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Type: Op-ed

  • India’s BRICS diplomacy is more than one summit’s result

    Why in the News

    Eleven members of BRICS have adopted the New Delhi Declaration 2026 by consensus, reiterating the importance of the Palestinian question and the two state solution. The Rio BRICS Declaration 2025 had gone further, condemning the military strikes against Iran as a violation of international law and the United Nations Charter. That formula was no longer available in Delhi. Iran had by then struck targets across the Gulf, including the territory of fellow BRICS members. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) had suspended trade and financial dealings with Tehran. The tension is whether a plurilateral forum is judged by the settlements it produces or by the dialogue it makes possible between members who have become belligerents against one another.

    Why was the Rio formula unavailable in New Delhi?

    1. Position in June 2025: Iran was a BRICS member that had been attacked, so every other member could condemn the strikes without contradicting its own position.
    2. The February 2026 escalation: The United States and Israel struck Iran again. Iran responded by striking targets across the Gulf, including the territory of fellow BRICS members.
    3. The UAE’s exposure: The UAE absorbed more Iranian projectiles than any other member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the six state grouping of Arab Gulf monarchies. It then suspended trade and financial dealings with Tehran.
    4. Why the formula lapsed: The condemnation language became unavailable because members had become belligerents against one another, not because the chair lacked resolve.

    What makes consensus among eleven members the achievement?

    1. The ministerial failure: BRICS foreign ministers met in New Delhi in May 2026 and produced no outcome document at all.
    2. The chair’s own assessment: The Ministry of External Affairs conceded in March that members were directly involved in the conflict, and that India as chair was working the Sherpa channel, the track of leaders’ personal representatives who negotiate summit texts before the leaders meet, to narrow differences.
    3. The turnaround: Four months after the ministerial failure, eleven members adopted a declaration by consensus.
    4. Precision where agreement existed: On the Palestinian question and the two state solution the language stayed precise rather than general.
    5. A floor where it did not: On the contested questions the text built a floor instead of delivering a verdict.

    Does a dialogue floor count as an outcome?

    1. The competing standard: One view tests a forum such as BRICS on the tangible outcomes it produces, not on the agency for dialogue and diplomacy it provides.
    2. Why that test misfires in a live conflict: The initiation of a dialogue cannot be expected to produce an immediate settlement, so judging it by the ends it may ultimately achieve dismisses it before it can work.
    3. The first bilateral since the war: Iran and the UAE used the summit for their first high level bilateral meeting since the war began.
    4. The declaration’s own significance: The importance of the West Asia text lies not only in what it says but in the fact that there was a declaration at all.
    5. Means as outcome: Where members are themselves parties to the conflict, the floor a summit provides is the result rather than a step toward one.

    What has a decade of Gulf engagement built?

    1. A changed agenda: India’s engagement with the Gulf has shifted from oil and trade toward defence, technology and security.
    2. Relationships across binaries: India’s relationships in West Asia are not organised as mutually exclusive choices between Iran and the Arab Gulf states.
    3. Access on the Arab Gulf side: India can register the security anxieties of the Arab Gulf without treating Iran’s isolation as an objective.
    4. Access on the Iranian side: India can engage Iran without appearing indifferent to Gulf security.
    5. Strategic autonomy restated: Strategic autonomy does more than create manoeuvring room for India. It creates diplomatic room between others.

    What are the limits of India’s position?

    1. Not a mediator: A summit declaration does not make India a direct mediator in West Asia.
    2. What formal mediation requires: Mediation requires acceptance by the parties, a mandate and a negotiating agenda, none of which a consensus text confers.
    3. What India can offer instead: Trusted channels where they are scarce, political access across opposing capitals, and the ability to enlarge the space for accommodation.
    4. The price not charged: That access is offered without demanding geopolitical allegiance from any of the parties.

    Challenges to India’s BRICS diplomacy

    1. Consensus rule lowers the ceiling: Every member holds an effective veto over the text, so an expanded membership reduces what any declaration can say. Eg. BRICS declarations record national positions on the Ukraine conflict rather than a common one.
      The Fix: Move contested items to issue based coalitions of willing members and keep the leaders’ declaration to the ground the whole group holds.
    2. No standing institutional memory: The grouping has no charter and no permanent secretariat, so continuity depends on the capacity of each rotating chair. Eg. The New Development Bank in Shanghai is the only permanent BRICS institution with a headquarters and a staff.
      The Fix: Establish a small standing secretariat to carry the Sherpa agenda across chairs rather than rebuilding it annually.
    3. Rivalry between the two largest members: India and China carry an unresolved boundary dispute into every agenda, which limits how far the group can act as a bloc. Eg. Disengagement along the Line of Actual Control has proceeded patrol point by patrol point through bilateral talks, never through a BRICS channel.
      The Fix: Keep bilateral disputes on bilateral tracks and confine the BRICS agenda to finance, health, space and technology, where member interests converge.
    4. Expansion dilutes coherence: A grouping spanning democracies and autocracies finds shared positions on norms harder to draft as it grows. Eg. Full membership has moved from five states to eleven within two years.
      The Fix: Publish admission criteria tied to economic and functional contribution, so each addition does not further widen the range of positions to be reconciled.
    5. Dollar dependence persists: The group’s financial alternatives remain marginal against dollar clearing, so the autonomy claimed in declarations is not matched by settlement practice. Eg. The US dollar still settles over 80% of global trade.
      The Fix: Extend existing bilateral local currency settlement arrangements to the trade flows that already run a recurring surplus, rather than pursuing a common currency.

    Conclusion

    The standard applied to a plurilateral grouping decides what it is seen to be worth. Judged by settlements signed, a forum whose members are firing at one another will always read as a failure. Judged by whether hostile parties still meet inside it, Delhi did the one thing that was no longer available to the chair at Rio. What to watch is whether the channels opened at the summit produce a second Iran and UAE meeting away from a summit setting, and whether the next chair carries the same text forward rather than reopening it.

    About BRICS

    1. Origin: The acronym BRIC was coined in 2001 to group high growth emerging economies, the first foreign ministers’ meeting was held on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in 2006, and the first leaders’ summit was held at Yekaterinburg in 2009.
    2. Membership: South Africa joined in 2011, expansion opened at the 2023 Johannesburg summit, and Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE joined in 2024 and Indonesia in 2025, taking full membership to eleven.
    3. Weight: Members account for over 45% of world population, roughly 37% of global Gross Domestic Product measured at purchasing power parity, which exceeds the G7 share, and about 42% of global oil production.
    4. Partner tier: A partner country category introduced in 2024 engages states such as Malaysia, Thailand and Nigeria without granting full membership.

    Schemes and Initiatives for BRICS

    1. New Development Bank (NDB): Headquartered in Shanghai, it finances infrastructure and sustainable development projects in member states and has approved over $35 billion in loans.
    2. Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA): A $100 billion pool providing short term liquidity support to members facing balance of payments pressure.
    3. BRICS Pay: A cross border payment system in pilot stage, intended to settle trade between members outside the SWIFT messaging network.
    4. BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Centre: Launched during the pandemic to facilitate technology transfer and vaccine access across members.
    5. Partnership on New Industrial Revolution (PartNIR): A standing cooperation track on artificial intelligence, digitalisation and green technology.
    6. Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation: Six satellites contributed by member states sharing earth observation data for disaster management, alongside a BRICS Space Council set up in 2025 to coordinate deep space and lunar research.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    ““BRICS acts as a powerful counterweight in global governance, actively amplifying the voice and influence of the Global South.” Explain the role of BRICS in projecting itself as an alternative to other groupings.”

  • Serious escalation

    Why in the News

    The U.S. Russia Sanctions Act has been signed into law, giving the U.S. President authority to levy tariffs of up to 100% on countries such as India that import large quantities of Russian oil and gas. The escalation of reciprocal tariffs to 50% on India last year rested on an Executive Order and could have been rescinded by the same method. This Act has been passed by the U.S. Congress, so it carries a higher order of legal permanence, and the President must justify any waiver in writing to Congress. The tension is that the tariff India must now negotiate against is both larger and far harder to reverse, and it stacks on levies already in force at a moment when Russia supplies more than half of India’s crude and the alternative sources are constrained.

    What does the U.S. Russia Sanctions Act do, and why is it harder to reverse?

    1. The authority it creates: The Act authorises the U.S. President to impose tariffs of up to 100% on countries importing large quantities of Russian oil and gas.
    2. Statute rather than executive instrument: The measure was passed by Congress, which gives it a higher order of legal permanence and authority than the Executive Order that carried last year’s 50% reciprocal tariffs.
    3. The waiver is constrained: Any waiver the President wishes to grant must be justified in writing to Congress.
    4. The rate is a ceiling, not a floor: The phrasing authorises tariffs of up to 100%, which leaves room for a lower rate to be set without amending the Act.

    What does the tariff stack do to Indian exports?

    1. Three levies at once: The 100% tariffs would sit over and above the 10% forced labour tariffs and the 50% Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminium.
    2. The market at risk: The United States is India’s largest export destination, accounting for about 20% of total goods exports.
    3. How the 50% was absorbed: Exporters mitigated the earlier 50% tariffs by sharing the cost with their American customers, which was a financially devastating and unsustainable way to retain them.
    4. Why that cannot be repeated: Sharing a 100% tariff will be impossible for India’s exporters, who are largely micro, small and medium enterprises.
    5. The net effect: Indian exports to the United States become too uncompetitive to sustain should the new tariffs take effect.

    What three options does India have?

    1. Cut Russian oil imports: India reduces its purchases of Russian crude to fall outside the Act’s trigger.
    2. Retain imports and absorb the tariff: India continues buying Russian oil and bears the tariff, which would be a significant blow to its export ambitions and to its micro, small and medium enterprises.
    3. Negotiate a low rate: India persuades the United States to set a low tariff using the up to 100% phrasing already in the law.

    Why is replacing Russian crude difficult?

