by state support rather than by market profitability.
    2. The subsidy and credit mechanism: State backed industrial subsidies and a state directed financial system supplying cheap credit allow firms to expand without being concerned about profits and returns against their international competitors.
    3. How it shows up in prices: Firms operating on razor thin or negative margins run zero sum price wars at home and abroad to expand market share, producing a self defeating race to the bottom.

    How did China build an “absolute advantage” in manufacturing?

    1. The advantage is not price alone: China’s success reflects scale, supplier networks, infrastructure, technological capabilities and state supported industrial ecosystems, not only low cost production.
    2. Breadth of the product range: The same base manufactures textiles, machinery, electronics, solar photovoltaic (solar PV) modules, batteries and electric vehicles (EVs) at competitive prices.

    What does China’s low cost supply give the rest of the world?

    1. Gains accrue to rich and poor economies alike: China’s rise has produced significant economic gains for both developed and developing countries.
    2. Cheaper inputs, not only cheaper consumption: Low cost Chinese goods reduce the prices of consumer goods, machinery, clean technology products and intermediate inputs.
    3. A development effect: Those cheaper inputs support industrial transformation and infrastructure development in developing economies.

    Why does the same cheap supply weaken manufacturing in developing countries?

    1. Asymmetric competitive pressure: Producers in developing countries face difficulty competing with Chinese producers, creating what is termed a “late industrialisation dilemma”.
    2. Upstream capability erodes: The pressure gradually weakens both the incentives and the capabilities to foster domestic upstream industries.
    3. The question is dependence, not efficiency: The issue is not whether Chinese imports are efficient and competitive, but whether import dependence blocks capability building and upgradation in manufacturing value chains.

    How is China’s dominance reshaping global value chains?

    1. Control of critical nodes: In the EV sector China controls 65 per cent of lithium refining, 70 per cent of cobalt refining and over 80 per cent of battery manufacturing.
    2. A position across multiple stages: China occupies a dominant and critical position across multiple stages of manufacturing value chain networks, which is transforming the geography of those networks.
    3. The paradox of dominance: The most competitive supplier in the system is also the source of strategic vulnerability for every country that relies excessively on a single supplier.

    What does Chinese overcapacity mean for India’s self reliance?

    1. Import concentration: China accounts for roughly 17 per cent of India’s imports, with dependence concentrated in solar PV modules, telecom components, electronics and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).
    2. The MSME layer takes the hit: Chinese imports have affected micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) led domestic manufacturing, undermining India’s manufacturing imperatives.
    3. A component bottleneck: India’s electronics industry faces a shortage of printed circuit boards because of geopolitical headwinds and supply chain impediments, which affects downstream manufacturing.
    4. The pincer dilemma: Chinese export curbs could restrict India’s access to key inputs such as solar wafers, cells and batteries. India’s Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for solar and EVs is at the same time challenged at the World Trade Organization (WTO) for violating local content rules.

    Challenges to rebalancing Chinese overcapacity

    1. No effective multilateral discipline on industrial subsidies: Trade rules reach export and local content subsidies, and reach unreported state support and cheap state bank credit only weakly. Eg. China’s subsidy notifications to the WTO have been repeatedly counter notified as incomplete by the United States, the European Union and Japan.
      The Fix: Negotiate a subsidy transparency code with automatic counter notification, so unreported support carries a rebuttable presumption of injury.
    2. Rebalancing depends on Chinese household demand, which stays weak: Household consumption remains under 40 per cent of Chinese output, so domestic absorption cannot take the place of exports. Eg. The property sector downturn after 2021 cut household wealth and pushed precautionary saving higher.
      The Fix: Tie any coordinated adjustment to verifiable social security and household income targets rather than to currency movement alone.
    3. Tariffs shift trade rather than retire capacity: Duties raise the price of arriving goods and leave the surplus plants that produced them in operation. Eg. Duties on Chinese solar cells were followed by assembly routed through Southeast Asia, later covered by circumvention findings.
      The Fix: Pair every trade remedy with rules of origin and value addition thresholds, so relief is not defeated by transshipment.
    4. Alternative suppliers do not exist at the required scale: Refining and processing capacity outside China takes years to build even where the ore is available. Eg. Indonesia’s nickel processing expansion was itself built largely with Chinese capital and technology.
      The Fix: Fund refining and processing capacity through pooled offtake guarantees among importing countries rather than through single country subsidies.
    5. No forum acts on the surplus itself: Existing instruments discipline individual programmes and individual shipments, not aggregate industrial capacity. Eg. WTO subsidy disputes are brought against named schemes one at a time.
      The Fix: Open a global dialogue on gradually rebalancing the Chinese economy in partnership with the United States and other major economies, on the pattern of the 1985 Plaza Accord.

