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Type: Op-ed

  • [3rd September 2026] The Hindu OpED: Reducing India’s exposure to U.S. tariff risks

    [3rd September 2026] The Hindu OpED: Reducing India’s exposure to U.S. tariff risks

    Question (2025 – GS2): “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?
    Linkage: This question directly addresses the concept of energy security as a “kingpin” of foreign policy. The U.S. sanctions act forces India to navigate its sovereign energy import strategy (specifically from Russia) while attempting to shield its vital foreign policy trajectories and trade arrangements with Western partners from massive tariff penalties.

    Mentor comment

    The U.S. Senate has passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, authorising tariffs of up to 100% on countries among the top five importers of Russian crude or gas. Combined with existing forced-labour tariffs, India’s cumulative U.S. tariff exposure could reach 110%. The Act exposes a conflict between India’s energy security strategy and its trade relationship with the United States.

    Why has Russian crude become a trade exposure rather than an energy choice?

    1. Diversification of supply produced concentration of risk: India moved towards Russian crude to reduce its import bill and gain room to manoeuvre amid global uncertainty, and that single decision now determines its tariff status in an unrelated market.
    2. The volumes are still rising: Imports nearly doubled within 2026, from 4.54 million metric tonnes (MMT) in January to 8.96 MMT in May.
    3. The cost is diplomatic before it is fiscal: Securing the supply has complicated the management of ties with the United States, which seeks to discourage these purchases, and the Russia sanctions legislation is the formal expression of that pressure.

    How does India’s cumulative tariff reach 110 per cent?

    1. A tariff was already imposed before this Bill: The United States applied forced labour tariffs on 60 countries, including India, under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, adding a 10% tariff on India in place of an expired 10% duty levied under Section 122.
    2. The sanctions provision stacks on top: If the Russia sanctions legislation becomes law, the additional 100% authorisation takes India’s cumulative tariff to 110%, among the highest applied to any country.
    3. The comparator is also India’s competitor: China’s cumulative tariff would reach 112.5%, since both countries are major importers of Russian crude, so relative price competitiveness in the United States market shifts less than the absolute number suggests.

    What does a tariff confrontation cost the Indian economy?

    1. The method: Two global trade simulations were run using the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) dataset and model, a general equilibrium framework that traces how a tariff shock in one market propagates through production, demand and trade flows in every other.
    2. The sanction scenario: Modelling a 110% United States tariff on India, with other countries facing forced labour tariffs and China facing 112.5%, India’s welfare declines by nearly $47 billion, and gross domestic product, output, domestic demand, exports and imports all contract.
    3. The trade contraction is the largest single effect: Aggregate exports fall by 5.1% and imports by 5.2%, reflecting disrupted trade flows and weaker economic activity. A prolonged tariff confrontation imposes substantial costs on India’s growth and trade performance.

    Does export diversification offset the shock?

    1. The second scenario changes only the destination mix: The same tariff environment was modelled alongside export diversification, proxied by a full India-European Union free trade agreement.
    2. The direction of the result reverses: Welfare improves by $26.3 billion, gross domestic product turns positive, and sectoral output and domestic demand recover by around 1%.
    3. Trade integration replaces the lost market: Aggregate exports rise by 3.1% and imports by a moderate 2.6%, indicating stronger production and deeper integration with alternative markets.
    4. The policy implication is separable from the oil question: Even if India continues procuring Russian crude for energy security, the adverse effects of the tariffs are mitigated to a large extent by diversifying where it exports.

    Why is diversification not a sufficient answer on its own?

    1. It depends on demand India does not control: Diversification works only to the extent that other markets can absorb additional Indian exports, and without adequate external demand it remains limited on paper.
    2. The United States cannot be written off: It remains one of India’s largest export destinations, so diversification is an addition to that market rather than a replacement for it.
    3. Domestic constraints cap the gain: Trade facilitation delays, non tariff barriers, weak logistics and standards, and a product mix concentrated in lower value goods all limit how much of a new market India can actually capture.

    Challenges to export diversification as a response to tariff risk

    1. A free trade agreement is not the same as realised exports: Tariff concessions deliver nothing where Indian exporters cannot meet the destination market’s standards and compliance requirements. Eg. Indian shrimp and spice consignments have faced repeated European Union border rejections over antibiotic and pesticide residue limits.
      The Fix: Fund accredited testing and certification laboratories at export clusters, so conformity assessment happens before shipment rather than at the importing port.
    2. Rules of origin can neutralise a preference: A partner country can grant duty free access and still block goods that use imported inputs beyond a stated value addition threshold. Eg. Indian electronics assembly relies heavily on imported components, which restricts qualification under strict origin rules.
      The Fix: Negotiate cumulation provisions that count inputs sourced from other partner economies towards the value addition requirement.
    3. Logistics cost erodes the tariff advantage: Higher freight and dwell times offset the duty saved when the alternative market is farther away than the one being replaced. Eg. Container dwell time and inland haulage costs remain a recognised drag on the delivered price of Indian goods.
      The Fix: Sequence dedicated freight corridor and port connectivity completion against the entry into force dates of the trade agreements being signed.
    4. Concentration simply moves rather than disappears: Replacing dependence on one large market with dependence on one large agreement reproduces the same vulnerability under a different flag. Eg. The exposure being addressed here arose precisely because a single destination carried a disproportionate share of Indian exports.
      The Fix: Set a ceiling share for any single destination in the export promotion strategy, and target Africa, Latin America and West Asia alongside the European Union.

    Conclusion

    The finding that matters here is that the loss is a function of market concentration rather than of the tariff itself. That reframes the policy problem: the question is not how to make the tariff go away, but how to make the destination mix wide enough that a tariff in any one market cannot set the direction of the whole economy. Trade agreements deliver that only when the supply side can use them, which means testing and certification capacity, faster clearance, and movement up the goods quality ladder have to be built before the agreements enter into force rather than after. The measure of success is not the number of agreements signed but the share of exports the largest single destination accounts for.

    About India-United States Trade and Investment Ties

    1. Scale of the relationship: Bilateral trade between the two countries stood at $149.84 billion in 2025-26.
    2. India runs a surplus, and it is narrowing: India’s trade surplus with the United States narrowed to $34.4 billion in 2025-26 from $40.89 billion in the previous financial year.
    3. Investment flows both ways: The United States is the third largest investor in India, with cumulative foreign direct investment inflows of $70.65 billion between 2000 and 2025.
    4. Indian capital in the United States: About 163 Indian companies operating there have created over $40 billion in tangible investments.

    Challenges in India-United States Relations

    1. Preferential access has already been withdrawn once: Trade concessions granted unilaterally can be revoked without negotiation, which makes them an unreliable base for export planning. Eg. The United States revoked India’s benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences in 2019, citing a lack of equitable access.
      The Fix: Convert the interim trade arrangement into a binding bilateral trade agreement, so market access rests on treaty commitment rather than on unilateral grant.
    2. Digital and data rules pull in opposite directions: Indian data localisation requirements conflict with the operating models of United States technology firms. Eg. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and its rules govern cross border transfer of personal data on terms those firms have contested.
      The Fix: Negotiate an adequacy style mutual recognition arrangement covering data transfer, so compliance is assessed once rather than jurisdiction by jurisdiction.
    3. Intellectual property standards remain contested: India is placed on the United States Priority Watch List for what is described as weak patent protection in pharmaceuticals. Eg. The dispute centres on Section 3(d) of the Patents Act, 1970, which bars patents on new forms of known substances without enhanced efficacy.
      The Fix: Run a standing bilateral working group on patent examination practice, so the disagreement is litigated technically rather than through annual watch list designations.
    4. Mobility restrictions hit India’s largest services export: Immigration and visa restrictions raise the cost of the delivery model on which Indian information technology services depend. Eg. A $100,000 fee on H-1B petitions materially changes the economics of onsite deployment.
      The Fix: Conclude a social security totalisation agreement and push services mobility commitments into the trade negotiation rather than treating them as an immigration matter.

    Back2Basics: Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974

    1. What it is: A provision of United States trade law that allows the United States Trade Representative to act against a foreign country’s acts, policies or practices that are found to be unjustifiable or unreasonable and to burden United States commerce.
    2. What action it permits: It authorises retaliatory measures, including additional duties on imports from the country concerned, without requiring a prior finding by any multilateral body.
    3. Why it is contentious: Unilateral retaliation under it sits uneasily with the World Trade Organization dispute settlement system, which requires disputes to be adjudicated before countermeasures are applied.
    4. How India has encountered it: India has been the subject of Section 301 action before, including the investigation into its equalisation levy on digital services.
  • China, US are in race to connect science with industry. India must catch up [Express]

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

    Mentor Comment

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

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

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

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

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

    Where does India stand as the race intensifies?