    1. Dependence level: Russia accounted for more than 51% of India’s oil imports as of July 2026.
    2. The alternative route is constrained: Supplies through the Strait of Hormuz remain constrained, which limits the Gulf as a substitute at short notice.
    3. Port capacity is the bottleneck: India will have to press countries such as Oman to accelerate the expansion of alternative ports.
    4. Price conditions are adverse: Oil remains well above $100 a barrel, which makes favourable terms with new suppliers increasingly difficult to obtain.

    What is the negotiating window, and what does the record suggest?

    1. The time available: Thirty days remain before the United States can levy the tariffs.
    2. The diplomatic occasion: The Union Commerce Minister is scheduled to travel to the United States at the end of the month for the G20 Trade Ministerial.
    3. What the record shows: Historical data show India has usually complied with U.S. pressure to cut oil imports from particular countries, Russia included, irrespective of vocal claims of strategic autonomy.
    4. The test: India’s ability to secure a low rate rather than a waiver is the measure of what the bilateral relationship at the leadership level can deliver.

    Challenges to the U.S. Russia Sanctions Act

    1. Origin of crude is hard to trace: Sanctioned barrels move through blending, ship to ship transfer and re export, so a measure keyed to the origin of oil is difficult to administer. Eg. Russian crude refined in India and exported as diesel to Europe has been treated as an Indian origin product.
      The Fix: Key the measure to refinery level crude import records rather than to the origin declared on a finished product shipment.
    2. Waiver discretion is narrowed but not removed: The written justification requirement raises the political cost of a waiver without barring one, so relief remains available and remains uncertain. Eg. The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, 2017 carried a national interest waiver that the U.S. administration left unexercised in India’s S 400 air defence procurement.
      The Fix: Seek a defined low rate under the up to 100% phrasing, since a rate is set by the President while a waiver must be defended to Congress.
    3. A tariff on the buyer raises the price for every buyer: Removing a large purchaser from discounted Russian barrels tightens the non sanctioned market and lifts the global benchmark. Eg. The G7 price cap of 2022 was built around a discount ceiling precisely to keep Russian barrels flowing rather than withdraw them from supply.
      The Fix: Press for a price cap style mechanism permitting purchase below a ceiling, in place of a tariff levied on the importing country.
    4. Legislated tariffs outlast the dispute that produced them: A measure in statute survives a change of administration and a settlement of the underlying conflict, so relief later requires a fresh Act of Congress. Eg. The Jackson Vanik amendment of 1974 continued to apply to Russia until its repeal in 2012, long after the emigration restrictions it targeted had ended.
      The Fix: Negotiate a sunset clause or a certification trigger tied to a settlement, so that relief does not depend on fresh legislation.

    Conclusion

    The instrument has changed character, and that is what makes this escalation different from the last one. A tariff resting on an Executive Order was reversible by the office that imposed it, and a tariff resting on an Act of Congress is not. India’s three options are all costly, and the cheapest of them, a negotiated low rate under the ceiling already written into the law, has to be secured inside the thirty day window and without the leverage that a reversible instrument once gave both sides. The G20 Trade Ministerial at the end of the month is the point at which that attempt is made.

    Back2Basics: Section 232 tariffs

    1. The statute: Section 232 of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act of 1962 is the national security trade provision of U.S. law.
    2. The process: It authorises the U.S. Commerce Department to investigate whether imports of a specified product threaten to impair national security.
    3. The power it triggers: On an affirmative finding, the President may adjust imports of that product through tariffs, quotas or other restrictions.
    4. How it applies: Section 232 measures attach to a product rather than to a country, so steel and aluminium tariffs imposed under it apply to imports from all origins.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    [2025, GS2, 15] “Energy security constitutes the dominant kingpin of India’s foreign policy, and is linked with India’s overarching influence in Middle Eastern countries.” How would you integrate energy security with India’s foreign policy trajectories in the coming years?”

  • India’s NGOs at a new funding crossroads

    India’s NGOs at a new funding crossroads

    Why in the News

    The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 would vest foreign contributions and every asset created from them in a government appointed designated authority where a Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) certificate is cancelled, surrendered or allowed to lapse. The first Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act was passed in 1976 under a government of a different political composition, and it rested on the same apprehension that foreign powers could destabilise the country by funding civil society organisations. The present Bill has not been enacted, held up by opposition from political parties and from civil society groups, particularly Christian organisations. The tension runs in two directions at once. The Bill tightens the foreign funding route at precisely the point when bona fide foreign donors are withdrawing from India of their own accord, which makes the operative question not whether foreign funding is curtailed but whether domestic philanthropy will fund the traditional service delivery organisations that foreign aid has been sustaining.

    What does the FCRA Amendment Bill, 2026 propose?

    1. Vesting on cancellation: Foreign contributions and all assets created from them vest in a government appointed designated authority where a certificate is cancelled, surrendered or automatically lapses.
    2. Provisional and permanent vesting: The organisation recovers the assets if registration is restored within the prescribed period, and vesting becomes permanent only if it is not. Restoration during the provisional vesting period returns both the assets and the unused foreign contribution.
    3. Disposal of assets: Where a fresh certificate is not obtained within the prescribed period, the assets may be sold or transferred to a government department, with the proceeds going to the Consolidated Fund of India.
    4. Remedies: The Bill provides for revision and for an appeal to the District Judge.

    What case does the government make for tighter control?

    1. An opaque channel: The stated position is that foreign funding into the NGO sector operates as a vast and intricate web, with thousands of crores of unmonitored capital entering annually under the banners of development, human rights and social welfare.
    2. Bypassing state accounting: Much of that money is said to deliberately avoid state accounting mechanisms.
    3. End uses alleged: The funds are said to reach politically charged campaigns, highly selective local advocacy, and aggressive proselytisation and religious conversion networks.

    Why do NGOs and their beneficiaries object?

    1. Doubts over religion neutrality: Christian organisations, which the government says receive a larger share of the funds among religious associations, are concerned that the legislation will not operate in a religion neutral way.
    2. Beneficiaries bear the loss: The organisations affected run schools, hospitals, old age care homes and similar institutions, and it is the people they serve who lose the service.
    3. Sole provider in some regions: Leaders from the northeast and tribal areas have pointed out that these institutions are sometimes the largest or the only providers of such services in their areas.
    4. The existing base is already narrow: FCRA registrations of 22,496 organisations have been cancelled since 2015, leaving about 14,466 active registered associations eligible to receive foreign contributions as of Ministry of Home Affairs data for September 2026.

    Why is foreign funding valued out of proportion to its size?

    1. Small in volume: The total volume of foreign aid to NGOs is small measured against government budgets, and only a small proportion of NGOs receive it at all.
    2. Flexibility is the real value: Foreign funding is an alternative source and a more flexible one, carrying fewer restrictions on how it may be used and tailored to an organisation’s needs through discussion between the NGO and the donor.
    3. The conditionality point: Different funding sources shape organisations and their effectiveness differently, which is the substance behind the observation that whoever pays the piper calls the tune.
    4. What the earlier research found: Desk research and interviews with NGOs of varying size recorded a minority reporting adverse consequences, specifically the adoption of ideas and practices from abroad unsuited to Indian conditions. Most reported that foreign funds contributed to India’s development and to the growth of the voluntary sector by bringing new ideas, techniques, technologies and organisational improvements.
    5. Why it filled a gap: Foreign aid played that role in the absence of adequate government funding and private philanthropy, and present receipts are larger than in 2006 to 2007, the last year for which comparable data were available when that research was published.

    What has changed in the funding environment?

    1. A more developed voluntary sector: The sector is more developed now than when foreign aid first became its flexible source of support.
    2. Donors are withdrawing on their own account: Bona fide foreign donors are moving away from giving to India because of economic difficulties at home and the perception that a country aiming to become the world’s third largest economy no longer needs their aid.
    3. The domestic alternative has improved: The domestic non government funding environment has strengthened over the same period.

    Can domestic philanthropy replace what is receding?

    1. The wealth base: Of 3,332 billionaires worldwide on the Forbes 2026 list, 229 are in India, the third largest number after the United States and China.
    2. Philanthropic volume: Private philanthropy was projected to reach Rs 1.43 lakh crore ($16 billion) in FY2025 per the India Philanthropy Report published by Bain and Company, with retail giving adding a further several thousand crore annually.
    3. The gap is widening, not closing: The same report projects demand growing faster than supply, with the gap reaching Rs 18 lakh crore ($210 billion) by 2030.
    4. Corporate social responsibility as the offset: CSR spending by listed companies reached Rs 22,563 crore in FY25, up 17.5%, following the Companies Act, 2013 mandate on companies above a specified size, and companies lacking internal competence in social development rely on NGOs as delivery partners.
    5. The mismatch in direction: New philanthropists, particularly entrepreneurs and technology leaders, are shifting from traditional giving toward ecosystem building, scientific research, higher education and complex institutional support. That is favourable for structural change and adverse for NGOs delivering traditional education, health and social welfare services.

    Challenges to the FCRA Amendment Bill, 2026

    1. Vesting precedes adjudication: Assets pass to the designated authority on cancellation, and the appeal to the District Judge is heard only after the organisation has lost control of them. Eg. Amnesty International India halted operations in 2020 after its accounts were frozen, before any adjudication had concluded.
      The Fix: Suspend vesting until the statutory appeal is decided, with an interim receiver operating the assets for the beneficiaries in the meantime.
    2. Services stop before culpability is established: Schools, hospitals and care homes tied to a suspended certificate halt operations during the provisional vesting period, irrespective of the eventual outcome. Eg. The Missionaries of Charity’s FCRA renewal lapsed in December 2021, suspending foreign funded operations across its homes until it was restored weeks later.
      The Fix: Ring fence frontline service assets from vesting and hand their operation to the State government of the district for the duration of the proceedings.
    3. Sale proceeds cannot be returned once absorbed: Money that reaches the Consolidated Fund of India can leave it only on an appropriation voted by Parliament, so restoration of registration cannot restore the asset. Eg. No administrative order can reverse a credit to the Consolidated Fund.
      The Fix: Hold sale proceeds in an escrow account outside the Consolidated Fund until the appeal period and any appeal are exhausted.
    4. Compliance cost falls hardest on small organisations: The 2020 amendment already required every recipient to operate a designated State Bank of India account in New Delhi, capped administrative expenses at 20% and barred sub granting, which removed the intermediary route through which grassroots bodies were funded. Eg. District level organisations that received foreign funds through a larger registered NGO lost that channel entirely.
      The Fix: Restore regulated sub granting to FCRA registered recipients with mandatory reporting on the onward transfer, along the lines of the light regulation approach the Vijay Kumar Committee proposed.

