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  • Terror’s changing face, India’s counter-terror strategy

    Terror’s changing face, India’s counter-terror strategy

    Why in the News

    India has unveiled PRAHAAR, its first comprehensive National Counter Terrorism Policy and Strategy, which sets a national framework for preventing and responding to terrorist activity and radicalisation through coordinated “whole of government” and “whole of society” approaches. The policy follows Operation Sindoor, the strikes of 6 and 7 May on the Pakistan based terror network launched after the Pahalgam attack of 22 April 2025, and follows the three declarations India issued immediately after that operation. The first of those declarations ended the stated era of restraint, the second classified any future act of cross border terrorism emanating from Pakistan as an “act of war”, and the third removed Pakistani nuclear blackmail as a restraining factor. The tension is that the doctrine India has hardened is built for a state sponsor with a return address, while the threat itself has fragmented into lone wolf attackers, autonomous cells and drone, cyber and artificial intelligence enabled methods that a retaliatory strike does not reach.

    What is PRAHAAR?

    1. PRAHAAR as a national policy: PRAHAAR is India’s first comprehensive National Counter Terrorism Policy and Strategy, unveiled on 23 February 2026.
    2. Scope of the framework: It sets out a national counter terrorism framework for preventing and responding to terrorist activities and to radicalisation.
    3. Whole of government and whole of society approach: It works through coordinated “whole of government” and “whole of society” approaches, so prevention is not left to security agencies alone.

    How has the form of terrorism changed in 25 years?

    1. The organisational form has fragmented: Large terror groups run by single leaders, such as al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden or the Islamic State under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with its call for an Islamic Caliphate, have given way to smaller and more autonomous entities.
    2. The attacker is now often solitary: Lone wolf attacks are becoming the norm, which removes the network that intelligence collection is designed to detect.
    3. Drones, cyber capability and artificial intelligence: Drones, cyber capabilities and artificial intelligence are now used to perpetrate terror.
    4. Counter terrorism use of the same technologies: Those technologies are used by the nations combating terrorism as well, so capability advantage is contested rather than assured.

    What is a lone wolf attack?

    1. The definition: A lone wolf attack is an attack planned and executed by a single individual, or by a pair acting alone, who belongs to no organisation and takes no operational direction from one.
    2. How the attacker is produced: Radicalisation runs through online propaganda rather than through recruitment by a handler, so the individual adopts a group’s cause without ever joining its structure. Eg. Self radicalised modules assembled around professionals, rather than around infiltrators, in recent hinterland cases.
    3. Why detection fails: Intelligence collection works by intercepting communication between conspirators and by penetrating networks, and an attacker who communicates with nobody generates neither signal.
    4. Why a retaliation doctrine does not reach it: A cross border response needs attribution to a sponsoring state, and an individual acting alone offers no camp, handler or command node to strike.

    Why did the early Indian response stay passive, and which attacks fell inside that period?

    1. Assassination of a former Prime Minister, 1991: The assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on 21 May 1991 at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu came while cross border terror was only beginning in Kashmir.
    2. Internal detection failed repeatedly: The March 1993 Mumbai serial blasts killed over 250 people in 13 coordinated blasts, and the synchronised blasts across Coimbatore in February 1998 exposed the inadequacy of internal security mechanisms.
    3. Pakistan’s direct role was first exposed by a hijack: The hijack of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 on 24 December 1999 forced India to release the Pakistan based terrorists Ahmed Omar Sheikh and Masood Azhar in exchange for more than 160 civilian hostages.
    4. Operation Parakram and its outcome: The Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) attack on Parliament on 13 December 2001 triggered a large scale military mobilisation under Operation Parakram, and after almost two years of standoff the disengagement took place with no direct punishment on Pakistan.
    5. Nuclear parity was the restraint: With both countries holding nuclear weapons, the threat of escalation drew the international community in to cool tempers each time.
    6. The 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the absence of retaliation: The 26/11 Mumbai attacks of November 2008, which brought the world’s solidarity with India’s fight against cross border terrorism, produced no military action against Pakistan.
    7. The Red Fort attack of 2000: An Army garrison within the Red Fort was targeted on 22 December 2000 by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists, killing three soldiers.
    8. Delhi market blasts of 2005: Over 60 people were killed in serial blasts across Delhi markets including Sarojini Nagar and Paharganj in October 2005.
    9. Delhi commercial district blasts of 2008: Multiple blasts hit Connaught Place, Greater Kailash and Karol Bagh in September 2008, months before the Mumbai attacks.
    10. The Delhi High Court blast of 2011: A briefcase bomb outside the Delhi High Court on 7 September 2011 killed 15 people, claimed by Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami (HUJI), an al-Qaeda affiliated group largely based in Pakistan.
    11. Akshardham, Varanasi and Pune attacks: The 2002 Akshardham Temple attack, the 2006 Varanasi serial blasts and the 2010 German Bakery blast in Pune are part of the same record.
    12. Proof did not produce a response: In each of these cases India chose not to respond directly and decisively, even after conclusive proof of Pakistan’s support.