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

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

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

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

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

    Can “technological sovereignty” be built without global science?

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

    Challenges to India’s science-industry linkage

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

    Conclusion

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

    About India’s Research and Innovation Ecosystem

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

    Laws and Rules Governing India’s Research and Innovation Ecosystem

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

    Government Initiatives for India’s Research and Innovation Ecosystem

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

    Key Facts about India’s Research and Innovation Ecosystem

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

    Back2Basics

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

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

  • [2nd September 2026] The Hindu OpED: The two balance sheets behind every e-waste decision

    [2nd September 2026] The Hindu OpED: The two balance sheets behind every e-waste decision

    Question (2018): “What are the impediments in disposing the huge quantities of discarded solid wastes which are continuously being generated? How do we remove safely the toxic wastes that have been accumulating in our habitable environment?
    Linkage: Discarded computers, servers, and networking systems are a rapidly growing source of toxic and solid electronic waste. This question directly addresses the core administrative and logistical bottlenecks that prevent advanced recycling from becoming the default choice in India.

    Mentor Comment

    Governments and companies replace thousands of computers, servers, networking devices and storage systems every few years, and this discarded equipment holds copper, aluminium, gold, silver, palladium and critical minerals. Advanced recycling of such equipment has still not become the default choice in India. The reason is that procurement in both the public and private sectors rewards the lowest visible cost at the point of disposal. Every disposal decision creates two balance sheets, one financial and closed with the transaction, the other strategic and open long after it. The lowest-price principle that secures transparency and fiscal discipline in public procurement now sits in tension with the lifetime cost of decisions in electronics, batteries and renewable energy.

    What is urban mining?

    1. Definition: Urban mining is the recovery of valuable materials from products that have already served their purpose, in place of extracting fresh ore from the earth.
    2. The ore body: Discarded IT equipment is among the largest untapped sources of strategic raw materials as economies digitise, and it is hazardous waste when poorly handled.
    3. What safe recovery needs: Sophisticated technology, secure data destruction, environmentally compliant processing and traceable supply chains, with collection and segregation adding to the cost.

    Why has advanced recycling not become the default choice in India?

    1. Procurement rewards the lowest visible cost: Public and private buyers maximise resale value and minimise processing cost when they dispose of equipment.
    2. Strategic value stays off the invoice: Recovery of critical minerals, secure data destruction, environmental benefit and domestic industrial capability rarely appear in the price that decides the contract.
    3. The gains accrue to others: Less virgin mining, stronger domestic supplies of critical materials, lower import dependence and responsible handling of hazardous components are benefits the disposing organisation does not book.

    What are the two balance sheets every disposal decision creates?

    1. The first, financial and immediate: Purchase price, resale value and savings achieved, all measurable, auditable and reflected in annual budgets.
    2. The second, strategic and open ended: It stays open long after the transaction and records resource security, environmental sustainability, industrial capability, supply-chain resilience, public health and national competitiveness.
    3. Good governance manages both: Some investments look expensive at first and later transform economies. Eg. Fifteen years ago solar power struggled to compete with conventional electricity on cost and governments that invested early were criticised for paying too much. Scale and learning have since made solar one of the world’s cheapest sources of electricity, and countries that built manufacturing capacity early hold advantages a cost comparison could not have predicted.

    How do the costs left off the invoice return later?

    1. Recovery priced against disposal: Investment in urban mining infrastructure looks expensive when judged only against the cost of disposing of a computer. The calculation changes when recovered materials, avoided imports, environmental safeguards, data security and future industrial capability are counted together.
    2. Pollution becomes health-care expenditure: The public health cost of unsafe processing lands on the exchequer years after the disposal saving was booked.
    3. Resource depletion becomes import dependence: Metals not recovered at home are bought abroad, raising manufacturing costs.
    4. Weak domestic capability becomes strategic vulnerability: An economy without recovery capacity depends on others for the materials its industry runs on.
    5. Environmental costs turn economic: Governments spend more on remediation, businesses face higher compliance costs and citizens pay through taxes and lost productivity. The costs are delayed or redistributed and rarely avoided.

    What should an organisation ask before selecting a recycler?

    1. Secure data destruction: Whether sensitive data on the equipment is securely destroyed before any material moves.
    2. Refurbishment before recycling: Whether working equipment is refurbished for reuse before it is broken down for materials.
    3. Efficient and transparent mineral recovery: Whether critical minerals are recovered efficiently and the recovery is traceable.
    4. The cost of skipping the questions: A marginal gain today becomes tomorrow’s cybersecurity risk, import dependence, reputational damage and permanent loss of strategic resources.

    Can the lowest-price principle survive in sectors where acquisition cost is not lifetime cost?

    1. What the principle protects: Governments have relied on the lowest-price rule to ensure transparency and fiscal discipline in public spending.
    2. Where it fails: Renewable energy systems, batteries, electronics and advanced manufacturing are sectors where the lowest acquisition cost is rarely the lowest lifetime cost.
    3. The alternative many countries have adopted: Life-cycle costing (pricing an option across purchase, operation, disposal and recovery rather than at purchase alone) and value-based procurement ask which option delivers the greatest long-term public value. Procurement then becomes a tool of industrial policy that shapes which technologies scale and which capabilities are built.
    4. The same logic in compliance markets: Judging Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR, the obligation on a producer to finance the collection and recycling of the products it sells) compliance on the cheapest available certificate rewards the lowest-cost provider over the highest-quality outcome. Rewarding traceability, recovery efficiency and technological capability would instead draw investment into advanced recycling and strengthen India’s domestic supply of critical minerals.

    Challenges to urban mining of e-waste in India

    1. Fake certificates break traceability: An EPR certificate market cannot reward quality when the certificates themselves are unverified. Eg. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) found over 600,000 fake recycling certificates in 2023 across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka.
      The Fix: Digitise certificate tracking against audited mass balance at each registered recycler, with cancellation of registration for a fake certificate.
    2. A floor price too low to sustain formal recycling: EPR pricing set below the cost of compliant recovery pushes material to informal and fraudulent channels. Eg. In April 2025 Daikin, Hitachi and Samsung sued the government opposing the mandated minimum recycler price.
      The Fix: Index the floor price to the audited cost of compliant recovery and revise it annually through a published formula.
    3. Inefficient recovery loses the minerals the policy exists to secure: Crude recycling wastes lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, gold and silver. Eg. Improper battery handling alone could cost India over USD 1 billion in foreign exchange by 2030.
      The Fix: Fund research in advanced shredding, bioleaching and non-thermal recovery and tie EPR credit to recovery efficiency rather than to tonnage collected.
    4. No domestic refining of precious metals: Indian recyclers dismantle equipment and export the printed circuit boards, so the highest-value step happens abroad. Eg. Circuit boards from Indian dismantlers are shipped to integrated smelters in Belgium, Japan and South Korea for gold and palladium refining.
      The Fix: Mandate a minimum domestic refining share within EPR targets and treat integrated refining as eligible infrastructure under the critical mineral recycling incentive.

    Conclusion

    India’s discarded IT equipment will become either a strategic reserve or an environmental liability, and the deciding instrument is the procurement rule rather than the recycling technology. The reform that follows is to score public disposal tenders on lifetime value. That means amending the General Financial Rules, 2017, the rules for central procurement, so that a tender can weigh quality of recovery against the immediate price. The unresolved question is who pays: the buyer who funds advanced recycling is not the one who gains from resource security, and no mechanism yet closes that gap.

    E-Waste Management in India

    1. Scale: As per the CPCB, India generated 14,14,645 metric tonnes (about 1.41 million tonnes) of e-waste in 2025-26 till March 2026, of which 9,79,080 metric tonnes (about 0.98 million tonnes) was recycled.
    2. Global standing and growth: India is the third largest generator behind China and the United States. Volumes surged over 150 percent in six years from 0.71 million tonnes in 2017-18 and are projected to nearly double by 2030.
    3. Formal capacity: 386 registered recyclers across 19 States and Union Territories offer a capacity of about 34.66 lakh metric tonnes per annum.
    4. Concentration: Just 65 cities generate over 60 percent of total e-waste, and 10 States account for around 70 percent.

    Laws and Rules Governing E-Waste Management

    1. Environment (Protection) Act, 1986: The parent statute under which every set of e-waste rules is notified.
    2. E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2016: Introduced the Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO) concept.
    3. E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022: Make EPR the core engine, mandate registration of all producers, refurbishers and recyclers on the CPCB portal, and expand coverage from 21 to 106 electrical and electronic equipment items.
    4. E-Waste (Management) Second Amendment Rules, 2023: Added provisions for safe, sustainable refrigerant management in refrigeration and air-conditioning manufacturing.
    5. E-Waste (Management) Amendment Rules, 2024: Enabled CPCB supervised platforms for trading EPR certificates, priced between 30 percent and 100 percent of the environmental compensation for non-compliance.
    6. Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management and Transboundary Movement) Amendment Rules, 2025: Introduced an EPR framework for non-ferrous metal scrap, with targets rising from 10 percent in 2026-27 to 75 percent in 2032-33.
    7. Basel Convention, 1989: India is a signatory to this treaty limiting the transboundary movement of hazardous waste, including e-waste.

