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Subject: Indian Society

  • 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.”

  • Perilous retreat: Gram sabhas must have a veto on issues relating to tribal land

    Why in the News

    The Committee on Public Undertakings has suggested that a project require the consent of only most, rather than all, of the gram sabhas affected by it. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 is framed in spirit to require the consent of every affected village assembly before forest land is diverted. The Tribal Affairs Ministry has declined to claim jurisdiction over the question, leaving the reading of that requirement to the Centre and the State governments. The contest is between a consent rule that protects the specific village losing its land and a counting rule under which the villages losing least can decide for the village losing most.

    What is the Forest Rights Act, 2006?

    1. What it recognises: The Act recognises individual and community rights over forest land for Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers who have depended on that land.
    2. Why it was passed: It was enacted to undo the “historical injustices” meted out to forest-dependent communities whose occupation of forest land had never been recorded.
    3. Where the authority sits: The gram sabha is the body that initiates the determination of the nature and extent of individual and community forest rights.
    4. What it does to land diversion: The consent of the affected gram sabhas is the barrier a project must clear before forest land is diverted for non-forest use.

    What would a majority consent threshold change?

    1. Assemblies become stakeholders: A regime deeming the acquiescence of 70 to 75 per cent of affected gram sabhas to suffice would reduce them from democratic bodies protecting the constitutional rights of their specific inhabitants to corporate stakeholders.
    2. The village that loses most can be outvoted: A project developer may bypass the consent of a village located directly within a proposed reservoir, once less affected villages provide their no-objection certificates.
    3. The change is jurisprudential, not procedural: A right held by a particular community because of its dependence on a particular forest cannot be surrendered by the agreement of other communities, so the threshold alters what the consent requirement is for.
    4. Classification disputes feed the same result: The political fight over classifying tribal communities alters who qualifies as a community member, which makes it easier to split a village assembly and engineer consent.

    What does the Tribal Affairs Ministry’s recusal produce?

    1. A regulatory vacuum: The refusal of the Tribal Affairs Ministry to claim jurisdiction leaves the Centre and the State governments unchecked in rewriting the rules by which forested land is diverted for non-forest use.
    2. The recusal rests on a technicality: The Ministry has located the question between the Forest Rights Act and the Environment Ministry’s rules in order to recuse itself.
    3. The consequence is substantive: That bureaucratic manoeuvre could strip forest-dependent communities of their most potent legal instrument.

    What is the legal position on consent as it stands?

    1. No express clause for every gram sabha: The Forest Rights Act does not include a clause requiring a no-objection certificate from every affected gram sabha.
    2. That does not make consent optional: The claim that no legal requirement presently exists, and that gram sabha decisions can be bypassed, is untrue.
    3. The route to any change is legislative: A government that wishes to move to a majority rule must change the relevant rules or legislation openly and democratically, rather than through an administrative reading of the existing text.

    Why do energy targets and forest rights collide?

    1. Infrastructure is being scaled rapidly: The government has been scaling up energy infrastructure, including the long-stalled Teesta-IV project, to meet macroeconomic goals.
    2. The same state wrote the protection: The Forest Rights Act was passed by that state to undo historical injustices, so the consent requirement is a commitment it made against its own future convenience.
    3. The chosen path avoids the argument: Proceeding on the notion that the consent requirement was never part of the Act settles the conflict by denying that it exists, rather than by weighing the claims on either side.

    What does land carry for forest-dependent communities?

    1. It is the base of everything else: Land is the foundation of these communities’ livelihoods, culture, identity and political autonomy.
    2. The struggle has been over dispossession: Communities have fought to resist displacement and dispossession and to secure customary collective ownership.
    3. They also supply public goods: Scheduled Tribe communities render social and environmental services and contribute to national development, including by helping meet India’s climate commitments.
    4. The recommendation follows from that: The Centre and the States should strengthen the powers conferred on gram sabhas in Scheduled Areas by the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 and the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996.

    Challenges to gram sabha consent under the Forest Rights Act

    1. Community forest rights lag individual titles: Most titles distributed under the Act are individual. Community forest resource rights, which are what a gram sabha exercises against a diversion, are recognised in a small share of eligible villages. Eg. Recognised community forest resource titles are concentrated in Maharashtra, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, with minimal recognition in several other States.
      The Fix: Complete community forest resource mapping and vesting in a village before any diversion proposal over its forest is processed.
    2. The consent requirement rests on executive instruction: It operates through Ministry circulars in the forest clearance process rather than through an express section of the Act, so it can be narrowed without going to Parliament. Eg. A 2009 circular of the Ministry of Environment and Forests made a gram sabha consent certificate part of the forest clearance record.
      The Fix: Write the consent requirement into the Act itself, so that any dilution requires an amendment debated in Parliament.
    3. Statutory exemptions have been widening: The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 removes categories of land from the forest clearance process, and the consent step travels with that process. Eg. Land within 100 km of an international border proposed for a strategic linear project falls outside the clearance requirement.
      The Fix: Retain the gram sabha consent step for every exempted category where forest rights have been recognised, independent of the clearance exemption.
    4. A refusal has no protected life: Nothing bars a fresh proposal over the same forest after a gram sabha has rejected one, so refusal delays a project rather than settling the question. Eg. In Orissa Mining Corporation v. Ministry of Environment and Forests (2013) the Supreme Court referred the bauxite mining question in the Niyamgiri hills to 12 gram sabhas, and all of them rejected it.
      The Fix: Bar a fresh diversion proposal over the same land for a fixed period following a gram sabha rejection, as land acquisition law already does.

    Conclusion

    The consent requirement is the one instrument that makes a village’s refusal legally consequential, and the change under discussion replaces refusal with arithmetic. Two positions cannot both hold: that the right belongs to a particular community because it depends on a particular forest, and that other communities may supply the consent on its behalf. The Environment Ministry can settle which of the two governs, and the honest route to that is an open amendment rather than a fresh reading of existing rules. Until it does, the strength of a village assembly’s veto depends on which ministry is willing to claim jurisdiction over it.

    Back2Basics: Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996

    1. What it does: It extends Part IX of the Constitution, on panchayats, to the Fifth Schedule areas with modifications.
    2. The gram sabha’s status: It makes the gram sabha, rather than the elected panchayat, the primary body competent to safeguard traditions, customs, cultural identity and community resources.
    3. Consultation before acquisition: It requires consultation with the gram sabha before land is acquired in Scheduled Areas and before displaced persons are resettled.
    4. Control over resources: It vests ownership of minor forest produce in the gram sabha and gives it a role in preventing land alienation and in granting minor mineral concessions.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2013] Under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, who shall be the authority to initiate the process for determining the nature and extent of individual or community forest rights or both? (a) State Forest Department (b) Distrit Collector/Deputy Commissioner (c) Tahsildar/Block Develoment Officer/Mandal Revenue Officer (d) Gram Sabha ANSWER: (d)”

  • Safety in Delhi needs a regulatory reset

    Why in the News

    A building collapse in Satya Niketan has reopened the question of who is answerable for building safety in Delhi. Comparable failures have occurred at Saidulajab, Hauz Rani, Tughlakabad Extension, Palam and Vivek Vihar. Delhi already runs an online single window system for building proposals, built on Automated Development Control Regulations (Auto DCR) software, and that system reached none of these structures. The contest is between a regulator that examines the plans submitted to it and a city where the dangerous construction is precisely the construction that submits no plan.