    Conclusion

    The argument over Chinese overcapacity is not an argument about efficiency. Cheap supply and domestic capability building pull against each other, and no importing economy has yet found a way to hold both. The unresolved question is whether a surplus economy will accept an adjustment that no external rule obliges it to accept.

    What is Global Trade Governance?

    1. About: Global trade governance is the body of rules framing trade between nations, administered mainly through the World Trade Organization, founded in 1995 as successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
    2. Membership: The WTO has 166 members covering over 98 per cent of world trade.
    3. Rationale: The system exists to make market access predictable and to lower barriers. Average industrial tariffs fell from around 40 per cent in 1947 to about 4 per cent today.
    4. Core principles: Most Favoured Nation treatment requires favourable terms offered to one member to extend to all, and National Treatment bars discrimination against imported goods once they enter a market.

    Laws and Rules Governing Global Trade Governance

    1. Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, 1995: Classifies subsidies and permits an affected member to impose countervailing duties where a subsidised import causes injury.
    2. Agreement on Trade Related Investment Measures, 1995: Prohibits investment conditions that discriminate against imports, including local content requirements.
    3. Customs Tariff Act, 1975: Sections 9 and 9A give India its statutory power to levy countervailing and anti dumping duties.
    4. Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992: Provides the legal basis for India’s import and export policy and for the Director General of Foreign Trade.

    Challenges in Global Trade Governance

    1. The dispute settlement tier is paralysed: Appeals cannot be heard, so a losing member can appeal into a void and avoid compliance. Eg. The Appellate Body has been non functional since December 2019 after appointments were blocked.
      The Fix: Restore an automatic and binding two tier dispute settlement system with appointments delinked from any single member’s consent.
    2. Unilateral measures bypass the rulebook: Members increasingly act outside the agreed remedy process, which removes the predictability the system was built to supply. Eg. Sweeping reciprocal tariffs imposed in 2025 were applied without recourse to WTO procedures.
      The Fix: Strengthen the organisation’s standing to act against politically motivated tariff action rather than leaving each dispute to bilateral settlement.
    3. The negotiating function has stalled: Multilateral talks have produced little since 2008, so the rulebook does not cover the trade that has grown since. Eg. The 2026 ministerial conference closed without an overall declaration and the electronic commerce duty moratorium lapsed.
      The Fix: Modernise the rules to cover electronic commerce, digital trade and cross border data flows, and consider majority voting for defined categories of agreement.

    Back2Basics: Plaza Accord

    1. What it was: An agreement reached in 1985 among the United States, Japan, West Germany, France and the United Kingdom to act jointly on exchange rates.
    2. What it did: The five agreed to intervene in currency markets to depreciate the US dollar against the Japanese yen and the Deutsche Mark.
    3. Why it is cited: It remains the standard example of major economies coordinating to correct a large trade imbalance rather than each acting through tariffs.

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

  • Progress review of Prime Minister Dhan Dhaanya Krishi Yojana

    Progress review of Prime Minister Dhan Dhaanya Krishi Yojana

    Why in News

    The Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare reviewed the implementation progress of the Prime Minister Dhan Dhaanya Krishi Yojana (PMDDKY).