    Challenges in E-Waste Management

    1. Informal-sector dominance: Over 50 percent of e-waste is handled informally through open-air burning and acid leaching, exposing workers and residents to respiratory illness, neurological damage and DNA damage. Eg. Acid leaching of circuit boards in Moradabad releases toxic slurry into the Ramganga and local groundwater.
      The Fix: Train waste-pickers as certified green collar technicians with protective gear, certification and links to healthcare, insurance and pensions.
    2. Illegal imports: Developed nations export e-waste to India under cover of used goods. Eg. 29 illegal-import instances were identified during 2019-22 across Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh.
      The Fix: Pre-shipment inspection of used electronics consignments at ports under the Basel Convention notification procedure.
    3. Low awareness in the trade itself: The people who handle discarded electronics first do not know the rules. Eg. A 2021 Delhi study found 70 percent of repair workers and 79 percent of scrap dealers unaware of e-waste rules.
      The Fix: Run registration and awareness campaigns through resident welfare associations and self-help groups linked to registered collection points.
    4. Uneven infrastructure: Recycling capacity and expertise are concentrated in a few States. Eg. Telangana has built formal capacity, and Chandigarh lacks formal facilities.
      The Fix: Set up decentralised recycling hubs in every State with a collection target tied to the State’s generation share.
  • Step up regulation

    Step up regulation

    Question (2024, GS2 – 15 Marks): “In a crucial domain like the public healthcare system, the Indian State should play a vital role to contain the adverse impact of marketisation of the system. Suggest some measures through which the State can enhance the reach of public healthcare at the grassroots level.”
    Linkage: The fact that non-government institutions account for 85–86% of AYUSH colleges is a stark example of the “marketisation” of healthcare education. The incentive of private players to “maximise student intake without matching increases in faculty and laboratory infrastructure” illustrates the precise “adverse impacts” of market-led growth that the state must step in to regulate.

    Mentor Comment

    Non-government institutions accounted for 86 per cent of Ayurveda colleges and 85 per cent of homoeopathy colleges in 2024, according to government data. Permitted seats rose by 43 per cent and total admission capacity by 25 per cent between 2021 and 2024. The Centre’s AYURGYAN allocation for AYUSH education, training, research, innovation and capacity building increased nearly sixfold over the same period, AYUSH being the group of systems covering Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy. Through that expansion the sector’s regulators have been denying permissions and grading colleges poorly. The tension is that private led growth carries an incentive to maximise student intake without matching increases in faculty and laboratory infrastructure, and the regulatory answer to it arrives one inspection at a time.

    How fast has AYUSH education expanded, and who is running it?

    1. The private sector runs the great majority of colleges: Non-government institutions accounted for 86 per cent of Ayurveda and 85 per cent of homoeopathy colleges in 2024.
    2. Seats grew faster than institutions: Permitted seats rose by 43 per cent and total admission capacity by 25 per cent between 2021 and 2024.
    3. Public funding rose alongside private capacity: The AYURGYAN allocation increased nearly sixfold over the same period.
    4. The private sector is leading the build out: The expansion of AYUSH medical education infrastructure is being driven by non-government institutions rather than by State run colleges.

    Why do the quality questions differ from those in allopathic education?

    1. The allopathic concern is narrower: Debate there has been confined to whether institutions adequately prepare students for evidence-based practice.
    2. AYUSH raises two questions at once: The first is the quality of training delivered, and the second is what students are being trained to practise.
    3. The evidence base is itself in question: Tougher quality control does not settle the separate question of the evidence backing AYUSH medicinal systems.

    Do the quality problems predate the current expansion?

    1. A 2005 audit found widespread deficiencies: The Comptroller and Auditor General found insufficient hospital beds, outpatient services or staff to be widespread among homoeopathy colleges.
    2. Bed occupancy ranged from 1 per cent to 71 per cent: The same audit recorded that spread across the colleges it examined.
    3. Faculty shortfalls exceeded half the requirement: A 2020 article in the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine reported that many institutions fell short by more than 50 per cent of the teaching staff required by the standards then in force.

    What are the regulators finding now?

    1. The Ayurveda regulator has denied 17 permissions: As of 21 August the National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM) had listed 17 Ayurveda colleges, all private, whose permissions it had denied.
    2. Several denials were for obstructing the process itself: The stated reason in several cases was non-compliance with the inspection process.
    3. The homoeopathy regulator graded 41 per cent of colleges lowest: The National Commission for Homoeopathy placed that share at the bottom grade, including nearly half of all private institutions.
    4. The recorded failures are specific and repeated: They include inadequate or disputed faculty strength, failures in inspection requirements and student intake numbers, and allegations of fictitious faculty.

    What incentive does private led expansion create?

    1. Intake is the revenue lever: Expansion led by private institutions is accompanied by an incentive to maximise student intake while holding faculty size and laboratory infrastructure at existing levels.
    2. A court has recorded the practice: The Karnataka High Court in Hillside Ayurveda Medical College (2023) acknowledged that educational institutions are often guilty of admitting excess students for financial gains.
    3. The regulatory response is retrospective: Permission withheld after an inspection corrects a college that has already been built and has already admitted students.
    4. Causation is not yet established: It is premature to infer that the rapid expansion has amplified these problems, and the persistent non-compliance is established on its own.

    Challenges to regulating AYUSH medical education

    1. Faculty can be produced on paper: A college can satisfy a faculty norm on inspection day by listing teachers who do not actually teach there. Eg. Aadhaar linked biometric attendance was introduced in allopathic medical colleges precisely because faculty were being shown only for inspections.
      The Fix: Extend biometric and payroll linked faculty verification to every AYUSH college and publish the verified roll monthly.
    2. Approval and assessment sit with the same body: A regulator that grants permission to a college also rates it, so a poor rating is a verdict on its own earlier approval. Eg. Allopathic regulation separated the two, creating a distinct Medical Assessment and Rating Board under the National Medical Commission.
      The Fix: Split permission and rating into separate boards with published criteria, on the model already used in allopathic regulation.
    3. Seats are cheaper to add than laboratories: Where fees are capped, a college raises revenue by raising intake rather than by improving what it teaches with. Eg. Private professional education in India has produced capitation fee litigation running from T.M.A. Pai Foundation (2002) onward.
      The Fix: Link seat sanction to an audited per student cost of teaching and clinical infrastructure rather than to floor space and declared faculty strength.
    4. Clinical exposure is measured by beds, not patients: An attached hospital can meet a bed norm without meeting an occupancy norm, so a student can qualify with very little clinical contact. Eg. Minimum standard requirements for AYUSH colleges specify bed numbers, which a college can satisfy with wards that stay largely empty.
      The Fix: Make verified average bed occupancy and outpatient footfall a condition of annual permission renewal.
    5. Efficacy sits outside the regulator’s remit: A regulator can enforce faculty and infrastructure norms without settling whether the therapy being taught works. Eg. Research on Ayurvedic medicine is largely funded and evaluated by the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences, a body under the same ministry that promotes the system.
      The Fix: Route efficacy trials for AYUSH therapies through independently assessed, pre-registered protocols outside the promoting ministry.

    Conclusion

    AYUSH education can expand meaningfully only when capacity growth is matched by quality assurance. Stronger faculty verification, independent assessment, outcome based accreditation and evidence based research can ensure that expansion delivers credible, high quality healthcare education.

    Back2Basics: National Commission for Indian System of Medicine

    1. Governing Act: Established under the National Commission for Indian System of Medicine Act, 2020 as the statutory regulator for Indian systems of medicine.
    2. Predecessor: It replaced the Central Council of Indian Medicine, which had regulated the sector since 1970.
    3. Jurisdiction: It covers education and practice in Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Sowa-Rigpa.
    4. Structure: It works through autonomous boards handling education standards, assessment and rating of institutions, and ethics and registration of practitioners.
  • Typhoid control needs more vaccine, less antibiotic

    Typhoid control needs more vaccine, less antibiotic

    Why in the News

    Typhoid cases in India are mounting without attracting the attention that influenza and swine flu currently draw, and every suspected case becomes a trigger for inappropriate or unnecessarily broad-spectrum antibiotic use. The disease is bacterial and vaccine preventable, yet it continues to be diagnosed imperfectly and treated empirically. The reason is the absence of a simple, reliable and accessible diagnostic test, which leaves the clinician with suspicion rather than confirmation. The tension is that the same empirical prescribing that substitutes for a diagnosis also generates the antimicrobial resistance in Salmonella typhi that makes future typhoid harder to treat, and it destroys the case data needed to see that resistance building.