    How does Delhi’s single window building approval system work?

    1. Online filing and document verification: Building proposals are submitted online. The Auto DCR software and the Building Plan Approval Management System verify the mandatory documents.
    2. Fee and site visit: The system issues a scrutiny fee challan for online payment. It then sends an SMS to the building inspector and the architect carrying the details of the site visit.
    3. Automated reading of the drawing: Auto DCR creates entities such as plots, building layouts and roads from the submitted drawings, using layers, geometrical mapping and reports.
    4. Rule checking and status: AutoCAD and allied software analyse the plans against the development control regulations and the building bye-laws, and the compliance status is available online before the plans are examined for approval.

    Which laws does illegal construction breach?

    1. Planning and municipal law: Illegal construction violates the Master Plan for Delhi, the Unified Building Byelaws, the Delhi Development Act and the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957.
    2. Fire law: It also violates the Delhi Fire Service Act, 2007, which is the source of the fire safety clearance a building is required to hold.
    3. The city absorbs the cost: Unapproved construction adds load to transport, services and civic amenities that were planned for a lower density.
    4. The failures are recurrent: Frequent fire incidents and structural failures in illegal constructions have endangered lives.

    Why is Delhi’s exposure larger than the collapses suggest?

    1. Seismic exposure: Delhi falls in Seismic Zone IV, where earthquakes may be severe, so unengineered construction carries a citywide risk rather than a single owner’s risk.
    2. Two cities with one problem: Planned development coexists with informal growth in slums and unauthorised colonies. Both are plagued by building violations along with a lack of oversight and enforcement.
    3. Safety is not conditional on tenure: The city cannot afford unsafe buildings irrespective of the type of development, the land ownership or the land use.

    Why has repeated official attention changed so little?

    1. The findings already exist: Courts, the commissions headed by G T Nanavati and by Baleshwar Prasad, and the high level committee headed by Tejendra Khanna have all underlined building safety, with very little impact.
    2. Monitoring is the weak link: Haphazard development and weak monitoring systems produce inefficiencies, delays and a loss of accountability.
    3. Non-compliance carries no standing consequence: Every building without a structural and fire safety certificate should be sealed and should display a safety related warning, and no such automatic consequence operates today.

    Why does approving plans not produce safe buildings?

    1. The department sees only what is filed: Building departments mainly deal with the plans they receive, so massive illegal and risky constructions are left out of the process altogether.
    2. The digital reform did not widen the net: The single window system improved the handling of submitted proposals. It brought no unauthorised construction into any approval or inspection stream, which is why the reform has not been successful.
    3. The software trails the city it regulates: The system needs updating to handle redevelopment, green buildings, transit oriented development and approvals under mixed land use.

    What would demunicipalising building regulation mean?

    1. Separating the regulator from the political apparatus: The proposal is to make the regulatory function for buildings independent of the municipal and political structure that currently houses it.
    2. One structure performs two conflicting roles: The same municipal apparatus both sanctions construction and polices it, so enforcement competes with local political interest.
    3. Bringing in the settlements now left out: Radical reform is required so that structures in informal settlements, urban villages and resettlement colonies receive regulatory attention.

    What can technology detect that inspection does not?

    1. Remote detection of new construction: Geospatial artificial intelligence, using high resolution satellite imagery and LiDAR (laser based remote sensing that measures distances to build a three dimensional model of a surface), can monitor and detect unauthorised construction.
    2. Continuous tracking in place of periodic visits: Spatial data driven Real-Time Morphological Tracking can change how building and layout plans are approved, and improve compliance with the building bye-laws, the Fire Services Act and land use stipulations.
    3. Less discretion, less rent: Automated detection reduces the human interface in approval and enforcement, and reduces the corruption that discretion creates.

    Challenges to an independent building regulator for Delhi

    1. Authority over building control is already split: Sanction and enforcement are divided among the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the New Delhi Municipal Council, the Delhi Development Authority and the Delhi Cantonment Board, so a new regulator adds a layer unless it absorbs theirs. Eg. The Delhi Development Authority prepares the Master Plan, and the municipal bodies sanction individual building plans under it.
      The Fix: Vest building safety certification in one statutory authority for the whole National Capital Territory, with the municipal bodies acting as its field arms.
    2. Unauthorised construction carries statutory protection: Punitive action against unauthorised colonies has repeatedly been suspended by law, so a regulator inherits a built stock it cannot act against. Eg. Successive National Capital Territory of Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Acts have protected specified categories of unauthorised construction from demolition and sealing.
      The Fix: Convert that protection into a time bound retrofitting and certification requirement, so regularisation buys structural safety rather than immunity alone.
    3. Detection is not structural assessment: Satellite imagery and LiDAR identify a new or altered footprint, and they cannot read load bearing capacity, foundation integrity or the quality of materials. Eg. A failure triggered by excavation under an existing building leaves no external signature beforehand.
      The Fix: Pair remote detection with a mandatory structural audit by empanelled engineers for every building above a defined height or age.
    4. Certification capacity does not exist at that scale: Sealing every building without a structural and fire safety certificate presumes a supply of qualified structural engineers and fire auditors the city does not have. Eg. Fire safety clearance is required only above a prescribed building height, and even that stock is audited irregularly.
      The Fix: Licence and empanel private structural auditors under statutory personal liability, with random state verification of the certificates they issue.

    Conclusion

    Building regulation in Delhi is organised around a transaction, the filing of a plan, and the buildings that kill people are the ones that never generate that transaction. Better software and further audit requirements leave that structure untouched. The reform with any prospect of changing outcomes starts from the built stock rather than from the file, detects change on the ground, and carries the authority to act on what it finds without asking an elected municipal body first. Whether the proposal for a regulator of that kind moves past commentary is the thing to watch.

    Urban Governance in India

    1. Cities carry the economy: Cities house about 37 per cent of the population and generate close to 70 per cent of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
    2. The urban share keeps rising: Urban India is projected to reach about 60 crore people, or 40 per cent of the population, by 2036.
    3. Authority is fragmented by design: Municipal functions are split across urban local bodies, development authorities and parastatal agencies, so no single body answers for a city.
    4. Cities raise almost nothing of their own: Urban local bodies raise under 0.6 per cent of GDP as own revenue, of which property tax accounts for about 0.15 per cent.

