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Subject: Indian Society

  • We need to manage public spaces, not women

    Why in the News

    In Delhi’s Aastha Kunj Park, three men posing as police officers gang-raped a 17-year-old, and young couples in Bihar’s Jamui and Samastipur were assaulted or harassed. Each victim was doing something ordinary in public, which shows the state still manages women instead of making public spaces safe.

    What does it mean to manage women instead of public spaces?

    1. Conditional access: In “Why Loiter?”, Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade argue that women gain access to public space only on proof of “respectability and purpose”.
    2. Paternalistic approach: This view manages risk by restricting women, not the space. It is like keeping people indoors instead of fixing a broken streetlight.
    3. Vocabulary of suspicion: Anti-Romeo squads in Uttar Pradesh, police overstepping their mandate and self-appointed moral guardians fixing curfews treat ordinary meetings between men and women as suspect.
    4. Cover for crime: Because a friendship or a walk home can easily be branded wrongdoing, offenders find it easy to pose as police, as in the Delhi park case.
    5. The takeaway: Policing women’s presence keeps them out of public life and hands abusers a ready disguise.

    What have reforms since 2012 changed, and what did the Verma Committee ask for?

    1. Legal reforms: After the 2012 Delhi gang rape and the 2024 rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College, India added fast-track special courts and harsher sentences.
    2. Women at work: The female workforce has grown rapidly, with millions more women professionals, but public infrastructure has not kept pace.
    3. Verma diagnosis: The Justice J.S. Verma Committee traced the 2012 crime to deep-seated patriarchy and the state’s failure to keep women safe. The Supreme Court reiterated that failure this week.
    4. Verma recommendations: The Committee treated sexual violence as an expression of power, not desire. It recommended gender-sensitisation training for police, better public amenities for women and wider conversations on masculinity.

    What does South Africa show about legal and lived equality?

    1. Sandton killings: A women’s running club in Sandton, Johannesburg, lost a member on an evening jog. The bodies of 10 women have been found with signs of sexual assault.
    2. National disaster: South Africa’s femicide rate is over six times the global average. Last year it declared gender-based violence and femicide a national disaster.
    3. Progressive constitution: South Africa’s 1996 constitution protects women even from private discrimination. Three decades on, women still improvise safety, running in groups and tracking each other by phone.
    4. Arrests in India: Unlike in South Africa, the alleged perpetrators of the Indian cases have been arrested.
    5. Legal versus lived equality: Both societies mistake legal equality for lived equality, so rights on paper do not make streets safe.

    Why must infrastructure come before generational change?

    1. Slow social change: Dismantling male entitlement and raising boys who need no policing is generational work. Women’s mobility cannot wait for it.
    2. Faster fixes: Regular patrols change the odds inside a park. Streetlights and better connectivity change what a walk home risks.
    3. Infrastructure as choice: Safe infrastructure gives women alternatives and agency, and makes their presence in public unremarkable.
    4. Less room for harm: Together with sensitisation, these measures cut the chances for toxic masculinity to cause harm.

    Challenges

    1. Moral policing by the state: Squads that watch couples divert police time from protecting women.
    2. Dark public spaces: Unlit parks, lanes and bus stops remain common in Indian cities.
    3. Slow trials: Judge vacancies and backlogs in special courts blunt the deterrence of harsher laws.

    Way Forward

    1. Space audits: Municipal bodies should map unsafe parks, lanes and stops and publish repair timelines.
    2. Evening beat patrols: State police should patrol parks and transit hubs every evening.
    3. End moral policing: State governments should disband squads that target consenting adults.

    Conclusion

    India has strengthened laws against sexual violence but still manages women’s behaviour rather than the spaces they use. The test is whether city budgets treat safe public space as core infrastructure rather than a response to the next crime.

    Government Initiatives for Women’s Safety

    1. Mission Shakti, ‘Sambal’: Runs One Stop Centres, the Women Helpline and Nari Adalats for legal, medical and counselling support.
    2. Safe City Projects: In eight major cities, artificial intelligence (AI) enabled closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and panic buttons cover public spaces.
    3. Nirbhaya Fund: Funds Women Help Desks in police stations to make them survivor friendly.
    4. Zero FIR: Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 lets a woman file a First Information Report (FIR) at any police station.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS2, 10 marks] Women’s social capital complements in advancing empowerment and gender equity. Explain.”

  • Gender disparities in contraceptive use and sterilisation

    Why in the News

    For the first time, the World Health Organization (WHO) has set benchmarks for reversible male contraceptives, challenging a pattern in which India has met its fertility goals while leaving contraception almost wholly to women. The new guidelines widen the choice of methods beyond those women use.

    What do the new WHO guidelines change?

    1. What they are: The guidelines widen contraceptive options. They set benchmarks that reversible male methods, ones a man can stop to regain fertility, must meet, like a product standard for developers.
    2. Why now: WHO research has challenged the assumption that men would not use new contraceptives.
    3. Choice as equality: WHO’s director for sexual and reproductive health called choice a gender equality issue.
    4. Imbalance in India: Women increasingly carry the burden of both temporary and permanent contraception, so falling fertility has not shifted any of it to men.
    5. The takeaway: Better male methods give India a practical way to share contraceptive responsibility.

    What does NFHS-6 show on contraceptive use?