    What is the typhoid conjugate vaccine?

    1. What it is: The typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) links the Vi capsular sugar coat of Salmonella typhi to a carrier protein. The conjugation produces a durable immune response, including in children under two, which the older unconjugated vaccine did not.
    2. India’s manufacturing position: India produced the world’s first World Health Organization (WHO) prequalified typhoid conjugate vaccine, Typbar-TCV, in 2017. Additional Indian products have achieved WHO prequalification since then.
    3. Where WHO places it: The WHO has prioritised introduction of the vaccine in countries carrying a high typhoid burden or high levels of antimicrobial resistance.

    Why does typhoid get treated without being diagnosed?

    1. A single Widal test settles nothing: The Widal test measures antibodies against Salmonella typhi, and one result is not sufficient to establish a diagnosis of acute typhoid.
    2. Endemicity corrupts the reading: In an endemic country such as India, background antibodies and previous exposure or vaccination make the result difficult to interpret. In routine practice a positive Widal result may still be treated as confirmation.
    3. The laboratory standard is only half sensitive: Blood culture remains the conventional laboratory standard. The latest WHO typhoid guidance puts the sensitivity of a single blood culture at only around 55 to 60 per cent.
    4. What the yield depends on: Sensitivity is influenced by the volume of blood collected and, critically, by prior exposure to antimicrobials.
    5. The vicious cycle this creates: A patient develops prolonged fever and takes an antibiotic before seeking care. The blood culture drawn afterwards returns negative, and the clinician responds to unresolved suspicion by escalating or changing the antibiotic.

    What does empirical treatment cost beyond the individual patient?

    1. Every course adds selection pressure: India already faces increasing resistance in Salmonella typhi, and each unnecessary antibiotic course creates additional selection pressure on the organism.
    2. Every missed case blanks the record: A patient treated without microbiological confirmation never enters the resistance data, so the surveillance that should guide prescribing is undermined by the prescribing itself.
    3. Breadth compounds the damage: The response to diagnostic uncertainty is a broader spectrum agent, which acts on organisms far beyond the one suspected.

    Why is a vaccine preventable disease being fought with antibiotics?

    1. The capability is not the constraint: The scientific and manufacturing capability exists and the vaccine exists. What remains inadequate is the scale and the rigour of its use.
    2. India is the case WHO describes: India is one of the countries where the combination of disease burden and resistance makes the case for typhoid vaccination compelling.
    3. Vaccination does not displace the basics: It cannot be treated as a substitute for clean water, sanitation, food safety or better diagnostics. It has to be one component of an integrated typhoid control strategy.

    What would an integrated typhoid control strategy require?

    1. Surveillance triggered by the case rise: Reports of increasing typhoid should themselves trigger strengthened surveillance. Hospitals and laboratories should systematically document suspected and culture confirmed cases, antimicrobial susceptibility patterns and prior antibiotic exposure.
    2. Diagnostic stewardship inside antimicrobial stewardship: Blood cultures should ideally be obtained before antibiotics are started, with adequate blood volume and appropriate laboratory practices.
    3. A test that works at the point of care: India needs investment in a better point of care or rapid diagnostic test for typhoid.
    4. A settled place for the vaccine: The position of the typhoid conjugate vaccine in the public health strategy needs to be revisited rather than left to individual prescribing decisions.

    Challenges to scaling the typhoid conjugate vaccine

    1. It sits outside the routine immunisation schedule: The vaccine is not part of the Universal Immunisation Programme, so uptake depends on the private market and on paying households. Eg. Coverage is concentrated in urban private paediatric practice rather than in the dense settlements where typhoid transmission is highest. Fix. Introduce it in a phased manner in high burden urban districts first, with the introduction decision anchored to culture confirmed case data.
    2. The vaccine does not cover the whole disease: Enteric fever is also caused by Salmonella paratyphi A, against which the conjugate vaccine gives no protection. Eg. A vaccinated patient presenting with prolonged fever still requires the same diagnostic workup. Fix. Fund development of a bivalent conjugate covering both organisms alongside scale up of the existing product.
    3. Introduction cannot be measured without a denominator: Without culture confirmed case counts there is no baseline against which to judge whether the vaccine reduced disease. Eg. Resistance data in India is heavily skewed towards tertiary hospitals rather than the community. Fix. Make enteric fever notifiable with mandatory laboratory reporting so introduction and impact are both measurable.
    4. Catch-up campaigns are the expensive part: A single dose given from six months of age is cheap, and a mass campaign across older cohorts is not. Eg. The cold chain and session load of a campaign compete directly with routine immunisation days. Fix. Attach the catch-up to existing school health programmes rather than running a parallel delivery system.

    Conclusion

    India has the vaccine and the manufacturing base to use it widely. What it does not have is a count of who actually has typhoid, because most cases are treated on symptoms and never confirmed in a laboratory. That missing count is exactly what would tell the government where to vaccinate first and whether it worked. The marker to watch is whether the typhoid conjugate vaccine enters the Universal Immunisation Programme, or stays held up waiting on data the country has not begun collecting.

    What is Antimicrobial Resistance?

    1. About: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites evolve and stop responding to medicines that once treated them. It is often termed the silent pandemic.
    2. The One Health scope: Human medicine, animal husbandry and the environment form one reservoir, since resistant organisms move between them through food, water and waste.

    Laws and Rules Governing Antimicrobial Resistance

    1. Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940: The parent statute regulating manufacture and sale of medicines in India.
    2. Schedule H1: Requires a prescription and a sale register for listed antibiotics and second line drugs.
    3. Ban on irrational fixed dose combinations: The government banned 156 irrational fixed dose combinations in 2024, several being antibiotic cocktails with no scientific basis.

    Government Initiatives for Antimicrobial Resistance

    1. National Action Plan on AMR 2.0 (2025 to 2029): Sets sectoral targets across human health, animal health and the environment.
    2. Red Line Campaign: Marks prescription-only antibiotic packs with a red vertical stripe for buyer identification.
    3. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) AMR Surveillance Network: Collects susceptibility data from tertiary care hospitals.

    Key Facts about Antimicrobial Resistance

    1. Consumption pattern: 59 per cent of antibiotics consumed in India in 2022 were in the WHO Watch category, meant to be used sparingly.
    2. Animal use ranking: India is the fourth largest consumer of antibiotics for animals, with an 82 per cent rise projected by 2030.
    3. Newborn burden: More than 50,000 newborn deaths a year in India are attributed to resistant sepsis.

    Challenges in Antimicrobial Resistance

    1. Antibiotics still move over the counter: Retail enforcement of the prescription requirement is weak, so a course is bought like a painkiller. Eg. The pill popping habit widened after the COVID-19 pandemic, with antibiotics taken for viral illness. Fix. Make the Schedule H1 register a digital point of sale entry so it can be audited rather than inspected.
    2. Manufacturing effluent seeds resistance in rivers: Untreated effluent from drug production enters water bodies and selects for resistant organisms outside any clinic. Eg. The Musi river near Hyderabad shows antibiotic levels a thousand times above safe limits. Fix. Tie public procurement preference to plants certified for zero liquid discharge.
    3. Farm use is a growth strategy, not a treatment: Antibiotics are given routinely in poultry and aquaculture to accelerate weight gain, not to treat disease. Eg. Shrimp samples have shown up to 100 per cent ampicillin resistance. Fix. Subsidise animal vaccines and enforce farm to fork traceability so residue traces to a producer.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2020] What is the importance of using Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccines in India? (1) These vaccines are effective against pneumonia as well as meningitis and sepsis. (2) Dependence on antibiotics that are not effective against drug-resistant bacteria can be reduced. (3) These vaccines have no side effects and cause no allergic reactions. Select the correct answer using the code given below: (a) 1 only (b) 1 and 2 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3 ANSWER: (b)”

  • The mountains have sounded a warning, we ignore it at our peril

    The mountains have sounded a warning, we ignore it at our peril

    Why in the News

    Flash floods have swept down from the mountains on the Nepal Tibet border into Nepal’s Rasuwa district. A glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) sent a massive avalanche of water and mud down the Lhende River about 20 km east of the Rasuwagadhi border crossing, sweeping away villages, settlements and a large number of people downstream. The avalanche may have been triggered by a 4.4 magnitude earthquake recorded in the area minutes earlier. At least six hydropower projects downstream were destroyed, costing Nepal 405 MW of capacity, which is 12 per cent of its national total. The tension is that the Himalaya has produced this exact sequence repeatedly, and hydropower schemes and hill tourism have expanded on the same valleys after each event. A second front has opened across the border, where China is building the Medog dam at the great bend of the Brahmaputra and hydrological information sharing with India has never been regular.