    Constitutional Framework Governing Urban Governance

    1. Part IXA, Articles 243P to 243ZG: Inserted by the Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992, it gives municipalities constitutional status and fixes their composition, duration and elections.
    2. Twelfth Schedule: Lists 18 functions a State may devolve to municipalities, including urban planning, regulation of land use and construction of buildings, and fire services.
    3. Article 243W: Empowers State legislatures to confer powers and responsibilities on municipalities as institutions of self government and for the Twelfth Schedule functions.
    4. Article 243Y: Requires the State Finance Commission to review municipal finances and recommend the sharing of State taxes with municipalities.

    Laws and Rules Governing Urban Development

    1. National Building Code of India, 2016: A model code issued by the Bureau of Indian Standards setting requirements for structural safety, fire and life safety and building services. States give it force through their own bye-laws.
    2. Model Building Bye-Laws, 2016: A template issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs for State and municipal bye-laws, covering sanction procedure, setbacks, parking and fire safety.
    3. Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016: Requires registration of projects and agents with a State regulatory authority, and fixes promoter liability for structural defects for five years from possession.
    4. Disaster Management Act, 2005: Provides the statutory basis for disaster management plans and for safety and retrofitting norms in hazard prone areas.

    Challenges in Urban Governance

    1. Devolution under the Seventy-fourth Amendment is incomplete: Many States have not transferred the listed functions or empowered mayors, so the body closest to a building is not the body that controls it. Eg. Urban planning and land use regulation sit with State owned development authorities in most large cities.
      The Fix: Complete activity mapping for the Twelfth Schedule functions and provide for directly elected mayors with a fixed tenure.
    2. Municipal finances cannot fund enforcement: Weak own revenue leaves cities without the technical staff to inspect, audit or prosecute. Eg. Successive Finance Commissions have tied municipal grants to property tax reform and audited municipal accounts.
      The Fix: Shift property tax to capital value with periodic revision, and make audited accounts a condition for central mission funds.
    3. Most urban land is not planned at all: Only about 30 per cent of urban land is properly planned, so the majority of growth happens outside any development control regime. Eg. Census towns cross the urban thresholds without having any urban local body.
      The Fix: Extend statutory planning coverage to census towns and peri urban areas before they are built out.
    4. Urban disaster risk is outrunning municipal capacity: Flooding, fire and heat concentrate on the least regulated built stock and on the poorest occupants. Eg. The Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025 provides for Urban Disaster Management Authorities in large cities.
      The Fix: Make the city disaster authority the owner of building safety audits, with the power to seal non compliant structures.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2023, GS2, 10.0 marks] “The states in India seem reluctant to empower urban local bodies both functionally as well as financially.” Comment.”

  • Civil Service candidates await Centre’s word on foundation course amid case in top court

    Why in the News

    The Centre has asked the Supreme Court for permission to let the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) allocate services to the 2025 Civil Services Examination recommendees without implementing the Rohith Nathan judgment. That judgment, delivered on 11 March, found that the DoPT was excluding certain Other Backward Classes (OBC) candidates from reservation by treating them as creamy layer on the basis of their parents’ salary income alone. The Court directed corrective measures within six months. The examination results had been declared on 6 March, days before the ruling, which places one entire recruitment cycle across the line the judgment drew. The 958 candidates recommended in that cycle now have no service allocation and no foundation course date.

    What is the creamy layer income test?

    1. Where it comes from: The DoPT Office Memorandum of 8 September 1993 operationalised the Supreme Court’s direction in Indra Sawhney (1992) to exclude the socially advanced sections within a backward class.
    2. How it is structured: The Memorandum sets out a Schedule of six categories. The first five exclude a candidate by the status of the parent regardless of income, covering constitutional posts, service grades, armed forces ranks, professions and trade, and property ownership.
    3. The sixth category is residual: It applies an income and wealth test to everyone the first five do not catch, using gross annual family income above the ceiling for three consecutive years.
    4. What the income test leaves out: Salary income and agricultural income are excluded from that calculation. Only income from property, business, capital gains and similar sources is counted, and the ceiling has stood at Rs 8 lakh since 2017.

    What did the Rohith Nathan judgment find, and what did it direct?

    1. The finding: A Division Bench held that the DoPT was treating equals unequally, since the single variable separating two otherwise identical candidates was the parent’s employer.
    2. How the discrimination worked: A child of a government clerk was tested without salary income and passed. A child of a public sector or private employee on the same pay was tested with salary income counted and failed.
    3. What the Court held on the test itself: The income and wealth component is a residual filter, not the primary basis for exclusion. It must apply the same way to all until the government establishes equivalence between public sector posts and government grades.
    4. The direction: The Centre was to create supernumerary posts for the petitioners within six months, with services allotted according to the candidates’ ranks in their respective examination years.

    Why is the service allocation stalled?

    1. The Centre has asked to be excused from the ruling for this cycle: Its application seeks permission for the DoPT to allocate services without implementing the judgment.
    2. The cycle straddles the ruling: Results were declared on 6 March and the judgment came on 11 March, so allocation for this batch would be the first application of whichever reading the Court settles on.
    3. Nothing moves until the hearing: The Supreme Court is set to hear the Centre on 17 September, and the allocation question is what that hearing turns on.

    What are the 958 recommendees facing?

    1. The course has not begun: The foundation course was expected to begin in August and has not started.
    2. The schedule lapsed without a replacement: A tentative start date of 24 August was circulated, and nothing has been communicated since the matter came before the Court.
    3. No communication has reached the candidates: Recommended candidates report receiving nothing from the DoPT or from the academy about when the course will start.
    4. Neither official channel has been updated: No updates on the next steps have appeared on the DoPT website or on the website of the training academy.

    Challenges to the creamy layer determination

    1. The equivalence of posts was never established: The 1993 Schedule made the rank test for public sector and private employees conditional on an equivalence with government grades that has not been drawn up in three decades. Eg. Reservation policy is the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment’s subject under the Allocation of Business Rules, and the DoPT can only issue instructions once that Ministry frames the policy.
      The Fix: Notify a post-equivalence table so the rank-based categories apply uniformly whoever the employer is, which removes the need for the income test in these cases altogether.
    2. The income ceiling moves by discretion rather than by indexation: With no formula, the threshold stays static through years of inflation and then jumps, so the excluded population changes for reasons unrelated to backwardness. Eg. The ceiling went from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 8 lakh in five irregular steps over 24 years.
      The Fix: Tie the ceiling to a published price or wage index with automatic annual revision.
    3. Verification rests on self-declaration: Certificates are issued on a declaration checked by local revenue staff, so a defect surfaces only when the appointment is scrutinised. Eg. Recruitment bodies cancel candidatures years after selection over defective certificates.
      The Fix: Validate income declarations against tax and land records at the point the certificate is issued rather than at the point of appointment.
    4. No data exists on who actually captures the benefit: Without caste-wise data on selections and appointments, the claim that a small number of families corner reserved posts cannot be tested either way. Eg. The Rohini Commission on sub-categorisation of Other Backward Classes worked without a comprehensive survey of selections.
      The Fix: Publish caste-wise selection and appointment data against reserved posts as a standing annual return.
    5. Central and State lists diverge: A community recognised as backward by a State is often absent from the Central list, and the same test is administered differently across the two. Eg. Candidates holding State OBC certificates have been denied central reservation.
      The Fix: Publish a mapped concordance between the Central list and each State list, so a candidate can see which list governs a given post.