    What changed when the fight moved across the border?

    1. The Uri attack and the 2016 surgical strikes: The JeM attack on an Army camp at Uri in Kashmir on 18 September 2016 led to the first cross border surgical strikes on 28 and 29 September.
    2. Message conveyed by the surgical strikes: They sent a message and served as a statement of intent that terror would not go unpunished.
    3. The Balakot air strike of 2019: After the attack on a Central Reserve Police Force convoy at Pulwama on 14 February 2019, the Indian Air Force struck a JeM terror camp at Balakot, the first time it had crossed into Pakistani airspace to hit a terror target.
    4. Operation Sindoor, 2025: Operation Sindoor was launched on 6 and 7 May after the Pahalgam attack, and in 96 hours the leaders and headquarters of the LeT and JeM networks were destroyed and Pakistani military assets were hit.

    What is the four fold strategy proposed from here?

    1. Elimination of the residual network: Continue to hunt down and eliminate the remnants of the terror network inside the country, particularly in Kashmir.
    2. Pre emptive action across the Line of Control: Take pre emptive military action against any potential terror threat building across the Line of Control (LoC), including at terrorist launch pads, which years of experience and an embedded intelligence network make possible.
    3. The de radicalisation programme: Run an exhaustive de radicalisation programme that motivates young people towards the mainstream and makes joining or supporting a terror outfit unattractive and prohibitively costly.
    4. Terror financing: Take all necessary steps to cut off terror financing, in close coordination with friendly countries.

    What is India pressing for at the multilateral level?

    1. The charge of double standards: At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit in Bishkek on 1 September the Prime Minister said, “We must send a strong message to countries that use terrorism as an instrument of policy and provide safe haven and support to terrorists that terrorism can never be a strategic asset for anyone.”
    2. A named attack entered a group declaration: The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi included an exclusive paragraph on the Pahalgam attack in the Delhi Declaration.
    3. Effect of a grievance carried in multilateral text: A specific Indian grievance is now carried in the text of a multi country declaration rather than only in national statements.

    Challenges to India’s counter terrorism strategy

    1. A retaliation doctrine has no target in a lone wolf attack: An “act of war” classification presumes an attributable state sponsor, and a self radicalised individual acting alone gives no address to strike. Eg. Self radicalised modules assembled around professionals, rather than infiltrators, in recent hinterland cases.
      The Fix: Pair the declaratory doctrine with a published attribution standard, so the threshold of evidence that triggers a cross border response is fixed in advance rather than argued after each attack.
    2. Police and public order are State subjects: A national policy has to be executed through State police forces that the Union does not control, which is where coordination breaks down. Eg. The delay in National Security Guard deployment during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
      The Fix: Route PRAHAAR’s obligations through a standing Centre State counter terrorism council with State specific implementation timelines, rather than through advisories.
    3. Intelligence remains fragmented across agencies: Multiple collection agencies without seamless real time sharing means a warning held by one is not actionable by another. Eg. Intelligence fusion is attempted through the Multi Agency Centre and the National Intelligence Grid, which depend on voluntary feeds from database holding agencies.
      The Fix: Give a single fusion centre statutory authority to task and receive feeds, on the model of a national counter terrorism centre, so sharing is an obligation rather than a courtesy.
    4. De radicalisation has no measurable output: A programme aimed at intent rather than at incidents cannot be judged by attack counts, and India runs no published evaluation of one. Eg. Online influence of the kind that drove youth radicalisation in Kashmir operates outside any programme’s reach.
      The Fix: Fix published indicators for the programme, such as recruitment attempts intercepted and cases of disengagement sustained over a stated period, and report them annually.
    5. Terror financing has moved to channels outside the banking system: Hawala, counterfeit currency and cryptocurrency route funds without touching a reportable transaction. Eg. Informal channel financing was traced in the ISIS linked Padgha module.
      The Fix: Bring virtual digital asset service providers fully under reporting obligations to the Financial Intelligence Unit India, so the fastest growing channel is monitored on the same terms as banks.
    6. There is no agreed international definition of terrorism: The absence of one lets states label selectively and refuse cooperation on legal grounds. Eg. Repeated holds placed on listings under the United Nations Security Council 1267 sanctions committee.
      The Fix: Press the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, which India first proposed in 1996, to a vote rather than leaving it in open ended negotiation.