    What is a glacial lake outburst flood?

    1. How the lake forms: A mountain river upstream is blocked by a portion of a glacier breaking away or by an avalanche. The blockage impounds a lake behind it.
    2. How the lake bursts: The loose banks of that lake give way under water pressure, and a huge volume of water and debris then hurtles downstream through narrow valleys.

    What did the flood take out beyond the power projects?

    1. The path of the surge: The floods spread south from Rasuwa into the Dhading, Gorkha and Nuwakot districts of Nepal, and the impact carries across the border into India. Chinese media reported similar loss of life and property on the Tibetan side, in Gyirong county.
    2. Indian pilgrims caught in it: Over 160 Indian pilgrims are reported missing. The hotels and guest houses they were staying in were washed away in the flood.
    3. A trade and pilgrimage artery closed: Rasuwagadhi is the most important border crossing between Nepal and Tibet for trade and for tourism, including pilgrim tours to Kailash Mansarovar. Cross border trade and traffic are likely to remain suspended for the foreseeable future.
    4. The recovery horizon: Rebuilding the lost generating capacity may take several years, and it is a loss Nepal can ill afford.
    5. India’s immediate response: India sent urgent medical and food supplies to Nepal. It also despatched specialised rescue teams.

    How large is the hazard the Himalaya now carries?

    1. Glacier area: There are 48,000 sq km of glaciers spread over the Himalaya, and another 18,000 sq km sit in the Karakoram.
    2. Mapped lakes: Researchers have mapped over 5,000 glacial lakes in the Himalaya. About 500 of them are classified as hazardous or significantly hazardous.
    3. Recorded events: There have been at least 388 recorded GLOF instances in the Himalaya Karakoram mountains, and their frequency has been increasing in recent years.
    4. What these glaciers support: Himalayan glaciers are the source of the rivers that sustain the entire Indo-Gangetic plain, which is populated by over 500 million people.

    Why has the record of past disasters not changed construction in the valleys?

    1. Dharali, August 2025: A GLOF event at Dharali in Uttarakhand, on the route to Gangotri, caused large scale loss of life and property.
    2. Kedarnath, 2013: The Kedarnath flash flood was caused by a combination of torrential rains and a GLOF at Chorabari lake to the north. The surge of flood waters and debris washed away towns and settlements along the highway to Gangotri.
    3. The rules that followed it: There was talk of assessing and strictly observing the human carrying capacity of these remote pilgrimage places. No construction within 500 metres of the river banks was to be permitted thereafter.
    4. What actually happened: Hotels and guest houses have mushroomed once again on the river banks. No lessons have been learnt from the earlier event.
    5. The load on the shrine towns: During the pilgrimage season Kedarnath may see a daily turnover of 15,000 to 20,000 pilgrims.
    6. Construction at extreme altitude: Prefabricated guest houses, restaurants and dhabas operate even at 18,000 feet, with gas cylinders transported back and forth for heating and cooking. There are no proper arrangements for waste management.
    7. The direction policy is moving in: The Uttarakhand government is reportedly considering opening Badrinath and Kedarnath for pilgrimage the whole year round.

    What has hydropower already lost to these events?

    1. Teesta-III, October 2023: A GLOF from South Lhonak lake in Sikkim completely washed away the 1200 MW Teesta-III hydropower dam and power station.
    2. Rishiganga, 2021: A sudden flash flood triggered by a glacial collapse in Chamoli in Uttarakhand wiped out the Rishiganga hydropower project. It also blocked the associated Chamoli tunnel.
    3. The seismic overlay: Hydropower development continues apace in the Himalaya, which is a known active seismic zone, so the outburst risk and the earthquake risk compound each other.
    4. The response to the evidence: Major hydropower projects continue to be pursued across the mountain zone, creating mounting risks to life and property, and those risks are being cynically ignored.

    Why is the Medog dam a transboundary risk for India?

    1. Scale of the project: China has begun constructing the gigantic Medog dam at the great bend of the Brahmaputra river just across the border. It is slated to deliver 300 billion kWh of power annually.
    2. How large that is: The largest hydro project in existence anywhere in the world, the Gezhouba on the Yangzi River, is rated at 15.6 billion kWh of power annually.
    3. The fault line under it: Chinese scientists have warned that the project sits very close to the Paizhen Fault, a major fracture in the Earth’s crust, which makes it vulnerable to seismic events. A major earthquake in the project vicinity could send a massive discharge of flood waters and debris into India’s Northeast.
    4. The information gap: The sharing of information and early warning between India and China has never been regular. It has been subject to the state of their political relations.
    5. The wider river geography: Several rivers rise on the Tibetan plateau and flow through Nepal and India. Flash floods on some of these cross border rivers have already caused large scale damage on the Indian side.

    Challenges to GLOF risk management in the Himalaya

    1. Warning systems are built for the wrong signal: A system designed to track the gradual movement of glacial water cannot register a sudden wall of debris. Eg. The Bhote Koshi warning system did not detect the surge that hit Rasuwa. Fix. Pair water level gauges with seismic and acoustic sensors that read mass movement rather than a change in river stage.
    2. A hazard rating triggers no building restriction: Classifying a lake as hazardous carries no automatic consequence for what may be built below it. Eg. A 2021 study by scientists from IIT Roorkee, IISc Bengaluru and the universities of Dayton, Graz, Zurich and Geneva flagged instability around South Lhonak lake, and the lake burst two years later killing at least 50 people. Fix. Attach a mandatory downstream no build corridor to every lake a national risk index rates as high.
    3. Clearance is granted one project at a time: A chain of dams on the same river is appraised as separate schemes, so the cumulative surge risk down the valley is never assessed. Eg. The Alaknanda and Bhagirathi basins in Uttarakhand carry dozens of projects on hydrologically connected rivers. Fix. Require a basin level cumulative impact assessment before any new project is cleared in an outburst exposed valley.
    4. Monitoring authority is split across agencies: Glacier survey, weather forecasting and dam safety sit with different bodies, so no single office can order action on a lake that is filling. Eg. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has itself proposed an integrated glacier monitoring authority coordinating the Geological Survey of India, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and the Indian Space Research Organisation. Fix. Create that authority and give it the power to direct downstream evacuation.
    5. Nothing tests a dam that is already built: Outburst assessments became mandatory for new dams only after the Sikkim event, and existing designs are under review rather than under obligation. Eg. The requirement followed the loss of a 1200 MW station rather than preceding it. Fix. Set a dated deadline for retrofitting or de-rating existing Himalayan dams that fail a surge simulation.

    Conclusion

    The hazard sits in one country and the damage arrives in another. No amount of engineering on the Indian side changes that. What India can change is its access to upstream data, which at present moves when relations are warm and stops when they are not. The marker to watch is whether the Medog construction timetable comes with a year round data sharing commitment, because that data is the only warning the Northeast would get.

    Disaster Risk Reduction in India

    1. What it covers: Disaster risk reduction cuts exposure and vulnerability through prevention, mitigation and preparedness, rather than through relief paid after an event.
    2. Who runs it: The Ministry of Home Affairs coordinates disaster management through its Disaster Management Division. Response is primarily a State government responsibility.
    3. The four fund pillars: The National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) finance relief. The National and State Disaster Mitigation Funds (NDMF and SDMF) finance risk reduction projects alone.
    4. Scale of the commitment: The Fifteenth Finance Commission allocated Rs 2.28 lakh crore for 2021 to 2026 across preparedness, mitigation, response and reconstruction.

    Laws and Rules Governing Disaster Risk Reduction

    1. Disaster Management Act, 2005: Establishes structures and processes at the national, State, district and local levels.
    2. Authorities created: The NDMA chaired by the Prime Minister, State Disaster Management Authorities chaired by the Chief Minister, and District Disaster Management Authorities headed by the District Collector.
    3. Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025: Modernises the 2005 framework for urban risk, climate extremes and data driven response.
    4. Urban Disaster Management Authorities: States may set up city specific authorities in State capitals and municipal corporation cities.
    5. Statutory databases: National and State disaster databases covering risk assessments, mitigation plans and real time data are now mandated.
    6. Plan ownership shifts: The NDMA and State authorities now prepare the disaster plans, earlier a task of the National and State Executive Committees.

    Government Initiatives for Disaster Risk Reduction

    1. National GLOF Risk Mitigation Project: A Rs 150 crore project covering Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Uttarakhand.
    2. Central Water Commission lake monitoring: The Commission monitors 902 glacial lakes and has a Risk Indexing Framework to prioritise high risk ones.
    3. Common Alerting Protocol based Integrated Alert System: A Rs 354.83 crore project delivering geo-targeted warnings through SMS, television, radio, sirens and satellites.
    4. Mission Mausam (2024 to 2026): Strengthens weather forecasting and multi-hazard early warning, including for outburst related risks.