    1. Unmet need: Fertility is below replacement level. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6) for 2023-24 finds unmet need, married women who want to avoid pregnancy but use no method, down one percentage point.
    2. More use overall: Married women using any method rose from 66.7% to 69.1% since NFHS-5.
    3. Modern methods decline: Modern methods, such as pills, intrauterine devices, condoms and sterilisation, fell from 56.4% to 52.7%.
    4. Traditional methods rise: Rhythm and withdrawal rose 6 percentage points, the largest rise of any method. Possible factors are fear of side-effects, privacy, partner preference and access.

    How lopsided is sterilisation?

    1. Female sterilisation: Its use eased from 37.9% to 36.5%, after climbing quickly between NFHS-1 and NFHS-3.
    2. Male sterilisation: Only 0.5% reported it in NFHS-6, down from 3.4% in NFHS-1.
    3. State pattern: Male sterilisation rose in 22 States, but only Telangana gained over one percentage point. States that reached a low Total Fertility Rate (TFR) early were no exception.

    Why has vasectomy become marginal, and why does it matter?

    1. From visible to marginal: As India reached replacement fertility, vasectomy shrank from a visible method to a marginal one, so the goal was met through women.
    2. Simpler procedure for men: Female sterilisation is not unsafe, but ending fertility is less invasive for men and needs only local anaesthesia.

    Challenges

    1. Social norms: Contraception is seen as a woman’s task, and fears about masculinity keep men from vasectomy.
    2. Programmes built around women: Family planning has long relied on female sterilisation camps. Eg. The 2014 Bilaspur camp deaths, Chhattisgarh.
    3. Few male options: Men have only condoms and vasectomy, since reversible male methods are still in development.

    Way Forward

    1. Adopt WHO benchmarks: India should use the WHO guidelines to address the gender imbalance, with the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation aligning approval rules for male methods.
    2. Counsel men: Train Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) to counsel men on vasectomy.
    3. Address side-effect fears: Counsel women on modern methods so they do not drift to less reliable ones.

    Conclusion

    India has reached its fertility goal without sharing the burden of contraception between women and men. What to watch is whether family planning programmes adopt WHO’s benchmarks for male methods.

    Key numbers

    1. Male sterilisation, NFHS-5: 0.3% (2019-21).
    2. Female sterilisation since NFHS-3: about 36 to 38%.

    Back2Basics: Total Fertility Rate

    1. What it is: TFR is the average number of children a woman would bear in her lifetime at current age-specific birth rates.
    2. Replacement level: About 2.1, above 2 because some children die young and slightly more boys are born.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026, GS1, 15 marks] Critically examine the challenges of demographic transition in contemporary India.”

  • State govts. stumped by demography committee’s ‘religion-wise’ inquiries

    Why in the News

    A Union panel on illegal immigration is seeking religion-wise data from routine administrative records, most of which States say they do not keep by religion. The Home Ministry’s High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes (HLCDC) has sent States 35 questions on records such as school enrolment and property transactions, and States say they cannot answer most of them.

    What is the HLCDC, and what has it asked for?

    1. What it is: A Home Ministry panel led by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar, constituted on 26 May.
    2. Mandate: It studies demographic changes caused by illegal immigration and “other abnormal reasons”, and suggests measures to deal with them.
    3. Religion-wise records: It wants 15 years of religion-wise data on birth and vehicle registrations, school enrolment and property transactions. This is like asking every government counter to sort its files by faith.
    4. Six communities: Every category is to be broken down for Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, Parsis and Buddhists.
    5. The takeaway: A panel on illegal immigration is seeking a faith-wise map of everyday administration, widening its inquiry from who entered illegally to how every community lives.

    What else does the questionnaire seek?

    1. Identity document spikes: The panel asks which districts saw unusual increases in Aadhaar, voter ID and ration card registrations.
    2. Enrolment anomalies: It asks which districts show school enrolment trends that do not match past birth rates, and why.
    3. Religious structures: It seeks temples, mosques, churches and other structures built in the period, and any Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping, meaning digital maps, used to identify them.
    4. Conversions and detention: It seeks intelligence and commission reports on religious conversions among Scheduled Tribes (STs). It also asks about operational detention centres and undocumented migrants apprehended or deported.

    Why can States not answer, and why is religion-wise data contested?

    1. Records not kept by religion: States hold only two relevant records: birth registrations, whose certificates name the newborn’s religion, and counts of migrants apprehended or deported.
    2. Secular construct: State officials hold that the secular construct of the Constitution prohibits collecting data under religious categories. The panel has received no State reply yet.
    3. Sachar precedent: The Congress-led government set up the Sachar Committee in 2005 to study Muslims’ status. In 2006 the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), then the principal Opposition, called its recommendations a religious quota and socially divisive.

    How does the Bihar SIR feed into the panel’s work?

    1. SIR ruling: On 27 May the Supreme Court upheld Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a fresh check of the electoral roll. It held that the Election Commission of India (EC) may check citizenship only to decide who stays on the roll.
    2. Reference to the Centre: The Court gave the EC four weeks to send the Centre the names of electors on the 2003 roll removed as non-citizens. A competent authority will then decide their citizenship under the Citizenship Act, 1955.
    3. Data pending: The EC has not yet given the panel data on those excluded as suspected foreign nationals, and has not explained the delay.

    Challenges

    1. Constitutional exposure: Religion-wise mapping of property and enrolment invites challenge under Articles 14 and 15, which bar discrimination on religion.
    2. Inference by proxy: Where records lack religion, officials may guess it from names, yielding unreliable and stigmatising data.
    3. Conflating religion with illegality: Reading religion-wise growth as illegal immigration turns a demographic trend into a finding without adjudication.