    Conclusion

    The doctrine India adopted after Operation Sindoor answers one form of the threat well and leaves the other untouched. A declared willingness to retaliate raises the cost of sponsoring an attack from across the border; it does nothing about an attacker who was recruited online and never crossed anything. PRAHAAR is the first instrument that addresses the second half, which is why its prevention and radicalisation components, rather than its enforcement components, are the part worth watching. The marker is whether the policy produces named nodal responsibilities and reported outcomes, or remains a framework document that the next attack is measured against.

    Terrorism in India

    1. Definition of terrorism: Terrorism is the deliberate use of violence, or the threat of violence, to instil fear and achieve political, ideological or religious goals.
    2. The statutory definition: Under Section 15 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, a terrorist act is any act intended to threaten India’s sovereignty, security or unity, or to create terror through violence, explosives or disruption of essential services.
    3. The four recognised strands in the Indian context: Cross border terrorism driven by Pakistan based groups in Jammu and Kashmir and by Khalistani networks, North East insurgencies run by ethno nationalist groups such as NSCN and ULFA, Left Wing Extremism across the Red Corridor, and hinterland terrorism by modules operating outside traditional conflict zones.
    4. The direction of change: The terror and organised crime nexus supplies funding, arms and logistics, and technology acts as a force multiplier through drones, encrypted platforms and 3D printing. Eg. The Houthi drone attack on Saudi Aramco in 2019.

    Institutional Architecture and Initiatives Against Terrorism

    1. Multi Agency Centre and Cyber Multi Agency Centre: Fuse intelligence inputs across central and State agencies.
    2. National Intelligence Grid: Networks databases held by different departments to give agencies real time access.
    3. Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre: Acts as the nodal point against cybercrime with a citizen reporting route. Eg. The 1930 helpline.
    4. Border management systems: Smart fencing under the Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System plugs infiltration gaps, backed by a layered coastal security grid.
    5. Surrender and rehabilitation policies: Pull cadres out of insurgency through reintegration rather than through prosecution alone.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS3, 10 marks] Terrorism is a global scourge. How has it manifested in India? Elaborate with contemporary examples. What are the counter measures adopted by the State? Explain.”

  • The choice is between AI applications and AI frontiers

    Why in the News

    India has no competitive frontier artificial intelligence (AI) model and no realistic prospect of producing one without significant policy shifts, at a time when United States and Chinese firms have released a parade of increasingly capable models through the year. The advice India has received from United States industry leaders and academics, supported by sections of the Indian information technology industry, is to concentrate on applications built on foundation models rather than on the frontier itself. The position advanced against that advice is that countries falling behind in frontier AI risk the fate of those that missed the Industrial Revolution, where a small business elite found a niche and prospered while ordinary people were disempowered. The binding constraint identified is not talent or algorithms but computing power, since the IndiaAI mission’s pool of 45,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) is a fraction of what a single United States frontier laboratory controls. The proposal put forward is a compute tax requiring any data centre established in India to reserve a share of its capacity for a publicly administered national pool.

    What is a frontier AI model?

    1. Frontier model: A frontier model is a foundation model at the leading edge of capability, from which industry specific applications are then built.
    2. Scaling laws: The industry has exploited “scaling laws”, which predict how a model’s performance improves with its size and with the computing power used for its training.
    3. Compute and data as the decisive input: The algorithms underlying modern AI models are widely understood, so better algorithms improve efficiency while the basic formula for producing a frontier model remains scaling compute and data.

    What are the two channels through which AI will matter?

    1. Diffusion through the economy: AI will spread by automating some routine jobs, with each industry requiring specialised applications built on foundation models.
    2. India’s application start up ecosystem: India has an active start up ecosystem devoted to building such applications, and businesses have rapidly adopted AI tools.
    3. The strategic channel is separate: AI will also have a strategic impact on research, cybersecurity and defence, which is not reached by application building.
    4. Mathematics and cybersecurity results: AI models have been used to solve some of the most important open problems in mathematics, and Anthropic’s Mythos model has formidable cybersecurity capabilities.

    Why is access to foreign frontier models not a durable substitute?

    1. Access today is real but conditional: Consumers currently have access to other frontier models, including Chinese open weight models.
    2. The most capable model is already withheld: Mythos has not been released publicly and is available only to selected organisations.
    3. Export control has already been applied: The United States temporarily imposed export restrictions on Mythos and on a version of Mythos with guardrails called Fable.
    4. The stated direction of policy: The United States is likely to restrict and regulate AI to “achieve global dominance”, so present availability cannot be expected to continue indefinitely.