    Core facts

    1. What it is: PMDDKY is a district focused agriculture development scheme. It converges existing schemes to raise farm productivity in India’s weakest performing agricultural districts.
    2. Implementing ministry: Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare is the nodal ministry. Multiple line departments contribute converged schemes.
    3. Coverage: The scheme targets 100 districts. Districts are selected on three parameters. The parameters are low agricultural productivity, low cropping intensity, and low credit disbursement.
    4. Convergence design: The scheme pools 36 existing schemes across 11 departments. It layers these on a single district plan rather than creating a new fund line.
    5. Release specific review figures: The specific progress numbers, district status, and targets reported in PRID 2305501 could not be verified from PIB this run. They are not reproduced here.

    Static Context

    1. Origin: The scheme was announced in the Union Budget 2025 to 2026. The Union Cabinet approved it in July 2025.
    2. Duration: The scheme runs for 6 years from 2025 to 2026.
    3. Model: The scheme is modelled on the Aspirational Districts Programme. That programme uses ranking, convergence, and competitive monitoring to lift the weakest districts.
    4. Focus areas: The scheme covers productivity, crop diversification, sustainable agriculture, irrigation and water conservation, post harvest storage at panchayat and block level, and farm credit.
    5. Monitoring: District, State, and National level committees oversee the scheme. NITI Aayog and assigned Central Nodal Officers support monitoring.

    Prelims angle

    1. Number of districts covered: 100 districts.
    2. Selection parameters: low productivity, low cropping intensity, low credit disbursement.
    3. Number of converged schemes: 36 schemes across 11 departments.
    4. Parent design model: Aspirational Districts Programme.
    5. Nodal ministry: Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

    Mains angle

    GS3, agriculture theme (major crops, cropping patterns, agricultural productivity, and scheme convergence). A question can ask how a convergence and district targeting model raises productivity in low performing agricultural districts. It can also ask how crop diversification and integrated farming raise small farmer incomes.

    “[2022, GS3, 15] What is Integrated Farming System ? How is it helpful to small and marginal farmers in India ?”

    “[2025, GS3, 10] Explain the factors influencing the decision of the farmers on the selection of high value crops in India.”

  • China, US are in race to connect science with industry. India must catch up [Express]

    China, US are in race to connect science with industry. India must catch up [Express]

    Mentor Comment

    Beijing’s second World Humanoid Games has showcased a Chinese project to become the world’s leading science power, rooted in the Chinese President’s call to mobilise “new quality productive forces” released by the current revolutions in science and technology. The US administration has released Science: A New Golden Age, billed as the first major reset in US science policy since World War II, aimed at reintegrating discovery with production. Both powers are building an ecosystem that connects science with industry, from opposite starting points. India has launched missions on artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductor production and quantum technologies, but its private capital has retreated from science and its state-led scientific institutions remain unreformed.

    How are China and the United States racing toward the same goal from opposite directions?

    1. China’s break with the old growth model: The Chinese President holds that the next phase of growth cannot rely on cheap labour, large-scale manufacturing, infrastructure and capital accumulation, and must come from innovation.
    2. AI diffused across the physical economy: Beijing’s objective is to diffuse AI across robotics, machine tools, automobiles, biotechnology, materials, energy, agriculture and scientific research.
      • It bets that fusing digital intelligence with the world’s largest industrial ecosystem will make China the leading technological power.
    3. From adaptation to original discovery: For decades China absorbed foreign technology, improved it through manufacturing and dominated production. It now wants to move upstream to original discovery.
    4. China’s spending signal: China spent 2.8 per cent of GDP on research and development (R&D) in 2025, and its basic-research expenditure rose by 11 per cent.
    5. China’s four-step logic: AI accelerates discovery; discovery produces technology; technology transforms industry; industrial strength generates national power and a geopolitical edge.
    6. The US reset names its own weakness: Science: A New Golden Age, released in July, recognises American strengths in universities, laboratories, technology companies and capital markets. It acknowledges the erosion of the capacity to turn discoveries into production.
    7. How globalisation split US innovation from manufacturing: Companies designed at home, produced abroad and depended on long supply chains. That model generated wealth and also the vulnerabilities exposed by the pandemic, China’s rise and geopolitical rivalry.
    8. Mirror-image fears: China begins with the largest manufacturing base and moves upstream into science. The US begins with the strongest scientific system and moves downstream into manufacturing. China fears dependence on American technology; the US fears dependence on Chinese production.

    What does “connecting science with industry” actually mean in this contest?