    Way Forward

    1. Lawful statistical sources: Use the Census and the National Family Health Survey, which record religion under legal safeguards.
    2. Narrower questionnaire: Limit requests to records that exist, such as migrants apprehended or deported.
    3. Published method: The Home Ministry should publish the panel’s terms of reference and methodology.

    Conclusion

    With States citing both missing records and the Constitution, the panel’s inquiry has stalled on data. Whether it narrows its demand to census data and adjudicated citizenship cases will decide if its findings hold up.

    Back2Basics: Secularism in the Indian Constitution

    1. Preamble: “Secular” was added by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976.
    2. Articles 25 to 28: Guarantee freedom of conscience and religion and freedom to manage religious affairs. They also bar taxes that promote a religion and religious instruction in State institutions.
    3. Basic structure: S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994), a nine judge Bench, held secularism part of the basic structure.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2022, GS1, 15 marks] Are tolerance, assimilation and pluralism the key elements in the making of an Indian form of secularism? Justify your answer.”

  • Women’s safety falls through gap between intent and policy

    Why in the News

    Women’s safety policy has stopped at intent and never reached accountability, capacity or women’s presence in public life, so the funds and schemes built since the December 2012 Delhi gangrape have not made public spaces safe. A gangrape at Aastha Kunj Park in South Delhi and a molestation case in Bihar’s Jamui, almost 15 years on, have reopened the question.

    What has the Nirbhaya framework built since 2012?

    1. What it is: The Nirbhaya Fund is a dedicated pool of Union money for women’s safety programmes, created after the 2012 protests. It works like a ring-fenced budget line for safety projects.
    2. Legal response: The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH Act) also followed the protests. It sets rules to prevent and redress sexual harassment at work.
    3. Spending record: Of Rs 7,712.85 crore allotted over a decade, Rs 5,846.08 crore was used.
    4. What the money built: Nearly 15,000 women’s help desks in police stations and fast-track courts for rape cases. Chennai, Surat and Bhubaneswar also set up gender labs to test safer urban design.
    5. The takeaway: Money has been spent and institutions built, yet streets remain unsafe, so the failure lies in follow-through, not funding.

    Why do safety audits not make streets safer?

    1. Safety audit: A safety audit walks a street, park or bus route to record risks such as dark stretches. Nikore Associates, a consultancy, has audited public spaces and transport in at least 10 cities.
    2. Audits as an end: Administrations publicise how many audits they conduct, not how the problems found are fixed, so no agency answers for a flagged risk.
    3. Unfixed dark zone: A lane behind Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi, has a 500 m unlit stretch that is widely known and still unfixed.
    4. Public reporting demand: City agencies should publish how they fix audit findings, handle women’s safety helpline calls, and how long their crisis response takes.

    Why do free bus rides not add up to safety?

    1. Free travel schemes: At least eight States offer free bus travel for women, in place of investment in gender-sensitive infrastructure such as lit streets and safe stops.
    2. Wait and walk: A free bus does little for safety if waits are long and unpredictable, or if women walk to the stop on unsafe streets.
    3. Intent without capacity: Free fares show that governments mean well. They do not show the capacity to innovate, meaning the design skill to build inclusive cities that work for all users.

    How would more women in public-facing jobs change public space?

    1. Absence breeds risk: Women are nearly absent from public spaces in the evenings, and emptier streets are less safe for them.
    2. Public-facing jobs: Government agencies hire drivers, conductors, station managers, park workers and e-auto drivers, so new hiring rules and targets can quickly raise women’s presence.
    3. Delhi height rule: The Delhi government cut the bus driver height requirement from 159 cm to 153 cm.
    4. Women bus drivers in Delhi: Within a year of the 2022 change, 34 women bus drivers were inducted.
    5. Women in police: Women are only about 10 per cent of the police, against the Centre’s 33 per cent target.

    Challenges

    1. Input metrics: Nirbhaya spending is tracked by money released, not by fewer crimes or freer movement for women.
    2. Fragmented responsibility: Lighting, buses, parks and policing sit with different agencies, so no single body owns a flagged risk.
    3. Fares versus capital: Fare waivers are a recurring cost that competes with budgets for lights, shelters and buses.

    Way Forward

    1. Outcome-linked releases: The Ministry of Women and Child Development should tie Nirbhaya releases to outcomes such as audit findings closed.
    2. Recruitment norm review: Transport and municipal bodies should revise physical norms that bar women, as Delhi did.
    3. Police hiring plans: States should set yearly recruitment plans for women police to meet the Centre’s target.

    Conclusion

    Women’s safety policy has been measured by money spent and audits held, not by risks removed. The test now is whether city agencies report what they have fixed and whether governments hire enough women to change who occupies public space.

    Government initiatives for women’s safety

    1. Mission Shakti, ‘Sambal’: Runs One Stop Centres, the Women Helpline and Nari Adalats for legal, medical and counselling support.
    2. Safe City Projects: In eight major cities, artificial intelligence (AI) enabled closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and panic buttons cover public spaces.
    3. Zero FIR: Section 173, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, lets a woman file a First Information Report at any police station.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS2, 10 marks] Women’s social capital complements in advancing empowerment and gender equity. Explain.”

  • Long wait for justice as pendencies in rape cases mount

    Why in the News

    Steady rape registrations since 2018 have turned into a growing trial backlog, with only about 2% of cases sent for trial in 2024 ending in conviction within the same year, National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data show. The recent gang rape of a 17 year old girl in south east Delhi has renewed concern over women’s safety in public spaces.

    How does a rape case move through the justice system?