    Why is compute the binding constraint for India?

    1. The national pool is small: The IndiaAI mission has a pool of 45,000 GPUs, which is only a fraction of the capacity controlled by a single United States frontier laboratory.
    2. The flagship allocation is smaller still: The mission allocated 4,096 GPUs to Sarvam AI to train India’s flagship model.
    3. The gap is an order of magnitude: That allocation is about 50 times smaller than what is used to train frontier models.
    4. Ingenuity does not close it: No amount of ingenuity can compensate for a resource gap of that size, which is why lack of computing power has bottlenecked sovereign Indian model development.

    What do the new data centres actually deliver to India?

    1. Data centre build out across States: A number of data centres with significant computing capacity are coming up in various States.
    2. Capacity reserved for multinational clients: These will primarily serve multinational corporations, and their location in India offers no tangible benefits.
    3. The investment goes into equipment: Most of the announced capital investment will be directed to electronic equipment.
    4. The employment effect is thin: The employment they create will be limited to a few construction and maintenance jobs.
    5. The environmental cost is local: Large data centres have a significant environmental impact, and in India that impact will be borne disproportionately by local communities.

    How would a compute tax work?

    1. The obligation: Any data centre established in India would be required to reserve a stated share, suggested at 25 per cent, of its computing capacity for a publicly administered national compute pool.
    2. The hardware does not move: That capacity would remain physically within the data centre.
    3. Allocation is centralised: The reserved capacity would be allocated by a central scheduler to Indian institutions.
    4. The bargaining position favours India: Multinational corporations are likely to resist, and their bargaining position is weak given the growing hostility to these installations elsewhere.
    5. Limits of the compute tax: Such a tax would not obviate the other data centre concerns, and only together with environmental safeguards and welfare measures would it open a narrow route to building a frontier model in India.

    Challenges to a compute tax on data centres

    1. Reserved capacity is not the same as usable capacity: Frontier training needs thousands of GPUs interconnected as one cluster, and a quarter of each site’s capacity scattered across many sites does not assemble into that. Eg. The flagship national allocation of 4,096 GPUs already sits far below frontier training scale despite being a single block.
      The Fix: Write the reservation as a contiguous interconnected block within each site, with a minimum cluster size, rather than as a percentage of total capacity.
    2. A capacity levy raises the cost of hosting in India: An operator prices the reserved share into its India investment case and can site the facility in a neighbouring jurisdiction instead. Eg. Data centre investment is mobile across countries in a way that manufacturing capacity is not.
      The Fix: Offset the reservation against power tariff and land concessions already given to data centres, so the obligation is priced as a condition of the incentive rather than as an additional charge.
    3. A public pool needs an allocation rule it does not yet have: Deciding which institution gets scarce compute, for how long and on what merit is a governance problem that no existing Indian body performs. Eg. The single largest allocation so far went to one start up for the flagship model.
      The Fix: Publish the scheduler’s allocation criteria and a usage register, so grants of compute are contestable in the way research grants are.
    4. Compute alone does not produce a model: Frontier training also needs large curated datasets and a small pool of researchers who have trained models at scale, both of which are internationally mobile. Eg. Indian language data is thin compared with the English language corpora frontier models are trained on.
      The Fix: Tie the compute grant to a data contribution obligation, so a recipient returns curated Indian language datasets into the national repository as a condition of access.
    5. The environmental burden stays where it was: Reserving capacity changes who uses the machines and not their power draw, water use or siting. Eg. The impact of large installations falls disproportionately on the communities around them.
      The Fix: Attach site level water and power disclosure and a local benefit sharing requirement to the same instrument that creates the reservation.

    Conclusion

    The question the argument forces is not whether India should build applications, which it already does well, but whether an applications only position is a strategy or a description of the constraint. The claim on the other side is that capability at the frontier has a strategic use in research, security and defence that no amount of downstream product building substitutes for. The compute tax is the first concrete instrument proposed to convert privately owned capacity sited in India into publicly directed capacity, and it is testable against a single question: whether the reserved share can be assembled into a cluster large enough to train anything. The marker to watch is whether any Indian allocation moves from the thousands of GPUs to the tens of thousands, since that is the threshold the gap is actually measured at.