    1. AI as an accelerator of knowledge, not a product: Washington and Beijing see AI not merely as a general-purpose technology but as an accelerator central to the production of new knowledge that in turn transforms industry.
    2. Discovery made continuous with manufacturing: By making discovery continuous with design and manufacturing, AI-driven science transforms production itself and converts scientific speed into economic power and geopolitical capability.
    3. The ecosystem, not the model, is the prize: The contest is not about who unveils the cleverest AI model or the most sophisticated humanoid. It is about building the most effective ecosystem connecting universities, laboratories, entrepreneurs, finance, energy, factories, supply chains and markets.

    Where does India stand as the race intensifies?

    1. Missions exist on paper: Delhi recognises the trend and has launched missions on AI, semiconductor production and quantum technologies, and has a draft robotics policy.
    2. The spending gap: The Economic Survey 2025-26 puts India’s R&D expenditure at 0.64 per cent of GDP, against about 2.8 per cent for China and 3.5 per cent for the US.
    3. The absolute gap is wider: The World Intellectual Property Organisation estimates India’s total R&D spend at $75 billion in purchasing-power-adjusted dollars, against $786 billion for China and $782 billion for the United States. In nominal dollar terms India looks even smaller.

    Why does the first weakness, the retreat of private capital from science, matter most?

    1. Ambition lives in government declarations: Ambition and imagination are concentrated in government declarations at a time when the private sector contributes more than ever to producing knowledge in the US and China.
    2. Indian capital has no science project: Indian capital rarely articulates a project for mastering the new forces of production or a new project for science and basic research.
    3. It was not always so: Jamsetji Tata helped create the Indian Institute of Science in 1909. The Kirloskars and other western Indian business families sent their children to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from the 1920s, recognising that independent India’s future lay in mastering modern science.
    4. Private philanthropy built the strategic programmes: The Sir Dorabji Tata Trust supported Homi Bhabha in establishing the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, which formed the nucleus of India’s atomic energy and space programmes. Indian capital has retreated from that tradition.

    Why does the second weakness, unreformed scientific institutions, compound the first?

    1. No overhaul in India’s reform era: China’s reform era, launched in the late 1970s under Deng Xiaoping, put the revitalisation of science and technology at the heart of the Four Modernisations. India’s reform era, beginning in the 1990s, produced no comparable overhaul.
    2. Same American training, different follow-through: India and China both benefited from access to American universities that trained their vast talent pools. China combined that opportunity with massive domestic investment in science and higher education and incentives for researchers to return.
    3. India does not draw talent back: India’s science sector fails to attract its trained talent home, and the shortfall is severe rather than marginal.

    Can “technological sovereignty” be built without global science?

    1. Bureaucratisation, then cultural nationalism: The Congress era saw the steady bureaucratisation of Indian science, and the BJP era is adding cultural nationalism to it.
    2. Mythology is not evidence: Civilisational pride cannot make mythology a substitute for evidence, experiment and scientific temper. India’s most confident claim should be that the greatest Indian contributions lie in the future, not that all modern science was discovered in its past.
    3. The cost of talking tall, once before: Delhi’s radical posturing on technological “self-reliance” in the 1970s and 1980s isolated India from global technological advances. Today there is grandiose talk of “technological sovereignty”.
    4. Two tracks at once: India must deepen cooperation with global science, capital, technology and talent, and at the same time build domestic research, industrial and institutional capacity. Neither track substitutes for the other.