    1. What the pipeline is: A case moves from police registration, to an investigation ending in a chargesheet (the police report accusing a person), to a court trial. Like a funnel, delay anywhere slows everything after.
    2. Why deadlines were set: After the 2012 Nirbhaya case, legislative changes brought tougher punishments and timelines for disposal of rape cases.
    3. Scope of the data: NCRB, which compiles India’s crime statistics, reports cases under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO), the law on sexual offences against children, separately. They are excluded here.
    4. What went wrong: Courts finish fewer trials than the new cases reaching them, so the pending pool grows even as new registrations stay flat.
    5. The takeaway: Stricter laws have not shortened the wait, because the bottleneck is courts’ capacity to finish trials.

    What does the 2024 data show?

    1. Steady registrations: Registrations have stayed roughly flat since 2018, at an average of about 84 cases a day.
    2. Investigation pool: Police had nearly 40,000 cases to investigate, 29,536 of them newly reported. The rest were mostly carried over from the previous year, with a few reopened.
    3. Chargesheeting: Police chargesheeted about 25,000 (63%). The rest stayed under investigation, went to another agency, or were closed by police as not warranting further proceedings.
    4. Trial pool: Chargesheeted cases joined lakhs already awaiting trial, taking the pool to 2,06,777 cases. Nearly 90% were still pending at year end.
    5. How decided cases ended: Courts disposed of, meaning decided, 20,587 cases:
      • about 68% in acquittal;
      • about 8% in discharge, where the accused is freed before trial;
      • about 24% in conviction.

    Why is conviction within the year so rare, and why does it matter?

    1. Same year convictions: Only 421 cases ended in conviction in the year they went to trial, under 1.5% of all rape cases filed.
    2. A lasting pattern: Earlier years show similarly tiny same year conviction shares, so 2024 is not a one year dip:
      • 1.2% in 2021;
      • 1.9% in 2022;
      • 2.3% in 2023.
    3. Spill over explains little: Cases reaching court late in the year run into the next year. That cannot explain the low share, because the law fixes trial deadlines.
    4. Low conviction overall: The overall conviction rate in rape cases is below 30%, and even convictions usually take long.
    5. Wider safety concern: Videos from Bihar’s Jamui and Samastipur showing harassment of girls add to demands for prompt preventive and punitive action.

    Challenges

    1. Too few trial courts: Rape trials share courts with other criminal cases, so hearings are spaced months apart.
    2. Forensic delays: Pending DNA and forensic reports from State laboratories hold up both chargesheets and trials.
    3. Witness attrition: Long trials let witnesses turn hostile and victims withdraw, which feeds the high acquittal share.
    4. Deadlines without consequence: Statutory timelines carry no penalty when missed, so they work as targets rather than obligations.

    Way Forward

    1. Staff dedicated courts: The Department of Justice and States should expand and fully staff Fast Track Special Courts for rape cases.
    2. Forensic capacity: States should add forensic laboratories and fix reporting times for sexual assault evidence.
    3. Protect witnesses: States should enforce the Witness Protection Scheme, 2018, upheld by the Supreme Court in Mahender Chawla v. Union of India (2018).
    4. Publish case age data: High Courts should publish district wise data on how long rape trials have been pending, so delays are tracked.

    Conclusion

    Rape cases now face a courtroom bottleneck rather than a gap in the law. Unless trial capacity grows, the pending pool will keep rising however stringent the punishments become.

    Back2Basics: Statutory timelines in rape cases

    1. Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2018: It fixed time limits for rape cases in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
    2. Investigation: Police must complete investigation within two months of recording the information.
    3. Trial: The trial must be completed within two months of the chargesheet being filed.
    4. Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023: It replaced the 1973 Code and retained these investigation and trial timelines.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS2, 10 marks] Women’s social capital complements in advancing empowerment and gender equity. Explain.”

  • Don’t make learning a test of worth

    Why in the News

    A student at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay has taken his life, and the circumstances of the death are under investigation. Accounts of what happened are sharply polarised, so establishing the immediate cause will not answer the larger questions the death raises. Over the last decade the IITs have recorded more than 170 deaths by suicide, a large number of them by students from Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities. A Supreme Court appointed task force on student suicides already has an interim report on the table. The contested point is whether such deaths are individual mental health events or the outcome of how these institutions treat the students they admit.

    Why does admission not deliver equality on campus?

    1. Society reproduced on campus: Prestigious institutions are not immune to the strains, power structures, hierarchies and discriminatory practices of society at large. Selectivity does not filter any of those out.
    2. The pressure to excel becomes outsized: Students arrive from very different social backgrounds into a system where the pressure to excel acquires outsized importance. Admission does not by itself guarantee equality for a student from a marginalised community.
    3. The additional burden: The burden is greater where a student must also negotiate subtle prejudice. A persistent sense of not quite belonging sits on top of the ordinary academic load.

    What did the Supreme Court appointed task force find?

    1. The panel and the report: A task force on student suicides appointed by the Supreme Court and chaired by a retired Supreme Court judge issued an interim report in June. Its findings are about the institutions rather than about the students.
    2. Complaint mechanisms do not work: Students often see institutional complaint mechanisms as difficult to access, ineffective, or operating in tokenistic ways. A mechanism that goes unused produces no record of the problem it exists to capture.
    3. Under reporting by the students most affected: For students from marginalised communities the fear of not being believed, or of retaliation, makes them hesitant to report discrimination at all. An absence of complaints is therefore not evidence that discrimination is absent.

    Why is the mental health framing insufficient?