    Conclusion

    The dispute is no longer about whether the exclusion was wrong, since that has been decided. It is about who absorbs the cost of correcting it, and both available answers create a fresh set of claimants. A recruitment cycle cannot be held open indefinitely, and a batch allotted on a reading the Court has already rejected moves the litigation one year forward rather than ending it. The hearing later this month is where that choice is made, and the marker is whether the Court permits an interim allotment or holds the executive to the timetable it set.

    Back2Basics

    1. What it is: The Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration is the central training institution for the Indian Administrative Service.
    2. Where it is: It is located at Mussoorie in Uttarakhand.
    3. What the foundation course is: The Academy runs the common Foundation Course taken by fresh recruits to the All India Services and the Central Civil Services before they move to their own service academies.
    4. Who administers it: It functions under the Department of Personnel and Training, and was formed in 1959 by merging the earlier IAS Training School at Delhi and the IAS Staff College at Shimla.

    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.”

  • State of exception

    State of exception

    Why in the News

    The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has expressed “grave concern” at reports of the law enforcement apparatus resorting to violence, physical and otherwise, against minority ethnic and ethno religious groups, Dalits and non citizens. This is India’s first review by the Committee since 2007, and India ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in 1968. The Committee also recorded that India has not provided detailed and updated information on the state’s inquiries and sanctions arising from allegations of such violence. The government’s position before the Committee is that caste bias falls outside Article 1 of the Convention because caste is not synonymous with race. The Committee has read the Convention as covering all forms of discrimination based on inherited status. The tension is between a state defending a definitional boundary to keep caste a domestic matter and a treaty body reading descent into the Convention to bring caste inside international scrutiny.

    What is the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination?

    1. A treaty body: CERD is a body of independent experts that monitors how states that have ratified ICERD implement it.
    2. Periodic review: States file periodic reports and the Committee issues concluding observations recording its concerns and its recommendations.
    3. No enforcement power: Concluding observations are not binding and carry no sanction, so their effect runs through the reporting obligation and reputational exposure.

    Why does the caste and race question decide the Committee’s jurisdiction?

    1. The government’s reading: Article 1 of ICERD defines racial discrimination by race, colour, descent, and national or ethnic origin, and the government argues that caste is not race and therefore sits outside that definition.
    2. The Committee’s reading: The Committee treats discrimination based on inherited status as covered, which brings caste within the Convention through the descent limb rather than the race limb.
    3. What actually turns on it: If caste falls outside Article 1, India owes the Committee no account of caste discrimination at all, so the argument is jurisdictional rather than semantic.
    4. The scale of what the technicality would exclude: The position would place the situation of 200 million Dalits beyond the reach of international review. The underlying facts would remain undisputed.

    What specific practices did the Committee flag?

    1. Manual cleaning of sewers: The practice continues despite a law prohibiting it.
    2. Treatment of Rohingya Muslims: Hate speech against them, their poor living conditions, and their mass refoulement, meaning return to a territory where they face persecution.
    3. Citizenship deprivation: Mass deprivation of citizenship through the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
    4. Electoral roll deletions: Large scale deletions arising from the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
    5. Statutes used against civil society: Use of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 to hamper the work of civil society organisations.
    6. A gap in the criminal code: The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 does not expressly criminalise racist hate speech.
    7. Exemptions in forest law: The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 exempts “national security” projects from consultative decision making.

    Why is the data gap the enabling condition?

    1. Enumeration is overdue: A much delayed Census means suitably disaggregated data on disenfranchised communities does not exist in current form.
    2. Crime data arrives late: Slow release of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data delays any independent check on recorded offences against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
    3. Special measures run on stale figures: Affirmative action is being implemented on 2011 Census data, which can mask a regression in the socioeconomic status of Scheduled Tribes and Adivasis.
    4. The effect is no longer administrative: The absence of data has moved past lethargy into actively impeding independent verification of the state’s own claims about fighting caste and faith based discrimination.

    What has happened to the domestic accountability machinery?

    1. Accreditation at risk: The Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI), the peer body that accredits national human rights institutions against the Paris Principles, recommended a downgrade of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) last year.
    2. The stated grounds: The appointment of police officers to investigative roles within the Commission, and a lack of pluralism in its composition.
    3. The consequence: With the domestic institution weakened, a treaty body review becomes the surviving external check rather than a supplement to a working domestic one.

    Domestic matter or international accountability?

    1. The sovereignty claim: The government treats the caste question as an internal matter and has dismissed the Committee’s concerns as politically motivated.
    2. The counter position: A definitional objection raised at the treaty body removes an entire class of discrimination from review without disputing that the discrimination occurs.
    3. Who is left carrying it: With the state contesting jurisdiction, the work of raising these issues in multilateral fora falls to civil society organisations, which are themselves the subject of the Committee’s concern about the use of regulatory and criminal law against them.

    What does the road ahead require?

    1. Institutional independence: Restoring the independence of the NHRC, beginning with the composition and appointment concerns that triggered the accreditation review.
    2. Criminal law: Expressly criminalising racist hate speech, which the current code does not do.
    3. Affirmative action: Supportive affirmative action, extended rather than narrowed, for the communities the measures are meant to reach.
    4. Data: Collecting and publishing disaggregated data on the affected communities.
    5. Electoral process: Improving the transparency of electoral roll revisions.
    6. Enforcement: Strengthening enforcement of existing protective law overall.

    Challenges to treaty body review as a check on caste discrimination

    1. No individual complaint route: India has not made the declaration under Article 14 of ICERD, so an individual or a group in India cannot petition the Committee directly. Eg. States that have made the Article 14 declaration allow individual communications, and India’s absence from that list leaves domestic courts as the only forum. Fix. Make the Article 14 declaration, which is a unilateral act requiring no amendment to the Convention.
    2. The evidence base is state controlled: The Committee reviews what the state chooses to report, so a gap in official data becomes a gap in the review itself. Eg. Shadow reports by non governmental organisations are the main corrective, which is why restrictions on their foreign funding directly shape what the Committee sees. Fix. Require the state report to be tabled domestically before submission, so its omissions are contested at home first.
    3. Long reporting gaps defeat periodicity: The Convention requires reports every two years and states file many years late with no consequence. Eg. Several states parties carry reports overdue by more than a decade on the Committee’s own schedule. Fix. Apply the review in the absence of a report procedure on a fixed timetable, so a missing report does not postpone scrutiny.
    4. Recommendations have no domestic legal effect: A concluding observation creates no right enforceable in an Indian court, since a treaty requires enabling legislation under Article 253 of the Constitution to become domestic law. Eg. Courts have used unincorporated treaty obligations as an interpretive aid rather than as a source of enforceable rights, as in Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan (1997). Fix. Route the recommendations through the NHRC’s statutory annual report to Parliament, so each produces a documented government response.