    Challenges to India’s science-industry linkage

    1. Research sits outside the universities that supply the workforce: Most public research is done in mission agencies and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) laboratories, so graduates and firms rarely meet discovery where it happens. Eg. The Defence Research and Development Organisation, the Indian Space Research Organisation, the Department of Atomic Energy and CSIR absorb the bulk of central research spending, and State universities receive a marginal share.
      The Fix: Route Anusandhan National Research Foundation grants preferentially to State universities with mandatory industry co-investment.
    2. Industry does not fund its own research: The private sector contributes 36 per cent of India’s gross R&D expenditure, against 77 per cent in China and 79 per cent in the US and Japan. Eg. The weighted tax deduction on in-house R&D under Section 35(2AB) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 was cut from 200 per cent to 100 per cent from 2020-21, removing the one fiscal incentive firms used.
      The Fix: Restore a weighted deduction tied to patents filed and products commercialised rather than to spending alone.
    3. Deep technology has no patient capital: Venture funds back consumer applications that return within five years, not fabs or materials that need fifteen. Eg. Micron’s assembly and test plant at Sanand, approved in 2023, needed roughly 70 per cent of its project cost as central and Gujarat subsidy before private capital moved.
      The Fix: Deploy the Research Development and Innovation scheme corpus as long tenure, low interest loans and fund-of-funds equity for private deep technology projects.
    4. Public procurement does not buy the first unit: Government buyers demand a track record, so an Indian prototype finds no first customer and licenses abroad. Eg. The United States’ Small Business Innovation Research programme reserves a fixed share of federal agency R&D budgets for small firms’ first contracts, and India has no equivalent set-aside.
      The Fix: Add a first-buyer set-aside in the General Financial Rules for Indian deep technology products validated by a designated national laboratory.

    Conclusion

    The contest India has to enter is an ecosystem contest, and an ecosystem cannot be declared into existence by a mission document. Two things remain unreconciled: a state-led science system that has never been restructured, and a private sector that has stopped funding discovery. Whether Indian capital returns to the tradition that built the Indian Institute of Science and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is the marker to watch, and the disbursal of the new research finance corpus to private laboratories is where it will first show.

    About India’s Research and Innovation Ecosystem

    1. What the ecosystem measures: Gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) counts spending by government, industry and higher education on basic research, applied research and experimental development.
    2. Who does the research: Central agencies dominate, with a small set of premier institutes such as the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institute of Science and the National Institute of Immunology providing the academic base.
    3. Global standing: India ranked 39th of 133 economies in the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s Global Innovation Index 2024, first among lower middle income economies.

    Laws and Rules Governing India’s Research and Innovation Ecosystem

    1. Anusandhan National Research Foundation Act, 2023: Creates an apex body to seed, grow and promote research in universities and laboratories, with a planned Rs 50,000 crore over 2023-28 of which Rs 36,000 crore is to come from non-government sources.
    2. The Act repealed the Science and Engineering Research Board Act, 2008 and subsumed that board into the new foundation.
    3. Patents Act, 1970: Governs the grant and enforcement of patents; the 2005 amendment introduced product patents in pharmaceuticals, chemicals and food to comply with the World Trade Organisation’s TRIPS agreement.

    Government Initiatives for India’s Research and Innovation Ecosystem

    1. Research Development and Innovation scheme: Approved by the Union Cabinet in July 2025 with a Rs 1 lakh crore corpus to finance private sector research in sunrise sectors through long tenure, low or nil interest loans and equity.
    2. IndiaAI Mission: Launched in 2024 by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, anchored in shared compute of 38,000-plus GPUs, the AI Kosh open dataset platform, and 570 FutureSkills and AI Labs in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
    3. National Quantum Mission: Launched in April 2023 with an outlay of Rs 6,003 crore for 2023-31, building four Thematic Quantum Technology Hubs in computing, communication, sensing and metrology, and materials and devices.
    4. India Semiconductor Mission: Approved in December 2021 with a Rs 76,000 crore outlay to subsidise fabrication, display and assembly plants and to fund chip design startups.
    5. VAIBHAV Fellowship: Launched in 2023 by the Department of Science and Technology to bring diaspora scientists to Indian institutions for collaborative research stints.

    Key Facts about India’s Research and Innovation Ecosystem

    1. National Science Day, 28 February: Marks the announcement of the Raman effect in 1928.
    2. National Technology Day, 11 May: Marks the Pokhran-II nuclear tests of 1998 and the first flight of the indigenous Hansa aircraft the same day.

    Back2Basics

    1. What they were: China’s programme to modernise agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology.
    2. When adopted: First articulated by Premier Zhou Enlai in 1963 and again in 1975, and made the centrepiece of the reform era at the Third Plenum of December 1978.
    3. Why science was listed: Science and technology was named as the modernisation that enabled the other three, which is why the reform era began by rehabilitating scientists and reopening universities to competitive entrance examinations.