    1. Counselling and wellness provision: More counsellors, helplines, wellness centres and greater awareness of distress are all necessary. None of them examines the conditions that produced the distress.
    2. The institution’s absence from the account: Individualising suicidal tendencies as personal difficulty, or as a student’s failure to cope, removes the institution from the account. It is then never required to ask difficult questions of itself.

    Why does faculty composition matter beyond representation?

    1. The social mismatch: The panel described a social mismatch between the backgrounds of a large number of students and those of their teachers. Access to higher education has grown more diverse and faculty composition has not followed.
    2. The measured gap: More than 65 per cent of faculty in IITs, National Institutes of Technology (NIT) and private institutions are from communities other than the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward Classes (OBC).
    3. Understanding from within: A more diverse faculty helps a campus understand social difference from within. Support then rests on institutional culture rather than on the good intentions of individual teachers.

    What does making academic performance the measure of worth cost?

    1. The promise of social mobility: In a country with a large aspirational class, the promise of social mobility is an important part of pursuing a degree. Education cannot be separated from career ambition.
    2. The purpose of an institution of learning: At the heart of academic life sits the process of gaining knowledge rather than grades, degrees and the job market alone. The purpose of an institution is to intertwine the two.
    3. The cost of an unrelenting measure: A student thinking constantly about grades, rankings, deadlines, evaluations and the consequences of falling behind has little room to follow an idea. The pleasure of learning is displaced by the accounting of it.
    4. Artificial intelligence as a shortcut: The ease with which artificial intelligence (AI) becomes a shortcut to learning makes the question unavoidable. An institution has to state whether it rewards the acquisition of knowledge or the ability to produce the right answer under pressure.

    What would an institution that examined itself have to change?

    1. The question the system has not answered: Institutions have not examined whether all students have the same space to enjoy friendships, freedom and intellectual discovery. Those are part of what higher education promises and they are not evenly distributed.
    2. The variable an institution actually controls: Elite institutions cannot insulate students from the vagaries of the economy. They can decide whether those uncertainties are amplified on campus, or whether education supplies the intellectual confidence to confront them.

    Conclusion

    The difficulty is not that the cause of each death is unknown. It is that both routes by which a student could raise a grievance, the complaint mechanism and the teacher, have been found wanting by an inquiry the institutions did not themselves commission. The unresolved question is whether an institution will accept an external finding against itself, since nothing in the present response obliges it to. The marker to watch is whether the task force’s final report attaches a named accountability route to the grievance mechanism, or repeats the recommendation to strengthen counselling.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS1, 15 marks] Despite comprehensive policies for equity and social justice, underprivileged sections are not yet getting the full benefits of affirmative action envisaged by the Constitution. Comment.”

  • Towards recognising women farmers

    Why in the News

    Maharashtra has passed the Women Farmers’ Empowerment Bill. The law grants women independent recognition as farmers irrespective of land ownership, through a Woman Farmer Certificate. It is the first Indian State legislation to give enforceable legal form to the activity-based, land-delinked definition of ‘farmer’. The National Policy for Farmers set that definition out in 2007 and never operationalised it. A comparable central law was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in 2011 and lapsed. The contested point is that recognition as a farmer in India runs through land revenue records, and those records stand primarily in men’s names. The United Nations has named 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer.

    What is the Woman Farmer Certificate under the Women Farmers’ Empowerment Bill?

    1. Land-delinked definition: The Act recognises women residents engaged in agriculture for at least one agricultural season a year, irrespective of the nature of the land. It broadens the definitions of both ‘agriculture’ and ‘farmer’.
    2. Woman Farmer Certificate: The certificate is the document that confers an independent agricultural identity on a woman, drawn from what she does rather than from a title in a land record.
    3. Categories named in the Act: It explicitly recognises the landless cultivator, the landless livestock rearer, the agricultural labourer, the plantation labourer and the pastoralist.

    How far has women’s participation in agriculture outrun their recognition as farmers?

    1. Workforce size: In 2025 agriculture employed roughly 110 million women and 127 million men in rural India, on Census adjusted Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) estimates, bringing the sector close to gender parity.
    2. Rate of increase: The women’s agricultural workforce has more than doubled since 2017-18.
    3. Concentration in agriculture: Nearly three-quarters of all rural women workers are now in agriculture, against less than half of men.
    4. Unpaid work: In 2025 more than 41% of female agricultural workers were unpaid, against 20% of men.
    5. Own-account work: Nearly 63% of men were own-account workers, against 39% of women.

    Why does the land record decide who counts as a farmer?

    1. Ownership held by men: Women largely work family land without owning it or appearing on the land record, because patriarchal norms keep records in men’s names.
    2. Share of holdings: Only 14% of operational agricultural land holdings, measured primarily through land records, are with women, as per the Agriculture Census 2015-16.
    3. Land record as the source of truth: Each State uses its land revenue record for administrative purposes, so the bias against women is carried forward into databases and scheme access.
    4. What exclusion costs: A woman left off the record cannot reach credit, subsidies, technology, extension services and related opportunities tied to land titles.

    What does scheme access reveal about the recognition gap?

    1. PM-KISAN coverage: Only 23% of beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) are women.
    2. PM-KISAN design: The scheme pays Rs 6,000 a year in direct financial assistance to eligible landholding farmer families for agricultural expenses and household needs.
    3. Gap where women dominate the workforce: Even in States where women are more than 50% of the agriculture workforce, women are under one-third of beneficiaries in most of them.
    4. Three measures of the gap: The gap is approximated by three shares taken together, women as a share of all agriculture and allied workers in 2025, women’s operational holdings as a share of all operational holdings in 2015-16, and women as a share of eligible PM-KISAN beneficiaries in 2024.
    5. Comparability caveat: The holdings and PM-KISAN figures sit nine years apart, and PM-KISAN counts individuals per landholding family, including successor widows, while the Census counts each holding once.