    Conclusion

    The dispute is not over whether the discrimination occurs but over whether an international body may examine it, and the two positions cannot both hold: a Convention read to cover inherited status, and a state reading that places caste outside its scope. What keeps the disagreement unresolvable is that the evidence which would settle either claim is the same disaggregated data the state has not produced.

    Back2Basics

    1. Statutory basis: It was constituted under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993.
    2. Composition: It is chaired by a former Chief Justice of India or a former judge of the Supreme Court, with members including a serving or former Chief Justice of a High Court and persons with knowledge of human rights.
    3. Powers: It inquires into complaints of human rights violation, exercises the powers of a civil court during inquiry, and may visit places of detention.
    4. Recommendatory character: Its findings are recommendations to the government concerned, which must report the action taken, and the Commission cannot enforce them itself.

    “[2023, GS1, 15 marks] Why is caste identity in India both fluid and static?”

  • Old rules, New rebels — Haryana khap panchayats vs Gen Z

    Why in the News

    Several khap panchayats, unelected community bodies dominated by elderly men from landowning communities, across north Haryana have passed resolutions banning marriage within the same gotra or khap cluster, live-in relationships and same-sex relationships, with violators to be barred from entering their villages. The resolutions followed outrage over a remark by a Naugama khap member at a meeting in Jind district, who said the phones of young women riding pillion in “unsuitable” clothing while using mobile phones should be smashed. Khap leaders describe the resolutions as guidance to preserve social cohesion, while young Haryanvis, women and men, have used social media to argue the diktats target women’s autonomy and carry no constitutional or legal standing.

    What are khap panchayats, and what have they resolved?

    1. An extra-constitutional community body: A khap panchayat is an unelected council, typically drawn from elderly men of a dominant landowning community, that claims authority over marriage, relationships and social conduct within a cluster of villages it oversees. Haryana has more than 130 such khaps.
    2. The August 9 Kandela resolution: Twenty-four khap panchayats meeting at Kandela village in Jind passed a resolution disallowing marriage within the same gotra or cluster, on the belief that members of the network are one extended social family regardless of caste.
    3. Bans on live-in and same-sex relationships: The khaps also passed resolutions against live-in and same-sex relationships and against content they consider obscene, while urging the government to regulate love marriages.
    4. No legal enforcement power: Khap members themselves acknowledge that khaps hold no legal authority. Fix. The stated penalty for disobedience, social ostracisation and exclusion from the village, is enforced through community pressure rather than any legal process.

    What triggered the current backlash?

    1. The viral remark on women’s mobility: Virender Dhull, a khap member and a school director of physical education, said at the Naugama khap meeting on August 1 that young women’s phones should be smashed if they rode pillion with legs astride while using phones or wearing clothes the khap found unsuitable.
    2. Local khap leaders disputed the characterisation: Naugama khap president Jaivir Lohan said the remark was an individual’s opinion, not a khap ban, and that parents, not the khap, should decide what is appropriate for their children.
    3. Same-gotra marriage was defended on genetic grounds: Lohan justified the ban on same-gotra marriage by citing a shared gene pool leading to genetic disorders and weak offspring, a claim not supported by the resolution’s actual social rationale of treating khap members as kin.

    How has Gen Z pushed back?

    1. Satire and direct criticism on social media: An M.A. student from Jind posted a video imagining a “Gen Z panchayat” that restricts elderly men’s card-playing and hookah use, questioning why moral scrutiny falls only on women.
    2. A generational and constitutional framing: A journalism graduate from Jind argued the diktats are illegal and violate constitutional rights, including freedom of movement, expression and privacy, and said the views of a few khap members should not be taken as representative of Haryana.
    3. The backlash cuts across gender: Content creators, including men, have criticised the khaps, though some responses have relied on derogatory personal attacks on khap members rather than constitutional argument.
    4. Data cited by critics: Commentators have linked the diktats to Haryana’s skewed sex ratio, noting the state’s Sex Ratio at Birth fell to 898 girls for every 1,000 boys in the first four months of 2026, alongside high youth unemployment.

    Challenges to khap panchayats’ authority

    1. Conflict with constitutional guarantees: Khap resolutions restricting marriage choice, mobility and relationships run against the fundamental rights to equality, personal liberty and freedom of movement. Eg. The Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018) ruling directed states to prevent khap panchayats from interfering with marriages between consenting adults. Fix. State governments should operationalise the safe-house and police-protection directions already laid down in that ruling rather than reacting only after a controversy goes viral.
    2. Exclusion of women from decision-making: Khap leadership remains almost entirely male; the Naugama khap’s 42 members are all men. Eg. Women were first elected as sarpanches in Haryana only in the 1980s, decades after khaps themselves had been functioning. Fix. Institutionalise the recently convened women-led mahapanchayats as standing bodies with actual resolution-making power, rather than as one-off gatherings.
    3. Selective moral policing: Restrictions target women’s clothing, mobility and phone use, while comparable scrutiny is not applied to men’s conduct, including drug use and crime among Haryana’s male youth. Eg. Critics have pointed out that no khap resolution has targeted male youth involved in drug abuse or crime, even as such resolutions are passed against women’s dress and mobility.

    Conclusion

    The wave of khap resolutions has sharpened a long-running collision in Haryana between a community-based order that claims authority over marriage and relationships and a legal system built around individual rights, now amplified by a socially connected Gen Z that is contesting these diktats openly online. The khaps have no legal power to enforce their rulings, but social ostracisation remains a real cost for those who defy them, leaving the underlying tension between custom and constitutional right unresolved.

    Back2Basics

    Gotra: A patrilineal clan or lineage group traditionally believed to descend from a common ancestor; marriage within the same gotra is customarily prohibited in parts of north India, the belief the Kandela resolution draws on.

      (GS2-07, 2015, 12.5 marks) Discuss critically the actions taken by the legislative, executive and the judiciary to set the things right in this regard.”

    1. Gen Z Adivasis ask for more

      Why in the News

      Tribal students at the Manjari Scheduled Tribes (ST) hostel near Pune have been on a hunger strike for over two weeks, part of protests at 25 locations across Maharashtra since August 12, demanding that the state act on 14 charges, chief among them a Supreme Court-mandated 2017 order to fill 12,500 government job positions reserved for tribals. The immediate trigger was an August 5 state order capping the age limit for staying in tribal hostels at 26 years, which the government raised to 30 on August 14 after protests began. The agitation gained force after three tribal schoolgirls died of snakebite at a Gadchiroli ashram school that had no beds. The state has held four rounds of talks and withdrawn the age cap, but has given the protesters no timeline on the pending job vacancies, and students say the same demands recur every year.