    Key Facts about Disaster Risk Reduction

    1. Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015 to 2030): The global blueprint adopted at Sendai in Japan, carrying four priorities and seven global targets.
    2. The United Nations custodian: The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction anchors the agenda and runs the Sendai Framework Monitor.

    Challenges in Disaster Risk Reduction

    1. Mitigation stays funded far below response: The roughly 80:20 tilt in the fund architecture privileges relief spending over prevention. Eg. Under the mitigation fund in 2025-26 the High Level Committee approved Rs 507.37 crore for panchayat led community risk reduction, a fraction of what response draws. Fix. Set a floor share of the disaster corpus spendable only on early warning, retrofitting and nature based solutions.
    2. India’s deadliest hazards are not notified disasters: Heatwaves and lightning sit outside the notified list, so States cannot draw relief for deaths from them. Eg. The Centre has not accepted the Sixteenth Finance Commission recommendation to notify them. Fix. Notify both with an IMD linked declaration trigger and a stated compensation protocol.
    3. The urban authority created in 2025 barely exists: City specific authorities are a State mandate, and only one State has set one up. Eg. Karnataka constituted an urban authority for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike. Fix. Fund the rollout centrally and fix a clear interface with the municipal corporation.
    4. The local tier remains under-empowered: Panchayats and urban local bodies are the first responders yet hold neither trained staff nor untied funds. Eg. The Aapda Mitra volunteer scheme trains community responders but reaches a small share of vulnerable districts. Fix. Route a fixed share of the mitigation fund to the local body with a training and equipment condition.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS3, 15 marks] What is disaster resilience? How is it determined? Describe various elements of a resilience framework. Also mention the global targets of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030).”

  • [31st August 2026] The Hindu OpED: Adopt policies for reuse of treated water

    [31st August 2026] The Hindu OpED: Adopt policies for reuse of treated water

    Question (2025, GS3): “Examine the factors responsible for depleting groundwater in India. What are the steps taken by the government to mitigate such depletion of groundwater?
    Linkage: The safe reuse of treated water is a critical step in mitigating groundwater depletion. By directing treated wastewater to agricultural fields (“farms”) and industrial units (“factories”), states can significantly reduce their dependence on fresh groundwater extraction.

    Mentor Comment

    Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand have notified treated wastewater reuse policies built for their own geography rather than on a single national template. Both were framed through an extensive consultative process, and both separate the needs of hill communities from those of densely populated plains. They follow the National Framework on Safe Reuse of Treated Water (SRTW), 2022, which made reuse a stated national priority and required States to frame reuse policies of their own. The tension is that sewage treatment capacity has already been built at scale under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), the central urban mission that funds water supply and sewerage, and a plant discharging into a drain rather than into a farm or a factory returns no water to the system.

    What is the National Framework on Safe Reuse of Treated Water, 2022?

    1. What it establishes: It sets the national position that reuse of treated water is a priority rather than a peripheral option, which is a policy signal as much as a guidance document.
    2. How it devolves: It requires States to develop their own reuse policies, on the reasoning that water solutions are local even where the ambition is national.

    What makes the two State policies a departure from template policymaking?

    1. Geography is written into the policy: Each policy accounts for the stark internal diversity of its State, treating hill settlements and dense plains as different reuse problems.
    2. Reuse is matched to purpose: Both embed fit for purpose reuse, so water is treated to the standard its end use needs rather than to a single quality for every user.
    3. Reuse is tied to other plans: Both integrate reuse with urban planning and with river rejuvenation, instead of running it as a standalone sanitation activity.
    4. Financing and monitoring are built in: Both carry community participation, blended finance and public private partnership pathways, and digital monitoring systems that make reuse accountable.

    Why does built treatment capacity not become reuse?

    1. A plant without an offtake is idle capacity: National missions have scaled treatment infrastructure, and pipes and plants alone do not close the loop when the output goes into a drain.
    2. Departments do not work together: Utilities, urban departments, irrigation agencies and industries operate in silos, and reuse succeeds only where they operate as one chain.
    3. There is no price signal: Reuse becomes economically rational only when pricing reflects what freshwater actually costs the system.
    4. End users have no assurance: Quality standards are what give a farmer or a factory confidence to take treated water as an input.
    5. National ambition has no local plan: City level roadmaps are what convert a national framework into action by a specific municipal body.

    What is the economic case for reuse?

    1. A supply that does not fail: Treated wastewater offers agriculture, industry, urban landscaping and ecological restoration a reliable and drought proof supply, which is increasingly rare.
    2. It reduces a costly dependence: Reuse cuts expenditure on sourcing fresh water and builds climate resilience into a city’s water balance.
    3. It removes a ceiling on growth: Industrial and urban expansion can proceed without straining existing freshwater supplies, and it supports low carbon urban development at scale.
    4. The case has not been made to the decision maker: Until this computable value is put clearly to State governments and planners, the policy remains an aspiration rather than a budget line.

    What decides whether a State actually adopts reuse?

    1. Money comes from convergence, not new allocations: The financial momentum for reuse targets is unlocked by identifying synergies with already funded schemes rather than by fresh budgetary provision.
    2. Public resistance is the deeper constraint: Misconceptions about the safety of treated water run deep, which is why the national framework and both State policies name treated water Apna Jal, our water.
    3. The shift required is psychological: No document can produce acceptance on its own, and the naming choice is an attempt to change how the resource is perceived before it is used.
    4. Delay compounds: States without a clear reuse plan for water security are not merely behind others, they are running out of time to catch up.

    Challenges to the National Framework on Safe Reuse of Treated Water, 2022

    1. The Framework carries no enforceable target: It directs States to frame reuse policies and fixes no volume any State must actually reuse, so a policy can be notified without a single litre changing hands. Eg. Maharashtra’s obligation to reuse 20 per cent of effluent comes from its own State water regulator rather than from any national instrument. Fix. Attach a reuse share to the consent to discharge issued under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, so the obligation sits on the discharger.
    2. Supply is continuous and demand is seasonal: A treatment plant produces a steady flow around the clock and agricultural offtake follows the cropping calendar, and the storage that bridges the two is rarely built. Eg. Chennai contracted its tertiary treatment output to industrial users in the Manali belt precisely because industry draws a steady year round volume. Fix. Contract an anchor buyer before a plant is commissioned rather than after it is built.
    3. Reuse in food crops carries a health exposure: Irrigation with partially treated sewage moves pathogens and heavy metals into the food chain, and the risk falls on consumers who never chose the input. Eg. The Musi river corridor downstream of Hyderabad has long been irrigated with untreated and partially treated sewage. Fix. Enforce end use specific quality tiers, with the strictest limits for crops eaten raw.
    4. The certifier is also the enforcer: State Pollution Control Boards must certify effluent quality and simultaneously prosecute the dischargers they certify, and they are thinly staffed for either task. Eg. Central Pollution Control Board reviews have repeatedly found a large share of sewage treatment plants operating outside discharge norms. Fix. Separate reuse quality certification from the enforcement function, and staff the certification arm to the number of plants it must clear.

    Conclusion

    The variable that decides reuse is not how much treatment capacity exists but who has contracted to take the output. What to watch is whether the States that have notified policies convert a stated reuse target into signed offtake agreements with irrigation agencies and industry, since that is the point at which a policy becomes a volume of water. The measure worth tracking is the share of treated sewage actually reused, not the share treated.

    Reuse of Treated Water in India

    1. What the activity is: Sewage or industrial effluent is processed to a defined quality standard and then supplied for a use that does not require freshwater.
    2. How little is recovered: Around 28 per cent of India’s sewage is treated and barely 3 per cent of that is beneficially reused, per the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
    3. The resource ahead: Over 35,000 million cubic metres of treated wastewater is expected to be available by 2050.
    4. Why the resource matters: India holds around 18 per cent of the world’s population and about 4 per cent of its freshwater, and per capita availability had fallen to 1,486 cubic metres by 2021, below the 1,700 cubic metre stress threshold.

    Laws and Rules Governing Reuse of Treated Water

    1. Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974: Created the Central Pollution Control Board and the State Pollution Control Boards, and made the discharge of sewage or trade effluent into a water body subject to their consent.
    2. Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Amendment Act, 2024: Rationalised the penalty regime, replacing prosecution for a set of minor offences with monetary penalties decided by an adjudicating officer.
    3. Environment (Protection) Act, 1986: The source of the effluent discharge standards a treatment plant must meet before its output is discharged or supplied to a reuse customer.
    4. Entry 17 of the State List: Water supply, irrigation and drainage are State subjects, which is why a national framework can direct States to act but cannot itself operate a reuse policy.