    [2019, GS3, 10 marks] How was India benefited from the contributions of Sir M.Visvesvaraya and Dr. M. S. Swaminathan in the fields of water engineering and agricultural science respectively?”

  • Why risk-monitoring in the Himalayas is like looking for ‘needles in haystacks’

    Why risk-monitoring in the Himalayas is like looking for ‘needles in haystacks’

    Why in the News

    A Senior Fellow of the Energy, Water and Sustainability Program at the Stimson Center, a US based non-profit think tank, has set out the sequence of the recent Nepal flood and the lessons it holds for hazard monitoring across the Himalayas.

    What triggered the Nepal flood, and why is the trigger still uncertain?

    1. A glacial detachment carrying bedrock: The present consensus is that the initial trigger was a glacial detachment that included bedrock on the northern slopes of Langtang Lirung, a 7,000-plus-metre peak in the Langtang range.
    2. The triggering process is not understood: The failure could be related to climate-related risks or to gradual shifts at the site itself.
    3. A slow creep, then a tipping point: Preliminary analysis indicates minor movement of the glacial mass in the weeks or months before the event, followed by a tipping point.

    How did a single glacial failure cascade more than 100 kilometres downstream?

    1. The descent: The failed mass swept down a gully toward the Lhende River, which reaches the Chinese border. The source area was around 5,200 metres, so the flow descended a couple of thousand metres.
    2. A temporary natural dam: The flow deposited a mixture of ice, rock and sediment that blocked the river.
    3. Three contested water sources: Debate continues on how much water came from the glacier itself, from melting of entrained ice, and from water that accumulated behind the landslide dam.
    4. Nine minutes to the border: The dam failed and sent a major pulse of water downstream, which reached the China border in roughly nine minutes. Footage from the Gyirong border facility shows a massive dark wave carrying a large volume of material, not just water.
    5. Back into Nepal within seconds: The border facility sat at a confluence with the Gyirong River tributary, and within seconds of hitting it the flow was already moving back into Nepal. There was no realistic opportunity to warn communities downstream, and many of those who could have generated an alert were themselves swept away.
    6. Dams, hydropower and villages: The flow destroyed dams and hydropower projects downstream, recruited additional sediment, and swept through villages along the river corridor.
    7. Beyond every mapped floodplain: The event continued into Nuwakot district and affected larger market towns in the floodplain, in areas well beyond the 100-year or 500-year floodplain (the extent a flood of that average recurrence interval is expected to reach). This was a thousand-year-plus flood event.
    8. Registered at the India-Nepal border: Significant impacts extended more than 100 kilometres downstream, and the flood pulse also registered at the India-Nepal border.

    Why are cascading hazard chains the larger Himalayan problem?

    1. A pattern across three countries: The same chain has appeared in Chamoli, in Sikkim with the South Lhonak GLOF (glacial lake outburst flood), and in Nepal with the Melamchi disaster.
    2. Climate risk as an amplifier: Climate risks are interacting with and amplifying other disaster risks, and these events are becoming more frequent and more intense.

    Why does hazard monitoring keep missing the sites that fail?

    1. Known high-risk sites exist, and this was not one: Several places around Nepal have been identified as high-risk areas for glacial detachment and surges, and glaciers immediately on the other side of Langtang Lirung are high-priority research sites. This particular location had no red flags.
    2. Hindsight still needs a target: Analysts are examining whether changes could have been detected in the days before the event, but that would still require knowing where to look.
    3. No signal to separate from noise: Monitoring every glacier and every mountainside that could collapse is not feasible without some signal that narrows the search.
    4. Satellites answer only the question they were pointed at: Remote sensing and satellite-based analysis are important, but different satellite tools answer different questions, and each needs a target. Engaging local communities is how the target is found.
    5. Almost every event came from an unknown place: Of over a dozen extreme events in the Himalayas over 10 years, almost all came from unknown places, the South Lhonak GLOF being the one known risk.
    6. No borrowed training data: Patterns are beginning to emerge, but no training dataset from the Alps or Norway can simply be transferred to the Himalayas, which have their own context and significant data scarcity and data sparsity.