      What are the students protesting, and what triggered this round?

      1. Fourteen charges, only one conceded early: The students placed 14 demands before the government, of which it first agreed only to scrap the hostel age limit for admission.
      2. A punitive age cap sparked the protest: The August 5 order capping hostel stay at 26 years threatened students who use the hostel to prepare for competitive exams and city jobs, and was raised to 30 only after protests spread.
      3. Snakebite deaths widened the demands: Three tribal schoolgirls died of snakebite at an ashram school in Gadchiroli that had no beds, after which protesters added a demand for 1 crore compensation and health insurance for the families.
      4. Invasive hostel practices are also contested: The students want Government Resolutions restricting assembly, protests and union participation withdrawn, and an end to compulsory practices such as pregnancy tests in female hostels.

      Why has the 2017 Supreme Court-mandated job quota gone unfilled for nine years?

      1. A binding order without a deadline mechanism: The Supreme Court directed in 2017 that 12,500 government job positions be filled for tribals, but nine years on the vacancies remain open with no fixed completion date.
      2. The state cites inter-departmental delay: A government official said filling the vacancies “cannot be done overnight” because multiple departments are involved, without naming a target date.
      3. Hostel capacity has not kept pace with demand: The state runs 490 tribal hostels housing 59,020 students, and students say the government has not expanded this capacity for several years even as demand for seats in city hostels has grown.

      What does the state’s handling of the protest reveal about tribal welfare governance?

      1. Concessions follow political pressure, not review: The age cap was withdrawn only after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi gave the protesters a platform at a Pune rally and wrote to the Chief Minister, not through an internal policy review.
      2. Design choices override student preference: The state defends centrally cooked meals for hostels as easier to monitor, while students say food travelling up to 100 km from central kitchens often spoils by the time it reaches them.
      3. The protest is a recurring one: Students say they have held similar protests for four consecutive years over the same unmet demands, including hostel safety and hygiene.
      4. The hunger strike has produced a medical emergency: Two of the six students on hunger strike, weak after 14 days without food, needed to be moved for hospital treatment as their blood pressure and blood sugar dropped.

      Challenges to filling the Scheduled Tribes job quota

      1. No enforcement timeline attached to the court order: A Supreme Court direction to fill a quota carries no built-in penalty for delay, so the executive can let vacancies persist for years without consequence. Eg. The 2017 order remains unimplemented nine years later even as the state government publicly reaffirms it will comply. Fix. Require the state to file a compliance affidavit before the Court every six months, naming the number of posts filled and the department responsible for the remainder.
      2. Fragmented departmental ownership slows recruitment: Filling a quota spread across “many departments” leaves no single authority accountable for the shortfall. Eg. A state official cited inter-departmental coordination as the reason recruitment “cannot be done overnight.” Fix. Designate one nodal department to consolidate vacancy data and recruitment timelines across departments and report progress publicly.

      Conclusion

      The Manjari hunger strike has forced the Maharashtra government to withdraw one contested order and promise action on the rest, but the core grievance, a Supreme Court-mandated tribal job quota unfilled nine years on, remains unresolved without a stated timeline. Whether this round of protest produces a written, binding commitment or another round of verbal assurance will determine if the annual cycle of protest continues.

    2. Rules at tribal hostels undermining dignity of students, says Rahul Gandhi

      Why in the News

      The Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, raised concerns over conditions at government tribal hostels, known as Ashram Shalas, in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, citing hunger strikes by students and reported malnutrition and snakebite deaths at a hostel in Gadchiroli. Ashram Shalas are residential schools set up specifically to house tribal students, often from remote forested areas, so they can access schooling that would otherwise require an impractical daily commute. Reports of hunger strikes and deaths at these hostels raise the question of whether the facilities meant to widen tribal access to education are instead exposing students to conditions that undermine their basic dignity and safety.

      What specific conditions have been raised at the hostels?

      1. Hunger strikes reported by students: Students at tribal hostels in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have gone on hunger strikes to protest hostel conditions, an extreme form of protest by residents that itself signals that ordinary grievance channels were not working.
      2. Malnutrition deaths reported at a Gadchiroli hostel: Deaths attributed to malnutrition among students at a hostel in Gadchiroli, a tribal-majority district in Maharashtra, point to a failure in the hostel’s food quality or quantity standards.
      3. A snakebite death reported at the same hostel: A student death from snakebite at the Gadchiroli hostel points to inadequate hostel infrastructure and the absence of timely medical evacuation in a forested, remote location.
      4. Concerns framed as a dignity issue, not only a facilities issue: The complaint frames the hostel rules themselves, not merely infrastructure gaps, as undermining student dignity, pointing to disciplinary or restrictive practices inside the hostels as part of the problem.

      Why do tribal hostels carry this specific set of risks?

      1. Remote locations limit emergency response: Ashram Shalas are deliberately located in or near tribal habitations, which are often in forested, hard-to-access terrain where the nearest primary health centre may be hours away, turning a treatable snakebite into a fatality.
      2. Chronic underfunding of hostel messing and staffing: Tribal welfare hostels are frequently reported to run on messing grants that have not kept pace with food costs, and with warden-to-student ratios too thin to catch early signs of malnutrition or illness.
      3. Weak grievance redress inside a residential, closed setting: Students living inside the hostel have limited means to escalate a complaint beyond the hostel’s own staff, which is part of why a hunger strike, rather than a formal complaint, became the mode of protest.

      Conclusion

      The Leader of the Opposition’s intervention puts political attention on a welfare infrastructure gap that had, until the hunger strikes and deaths came to light, received limited scrutiny. Whether the State governments of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh respond with an audit of hostel messing, staffing and medical-evacuation arrangements will determine if this becomes a one-time political exchange or a lasting reform.

      Back2Basics: Ashram Shalas

      1. Residential schools established specifically for children from Scheduled Tribe communities, run by State tribal welfare departments with central assistance under centrally sponsored schemes for tribal education.
      2. Intended to widen access to schooling for tribal children in remote, forested habitations where a daily commute to a regular school is not feasible.
      3. Provide free boarding, lodging and schooling, funded through State messing and infrastructure grants supplemented by central tribal welfare allocations.
      4. Have periodically drawn scrutiny over understaffing, poor food quality, and inadequate health and safety infrastructure.

      Matching Previous Year Question

      “[2025, GS1, 15 marks] Does tribal development in India centre around two axes, those of displacement and of rehabilitation? Give your opinion.”