    Government Initiatives for Reuse of Treated Water

    1. Namami Gange Programme: Funds sewage treatment across the Ganga basin, including colony level decentralised plants and the reuse of treated water for irrigation.
    2. National Water Mission: Targets a 20 per cent improvement in water use efficiency, with reuse counted as a demand side measure alongside conservation.
    3. Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority mandate: The State regulator requires 20 per cent effluent reuse, a model NITI Aayog has endorsed for wider adoption.
    4. Water Reuse Certificates: Developed by the World Bank hosted 2030 Water Resources Group, these are tradable permits on a cap and trade model, with higher quality treated water earning more credits.

  • What two gramophones tell us about Vande Mataram

    Why in the News

    Two gramophone records of Vande Mataram, one cut in 1938 and one pressed some time afterwards, carry contradictory descriptions of what the song officially is. The first was commissioned for the 51st Annual Session of the Indian National Congress at Haripura in 1938. It answered the Congress Working Committee meeting at Calcutta in October 1937, which had cut the song’s ceremonial position. The second, undated record reverses the first on both the stanza count and the label. What is contested is the basis on which the familiar distinction between a National Anthem and a National Song now rests.

    What had happened at Calcutta in October 1937?

    1. The song’s position was reduced there: The Congress Working Committee meeting of October 1937 compromised the pride and the position the song had held in Congress proceedings.
    2. The Congress had treated it as the anthem for years: Vande Mataram had been referred to as the National Anthem in the proceedings and reports of the annual sessions over a long period.
    3. The record keeping was not incidental: Many of those reports through the 1920s were edited and prepared by the then General Secretary of the Indian National Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru.
    4. Haripura was framed as a correction: The session a few months later set out to restore what the Calcutta meeting had removed, so the staging there is evidence of intent rather than ceremony.

    How was the song staged at Haripura?

    1. The procession was built around it: The President elect, Subhas Chandra Bose, was carried four miles to the pandal in a rath drawn by 51 bullocks, moving in pairs, each pair carrying tricolour flags on their heads.
    2. The detail was deliberate: The bells hung around the bullocks’ necks were tuned, and carried the words Vande Mataram engraved on them.
    3. The performers were brought from Bengal: Singers and musicians travelled with the President elect from Calcutta in the second class bogies of the Nagpur Mail, led by the master musician RR Mukherjee.
    4. The leadership acknowledged it formally: The senior leadership of the Congress, including Mahatma Gandhi, stood at attention as the Bengal troupe sang the song.
    5. The reception was recorded at the time: Sarojini Naidu described the Haripura rendering as exquisitely sung with deep and thrilling emotions, and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay credited the troupe with setting the emotional tone of the whole session.

    What did the 1938 record actually declare?

    1. It was commissioned to make a point: A special gramophone record was cut in 1938 to restore the standing of the song, and the work was given to Timir Baran, then the most credible name in Indian orchestration.
    2. It was the first complete setting: For the first time the complete song was composed in two versions, a grand choral rendering as an anthem and an instrumental arrangement in the character of a military march.
    3. The physical format carried the argument: It was issued on a 12 inch disc against the usual 10 inch, because the larger disc combined respect with the need to fit all six stanzas on one side.
    4. The label declared completeness: It read BANDE MATARAM SAMPOORN, sampoorn meaning complete, and that assertion was repeated in Devanagari, Bangla and Nastaliq.
    5. The label declared status: A second declaration in bold capitals read INDIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM, with a tricolour bearing the charkha above it.

    What did the Constituent Assembly settle on 24 January 1950?

    1. The Cabinet’s earlier choice was provisional: Jana Gana Mana was tentatively chosen as the National Anthem in 1948.
    2. The Assembly formalised it by statement, not by article: The Constituent Assembly settled the question through a Statement read on 24 January 1950, after the Constitution had been finalised on 26 November 1949 and signed.
    3. The Statement drew no such distinction: It declared Jana Gana Mana the National Anthem, and said of Vande Mataram that it shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status.
    4. The disputed term is absent from it: The expression National Song does not occur anywhere in what was read out on that date.

    Where did the National Song distinction come from?

    1. A secretariat noting, not a statute: The distinction sharpened in a Prime Minister’s Secretariat noting of 25 November 1955, which referred to Vande Mataram as a Special National Song.
    2. It departed from the 1950 language: That phrase replaced the equal status formulation the Constituent Assembly had used five years earlier.
    3. It also fixed protocol: Where both were performed, Vande Mataram was to open and Jana Gana Mana to close, and the noting recorded the view that as a rule both should not be performed at the same function.
    4. The distinction was carried forward administratively: The noting was marked to the Ministry of Home Affairs, which has maintained the National Anthem and National Song distinction since.
    5. It rests on nothing enacted: That distinction has no constitutional, legal or legislative basis.

    What does the second record leave unresolved?

    1. The stanzas were cut back: Between the 1938 recording and the 1950 statement, a second, little noticed record reduced the six stanzas to four.
    2. The format shrank with them: It was pressed on a 10 inch His Master’s Voice (HMV) record, the standard size the 1938 disc had deliberately exceeded.
    3. The claim on the label changed: The words Sampoorn and Indian National Anthem were both dropped, and the label read Indian National Congress Anthem instead.
    4. The record itself is silent on why: Who inserted the word Congress, and on whose authority, is not documented anywhere on the disc.

    Conclusion

    The documentary trail runs from Congress proceedings through the 1920s, to the 1938 disc, to the Constituent Assembly, and then to an executive noting in 1955 that changed the terminology. The distinction now treated as settled therefore originates in administrative practice. The unanswered question is who authorised the relabelling on the second record, since no source names them.

    Laws and Rules Governing India’s National Symbols

    1. Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971: Penalises insult to the Indian National Flag, the Constitution of India and the National Anthem, and it is the only statute that names a national symbol for protection.
    2. The Act does not extend the same protection to a National Song, which is one reason the anthem and song categories are not legally equivalent.
    3. The Flag Code of India, 2002: Consolidates the executive instructions on display and use of the National Flag, and was amended in 2021 and 2022 to permit machine made and polyester flags and flying by night on open display.
    4. Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act, 1950: Restricts commercial and professional use of the State Emblem, the name and pictorial representation of national figures, and certain official seals.
    5. State Emblem of India (Prohibition of Improper Use) Act, 2005: Governs use of the State Emblem specifically, which the 1950 Act had covered only in part.

    Key Facts about India’s National Symbols

    1. National Anthem: Jana Gana Mana was composed in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore and first sung at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress in 1911, with a playing time of about 52 seconds for the full version.
    2. Constitutional position: The Constitution names neither the anthem nor the song in its text, and Article 51A(a) makes respect for the Constitution, the National Flag and the National Anthem a Fundamental Duty.
    3. National Flag: Adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 July 1947, with the Ashoka Chakra of 24 spokes replacing the charkha carried on the earlier Congress tricolour.

    Back2Basics: Vande Mataram

    1. Its origin: A poem by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, written in the 1870s and published within the novel Anandamath in 1882.
    2. Its language: Composed in Sanskritised Bengali, which is why the stanza count and the translations became a point of dispute later.
    3. Its political career: It entered nationalist politics at the 1896 Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress and became the mobilising song of the Swadeshi movement during the Partition of Bengal.
    4. Why the stanza count matters: Only the first two stanzas invoke the land, while later stanzas carry religious imagery, which is why the number of stanzas performed became a political question.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2021] With reference to Madanapalle of Andhra Pradesh, which one of the following statements is correct? (a) Pingali Venkayya designed the tricolour Indian National Flag here. (b) Pattabhi Sitaramaiah led the Quit India Movement of Andhra region from here. (c) Rabindranath Tagore translated the National Anthem from Bengali to English here. (d) Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott set up headquarters of Theosophical Society first here ANSWER: (c)”

  • Let the Western Ghats breathe

    Why in the News

    The Rs 10,000 crore, 2,000 MW Sharavathi Pumped Storage Project in Karnataka is under an interim stay by the Karnataka High Court, with work frozen until further orders. The project sits entirely inside the Sharavathi Valley Lion-Tailed Macaque Wildlife Sanctuary. An expert panel constituted by the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) had earlier recommended against approving it. The contest is between a state that needs storage to absorb intermittent renewable power and a protected rainforest where such construction is barred outright.

    How does the Sharavathi Pumped Storage Project work?

    1. What it connects: The project links the Talakalale and Gerusoppa reservoirs on the already heavily dammed Sharavathi river.
    2. What has to be built: The link runs through massive underground tunnels and powerhouses cut into the valley.
    3. The pumping cycle: Water is pumped uphill during off-peak hours, when demand and power prices are low.
    4. The generating cycle: The stored water is released downhill to generate power during peak demand.