    Conclusion

    Whether the Bill is enacted decides how foreign funding ends, not whether it contracts, since the donors are already leaving. The future is not bleak if Indian domestic philanthropy steps into the space, and that requires indigenous donors and the government to become responsive to what NGOs actually need rather than replicating the conditionality that made government funding the harder money to use. What must change is the practice of funding itself: a serious dialogue on funding practice as distinct from development priorities, and the adoption by domestic donors of the flexibility that made foreign aid valuable out of proportion to its volume. The thing to watch is whether the traditional education, health and welfare organisations find a domestic source before the foreign one closes.

    NGO Sector in India

    1. What the sector is: Non governmental organisations, also described as civil society organisations, are voluntary not for profit entities operating independently of government on social, economic, environmental and political issues.
    2. Scale: India has over 34 lakh registered NGOs on the NITI Aayog Darpan portal, among the largest such sectors in the world.
    3. Three registration routes: Societies register under the Societies Registration Act, 1860; private trusts under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 and public trusts under the relevant State legislation; and companies under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013.
    4. The foreign funding law: The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 governs the receipt of foreign donations and requires that they be used for the purpose for which they were given.

    Government Initiatives for the NGO Sector

    1. NITI Aayog Darpan portal, 2015: Registration on the portal is mandatory to receive government grants and CSR funds, and it assigns each organisation a unique identifier and publishes its board members, projects and financials.
    2. Income Tax Act exemptions: Sections 12A and 12AB provide tax exemption to charitable trusts and NGOs, and Section 80G gives donors a 50% or 100% deduction, both subject to renewal every five years.
    3. Aspirational Districts Programme, 2018 and Aspirational Blocks Programme, 2023: NGOs are engaged as implementing and capacity building partners in identified districts and blocks.
    4. National Voluntary Sector Policy, 2007: The policy recognises the independence and autonomy of the sector, promotes multi stakeholder dialogue, and recommends simplified registration and transparent funding mechanisms.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    [2015] Examine critically the recent changes in the rules governing foreign funding of NGOs under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), 1976.

  • A homegrown innovation ecosystem is taking root

    A homegrown innovation ecosystem is taking root

    Why in the News

    Three institutional foundations of an innovation economy are advancing together in India for the first time: public research, corporate research and development (R&D), and deep technology entrepreneurship. Technologies that once arrived through imports are increasingly being invented at home, in research institutions, in industry and in startups. Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductor technology, critical for advanced radar, space systems and next generation communications, is now being developed domestically in a tightly export controlled field. Affordable immunotherapies developed in India are expanding access to advanced cancer care at the same time. The tension is between volume and value. Patent filings are rising sharply, while the number of patents actually in force, the rate of commercialisation and national R&D spending remain far below those of the economies India is measured against.

    What are the three major institutional pillars shaping India’s emerging innovation ecosystem?

    1. Public Research Institutions: Government-supported institutions conduct foundational and long-gestation research. Eg: DRDO developed indigenous Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology.
    2. Corporate R&D: Private-sector industries increasingly invest in research and development. Eg:Jio Platforms has made significant patent filings in 5G and 6G technologies.
    3. Deep-Tech Entrepreneurship: Startups convert advanced research into commercial applications. Eg:AGNIT Semiconductors is commercialising indigenous GaN technology developed through IISc’s research ecosystem.

    What do the patent and R&D numbers actually show?

    1. Filing growth: Patent filings rose from just over 1,10,000 in 2024-25 to more than 1,43,000 in 2025-26, an increase of 30.2%.
    2. Domestic ownership of filings: Domestic applicants now account for almost seven in ten filings, so the growth is not driven by foreign applicants seeking protection in the Indian market.
    3. Patents in force, which is the real test: Patents in force in India stood at just over 2,40,000 in 2025, against 5.7 million in China, 3.5 million in the United States and 2.1 million in Japan on 2024 data. Patents in force counts rights that were granted and are still being maintained, so a wide gap against filings points to low grant rates, high abandonment, or both.
    4. The spending floor beneath all of it: India spends just under 1% of GDP on research and development, against about 2.4% in China and 3.5% in the United States.

    What is gallium nitride (GaN) and why is it strategic?

    1. What it is: Gallium Nitride is a semiconductor material that handles higher voltage, higher frequency and higher temperature than silicon, which is why it is used where power density and signal strength matter more than cost.
    2. Where it is used: It underpins monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), the single chip radio frequency circuits inside advanced radar, satellite links and next generation wireless equipment, and it is subject to export control for that reason.

    What does the GaN breakthrough show about the public research pillar?

    1. The breakthrough and where it happened: Scientists of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) at the Solid State Physics Laboratory (SSPL) in Delhi and the Gallium Arsenide Enabling Technology Centre (GAETEC) in Hyderabad announced a breakthrough in making GaN MMICs in March 2023.
    2. Why it had to be built at home: The technical know how for these circuits was, by widely reported accounts, refused to India under the offset provisions of the Rafale fighter jet purchase from France.
    3. The club it joined: India is now one of seven countries to have mastered this technology, alongside China, France, Germany, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
    4. Transfer out of defence: DRDO is actively transferring GaN High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) based MMIC technology, a transistor design that carries current through a very thin high mobility layer, for use in 5G and 6G wireless infrastructure, electric vehicle on board chargers and renewable energy inverter systems.
    5. The commercial end of the pipeline: AGNIT Semiconductors, a spin off from the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE) at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, is translating homegrown GaN technology into commercial applications.

    Is India moving from standard implementer to standard setter?

    1. The alliance and its target: The Bharat 6G Alliance (B6GA) has stated an aim of contributing 10% of global 6G patents by 2030.
    2. The filing base so far: Alliance members have made more than 7,700 patent filings across 5G and 6G technologies, including over 4,400 foreign filings.
    3. The caveat on those numbers: These are applications, not grants, and not declared standard essential patents, which are the patents a technical standard cannot be implemented without and which earn licensing revenue from every implementer.
    4. Participation in the standards body: Indian contributors made almost 3,000 technical contributions to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the body that writes mobile communication standards, in the last year, a 15 fold increase over 2020.
    5. International filing rank: The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) 2025 Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) rankings, which track a single international application route that reserves rights across member countries, placed Jio Platforms Limited 19th overall among international filers, a rise of more than 300 places and its first entry into the top 20.

    What has changed in the startup ecosystem?

    1. The capital commitment behind it: Members of the India Deep Tech Alliance (IDTA) have made deep technology commitments of more than $2.5 billion, alongside the central government’s Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) financing.
    2. Earth observation: Pixxel Space, founded by two alumni of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, has six satellites in orbit in hyperspectral imaging, which captures hundreds of narrow wavelength bands so materials can be identified rather than merely seen, with a full constellation of 18 to 24 planned.
    3. Launch vehicles: Skyroot Aerospace flew the Vikram-1 low earth orbit launch, and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras nurtured Agnikul Cosmos is working toward fully reusable launch vehicles.
    4. Affordable advanced medicine: ImmunoACT, incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay with the Tata Memorial Centre, developed NexCAR19, India’s first indigenous CAR-T cell therapy, in which a patient’s own immune cells are re engineered to attack cancer cells, delivered at a tenth of typical treatment costs.
    5. Preventable blindness: Bengaluru based Remidio Innovative Solutions, supported at early stage by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), screens for diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma through smartphone enabled retinal imaging with artificial intelligence.

    Challenges to India’s homegrown innovation ecosystem

    1. Patent examination capacity: A grant depends on examiner throughput, so filings rising faster than examiner strength lengthen the wait rather than produce enforceable rights. Eg. The Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks administers patents, designs, trade marks and geographical indications through a single office.
      The Fix: Ring fence recruitment of technically qualified examiners to the patent stream and publish disposal data by technology field.
    2. The cost of keeping a patent in force: A granted patent lapses unless a renewal fee is paid every year, so a holder with no paying customer lets it go. Eg. The Patents Act, 1970 requires renewal fees annually from the third year across the twenty year term.
      The Fix: Defer renewal fees for publicly funded institutions and recognised startups until the patent earns its first revenue.
    3. Non standard transfer terms for publicly funded intellectual property: Each laboratory negotiates its own royalty and exclusivity terms, so a licensee faces a fresh negotiation at every institution. Eg. The Protection and Utilisation of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill, 2008, drafted to settle exactly those terms, was never enacted.
      The Fix: Issue one standard licensing template with published royalty bands for every publicly funded laboratory.
    4. No public first customer for unproven technology: Procurement rules reward the lowest price and a record of prior supply, which a first time deep technology supplier cannot show. Eg. The Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017 sets local content thresholds but creates no route for a technology with no supply history.
      The Fix: Reserve a share of ministry procurement for first of a kind indigenous technology with a relaxed prior experience condition.

    Conclusion

    India’s innovation constraint has moved. The question is no longer whether homegrown technology can be created, since a full pipeline from government laboratory to academic institution to commercial venture now exists in at least one strategic field. The open question is whether a right on paper can be turned into a product with a buyer, which is where filings, grants and revenue currently part company. The marker to watch is the share of filings that survive to become patents in force, because that one ratio tests grant capacity, commercial intent and maintenance funding at the same time.