    What monitoring triangle does the interview propose for India, Nepal and the Himalayas?

    1. Mapping is the baseline: The mapping exercise undertaken by India’s Home Ministry and space agencies to monitor glacial lakes and hazards is an absolute necessity. Nepal does not have the same level of resources. Some mapping has been done there, and it is not as comprehensive.
    2. Maps enable zoning; monitoring is the key: Once maps exist, hazard zoning and modelling can begin, but detection depends on continuous monitoring.
    3. Corner one, remote sensing: Remote sensing and satellite imagery form one part of the triangle.
    4. Corner two, fixed station networks: Hydromet (hydrological and meteorological) and seismic stations form the second.
    5. Corner three, localised monitoring through local government: Local governments, disaster managers and Community Disaster Management Committees can collect local data, report landslides and monitor impacts after storms.
    6. Localised monitoring through people immersed in the terrain: Yak herders and fishermen notice changes in rivers, glaciers and glacial lakes. Oral histories with elders reveal smaller avalanches, glacial-lake floods and other events that science has not recorded, helping identify potential hotspots.
    7. The combination is the detector: Combining the station network, remote sensing and localised monitoring gives a better chance of detecting changes and distinguishing the signal from the noise that tells you where to look.

    Challenges to Himalayan hazard monitoring

    1. Hydropower sited in hazard corridors without upstream sensing: Projects sit in narrow gorges below unstable ice and rock with no instrument between the source and the intake. Eg. The February 2021 Chamoli rock and ice avalanche from Ronti peak destroyed the Rishiganga and Tapovan-Vishnugad projects with no upstream warning.
      The Fix: Make a hazard chain assessment and ridge line sensors with satellite telemetry a condition of clearance for every Himalayan hydropower project.
    2. Instruments die with the event they are meant to detect: A sensor placed at the lake or in the channel is destroyed by the first surge and reports nothing. Eg. Monitoring equipment installed at South Lhonak lake in September 2023 was washed away in the October 2023 outburst that also breached the Teesta III dam at Chungthang.
      The Fix: Place redundant stations on high ground and at staggered distances downstream so at least one survives to trigger sirens.
    3. Cross-border flows carry no shared alert: The upstream country holds the first minutes of warning and no protocol obliges it to pass them on. Eg. India’s hydrological data sharing arrangement with China on the Brahmaputra lapsed in 2023.
      The Fix: Adopt a Hindu Kush Himalaya alert protocol through the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) that pushes automatic upstream alerts to downstream disaster authorities within minutes.
    4. Warnings that never reach the last mile: A satellite detection is useless to a village asleep in a gorge with no siren and no signal. Eg. The Sikkim outburst struck after 10 pm on 3 October 2023 and reached the Teesta valley settlements in the dark.
      The Fix: Pair the National Disaster Management Authority’s Common Alerting Protocol based cell broadcast with battery-backed community sirens in every mapped downstream settlement.

    Conclusion

    India has the baseline map; Nepal has part of one. Neither has the monitoring triangle that turns a map into a warning. The unresolved gap is that detection still depends on knowing where to look, and the herders, fishermen and village committees who hold that knowledge are not yet wired into any station network. The test of the next monsoon is whether a single high mountain site with no red flag gets watched because a community reported it first.

    Back2Basics

    1. What it is: A sudden release of water from a lake formed by melting glaciers, held back by a natural dam of loose moraine debris or ice rather than bedrock.
    2. How it starts: An avalanche, rockfall or ice calving into the lake sends a displacement wave over the dam, or seepage erodes the moraine from within until it collapses.
    3. Why it is deadlier than a rain flood: The surge carries rock and sediment, arrives with minutes of warning, and can breach infrastructure far below the lake.
    4. India’s framework: The National Disaster Management Authority issued dedicated guidelines on GLOF and Landslide Lake Outburst Flood management in 2020.

    [2021, GS1, 15 marks] How does the melting of the Arctic ice and glaciers of the Antarctic differently affect the weather patterns and human activities on the Earth? Explain. (250 words)

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