    Why do the Western Ghats matter beyond their species counts?

    1. Scale of the chain: The Western Ghats run 1,600 kilometres along the edge of the peninsula.
    2. Global standing: They are one of the world’s eight hottest biodiversity hotspots.
    3. What they hold: They harbour nearly half of India’s flowering plant species, a third of its vertebrate fauna, and over 300 globally threatened species.
    4. Narrow endemics: Species such as the Katlekan Marsh Nut and the Gund Day Gecko are found only in these forests and nowhere else.
    5. What primary forest looks like: In the Katlekan dark forest of North Kanara the canopy cuts out light so completely that a torch is needed at midday, a structure the fragmented woodlots counted as forest elsewhere do not reproduce.

    What do the Ghats do for the peninsula’s water and climate?

    1. First contact with the monsoon: The chain takes the first impact of the southwest monsoon and releases it downstream.
    2. Source of the Deccan’s rivers: The Godavari, Krishna, Kaveri and Tungabhadra all originate here, sustaining hundreds of millions of people across six states.
    3. Regional climate function: The dense forests temper regional climate, draw down carbon, hold soil in place, and soften the runoff and flooding that would otherwise reach the downstream plains.
    4. A moisture recycling system: Like the Amazon basin, these rainforests cycle moisture back into the atmosphere, which sustains the monsoon that feeds them.

    Why did the wildlife expert panel advise against approval?

    1. The siting is barred by law: The project lies wholly within a wildlife sanctuary that carries one of the highest levels of protection under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, where such infrastructure is strictly prohibited.
    2. The panel’s finding: The expert panel constituted by the NBWL Standing Committee recommended against approval, citing irreversible ecological harm.
    3. The technical objection: The panel questioned the project’s technical justification and found it would yield no new net energy to the grid.
    4. A net energy loss: Pumping requirements would produce a net loss of approximately 500 MW.

    What are the physical costs of building inside the sanctuary?

    1. Primary forest cleared: The project requires clearing over 50 hectares of dense primary evergreen forest.
    2. Corridors broken: The clearance fragments wildlife corridors between the Anshi-Dandeli and Bhadra-Kudremukh landscapes, cutting the routes large mammals use to move between the two.
    3. Landslide risk: The zone is geologically fragile, and blasting for underground tunnels and powerhouses with heavy industrial explosives raises the risk of slope failure.

    Does rejecting the project leave Karnataka’s storage need unanswered?

    1. The need is real and conceded: Karnataka has an installed renewable energy capacity of 20.23 GW, and critics of the project accept that this output has to be firmed up.
    2. Why storage is the constraint: Solar and wind generation is intermittent, so the grid needs a way to shift surplus power to hours of peak demand.
    3. The options are plural, not singular: Battery Energy Storage Systems, compressed air energy storage and gravity energy storage sit alongside pumped storage as ways to manage that intermittency.
    4. The siting question is separable from the technology question: Accepting the need for storage does not settle where a storage project may be built.

    Conclusion

    The argument is not that pumped storage is wrong, it is that this catchment is the wrong place to put it. A project that yields no new net energy and consumes more power than it returns cannot justify clearing primary evergreen forest. The Karnataka High Court’s interim stay holds the position for now. What remains unresolved is whether the clearance system will treat the highest protection category as an absolute siting bar or as a threshold that can be crossed on a case by case finding.

    What is Environmental Impact Assessment?

    1. About: Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a planning tool that predicts and seeks to mitigate the environmental consequences of a project before it is approved.
    2. Statutory history: India introduced EIA in 1978 for river valley projects, made it statutory through the 1994 notification under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, and consolidated it in the EIA Notification, 2006.
    3. Who appraises what: Category A projects are appraised centrally by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and Category B projects by the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority, with Category B1 alone requiring a full study and a public hearing.

    Challenges in Environmental Impact Assessment

    1. Conflict of interest in who pays: The assessment is funded by the project proponent, which creates an incentive to understate impacts. Eg. Independent data on the Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone exposed deficiencies the proponent’s own assessment had missed. Fix. Have EIA reports audited by an autonomous body not funded by the proponent.
    2. Cumulative impact goes unmeasured: Appraisal runs project by project, so the combined load on one river is never assessed. Eg. National Green Tribunal orders in 2024 and 2025 cancelled clearances on this ground. Fix. Move to landscape level cumulative assessment for a whole catchment.

    Back2Basics: Sharavathi Valley Lion-Tailed Macaque Wildlife Sanctuary

    1. Location: In the Sharavathi river valley, Shivamogga district, Karnataka.
    2. Landmarks within it: Jog Falls and the Linganamakki reservoir lie inside it.
    3. Flagship species: The lion-tailed macaque, an endemic arboreal primate, is a keystone seed disperser and an indicator of forest health.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS3, 10 marks] What role do environmental NGOs and activists play in influencing Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) outcomes for major projects in India? Cite four examples with all important details.”

  • [29th August 2026] The Hindu OpED: Unkind cuts: On the Telangana and Karnataka electoral rolls

    [29th August 2026] The Hindu OpED: Unkind cuts: On the Telangana and Karnataka electoral rolls

    Question (2018, GS2): “In the light of recent controversy regarding the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), what are the challenges before the Election Commission of India to ensure the trustworthiness of elections in India?
    Linkage: The core of the current news is the concern over potential wrongful disenfranchisement vs. genuine roll clean-up. When the ECI implements large-scale deletions (up to 50% in some urban constituencies) without releasing verifiable metrics like the elector-to-population ratio, it creates a transparency deficit. This directly mirrors the challenge of maintaining public trust in the electoral process, similar to the EVM debate.

    Mentor Comment:

    The Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has struck off nearly a fifth of the electoral rolls in Telangana and Karnataka, about 22 per cent and 19.5 per cent respectively, with some Bengaluru and Hyderabad constituencies losing more than 40 to 50 per cent of their electors. The revision has proceeded after the Supreme Court of India permitted the SIR process to continue, and follows the Bihar SIR, where the Court had questioned why political parties filed so few objections to wrongful deletions. The Commission has not published the elector-to-population ratio, the only test of under-enrolment, for any state during the revision, making it impossible to verify whether the deletions reflect genuine bloat or wrongful disenfranchisement.

    What is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR)?

    1. What it is: The SIR is an intensive revision of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission of India, distinct from its routine summary revision process.
    2. How it works: It places the onus on electors and political parties to file objections against wrongful deletions.
    3. Its template: The Bihar SIR set the process the Commission has since extended to other states, including Telangana and Karnataka.

    What does the scale of deletions in Telangana and Karnataka show?

    1. High deletion rates: Telangana lost about 22 per cent and Karnataka about 19.5 per cent of electoral roll names, among the highest deletion rates in the country.
    2. Sharpest cuts in capital cities: Five Bengaluru constituencies lost more than half their electors, and nine of Hyderabad’s 15 constituencies saw deletions of more than 40 per cent.
    3. Implausible as genuine bloat: Both states have high net in-migration from the rest of India, and a deletion is justified only if the elector left the state altogether, since a move within the state would only relocate a name on the same roll rather than remove it.

    Why is the Commission’s justification hard to verify?

    1. Mandatory ratio withheld: The Commission has not published the elector-to-population ratio for any state during the revision, though doing so is mandatory and is the only test of under-enrolment.
    2. Opaque data release: Karnataka’s Chief Electoral Officer has not released a gender-wise breakdown of deletions and has scattered lists across Google Drive links without the old booth numbers, making verification difficult.
    3. A precedent of wrongful exclusion: A similar “logical discrepancy” process in West Bengal disenfranchised lakhs of electors; a Right to Information request found barely 82,000 of nearly 38 lakh appeals before 19 tribunals had been decided months after the state’s elections, with more than 90 per cent of decided appeals restoring the elector.

    Challenges to the SIR process

    1. Onus on electors invites under-objection: Requiring electors and parties to actively contest wrongful deletions means low awareness and the infrequent use of a voter identity card lead to few objections being filed. Eg. During the Bihar SIR, the Supreme Court itself asked why political parties had filed so few objections. Fix. Shift the burden to the Commission by requiring it to proactively verify a deletion against updated residence or migration data before finalising it.
    2. Opacity defeats verification: Withholding the elector-to-population ratio and publishing deletion lists without booth numbers or gender breakdowns prevents independent scrutiny of whether cuts are justified. Eg. The Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer scattered deletion lists across Google Drive links without old booth numbers. Fix. Mandate publication of the elector-to-population ratio and a standardised, booth-wise deletion list for every state before a revision is finalised.

    Conclusion

    Unless the Commission publishes the verification data it is required to release, the scale of the Telangana and Karnataka deletions will remain unexplained, and the West Bengal experience suggests a substantial share of those struck off may eventually prove to have been wrongly excluded.