    Why is the binding constraint the identification system rather than land itself?

    1. Missing instrument: A women farmers’ registry delinked from land records had been absent before this legislation, so recognition shifts from the owner of land to the person who farms.
    2. Meghalaya: Women are 70% of PM-KISAN beneficiaries there, a share that reflects matrilineal inheritance under which women are the customary landholders.
    3. Kerala: Women are 44% of beneficiaries, and collective farming through groups such as Kudumbashree provides an alternative route to participation and recognition.
    4. Odisha: The KALIA scheme has reached landless and sharecropper women without a land title as the gate.
    5. Widest gaps: In Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh women are nearly two-thirds of the agricultural workforce but a small fraction of beneficiaries.
    6. The constraint named: Where the land record is the gatekeeper women are filtered out, and where an alternative mechanism exists their access rises substantially.

    What will turning recognition into access require?

    1. Route to registration: Implementation runs through either self-registration or identification of women farmers by the Gram Sabha, including women with no land and women with no title in their name.
    2. A new database: The Act provides for a database of women farmers, which has to be connected to existing agricultural databases.
    3. Digital integration: Linking the certificates to Agri Stack, the digital agriculture platform developed by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, and issuing FarmerIDs to women is what carries them into the wider digital agricultural ecosystem.

    Challenges to the Woman Farmer Certificate

    1. Duplication and exclusion in the register: A second database beside existing agricultural databases can record the same woman twice or leave her out of both. Eg. States hold no common definition for identifying a woman farmer, issuing her certificate or maintaining the record.
      The Fix: Build a standardised cross-State system of definitions, certificates and databases, so one woman farmer carries one identity across schemes and platforms.
    2. Awareness as the binding step: A certificate confers status without telling its holder what the status unlocks. Eg. Registration depends on a woman either applying herself or being identified by her Gram Sabha, and a woman who knows of neither route stays uncounted.
      The Fix: Run a continuous local information campaign naming the schemes and the credit lines the certificate opens.
    3. Central eligibility still keyed to land: A State certificate does not by itself alter the eligibility test a central scheme applies. Eg. PM-KISAN pays landholding farmer families, so a landless certificate holder still fails that test.
      The Fix: Rewrite scheme eligibility around the activity-based definition of a farmer rather than around a land title.

    Conclusion

    One State has separated the identity of a farmer from the ownership of land. Access to credit and welfare still runs through databases that read titles. The unresolved question is whether scheme administrators treat an activity-based certificate as proof of farmer status, or whether a second register simply sits beside the first without opening anything. What to watch is whether other States legislate a comparable registry, and whether the Gram Sabha route reaches women who have never appeared in any agricultural record.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2014, GS1, 10 marks] Discuss the various economic and socio-cultural forces that are driving increasing feminization of agriculture in India.”

  • Global Gender Gap Index 2026

    Global Gender Gap Index 2026

    Why in the News?

    The World Economic Forum (WEF) released the Global Gender Gap Index 2026, ranking 145 economies across four dimensions. India retained its 131st position. Iceland remained at the top.

    Key Findings

    • India’s overall gender parity: 64.5%
    • Global average: 69.2%
    • India has closed 4.3 percentage points of its gender gap since 2006.
    • Globally, 69.2% of the gender gap has been closed.
    • Iceland: 1st, with 93% of its gender gap closed.
    • Top three:
      • Iceland
      • Finland
      • Norway
    • Chad: lowest-ranked country.
    • Iran and Pakistan were also among the bottom three.

    Four Dimensions of the Index

    1. Economic Participation and Opportunity

    India’s parity score: 41.2%

    • Improved by 0.5 percentage points from the previous edition.
    • Still 3.5 percentage points below India’s best score in 2013.
    • Professional and technical workers: parity increased from 26.6% in 2006 to 49.9% in 2026.
    • Legislators, senior officials and managers: 13.1% parity.
    • Labour-force participation parity: 44.1%.

    2. Educational Attainment

    • India recorded 96.6% parity.
    • Declined by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year.
    • Educational gains have been a major contributor to India’s improvement since 2006.

    3. Health and Survival

    • India’s parity score: 95.6%.
    • Sex ratio at birth remained nearly one percentage point lower than in 2006.

    4. Political Empowerment

    • India’s highest-performing subindex.
    • 24.5% of the gender gap closed.
    • Global rank: 67th.
    • Parliament: 16.1% of the gender gap closed in 2026.
    • Ministerial level: 5.9%, compared with 3.5% in 2006.
    • India’s ministerial parity had reached 30% in 2019, before declining.

    Important Global Observations

    • Southern Asia was the lowest-scoring region in Economic Participation and Opportunity.
    • Globally, political empowerment recorded the largest gains since 2006, but has experienced a reversal since 2016.
    • Women account for 19.1% of CEO roles globally.
    • Women remain underrepresented in Artificial Intelligence (AI), accounting for fewer than one in five AI engineers.
    • Australia entered the global top 10 for the first time.
    • Iceland was the only country to cross 90% parity, at 93%.