    3. What young want, and why creating good jobs is no longer optional

      Why in the News

      Almost 70 per cent of urban job seekers surveyed in Delhi said they were looking for a job that would place them on their ideal career path from the start, instead of settling for any job. The survey covered over 3,000 randomly sampled men and women, 24 years of age on average, living in middle-class residential areas of the capital, and was conducted in the summer of 2023. Their stated career goal was predominantly salaried or formal-sector employment. The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for the same year records an urban labour market that cannot supply that goal, with less than 50 per cent of the urban workforce in salaried jobs. A follow-up experiment then exposed a random subset of the same job seekers to real-world job openings and salaries, and re-surveyed them a year later. Correcting their information lowered their expectations and left their aspirations untouched, so the contest is over who adjusts, the young or the labour market.

      What is the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)?

      • Purpose: The PLFS is the official household survey that estimates how many people are working, seeking work or outside the labour force, and in what kind of work they are engaged.
      • Nodal body: The National Sample Survey Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation conducts it and is the principal source of employment estimates in India.
      • Activity status measures: Usual Status classifies a person by activity over the preceding 365 days, while Current Weekly Status treats a person as unemployed if they did not work even one hour in the reference week.

      What do young urban job seekers actually want from work?

      • A career path, not a job: Almost 70 per cent said they wanted an opening that put them on their ideal career path from the start rather than any available job, and more men said this than women.
      • Formal salaried work is the goal: The stated career goal was predominantly salaried or formal-sector employment rather than casual or own-account work.
      • Women lean harder towards salaried jobs: More women job seekers aspired to salaried positions than men did.
      • Only 14 per cent of women prefer self-employment: Just 14 per cent of the women interviewed said they would rather work for themselves.
      • A third of men want to run enterprises: More than a third of the men wanted to start their own businesses.
      • Public sector preference is a myth: A comparable share of these men and women were looking for private-sector salaried jobs, which cuts against the dominant narrative of a strong preference for government jobs.

      How far does the urban labour market fall short of those preferences?

      • Salaried work is a minority outcome: Less than 50 per cent of India’s urban workforce holds a salaried job.
      • It is scarcer still for the young: Merely one in every three employed 24-year-olds holds a salaried job, a lower share than for the workforce as a whole.
      • Government jobs are a tenth of the market: No more than 10 per cent of the urban workforce is in the public sector or government jobs.
      • The formal private sector is barely larger: Only about 15 per cent of the urban workforce is in the formal private sector.
      • Self-employment is the largest single category: Of those working, 40 per cent are self-employed.
      • Most self-employment is subsistence, not enterprise: An overwhelming majority of these businesses hire no worker at all and report an annual turnover of less than Rs 10 lakh, so the aspiration to build a firm meets a market of one-person shops.

      Why do salary expectations diverge from what these jobs actually pay?

      • The occupations tested: Respondents were asked what they expected to earn as an accounts keeper, a primary school teacher, a data entry operator, a hospital attendant and an electrician, and each expectation was measured against actual PLFS earnings for the same occupation.
      • Expectations run up to 40 per cent above reality: Job seekers expect up to 40 per cent higher salary than the earnings the PLFS records for the same work.
      • Men are the more over-optimistic: Male job seekers expect almost Rs 8,000 more per month than the actual average earnings for these jobs.
      • The gap widens for salaried work: For salaried jobs specifically, male job seekers expect Rs 8,500 more per month than actual earnings.
      • The aggregate divergence exceeds 30 per cent: Taken together, salary expectations sit more than 30 per cent above reality, and the skew is sharper still among job seekers below 25 years of age, especially young men.
      • Information and inexperience explain the gap: A lack of information or outright misinformation about openings and pay, combined with inexperience of the job market, are the two obvious sources of the misalignment.

      What did correcting job seekers’ information change, and what did it leave untouched?

      • The design: A random subset of the 3,000 job seekers was informed about real-world job opportunities and salaries, and both the informed and the non-informed groups were re-surveyed twelve months later.
      • Expectations fell: Accurate information significantly dampened labour-market expectations of landing the ideal job, relative to those who were not informed.
      • Men disengaged first: Men in particular became less likely to report that they were on their ideal career path.
      • Search effort fell with belief: That disillusionment was accompanied by a decline in men’s job-search intensity.
      • The two exits from a failed search: As preferred job offers fail to materialise, job seekers adjust expectations downwards and either remain in the same jobs or leave the labour market and enrol at educational institutions.
      • Aspirations did not move: The answer on whether aspirations changed is a clear no, since these men and women continued to aim for formal-sector jobs or dynamic entrepreneurship a year later, because aspirations are long-term goals and not easily malleable.
      • High education costs make the expectation rational: Good-quality education is increasingly bought from private institutions at rising cost, so a high expected salary is not only aspirational but necessary to recover that outlay.

      Challenges to the Periodic Labour Force Survey

      • Informal work is under-captured: Household surveys do not fully record home-based, gig and platform work in a workforce that is about 90 per cent informal. Eg. Delivery and ride-hailing riders working across two aggregators are frequently recorded as ordinary self-employed workers. Fix. Align the activity definitions with International Labour Organization and System of National Accounts practice so multi-job holders, freelancers and platform workers are counted separately.
      • No skill mapping against job requirements: The survey does not match worker skills to the requirements of available jobs, so structural unemployment cannot be measured from it. Eg. The India Skills Report finding that only about half of graduates are employable has no counterpart in official survey data. Fix. Add a skills and job-requirement module so mismatch is measured rather than inferred.
      • Rural data has been low frequency: Rural estimates were historically produced only once a year, so rural distress is visible with a long lag. Eg. A monsoon failure that pushes workers back into farm labour shows up only in the following annual round. Fix. Extend high-frequency quarterly or monthly rounds to rural areas rather than confining them to towns.
      • Urban bias in the high-frequency rounds: The quarterly bulletins have been confined to urban areas, which under-measures the larger rural workforce. Eg. Quarterly urban unemployment rates are debated publicly while comparable rural numbers are unavailable. Fix. Publish a single integrated quarterly series covering both sectors on the same reference period.
      • New job categories are missing: Gig, digital, start-up and green jobs are not adequately represented in the occupational classification the survey uses. Eg. Solar installation and battery recycling roles have no distinct occupational code. Fix. Integrate Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation, National Career Service and PLFS records so emerging job creation is tracked from administrative data as well.

      Conclusion

      Young urban job seekers want formal salaried careers and dynamic enterprise, and correcting their information about the market lowers what they expect to earn without changing what they want. That asymmetry places the burden of adjustment on the economy rather than on the young, and realising these aspirations requires a structural transformation that creates jobs with regular pay and benefits. The four Labour Codes are a step in that direction, and creating good jobs and genuine career paths, rather than jobs alone, is no longer optional. Failure carries a specific cost, which is the squandered potential of an entire generation.