    Government Initiatives for India’s research and innovation ecosystem

    1. Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF): Established under the Anusandhan National Research Foundation Act, 2023 to seed and grow research in universities, colleges and research laboratories, with the larger share of its funding intended to come from non government sources.
    2. Startup India: Launched in 2016 under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, it gives recognised startups tax exemptions, self certification under labour and environment laws, and fast tracked patent examination with fee rebates.
    3. Fund of Funds for Startups: Operated by the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), it invests in Alternative Investment Funds rather than in startups directly, so capital reaches ventures through professional fund managers.
    4. Atal Innovation Mission: Runs Atal Tinkering Labs in schools and Atal Incubation Centres in host institutions, working on the supply of innovators rather than on the funding of firms.
    5. Technology Development Board: Set up under the Technology Development Board Act, 1995 to provide loans and equity to companies commercialising indigenous technology.

    Back2Basics: Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme

    1. What it is: A central financing window for private sector led research in sunrise and strategic sectors, aimed at the stage private capital avoids.
    2. Size: A corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore was approved for it by the Union Cabinet in 2025.
    3. How the money moves: Funds flow through a special purpose fund to second level fund managers, who extend long tenure low or nil interest loans or take equity, rather than paying out direct grants.
    4. Who steers it: It is guided by the Governing Board of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, so research financing and research promotion sit under one apex structure.

    [2026, GS3, 15] How are startups in India promoting entrepreneurship, innovation and employment? Discuss the global and domestic challenges in their working and suggest suitable measures to overcome these challenges.”

  • Deep-sea discovery, environmental responsibility

    Deep-sea discovery, environmental responsibility

    Why in the News

    India holds three International Seabed Authority (ISA) exploration contracts covering approximately 95,000 square kilometres across the Central Indian Ocean Basin, the Central Indian Ridge and the Carlsberg Ridge in the international seabed area. Its exploration has identified an estimated 366 million tonnes of polymetallic nodules containing nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese. Under the Deep Ocean Mission, deep sea mining technology, underwater robotics and the MATSYA 6000 human submersible are being developed. The case now put is that this capability raises a prior question rather than settling one: whether everything that can be technologically exploited should necessarily be exploited. The counter position is that these minerals carry legitimate strategic importance for India’s renewable energy, electric mobility and advanced manufacturing ambitions. The tension is between a demonstrated technical capability and an ecosystem whose functioning is not understood well enough to predict what large scale disturbance would do to it.

    What is deep sea mining of polymetallic nodules?

    1. Polymetallic nodules: Mineral concretions the size of a potato that lie loose on the abyssal seabed at depths of roughly 4,000 to 6,000 metres, formed over millions of years as metals precipitate around a nucleus.
    2. Why they are wanted: They carry nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese, the metals used in battery cathodes and in alloys, which ties the deposits to the energy transition.
    3. How collection works: A seabed crawler lifts the nodules off the sediment surface. The nodules are then raised through a riser pipe to a surface vessel, and the sediment and water drawn up with them are discharged back into the water column.
    4. Where the activity is regulated: Mineral activity on the seabed beyond national jurisdiction is administered by the International Seabed Authority, which issues exploration contracts and has not yet finalised the rules for commercial exploitation.

    What does India’s deep ocean research actually show?

    1. Biodiversity surveys: Surveys across 19 seamounts have studied around 1,300 deep sea organisms.
    2. Species new to science: Nearly 23 of those organisms have been reported as new to science.
    3. Mining technology tested: The National Institute of Ocean Technology has tested a mining machine at a depth of about 5,270 metres.
    4. Environmental baselines built alongside: The exploration work has been accompanied by extensive environmental and biodiversity studies rather than resource assessment alone.
    5. The standing gap: The research continues to reveal previously unknown organisms, so the consequences of large scale seabed disturbance cannot be confidently predicted while the inventory remains incomplete.

    Why does strategic importance not settle the question of extraction?

    1. Capability is not permission: Technological progress creates the assumption that what can be exploited should be exploited, and the deep ocean is the case where that assumption does not hold.
    2. The necessity test: Before extraction is considered, the questions are whether the minerals are genuinely necessary at the proposed scale, whether alternatives exist, and whether demand can be reduced.
    3. The demand side routes: Recycling, efficiency, substitution and a circular economy each reduce the quantity of primary metal required, so the case for extraction has to be made against them rather than in their absence.
    4. Where the burden sits: Necessity must be demonstrated rather than presumed, which places the onus on the party proposing extraction rather than on the party opposing it.
    5. Exploration is separable from exploitation: Investment in deep ocean science advances knowledge, biodiversity assessment, environmental baselines and technology without committing the country to commercial mining.

    Why can adaptive management not substitute for the decision itself?

    1. The nature of the disturbance: Mining physically disturbs the seabed, so the damage follows from the activity itself rather than from how carefully it is run.
    2. Limits of adaptive management: Adjusting practice in response to observed harm requires a baseline against which harm can be detected, and the baseline for these ecosystems is incomplete.
    3. Irreversibility: Nodules form over geological time, so the hard substrate they provide is not recreated within any management horizon a contract could set.
    4. The question restated: The operative question is not how to mine with minimum damage but whether there is a need to mine at all.
    5. Why the timing matters: India’s ISA activities remain at the exploration stage, so a high ecological threshold can be fixed before any commercial decision rather than negotiated after one.

    What would leadership on deep sea ecological governance involve?

    1. Recognising ecological value: Treating the deep ocean as a precious ecological asset whose value may exceed that of its mineral wealth, rather than as a mineral reserve alone.
    2. Using the Mission’s own findings: The knowledge generated under the Deep Ocean Mission can support a conclusion that some poorly understood and potentially irreversible ecosystems are better left undisturbed.
    3. Mission LiFE as the domestic anchor: Lower demand, resource efficiency, recycling, substitution and circular consumption already sit in Mission LiFE, so the position has a stated domestic policy basis.
    4. Alignment with existing frameworks: Nature based Solutions, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the circular economy share the principle that nature is the capital on which development depends.
    5. The role of science: Science establishes not only how far a country can go but also where it must stop, so identifying the frontiers best left untouched is part of its function.

    Challenges to deep sea mining governance

    1. The exploitation rules are unfinished: The International Seabed Authority has not adopted the regulations for commercial recovery, so there is no agreed standard for environmental thresholds, monitoring or liability. Eg. The two year rule triggered by Nauru in 2021 forced the Authority to face applications even without a completed code.
      The Fix: Hold commercial applications until the exploitation regulations and a liability regime are adopted, and argue that position at the Authority’s Council.
    2. The sponsoring State carries the liability: A contractor operates under the sponsorship of a State, which bears responsibility for ensuring compliance, so a private failure becomes a sovereign exposure. Eg. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea advisory opinion of 2011 set out the due diligence obligations of States sponsoring activity in the Area.
      The Fix: Require every sponsored contractor to post an environmental bond and accept independent monitoring before a sponsorship certificate issues.
    3. Sediment plumes travel beyond the mine site: Collection stirs fine sediment that drifts across the seabed, and the discharge from the surface vessel spreads through the water column, so effects extend past the licensed block. Eg. Tracks left by an experimental seabed disturbance in the Peru Basin in 1989 were still visible decades later with little faunal recovery.
      The Fix: Mandate plume modelling and independent monitoring across an agreed buffer around every test and production site.
    4. Recovery time exceeds any contract term: Nodule fields and the organisms attached to them re form over millions of years, so a disturbed area is lost for the purposes of any human management cycle. Eg. Sponges, corals and other attached species in the Clarion Clipperton Zone depend on the hard nodule surface as their only available substrate.
      The Fix: Designate no mining reference zones of ecological significance inside each contract area before exploitation is licensed, not after.
    5. India has no domestic law for activity in the Area: The Offshore Areas Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act, 2002 governs India’s own offshore areas, while activity in the international seabed area is covered only by contract conditions. Eg. India’s exploration contracts sit beyond national jurisdiction, where domestic environmental clearance procedures do not apply at all.
      The Fix: Enact a domestic statute fixing environmental assessment, monitoring and liability standards for Indian entities operating in the Area.
    6. Demand forecasts may not survive a change in battery chemistry: The commercial case for nodules rests on nickel and cobalt demand, which falls as cell chemistries shift away from those metals. Eg. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells use neither nickel nor cobalt and have taken a growing share of electric vehicle batteries.
      The Fix: Tie any extraction decision to a periodically revised national critical mineral demand assessment that accounts for substitution and recycling.

    Conclusion

    India’s position on the seabed is unusual in that it holds the contracts and the technology to use them, and has not yet taken a decision to exploit. That interval is where an ecological threshold can be written in as a condition rather than conceded later as a compromise. The two commitments pull against each other, since the same mineral demand the energy transition generates is what makes the seabed attractive, and reducing that demand is what would make the seabed unnecessary. The point to watch is what India argues when the rules for commercial recovery come to a decision at the Authority, because that is where a principle has to become a stated national position.

    Government Initiatives for deep ocean science and the blue economy

    1. Deep Ocean Mission: Launched in 2021 under the Ministry of Earth Sciences with an outlay of about Rs 4,077 crore, it runs on six pillars covering deep sea mining technology and a manned submersible, ocean climate change advisory services, technologies for deep sea biodiversity, ocean survey and exploration, energy and freshwater from the ocean, and an advanced marine station for ocean biology.
    2. Samudrayaan: The manned ocean mission under the Deep Ocean Mission, designed to take a crew to a depth of 6,000 metres in the MATSYA 6000 submersible.
    3. O SMART: The Ocean Services, Modelling, Application, Resources and Technology scheme, which funds ocean observation, forecasting and marine resource services.
    4. National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research: Headquartered in Goa, it runs India’s polar and Southern Ocean research programmes and supports ocean science campaigns.
    5. Deccan High Level Principles on Blue Economy: Adopted at Chennai under India’s G20 Presidency in 2023, they set out an agreed framework for sustainable ocean management.

    Back2Basics: International Seabed Authority (ISA)

    1. What it is: An autonomous international organisation established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), 1982 and its 1994 Implementation Agreement.
    2. Mandate: It organises and controls all mineral related activity in the Area, meaning the seabed and subsoil beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, which UNCLOS designates the common heritage of mankind.
    3. Membership and seat: It is headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica, and its membership comprises every State party to UNCLOS, India included.
    4. What it issues: It grants exploration contracts to State sponsored contractors and is still drafting the exploitation regulations, known as the Mining Code, that would govern commercial recovery.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026] Which of the following statements with regard to India’s Deep Ocean Mission is/are correct?