    Important Full Forms

    • WEF: World Economic Forum
    • AI: Artificial Intelligence
    • CEO: Chief Executive Officer

    Prelims Quick Revision

    • Global Gender Gap Index: World Economic Forum
    • 2026 edition: 145 economies
    • India: 131st
    • Top: Iceland
    • India overall parity: 64.5%
    • Global parity: 69.2%
    • Four dimensions:
      1. Economic Participation and Opportunity
      2. Educational Attainment
      3. Health and Survival
      4. Political Empowerment
    • India’s highest subindex: Political Empowerment
    • India’s Economic Participation parity: 41.2%
    • India’s Educational Attainment parity: 96.6%
    • India’s Health and Survival parity: 95.6%
    • Political Empowerment: 24.5% gap closed
  • PMAY-U: Housing, Inclusion and Empowerment

    PMAY-U: Housing, Inclusion and Empowerment

    Why in the News?

    The Ministry highlighted the achievements of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U) and the progress of PMAY-U 2.0, aimed at achieving Housing for All in urban areas. PMAY-U was launched in June 2015, while PMAY-U 2.0 was launched in September 2024.

    Key Highlights

    PMAY-U

    • Provides all-weather pucca houses with basic civic amenities to eligible urban households.
    • Focuses on:
      • Economically Weaker Sections (EWS)
      • Low Income Groups (LIG)
      • Middle Income Groups (MIG)
      • Slum dwellers
    • Original mission period was up to March 2022, extended up to 30 September 2026 for completion of sanctioned projects.

    PMAY-U 2.0

    • Launched in September 2024.
    • Implementation period: 2024-2029.
    • Target: 1 crore additional urban poor and middle-class families.
    • Financial assistance: up to ₹2.50 lakh per unit.
    • Also includes affordable rental housing.

    Income Categories

    • EWS: Annual income up to ₹3 lakh
    • LIG: ₹3 lakh to ₹6 lakh
    • MIG: ₹6 lakh to ₹9 lakh

    Four Verticals of PMAY-U 2.0

    1. Beneficiary-Led Construction (BLC)

    • Financial assistance up to ₹2.5 lakh.
    • For eligible EWS families.
    • Construction on own available land.
    • Maximum carpet area: 45 sq m.

    2. Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP)

    • Public/private agencies construct affordable houses.
    • Houses generally have 30-45 sq m carpet area.
    • Financial assistance up to ₹2.5 lakh per unit.

    3. Affordable Rental Housing (ARH)

    • Provides affordable rental accommodation.
    • Covers EWS and LIG beneficiaries, including:
      • Migrants
      • Homeless persons
      • Industrial workers
      • Working women
      • Construction workers
      • Street vendors
      • Rickshaw pullers
      • Contractual workers

    4. Interest Subsidy Scheme (ISS)

    • Provides interest subsidy on eligible home loans.
    • Applicable to loans sanctioned and disbursed on or after 1 September 2024.
    • Covers EWS, LIG and MIG beneficiaries.

    Major Achievements

    As of 9 August 2026:

    • 1.25 crore houses sanctioned under PMAY-U and PMAY-U 2.0.
    • More than 1 crore houses completed and delivered.
    • Under PMAY-U 2.0:
      • 18.38 lakh houses sanctioned
      • 14.40 lakh under BLC
      • 2.48 lakh under AHP
      • 1.36 lakh under ISS
      • 13,046 dwelling units under ARH
    • Around 1 crore houses among the 1.25 crore sanctioned were allotted to women, either in the name of the female head of household or through joint ownership.

    Inclusion and Empowerment

    PMAY-U promotes:

    • Women ownership/co-ownership of houses.
    • Housing access for:
      • Scheduled Castes (SCs)
      • Scheduled Tribes (STs)
      • Other Backward Classes (OBCs)
      • Minorities
      • Senior citizens
      • Persons with disabilities
      • Transgender persons

    Technology-enabled Implementation

    • Unified Web Portal: application, processing, tracking and fund disbursement.
    • PMAY-U Dashboard: real-time monitoring of key indicators.
    • Geo-tagging: tracks houses through five stages:
      1. Grounding
      2. Foundation
      3. Superstructure
      4. Finishing and external development
      5. Completion
    • Technology Sub-Mission (TSM): promotes modern and disaster-resilient construction technologies.
    • Technology and Innovation Sub-Mission (TISM): promotes innovative, green and climate-responsive housing.
    • Technology Innovation Grant (TIG): supports innovative technologies in AHP projects.

    Prelims Quick Revision

    • PMAY-U: launched in June 2015.
    • PMAY-U 2.0: launched in September 2024.
    • PMAY-U 2.0 period: 2024-2029.
    • Target: 1 crore additional families.
    • Four verticals: BLC, AHP, ARH, ISS.
    • PMAY-U 2.0 covers EWS, LIG and MIG.
    • ARH focuses on rental housing, including migrants and working women.
    • ISS relates to home-loan interest subsidy.
    • Technology tools include geo-tagging, dashboards and unified digital platforms.

  • The murder of a musician, and a familiar unease

    Why in the News

    A guitarist from Manipur who had spent close to twenty years working and teaching in Delhi died after being assaulted by a group of people in his building, with the immediate dispute recorded by the police as one over noise. The death follows the 2014 killing of an Arunachal Pradesh student in Lajpat Nagar, which drew national attention to violence against people from the Northeast and led the Delhi Police to set up the Special Police Unit for the North East Region (SPUNER), a dedicated unit with helplines and nodal officers for complaints from Northeastern residents. More than a decade after that unit was created, an investigation this year found that one in four Police Control Room (PCR) calls from Northeastern residents was linked to landlord harassment. The tension is that a remedy built around policing violent incidents has left untouched the everyday transactions, tenancy above all, in which the vulnerability actually shows up.