    4. To build Delhi’s future, learn from past missteps

      Why in the News

      Delhi’s fourth Master Plan was notified last week, with an emphasis on expanding public transport, ecological restoration, redevelopment, affordable housing and mixed land use. It follows the third Master Plan, which came into effect about 25 years ago when the city’s population was about 14 million, Gurugram and Noida were fledgling suburbs, the first lines of the Metro network were being laid, and a compressed natural gas policy for public transport had been introduced as a pollution-control measure. Another 10 million people have made the capital their home since then, and the air quality improvement of the 2000s and early 2010s has given way to an almost intractable pollution crisis. The third plan’s vision of a more sustainable city was defeated by municipal inertia and a lack of alignment among civic agencies, the Centre and the Delhi government. The contest is whether the fourth plan’s content can survive the same fragmented authority that defeated the third.

      What is the Delhi Master Plan?

      1. What it is: A Master Plan is a statutory long-range land use document that fixes how land in a planning area may be used, at what density, and with what infrastructure provision.
      2. Statutory basis: The Delhi Development Authority prepares and the Central Government approves it under the Delhi Development Act, 1957, which makes departure from the notified land use unlawful.
      3. Cycle: Each plan runs for a perspective period of roughly two decades, and the plan notified last week is the fourth in the series.

      What has changed in Delhi since the third Master Plan?

      1. Population then: The city’s population was about 14 million when the third Master Plan came into effect about 25 years ago.
      2. Population added since: Another 10 million people have made the capital their home in the intervening period.
      3. Satellite cities were still small: Gurugram and Noida were fledgling suburbs at that point and are now full cities in their own right.
      4. The Metro did not yet exist: The first lines of the capital’s Metro network were being laid when the third plan took effect.
      5. The pollution response of that era: A compressed natural gas policy for public transport had just been introduced as a pollution-control measure.
      6. Two outcomes since: Civic infrastructure in the neighbouring cities has come under acute stress, and the air quality improvement Delhi experienced for much of the 2000s and early 2010s has given way to an almost intractable pollution crisis.

      What does the fourth Master Plan propose?

      1. Five stated emphases: The plan is built around expanding public transport, ecological restoration, redevelopment of built-up areas, affordable housing and mixed land use, which reverses the outward expansion the earlier plans assumed.
      2. A large housing target: It carries an ambition of roughly 40 lakh additional homes by 2047 at affordable rates, to be met on land already inside the city rather than through fresh acquisition at the periphery.
      3. Higher permitted densities: Development norms are made more flexible so an existing plot can carry more floor space, which is the mechanism by which the housing target is to be delivered without new land.
      4. An end to rigid zoning: The plan records the futility of rigidly demarcating residential and commercial areas, since mixed use shortens the average work trip and lightens the load on the road network.
      5. Water bodies get attention: Restoration of the city’s water bodies and the nurturing of green spaces enter the plan as a standing planning obligation rather than as a separate departmental programme.
      6. The claimed payoff: Implemented as written, these measures ease the city’s longstanding traffic congestion and improve its air quality.

      Why can Delhi no longer grow by expanding outward?

      1. Land inside the territory is finite: With limited land available within the National Capital Territory, outward expansion has reached its limit.
      2. Existing land must work harder: Better utilisation of existing urban land therefore becomes more important than acquiring new land at the edge.
      3. The periphery is already strained: The stress on the civic infrastructure of neighbouring cities shows that pushing growth outward transfers the problem rather than solving it.
      4. Density and transport reinforce each other: Environment-friendly transport combined with mixed land use shortens trips, which is where the congestion and air quality gains come from.
      5. Ecological health follows land use: Redevelopment paired with the nurturing of green spaces and the city’s water bodies is what connects the land use choice to the well-being of residents.

      Why does fragmented civic authority defeat a good plan?

      1. Two persistent governance deficits: Municipal inertia and a lack of alignment among civic agencies, the Centre and the Delhi government are the national capital’s most persistent governance problems.
      2. They defeated the previous plan: These deficits were the biggest bottleneck in realising the previous Master Plan’s vision of a more sustainable city.
      3. Twenty-five years of research say the same thing: Work on pollution, Yamuna restoration, waste management, urban flooding and transport development has pointed consistently to the need for concerted action among departments.
      4. Metro expansion depends on four other agencies: A Metro line works best when bus routes, last-mile connectivity, parking rules and pedestrian facilities are designed around it, and each of those sits with a different authority.
      5. Land use cannot be separated from drainage: Land-use planning and infrastructure development cannot be divorced from the requirements of curbing water logging.
      6. Safety approvals need shared information: Building approvals, fire safety and emergency response require effective information-sharing among construction, fire and municipal authorities.
      7. The failures are already visible: Repeated fire incidents, building collapses and the strain placed on the city’s infrastructure during heavy rainfall have exposed the risks of fragmented and overlapping responsibilities among agencies.

      Challenges to the fourth Delhi Master Plan

      1. Higher density without matching services: Raising permitted density on existing land increases the load on water, sewerage and power networks that are already at capacity. Eg. Under 27 per cent of urban homes in India are connected to sewer lines. Fix. Tie each density increase to a notified infrastructure augmentation plan for that zone before the higher norm takes effect.
      2. Affordable housing targets have historically underdelivered: A large notified housing number does not by itself produce units at prices the intended buyers can pay. Eg. India carries an estimated shortage of about 1.87 crore urban housing units. Fix. Use in-situ redevelopment and rental stock alongside ownership housing, on the model of the Odisha JAGA Mission’s land titling.
      3. Unauthorised construction outruns the plan: Land use notified on paper is routinely departed from where enforcement is weak, which converts the plan into a document rather than a constraint. Eg. Only about 30 per cent of India’s urban land is properly planned. Fix. Publish a public geographic information system layer of notified land use against surveyed construction, updated annually.
      4. No single planning authority for the region: Delhi’s growth spills into Gurugram, Noida and Ghaziabad, which the National Capital Territory plan cannot bind. Eg. Congestion costs Delhi commuters 76 hours a year, much of it on inter-state commutes. Fix. Constitute and empower a Metropolitan Planning Committee under Article 243ZE with a statutory regional land use mandate.
      5. Municipal finances cannot fund the plan: Ecological restoration, drainage and transit feeders require sustained capital that city governments do not raise. Eg. Indian cities raise under 0.6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product in their own revenue, of which property tax is only 0.15 per cent. Fix. Modernise property tax assessment and issue municipal bonds against ring-fenced user charge revenue.

      Conclusion

      Delhi’s fourth Master Plan is a credible blueprint, and its emphasis on compact growth, mixed land use, public transport and ecological restoration addresses the failures of the last 25 years. Its content is not the binding constraint. The fragmentation of civic authority that defeated its predecessor, examined above, is left untouched by it. Delhi has a blueprint for improving liveability, and what it needs is to learn from past failures.

      “[2019, GS1, 15 marks] How is efficient and affordable urban mass transport key to the rapid economic development of India?”