    1. It was launched by the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Government of India.

    2. Matsya-6000 has been designed to carry 3 people for deep sea exploration.

    3. Samudrayaan is a project under this mission.

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 and 3 only

    (c) 1 and 2 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3 Answer: B”

  • Punjab owes its young a chance to recover

    Why in the News

    More than 10 lakh people have registered at Punjab’s government de addiction clinics since the State opened them, and that figure counts only those who gave their names. What changed in Punjab is the chemistry of the supply rather than its presence, since opium and poppy husk were consumed within social boundaries for generations. Chitta, the local name for smoked or injected synthetic heroin, reaches the brain in seconds. The Outpatient Opioid Assisted Treatment (OOAT) programme can report how many crore tablets it dispensed last year and cannot report how many people recovered. The tension is between policing and treatment. Peddlers have been arrested under every government without a single trafficking network being broken, and the treatment system that would cut demand was built and then left unfunded.

    What is the Outpatient Opioid Assisted Treatment programme?

    1. What it does: It delivers opioid substitution treatment on an outpatient basis, so a dependent person receives a prescribed medicine at a clinic and returns home rather than occupying a bed.
    2. Why substitution is used: A long acting oral opioid occupies the same brain receptor as heroin without the rapid rise that drives craving. That allows a person to function while the dependence is managed.
    3. How it is delivered: The programme runs through government OOAT clinics across Punjab, with dispensing recorded centrally.
    4. What it does not do by itself: Substitution manages dependence. It does not supply the counselling, follow up and employment that decide whether a person stays recovered.

    Why has the chemistry of the supply changed the nature of the problem?

    1. The same receptor, a different speed: Opium and heroin act on the same brain receptor. The difference between them is the speed at which each reaches it.
    2. Why the rate of rise matters: Opium eaten is absorbed over hours, so the body can adjust to it. Heroin smoked or injected arrives in seconds, and it is that rate of rise that builds craving.
    3. What sustained use does: When a stronger drug floods those receptors every day, the brain stops producing its own opioids. Within months the user is chasing an ordinary baseline rather than a high.
    4. Why willpower is the wrong frame: Withdrawal is the loss of the ability to feel ordinary comfort. It is not a matter of discomfort or resolve.
    5. What this changed in Punjab: Poppy husk was sold at the village shop and opium was taken at weddings, funerals and harvests, within recognised limits. The shift to fast acting synthetic opioids removed those limits with no change in the population’s morals.

    What does the registration figure show, and what does it miss?

    1. The undercount: The register counts only those who gave their names, so the dependent population is larger than the recorded number.
    2. What a registration is not: A registration records an entry into treatment. It records nothing about completion, relapse or recovery.
    3. The household scale: Each registration stands for a family waiting on an outcome, which makes this a demand side problem of a size no enforcement drive can absorb.
    4. Why the number is the starting point: A dependent population of this size sets the staffing, dispensing and follow up load the system has to be built for.

    Why can interdiction alone not close the supply?

    1. The arithmetic of potency: Synthetic opioids are potent enough that a year’s worth can cross the border in a drone the size of a tiffin box, so seizure volumes cannot keep pace with supply.
    2. Arrests without networks: Every government of every colour has arrested peddlers. Not one has dismantled a trafficking network.
    3. Where enforcement would have to move: Effective control needs technology on the fence, detection grids, counter drone systems and forensics that trace a consignment backwards to its source.
    4. The political element: Prosecution has to reach the people who protect the trade, rather than stopping at the boys who consume it.

    What has gone wrong with treatment delivery?

    1. Built and then starved: The OOAT programme was created with a working frame and then left without the money to run it.
    2. Counting the wrong thing: The State can report the tablets dispensed. It cannot report the people recovered.
    3. Diversion priced into the system: A tablet costing thirty rupees at the clinic sells for three hundred rupees outside it. That price gap is a direct measure of how little supervision is being paid for.
    4. The empty posts: Punjab has a very small number of psychiatrists, and counsellors and hospital beds are similarly short, so the clinical side of the programme is understaffed.
    5. The budget comparison: The entire de addiction budget is a rounding error against the State’s power subsidy bill.
    6. Follow up and work: Relapse occurs around 18 months after the last dose, so follow up has to run long past discharge. A recovered person with nothing to do on a weekday afternoon is not recovered.

    Challenges to Punjab’s drug de addiction response

    1. Treatment capacity is concentrated in dispensing: Clinics can hand out medicine at scale without the psychiatric and counselling staff that make substitution therapy work. Eg. The National Mental Health Survey, 2015 to 2016 recorded a treatment gap above 80 percent for alcohol use disorders in India, driven by the shortage of trained personnel.
      The Fix: Fund and fill sanctioned psychiatrist and counsellor posts at OOAT clinics before dispensing capacity is expanded further.
    2. Diversion of substitution medicine: Unsupervised take home dosing allows prescribed opioids to reach the illicit market, so the treatment supply becomes a source of supply. Eg. Buprenorphine formulations dispensed under opioid substitution programmes have been recovered from illicit markets in several States.
      The Fix: Require directly observed dosing at the clinic through the initial phase, and link take home doses to verified follow up attendance.
    3. Border technology lags the smuggling method: Fencing and patrolling were designed against people and vehicles, not against small payload aerial delivery. Eg. The Border Security Force recovers drones along the Punjab frontier with Pakistan every year, and annual recoveries have risen rather than fallen.
      The Fix: Deploy a continuous counter drone detection and jamming grid along the Punjab border sector, in place of sighting and pursuit.
    4. Prosecution stops at the consumer end: Cases cluster at small quantity possession, so the financing layer above the peddler is rarely reached. Eg. Case loads under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 are dominated by small quantity matters rather than by commercial quantity trafficking.
      The Fix: Route every commercial quantity seizure to a parallel financial investigation, so the trafficking case and the asset case are run together.
    5. Recovery has no employment endpoint: A person completing treatment returns to the same absence of work that preceded the dependence, so relapse is structurally invited. Eg. Punjab’s high rate of youth emigration reflects the shortage of local work that treatment programmes discharge people back into.
      The Fix: Attach a guaranteed skilling and placement slot to discharge from an OOAT clinic, tracked through the period in which relapse occurs.

    Conclusion

    Punjab has organised its response around arrest and abstinence, and neither instrument matches what the problem actually is. Dependence on fast acting opioids is a treatable clinical condition sitting on a criminal supply chain, and the clinical side has been funded as an afterthought. A state that can count tablets and cannot count recoveries has not yet settled what it is trying to achieve. The thing to watch is whether the next State Budget moves the de addiction allocation to a level comparable with the State’s other standing commitments, and whether recovery, rather than dispensing, becomes the reported statistic.

    Government Initiatives for drug demand reduction

    1. Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan: Launched in 2020 by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, it runs awareness, community outreach and treatment linkage in the districts identified as most affected.
    2. National Action Plan for Drug Demand Reduction: The central scheme funds State run de addiction and rehabilitation centres, counselling services, community peer networks and awareness programmes.
    3. MANAS helpline: The Narcotics Control Bureau operates a national toll free helpline for reporting drug trafficking and for seeking counselling and rehabilitation support.
    4. National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre: Based at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, it conducts national surveys of substance use and trains treatment personnel for State programmes.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2018, GS3, 15] India’s proximity to two of the world’s biggest illicit opium-growing states has enhanced her internal security concerns. Explain the linkages between drug trafficking and other illicit activities such as gunrunning, money laundering and human trafficking. What counter-measures should be taken to prevent the same?”

  • In India-China thaw, Beijing’s signals for Washington

    Why in the News

    India and China issued separate statements after the meeting between the Prime Minister and the Chinese President on the sidelines of the 18th BRICS Summit hosted by New Delhi. The Chinese statement runs almost three times as long in its English version, and it carries references to greater BRICS cooperation, the Global South, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the G20 that the Indian statement does not. The Chinese President attended after skipping the G20 summit India hosted in 2023, and arrives less than two weeks before a state visit to Washington. The tension is over who the Chinese text is written for. India used the meeting to sustain the thaw for domestic economic reasons and to show the United States that it has other partners. Beijing used the same meeting to signal to Washington rather than to Delhi.

    What does the length and focus of the Chinese statement reveal?

    1. Audience of the Chinese text: The statement speaks as much to the United States as to India, since it builds out multilateral themes rather than the bilateral agenda. Eg. Its references to greater BRICS cooperation, the Global South, the SCO and the G20 have no counterpart in the Indian statement.
    2. Timing against the Washington visit: The Chinese President’s presence in New Delhi comes less than two weeks before a state visit to the United States, so the meeting doubles as positioning ahead of that visit.
    3. India’s own calculation: India sought to sustain the thaw for domestic economic reasons. It also used the summit to signal to Washington that it has other partners and can influence them.
    4. The difference in restraint: India worked to balance strategic autonomy through BRICS against an even keel with the United States. Beijing used the BRICS platform directly against Washington.

    Why does the ordering of border issues differ in the two statements?

    1. India’s priority: Peace and tranquility in the border areas takes up the bulk of the Indian statement. The text asks both sides to observe existing agreements and understandings on border related issues.
    2. China’s priority: The Chinese statement mentions maintaining peace and tranquility in the border areas twice, with less detail than it gives to people to people exchanges and multilateral cooperation.
    3. Where the border detail sits instead: The specifics appear in the “Eight Points of Outcomes and Consensus” issued after the 25th round of talks between the two Special Representatives on the boundary question last month.
    4. The outcomes are promises rather than settlements: The expert group agreement on an “Early and Substantial Harvest of boundary delimitation and Border Management” has neither a settled definition nor agreed terms of reference. Eg. The proposed meeting on hydrological data sharing and renewal of the relevant memoranda of understanding has been under discussion between the Special Representatives for at least two years.