    What does the record of the past decade show?

    1. The 2014 case set the institutional response: An Arunachal Pradesh student was killed in Delhi in 2014 after an altercation with shopkeepers in Lajpat Nagar, and the Delhi Police subsequently created SPUNER, with other measures opening avenues to seek help.
    2. The exposure has relocated rather than closed: An investigation this year found that one in four PCR calls received from Northeastern residents was linked to landlord harassment.
    3. The pattern extends past Delhi: A 24 year old student from Tripura died in Dehradun last December after being attacked.
    4. Motive itself is contested in the record: In that case the victim’s brother alleged that racial slurs preceded the assault, and the police said their preliminary investigation found no evidence of a racial motive and described the incident as a confrontation that escalated in the heat of the moment.

    Why has the existing remedy not closed the gap?

    1. A unit built for incidents does not reach a relationship: SPUNER responds to a complaint after an act. Tenancy harassment is continuous, deniable and rarely produces a single reportable offence. Eg. The concentration of PCR calls in landlord disputes is the measure of that gap.
    2. Establishing motive is left to the investigating officer: Whether an assault was racially motivated is a finding recorded during investigation, and a finding of no racial motive closes the question without an independent test.
    3. Availability is not the same as use: Avenues to seek help were created after 2014, and the sense of vulnerability has not disappeared from everyday life more than a decade later.

    Does length of residence settle the question of belonging?

    1. The record of residence was long: The musician moved to Delhi nearly two decades ago, spent around 17 years working and teaching in the capital, established a music school, mentored students from home and taught at the Delhi School of Music.
    2. The life was locally rooted: By the time of his death he had built a profession, made friends, raised a family, and walked the same streets for years, while continuing to teach the music he had begun playing in Manipur.
    3. The question the death leaves open: How many years a person has to live in a city before he is simply of that place, rather than someone from somewhere else, is a difficult irony for people from one part of India negotiating safety, recognition and belonging in its capital.
    4. A single night displaces the preceding life: The account of such a death reduces easily to the noise outside the home, the argument, the blows in the stairwell and the journey to hospital, and drops the two decades that came before them.

    Challenges to the Special Police Unit for the North East Region

    1. Its jurisdiction is one city: The unit is a Delhi Police creation, so a resident of any other city has no equivalent point of contact. Eg. The Dehradun death last December fell outside any comparable unit’s remit.
      The Fix: Require every State police force with a significant Northeastern student and worker population to designate a nodal officer with the same published helpline and reporting duty.
    2. It has no remit over housing: Landlord harassment is a civil tenancy matter until it becomes an offence, so the single largest reported grievance sits outside the unit’s powers. Eg. One in four PCR calls from Northeastern residents concerns exactly this.
      The Fix: Bring refusal to let or eviction on grounds of region or ethnicity within a rent authority’s jurisdiction, with a penalty attached to a proved refusal.
    3. Racial motive is not an aggravating factor in law: Where a statute does not treat racial motivation as aggravating, an investigating officer recording no such motive changes neither the charge nor the sentence. Eg. The Dehradun case was closed on the record as an escalation rather than a racially motivated attack.
      The Fix: Insert racial or ethnic motivation as a statutory aggravating circumstance at sentencing, so the finding carries a consequence and is therefore investigated.
    4. Reporting depends on the complainant’s confidence: A unit reached only by a call from the person affected undercounts precisely those most reluctant to approach the police. Eg. Students and short term migrant workers dependent on a landlord for accommodation carry a direct cost for complaining.
      The Fix: Route complaints through college and university grievance cells with a mandatory onward referral, so the first contact is not the police station.

    Conclusion

    The institutional answer built after that killing was designed for the kind of event that produced it, a violent incident with an identifiable offender and a police response. What the intervening decade has documented is a different and more ordinary exposure, concentrated in housing, where no criminal complaint is filed and no unit has jurisdiction. Until refusal and harassment on grounds of ethnicity carry a defined legal consequence, the record will keep registering the incidents and missing the condition. The measurable thing to watch is whether the PCR call category that is already being counted is ever converted into a reportable enforcement statistic.

    Discrimination against Northeastern Indians in the cities

    1. What the term covers: It refers to differential treatment of people from the eight Northeastern States in housing, employment, education and public spaces in metropolitan India, resting on appearance, language and food practices rather than on caste.
    2. The population it affects: Large student and working populations from the region live in Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune, most of them outside the State in which their community holds Scheduled Tribe status.
    3. The legal position of that status: Scheduled Tribe status is notified State by State, so a person from a Northeastern Scheduled Tribe usually does not hold that status in the city they migrate to, and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 therefore does not apply to them there.
    4. The institutional response so far: It has been organised around policing and helplines rather than around anti discrimination law.

    Laws and Rules Governing Racial and Ethnic Discrimination

    1. Constitution of India, Article 15: It prohibits discrimination by the State on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, and Article 19(1)(e) protects the right to reside and settle in any part of India.
    2. Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023: It penalises promoting enmity between groups on grounds of race, language, place of birth or residence, and it does not recognise racist motivation as an aggravating circumstance in an offence against the person.
    3. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989: It provides enhanced penalties and special courts for offences against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and its protection follows the State specific notification of that status.
    4. The Bezbaruah Committee, 2014: Set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs after the Lajpat Nagar killing, it recommended a dedicated penal provision against racial discrimination and fast track courts for such cases, and the penal provision has not been enacted.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026, GS1, 10.0 marks] Unity in diversity remains the defining feature of Indian society despite the challenges from communalism and regionalism. Comment.”