    What is China asking India to do?

    1. The dual track formulation: Beijing wants India to advance ties in other areas and on border issues in parallel (the dual track, which removes a border settlement as a precondition for wider cooperation). India moved toward this position after the announcement of completed troop disengagement in 2024.
    2. “Eliminate interference”: The term is left undefined in the Chinese statement, so any number of issues can later be raised under it to pressure India.
    3. Managing domestic opinion: China expects India to “effectively improve the public opinion base of bilateral relations”. In practice that asks India to restrain critics of Chinese policy and sceptics of the current thaw.
    4. Taiwan and Tibet inserted: The Chinese statement refers explicitly to India’s “policies and positions on Taiwan and Tibet”. Those references are absent from the Indian statement.
    5. The asymmetry in specificity: Both statements describe what good bilateral ties should look like. Only the Chinese text is specific about what the other side ought to do.

    Why is the Chinese commitment conditional?

    1. The insurance clause: The Chinese statement calls the view of the two countries as “partners rather than adversaries” a “strategic judgment based on the stage of development and the international environment of the two countries”.
    2. What the clause reserves: A judgment tied to circumstances can be revised when those circumstances change, so the framing states a condition rather than a settled position.
    3. The domestic driver: A difficult economic situation at home makes stability in ties with both India and the United States useful to Beijing at present.
    4. The political calendar: The run up to the 21st National Congress of the Communist Party of China, a year away, is the more significant driver of that need for stability.
    5. Keeping India and the United States apart: Stability with each is combined with mechanisms such as BRICS that work to keep the two from converging.

    Challenges to the India and China thaw

    1. Disengagement is not de escalation: Troop disengagement at friction points leaves large forward deployments and new infrastructure in place, so the risk of a fresh standoff is unchanged. Eg. The 2020 Galwan Valley clash in eastern Ladakh followed a build up along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that no existing agreement had reversed.
      The Fix: Convert the expert group’s boundary delimitation talks into a dated work programme with agreed terms of reference, so a promise becomes a schedule.
    2. The boundary itself remains unclarified: The LAC has never been mutually agreed on maps, so each side patrols to its own claim and contact is built into routine patrolling. Eg. The exchange of maps under the confidence building framework stalled after the middle sector in the early 2000s.
      The Fix: Resume sector by sector clarification of the LAC on maps, beginning with the sectors where patrol overlap is densest.
    3. Economic dependence widens as ties warm: A thaw pulled by domestic economic needs increases reliance on Chinese inputs in the sectors India is trying to localise. Eg. Indian pharmaceutical production depends heavily on Chinese active pharmaceutical ingredients and key starting materials.
      The Fix: Tie each relaxation in trade and investment screening to a measurable substitution target in the dependent sector.
    4. Water data sharing rests on lapsing instruments: Hydrological data on the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej flows through memoranda that expire and must be renewed, so flood season information becomes a bargaining chip. Eg. Data was not supplied to India during the 2017 Doklam standoff.
      The Fix: Replace the renewable memoranda with a standing agreement carrying automatic renewal and a fixed transmission schedule.
    5. Third country questions are imported into the bilateral: Raising Taiwan and Tibet in a bilateral readout converts India’s positions on those questions into bargaining material. Eg. China’s protests over Indian leaders visiting Arunachal Pradesh follow the same pattern.
      The Fix: Keep India’s stated positions on Taiwan and Tibet out of bilateral outcome documents, and record any divergence separately.

    Conclusion

    The Chinese text reads as a message to Washington delivered through a bilateral meeting in New Delhi. The Indian text reads as a bilateral document, and that gap is the thing to hold on to. Beijing has attached its own condition to the relationship by describing partnership as a judgment about circumstances rather than as a settled view. The markers to watch are the Chinese President’s visit to the United States and China’s own political calendar, since those are the circumstances the formulation reserves the right to respond to.

    About India and China relations

    1. The disputed boundary: India and China share a boundary of about 3,488 km across the western, middle and eastern sectors, and it has never been mutually delineated.
    2. The agreements that hold it: The Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control, 1993 and the Agreement on Confidence Building Measures in the Military Field, 1996 are the base instruments governing conduct along the boundary.
    3. The trade asymmetry: China is among India’s largest trading partners, and India runs its single largest bilateral trade deficit with China.
    4. Overlapping memberships: The two sit together in BRICS, the SCO and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), so cooperation and contestation run through the same institutions.

    Back2Basics: the Special Representatives mechanism on the boundary question

    1. When it was set up: The mechanism was established in 2003 to explore a settlement of the boundary question from the political perspective of the overall bilateral relationship.
    2. Who holds the posts: India is represented by the National Security Adviser and China by its Foreign Minister.
    3. What it produced: The Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India China Boundary Question, 2005 was concluded under this mechanism.
    4. The three stage design: The talks were framed to move from agreed political parameters, to a framework for settlement, and then to delineation on maps and on the ground.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS2, 10] The West is fostering India as an alternative to reduce dependence on China’s supply chain and as a strategic ally to counter China’s political and economic dominance.’ Explain this statement with examples.”

  • Does the BRICS summit signify a shift for Indian foreign policy?

    Does the BRICS summit signify a shift for Indian foreign policy?

    Why in the News

    The New Delhi Declaration of 2026, adopted at the BRICS summit hosted by India, pushes back against unilateral western sanctions, criticises Israel over the killing of civilians, the attacks on Lebanon and the forced occupation of Palestinian territory, and supports United Nations reform together with a BRICS payment mechanism. The declaration has been likened to the foreign policy of India’s non aligned past. It is also the first BRICS declaration since 2022 to carry no reference to Ukraine. The tension is whether the text marks an actual shift in Indian foreign policy, or is multilateral language that a national position is not expected to follow.

    Is the New Delhi Declaration a return to non alignment?

    1. Continuity, not a shift: The declaration is in keeping with Indian foreign policy, whether that is described as strategic autonomy and multi alignment or as multi vector engagement. What has changed is optics, with India on the front foot and less apologetic about being emphatically part of a non western forum.
    2. Non alignment does not describe the present aim: Non alignment was a strategy for a weak state in a bipolar world. The declared ambition in India today is to become one of the poles in a multipolar world.
    3. The Bandung reference: The declaration invokes the Bandung Spirit in pursuit of a fairer, more inclusive and representative multilateral system. On the second reading that invocation is nostalgia rather than operative policy.
    4. What the platform is: BRICS is a political platform and not a security platform, so a declaration adopted in it cannot commit a member to anything it would not do bilaterally.

    What did the summit’s optics carry, and what did they not?

    1. A return after seven years: The Chinese President had not travelled to India in nearly seven years before this summit.
    2. Who else was at the table: The Abu Dhabi Crown Prince sat at the same table, and the outreach session brought in powers that do not otherwise enter great power conversations.
    3. Socialisation as the actual product: What the platform generated was contact inside it and on its margins rather than agreement, and that contact is not by itself shaping the world order.
    4. National positions expressly preserved: The declaration calls for exercising restraint and for protecting civilians and civilian infrastructure. It also pointedly recalls the respective national positions of each member.
    5. Why a multilateral text can go further than a national one: A country can say in a high level multilateral document what it will not say in a national statement. Eg. The phrase “unilateral coercive measures” is understood to mean US actions, without naming a measure or a date.

    Why did the declaration drop Ukraine?

    1. A break in precedent: Every BRICS summit declaration since 2022, including the 2024 summit held in Russia, carried a reference to Ukraine.
    2. Attributed to Russian insistence: The omission is attributed to a Russian veto exercised to preserve consensus. The Rio declaration last year had condemned a Ukrainian attack on Russia with no equivalent condemnation of anything Russia had done, and dropping the subject entirely replaced that one sided formulation.
    3. An error of omission: A major multilateral geopolitical forum that stays silent, rather than calling on the belligerents to end the war, has left the central question unaddressed.
    4. India’s own incentive: India had little reason to press for the language, having sided with the Russian Federation in this war indirectly if not directly.
    5. The option not taken: Neutral language on Ukraine was available on the precedent of the earlier joint declarations, and was not used.

    How does the Israel language sit with India’s bilateral position?

    1. The bilateral signal: The Prime Minister told the Israeli parliament during a visit in February 2026 that India stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Israel.
    2. The disjunction: The declaration’s condemnation of Israel is strong, which creates a clear break between the multilateral text and that bilateral statement. The text may be intended to counter the perception that India was drawing too close to Israel.
    3. Shelter in United Nations language: The declaration cites UN Security Council Resolution 2803 of November 2025, which provided for an International Stabilisation Force and a Board of Peace. Some of the declaration’s language is drawn from that resolution.
    4. No contradiction of settled policy: The two state solution has been India’s standing position, so the text does not contradict Indian policy on Palestine.
    5. The room shaped the text: With the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran and Indonesia at the table, there was a limit to how far India could push back against the harshness of the language.
    6. Where the balance actually sits: The partnership with Israel remains the weightier commitment, since a bilateral address to a parliament is consequential while a multilateral declaration is symbolic.

    What does the economic agenda amount to?

    1. The bloc’s weight: The grouping’s membership accounts for 40 percent of the global economy and 25 percent of global trade.
    2. Two different propositions in payments: India supports local currency payment mechanisms for bilateral trade. India has not supported a permanent payment mechanism operating under the BRICS umbrella.
    3. Why a common settlement currency is resisted: There is no single approach to currency settlement that suits every pair of trading partners. A non dollar mechanism would in practice elevate the next dominant currency, and on present weight that currency would be China’s.
    4. BRICS against the Group of Seven: BRICS is a counterpoint to the Group of Seven (G7), an economic grouping that also carries geopolitical responsibilities.
    5. India sits on both sides of that line: India is a standing invitee to the G7 along with Australia and South Korea. One proposal is that the G7 dissolve itself into a Democratic 10 (D10) including those three, with India as the bridge between east and west and a voice of the south.

    Where should India spend its diplomatic capital next?

    1. The immediate calendar: The ASEAN East Asia Summit in the Philippines falls in November. Visits by the Prime Minister to the United States, Canada and Brussels follow, with three trade agreements potentially in reach.
    2. Multi vector engagement as the method: The approach is to keep all stakeholders engaged in multiple directions at once rather than to choose a camp.
    3. Diplomatic capital is finite: India has only so much of it, so battles, forums and partners have to be picked rather than attended to uniformly.
    4. The rooms that will decide the next order: The forums framing global rules on artificial intelligence and the governance of space are where the next world order will be made, rather than a platform such as BRICS.

    Challenges to BRICS as a vehicle for Indian foreign policy

    1. The consensus rule produces silence: A single member’s objection removes a subject from the declaration altogether instead of producing balanced language. Eg. The complete absence of any reference to Ukraine from the New Delhi Declaration.
      The Fix: Issue a chair’s summary alongside the declaration, so positions that fail consensus are still on the record.
    2. Expansion dilutes coherence: Members with opposed interests make a common position harder to reach as the grouping grows. Eg. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joined in 2024 and Indonesia in 2025.
      The Fix: Anchor the agenda in a small set of deliverables such as development finance, where the members’ interests already converge.
    3. Moving off the dollar substitutes one dependence for another: Replacing the dollar as a settlement currency hands the same structural leverage to whichever currency takes its place. Eg. The New Development Bank suspended new transactions in Russia in 2022 to protect its own access to international capital markets.
      The Fix: Expand bilateral local currency settlement arrangements rather than build a single common currency mechanism.
    4. The platform cannot handle its members’ own disputes: A grouping with no security function offers no channel for a conflict between two of its members. Eg. India and China are both members while their boundary dispute is handled entirely bilaterally.
      The Fix: Keep security questions in the bilateral and plurilateral formats built for them, and hold the grouping to economic and governance reform.
    5. Declarations carry no implementing mechanism: A position agreed in a summit text has no follow through between summits. Eg. Calls for Security Council reform recur in these declarations while two of the grouping’s own members do not support expanding permanent membership.
      The Fix: Attach a named working group and a reporting deadline to each declaration commitment.

    Conclusion

    The declaration reads as a shift and functions as a signal. What a grouping’s text says and what its members do bilaterally have been allowed to diverge, and India’s positions on Israel and on Russia both sit inside that gap. The unresolved question is whether multi vector engagement can keep both registers running once a partner insists on consistency between them. The next test is the sequence of bilateral visits and trade negotiations that follows the summit, where the same positions have to survive contact with a single counterpart.

    About BRICS

    1. Formation: The grouping began as BRIC, with Brazil, Russia, India and China holding their first leaders’ summit in 2009. South Africa joined in 2010 and the grouping became BRICS.
    2. Expansion: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates were admitted as members in 2024, and Indonesia joined in 2025.
    3. New Development Bank: Agreed at the 2014 Fortaleza summit and headquartered in Shanghai, it finances infrastructure and sustainable development projects in member states and other developing countries.
    4. Contingent Reserve Arrangement: Also agreed in 2014, it is a currency swap framework members can draw on to meet short term balance of payments pressure.

    Back2Basics: Non-Aligned Movement

    1. Origin: The Bandung Conference of 1955 brought together Asian and African states and set out principles of sovereignty, non interference and peaceful coexistence.
    2. Founding: The Movement was formally established at the Belgrade Conference of 1961.
    3. Core idea: Member states declined formal military alignment with either Cold War bloc while retaining the freedom to engage both.
    4. India’s role: India was among its founding members and hosted the seventh summit at New Delhi in 1983.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026, GS2, 10] “BRICS acts as a powerful counterweight in global governance, actively amplifying the voice and influence of the Global South.” Explain the role of BRICS in projecting itself as an alternative to other groupings.”

  • For AI governance, hard laws and strong guardrails

    Why in the News

    A 154 page threat intelligence report published by Anthropic has documented nine months of artificial intelligence (AI) misuse, covering December 2025 to August 2026 across seven harm categories, from state sponsored operations to lone actors. Two days later the company’s chief executive published a blog post calling on the industry to slow the development of frontier AI, and the heads of two rival AI firms agreed within hours. The report’s significance is structural rather than evidentiary. AI is described as having moved from a tool that generates harmful content to an orchestration layer connected to other software and running multiple stages of an operation at once. The tension is that a voluntary slowdown is being proposed by the same firms whose competitive position it would protect, in a field where one major jurisdiction sits outside any such agreement.

    What is AI ‘uplift’?

    1. The term: Uplift is the capability boost AI gives to an attacker, measured in the speed, scale and depth of the harm produced.
    2. The mechanism: AI sits as an orchestration layer across other software, running several stages of an operation simultaneously rather than performing a single task.
    3. What it changes: Sophisticated attacks become possible with fewer people and less expertise than were previously required.

    What did the threat intelligence report document?

    1. A near fully automated disinformation operation: A flagged operation in Bangladesh was almost entirely automated. AI generated the content, other software turned it into videos, and scheduling algorithms published them at optimised times.
    2. The scale one person achieved: That single operation ran one person, 29 accounts and 1,500 fabricated stories.
    3. A distillation campaign: An Alibaba campaign used 151 million AI exchanges to copy a competitor’s capabilities.
    4. Surveillance uses: The report records AI being used as an instrument of control by those who possess it, rather than as a means of communication.
    5. The biological weapons admission: The company states that for its most capable current models it can no longer assure that a sophisticated actor could not receive meaningful assistance in biological weapons research.
    6. An incomplete picture: What was caught is a subset of what was attempted, so the documented cases set a floor rather than a total.

    Why is the voluntary slowdown the wrong frame?

    1. The stated warning: The slowdown call rested on the claim that AI has been advancing far faster since the middle of the year, and that swarms of rogue AI agents could take over the internet within six to 12 months.
    2. Three obstacles to a unilateral slowdown: Competitive pressure, capital and geopolitics make a one sided pause difficult to sustain, with China operating outside any such agreement.
    3. The incentive problem: A market leader calling for a slowdown is also calling for an arrangement that protects its own lead, a point made publicly by a venture capitalist during the exchange.
    4. The reframing: The operative question is not how to slow development but how to accelerate governance, since voluntary disclosure is not a governance system.

    Why is the Bangladesh case directly relevant to India?

    1. Transferable techniques: Automated account creation, AI generated content at scale and optimisation for rural low literacy audiences apply to any democracy with a large and linguistically diverse electorate.
    2. The Indian exposure: India has 950 million eligible voters and continuous State elections, so the target surface is permanent rather than episodic.
    3. Detection asymmetry: AI generated disinformation in multiple Indian languages is easy to produce and difficult to detect, which places the burden on platforms rather than on individual users.
    4. Distillation and surveillance: The Alibaba style distillation campaign will be run against Indian AI models, and the surveillance cases bear directly on the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution.

    What guardrails are proposed for India?

    1. Mandatory misuse reporting: Every AI platform above a defined scale threshold would be required to report detected misuse to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and to a designated AI Safety Authority.
    2. Watermarking in political contexts: Mandatory watermarking of AI generated content in political and public interest contexts is proposed as the direct answer to the Bangladesh style operation.
    3. Covering agentic AI: Platform accountability rules must explicitly cover agentic AI, meaning systems that act in the world rather than only generate text.
    4. Criminalising distillation and API abuse: New legislation would explicitly prohibit and criminalise systematic distillation and fraudulent mass API access.
    5. A statutory regulator: A statutory body is proposed with powers to compel disclosure, audit systems and impose restrictions, on the position that governance risks can only be addressed by law.

    What do the American and European positions show about India’s opening?

    1. The United States: The American position is described as constrained by a deregulatory administration, so federal statutory guardrails are not the near term route there.
    2. The European Union: The European position is described as one where regulatory ambition has at times outrun technical understanding, which limits it as a model to copy.
    3. India’s claimed advantage: India is presented as the world’s largest democracy with a record of building technology policy at scale, naming Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Aadhaar and the Information Technology Rules of 2021, and with a direct stake in AI serving 1.4 billion citizens.

    Challenges to AI governance through hard law

    1. Compute and models sit outside national jurisdiction: A statutory duty binds the platform’s Indian operations while the model weights, training compute and developer sit abroad. Eg. The most capable frontier models in use in India are trained and hosted by firms headquartered in the United States and China.
      The Fix: Anchor obligations to the point of service to Indian users, so scale in India rather than location of training triggers the duty.
    2. Watermarks are removable: Provenance marking on AI generated media can be stripped by re encoding, cropping or screen capture before redistribution. Eg. Synthetic political audio clips circulate on messaging platforms as re recorded files carrying no original metadata.
      The Fix: Pair content watermarking with cryptographic provenance at capture and upload, so an absent signature is itself a detectable signal.
    3. Open weight models escape platform duties: Rules written for large platforms do not reach a model downloaded and run privately on local hardware. Eg. Open weight large language models are distributed freely and fine tuned offline without any platform intermediary.
      The Fix: Place release stage obligations on the entity publishing model weights, including safety evaluation and disclosure before public release.
    4. Regulatory capacity lags the technology: A statutory authority needs evaluation infrastructure and staff able to audit frontier systems, which is scarce and expensive. Eg. Existing Indian technology regulators depend heavily on deputation and contractual staffing for specialised roles.
      The Fix: Fund a standing model evaluation facility attached to the authority, so audits rest on in house testing rather than on developer self reporting.
    5. Overbroad drafting reaches lawful speech: A duty to detect and disrupt coordinated content operations can be applied to ordinary political campaigning and satire. Eg. Content takedown obligations under existing intermediary rules have been contested in court for their effect on lawful expression.
      The Fix: Define the triggering conduct by automation and inauthenticity of accounts rather than by the content’s subject matter.

    Conclusion

    The governance question has shifted from what a model outputs to what a system does across other software, and no Indian statute currently addresses that second thing. A statutory authority with audit and disclosure powers is the route proposed, and it would need enforcement reach over entities whose models are built outside India. The live tension is between a detection duty broad enough to catch automated influence operations and one narrow enough to leave political speech alone. The near term marker is whether a scale threshold and an AI specific reporting duty appear in Indian law rather than in advisories.

    Government Initiatives on AI Governance in India

    1. IndiaAI Mission: Approved in 2024 under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, it funds shared computing capacity, datasets, application development and a safety pillar for trusted AI.
    2. National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence: Released by NITI Aayog in 2018 under the framing of AI for All, it identified healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities and mobility as priority sectors.
    3. Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: It governs the processing of digital personal data, which is the input layer for model training and for profiling.
    4. Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021: These create due diligence and grievance obligations for intermediaries and significant social media intermediaries operating at scale.
    5. Indian Computer Emergency Response Team: Designated under the Information Technology Act, 2000 as the national agency for cyber incident response, collection and reporting.

    Back2Basics: Distillation of AI models

    1. What it is: Distillation trains a smaller model to reproduce the behaviour of a larger one by learning from the larger model’s outputs.
    2. Legitimate use: It is a standard technique for producing cheaper and faster models for deployment on limited hardware.
    3. The misuse form: Systematic querying of a competitor’s model at very large volume can be used to copy its capabilities without access to its weights or training data.
    4. Why it is hard to police: The queries are individually ordinary, so the abuse is visible only in the aggregate pattern of account and API use.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2023, GS3, 10] Introduce the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI). How does AI help clinical diagnosis? Do you perceive any threat to privacy of the individual in the use of AI in healthcare?”

  • A war room for India in an age of sanctions

    Why in the News

    The United States has sanctioned four companies based in India and three Indian nationals over alleged trade in Iranian oil and petrochemicals. Iran has separately listed an LNG carrier serving India and an Indian flagged bulk carrier for possible fines, detention or confiscation in the Strait of Hormuz. One order travels through bank wires and the other waits at sea. The US Congress has also passed a sanctions Bill authorising the President to impose tariffs as a form of economic coercion. The tension is that foreign pressure now arrives as one connected system running from a listing to a payment to a berth, while India’s answer is assembled after the fact from separate Ministries.

    What is weaponised interdependence?

    1. The mechanism: Whoever controls a network that others depend on can exert pressure on them through it, because withdrawal of access costs the dependent party more than the dispute is worth.
    2. Where India sits in that network: An Indian company may need an American bank for payment, a foreign insurer for its ship and safe passage through a strait that another state can disrupt.
    3. Secondary sanctions: These instruct a foreign business to abandon a targeted transaction or risk losing access to American finance. The instruction operates on a business that is not itself in the sanctioning country’s jurisdiction.

    How have sanctions widened from the seller to the whole transaction?

    1. Sectoral widening: The US widened the secondary sanctions threat under Operation Economic Outcast across five Iranian sectors: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping.
    2. Reaching a bank with an Indian branch: Washington imposed Iran related sanctions on Russia’s VTB Bank, which has a Delhi branch. Banks dealing with it face sanctions risk even where the transaction is permitted under Indian law.
    3. Export controls on third country suppliers: Sanctions against Russia widened after 2022, and export controls began pursuing foreign suppliers of chips and machine tools.
    4. The whole oil chain: Oil restrictions reached tankers, insurers, ship managers and traders, so the measure followed the transaction rather than stopping with the seller.
    5. Tariffs as a sanctions instrument: Indian exports to the US could face tariffs of up to 100 percent over India’s purchases of Russian oil. The Indian government is monitoring developments and has said it will work with industry to protect India’s trade and economic interests.

    How is Iran turning the Strait of Hormuz into a second chokepoint?

    1. The non compliance list: Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority published a list of 45 vessels it called non compliant, and the list had grown to 77 within three weeks.
    2. Indian linked vessels named: The list included Disha, chartered by Petronet LNG and managed by the Shipping Corporation of India. It also included Maha Roos, an Indian flagged bulk carrier.
    3. No stated grounds: The authority did not explain the alleged breaches behind any listing.
    4. Insurance as the pressure point: The authority warned insurers against covering the listed ships, which removes a vessel’s ability to trade without touching it physically.
    5. The trap for a shipowner: Washington has already sanctioned the authority and warned that seeking passage guarantees from it could carry sanctions risk, even where no payment is made.

    Why does India’s sanctions response have no single owner?

    1. Split jurisdiction: Diplomacy, law, banking, trade, shipping and fuel supplies sit in different parts of government. No Ministry can see the whole chain on its own.
    2. The chain ends in the domestic economy: Economic coercion ties foreign policy directly to household consumption, and its consequences reach households, farmers and seafarers.
    3. Crisis coordination already exists: During the current West Asia crisis the government coordinated Ministries, monitored vessels and supplies, raised LPG production and found alternative cargoes. It kept pumps open and kitchens supplied.
    4. That coordination is temporary: The arrangement was assembled for one emergency and has no institutional form that outlasts it.

    What do the European and Chinese responses show about the limits of legal defiance?

    1. European Union, the Blocking Statute: Europe answered American laws of the 1990s that threatened foreign companies with penalties for conduct abroad by enacting a Blocking Statute.
    2. What the Blocking Statute could not do: Several European companies withdrew from Iran when secondary sanctions returned in 2018, despite holding legal protection at home. The possible loss of access to American banking and dollar payments choked off trade that remained lawful in Europe.
    3. China, an instruction not to comply: Beijing told Chinese businesses not to recognise, enforce or comply with American sanctions against five Chinese refining companies. China has said the American measures had no basis in international law or authorisation from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
    4. Why China can hold that line: Its market power, state directed economy and leverage over critical supply chains give it room to resist that India does not have.
    5. India’s stated position: India upholds sanctions mandated by the UNSC and does not accept unilateral sanctions.
    6. Why the Chinese route is costly for India: India’s financial and commercial ties with the US make that approach expensive, and a legal objection alone offers no comfort if Indian firms still bear the cost.

    What would an Economic Security and Sanctions Office do?

    1. Location and composition: A permanent office under the Cabinet Secretariat would bring together officials responsible for foreign policy, finance, commerce, energy, shipping, law and defence. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the market regulators would sit in it alongside them.
    2. Mapping the failure points: Its staff would track where a transaction could fail, from payment and insurance through to shipping and delivery.
    3. Contesting listings: It would seek the evidence behind foreign listings and support legitimate requests for removal.
    4. Negotiating relief: It would negotiate written exemptions and transition periods and issue clear Indian guidance on what is prohibited.
    5. Separating law from caution: Banks would be required to distinguish a legal prohibition from their own commercial caution before refusing a payment.
    6. Early warning to firms: Companies would be told in advance when a payment route, an insurer or a port is at risk.

    What capacity does India need alongside coordination?

    1. Fuel storage: More LPG storage is needed, so a supply interruption does not immediately reach kitchens.
    2. Indian controlled shipping: An expanded Indian controlled tanker fleet reduces reliance on foreign owners who can be pressured by a third country.
    3. Marine insurance: A stronger Bharat Maritime Insurance Pool gives Indian cargo an alternative when foreign insurers withdraw cover.
    4. Contracting around the chokepoint: Long term LNG contracts sourced outside Hormuz reduce the volume exposed to a single strait.
    5. Rupee settlement and its limit: Rupee settlement can preserve lawful trade where the seller accepts it. It cannot shield a bank that still needs access to New York.

    Challenges to an Economic Security and Sanctions Office

    1. A coordinating body without statutory teeth: An office under the Cabinet Secretariat can convene Ministries but cannot override a line Ministry’s own statutory decision. Eg. The National Security Council Secretariat coordinates across Ministries without displacing their individual powers.
      The Fix: Write its mandate into the Government of India (Allocation of Business) Rules, 1961, so its guidance binds the participating Ministries.
    2. Banks overcomply to protect correspondent access: A bank will refuse a lawful transaction rather than risk its dollar clearing relationship, and no guidance note reverses that calculation. Eg. Payment routes for Russian crude shifted repeatedly to third country banks and intermediaries after 2022.
      The Fix: Create a formal channel for an Indian bank to obtain a written comfort opinion before it declines a lawful payment.
    3. Foreign listings arrive without evidence: A designating authority often publishes no grounds, so a listed Indian entity has nothing to rebut. Eg. The vessel list issued by Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority carried no explanation of the alleged breaches.
      The Fix: Open a delisting case file for every listed Indian entity and route it through one named office rather than through whichever Ministry is approached.
    4. Seafarers carry the personal cost: Crew on a listed or detained vessel face wage loss, prolonged detention and abandonment far from home. Eg. Indian nationals crew a large share of the merchant vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
      The Fix: Extend consular support, legal representation and wage protection to Indian seafarers on any vessel named by a foreign authority.
    5. Physical capacity cannot be built inside a crisis: Storage, tankers and insurance capacity take years to create and cannot be summoned once a chokepoint closes. Eg. Long term LNG supply contracts run for a decade or more and cannot be re sourced at short notice.
      The Fix: Set dated targets for storage, fleet and insurance pool capacity and review them annually against a standing map of coercion risk.

    Conclusion

    Sanctions have stopped being a question of diplomatic position and become an operational one, because the pressure lands on a payment, an insurance policy or a berth rather than on a statement. India cannot move the chokepoints it depends on, so the variable it does control is whether a decision is taken with the whole journey in view. The unresolved part is authority: a coordinating office can map the exposure, but the Ministry that owns the decision still owns the cost of it. Whether the coordination improvised for the current emergency is given a permanent institutional home is the marker to watch.

    Back2Basics: Security Council sanctions and unilateral sanctions

    1. Security Council sanctions: The United Nations Security Council imposes sanctions under Article 41 of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which provides for measures not involving the use of armed force.
    2. Their binding force: Member States are obliged to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council under Article 25 of the Charter.
    3. Unilateral or autonomous sanctions: These are imposed by a single state or a regional bloc outside the Security Council, and they place no legal obligation on any other state.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2018, GS2, 15] In what ways would the ongoing US-Iran Nuclear Pact Controversy affect the national interest of India? How should India respond to this situation?”