    Artificial Intelligence in India

    1. AI as a public good: India treats AI as a public good rather than a proprietary luxury, anchored in shared compute infrastructure, open and locally relevant datasets and decentralised talent development.
    2. The scale of the ecosystem: Over 6 million people are employed in the technology and AI ecosystem, with more than 1,800 Global Capability Centres of which over 500 are AI focused.
    3. Adoption is broad: 87 per cent of enterprises are actively deploying AI solutions, led by industrial and automotive, consumer goods and retail, banking and financial services, and healthcare.
    4. The projected economic weight: AI is projected to contribute USD 500 to 600 billion to India’s Gross Domestic Product by 2030.

    Government Initiatives for Artificial Intelligence

    1. IndiaAI Mission, 2024: Implemented by IndiaAI under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology with an outlay of Rs 10,371 crore, on the stated vision of making AI in India and making AI work for India.
    2. AIKosh: The national AI dataset repository, carrying over 3,000 datasets and 243 models across 20 sectors.
    3. BharatGen: A government funded multimodal large language model initiative designed for AI powered public services and Indian use cases.
    4. Digital India Bhashini and Project Vaani: Speech and translation tools across the 22 Scheduled Languages, supported by a 150,000 hour Indian speech dataset.
    5. IndiaAI FutureSkills and YUVAi: Fellowships and AI labs concentrated in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, and an AI skills initiative for school students in Classes 8 to 12.
    6. IndiaAI Safety Institute: The national trust framework covering bias mitigation, privacy, explainability and AI governance.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026, GS3, 15 marks] What is agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Explain its working. Describe its applications with suitable examples. Discuss the advantages, risks and challenges associated with agentic AI systems.”

  • Pakistan’s westward turn – strategic depth or overstretch

    Why in the News

    Pakistan and Kuwait signed a defence cooperation agreement on 27 August 2026, the latest step in a rapidly expanding Pakistani strategic footprint in West Asia. It follows the Makkah Agreement of 7 August, under which Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan agreed that an armed attack against one member would be regarded as an attack against all. Pakistan has also acted recently as an intermediary between Iran and the United States. What is new is not Pakistani involvement in West Asia, which is decades old, but its institutionalisation into standing commitments with a secretariat behind them. The contest is over what those commitments actually buy: strategic depth against India, or an overstretch that ties Pakistan into rivalries it cannot control.

    What is the Makkah Agreement?

    1. Signatories and the collective defence clause: Signed on 7 August among Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan, it stipulates that an armed attack against one member would be regarded as an attack against all.
    2. The permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia: At a meeting in Istanbul on 31 August, the three countries’ Foreign and Defence Ministers and military chiefs decided to establish a permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia.
    3. The Secretary General post: A Pakistani will serve as its first Secretary General for three years.
    4. Interoperability and defence industrial cooperation: The three agreed to strengthen military interoperability and to pursue defence industrial cooperation, including joint technology development and production.

    What are the historical roots of Pakistan’s West Asian orientation?

    1. A dual identity from the start: From its inception Pakistan attempted to combine its South Asian geopolitical identity with that of a major Muslim power.
    2. The Cold War architecture: Pakistan, Iran and Türkiye were linked through the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and subsequently through the Regional Cooperation for Development.
    3. The 1971 defeat as the turning point: Pakistan’s defeat and dismemberment in 1971 pushed it towards the Arab world, as it sought to compensate for its diminished position in South Asia by emphasising its Islamic identity.
    4. The Lahore Islamic summit of 1974: The Islamic summit held in Lahore in 1974 marked the reorientation, and Pakistan simultaneously developed extensive military relationships with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies.

    What contradictions does the new arrangement already face?

    1. Houthi attacks as the first test: Renewed Houthi missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia created the first serious test of the Makkah pact.
    2. The Houthis have improved their position at sea: Their capture of Mocha port and Perim island has added to their capability to choke off Saudi shipping through the Bab al-Mandab.
    3. Closure of the Strait of Hormuz: With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed by Iran, a frustrated Saudi Arabia may relaunch a full scale war against the Houthis.
    4. The collective defence clause dilemma: Such a war would create a major dilemma for Pakistan if Riyadh decided to invoke the collective defence provision of the Makkah agreement.
    5. Pakistan is holding five roles at once: It wants to be Saudi Arabia’s security partner, Türkiye’s strategic ally, Iran’s friend and interlocutor, Washington’s useful intermediary and a security provider to the Gulf monarchies, and these roles are compatible only when regional tensions are manageable.

    What does the westward turn give Pakistan against India?

    1. Defence in depth through a security network: A Pakistan embedded in a web of West Asian security relationships may acquire defence in depth.
    2. Saudi finance, Turkish technology and Gulf access: Saudi financial resources, Turkish defence technology and Pakistan’s expanding relationships with Gulf militaries can in theory increase Islamabad’s resilience in a confrontation with India.
    3. Türkiye’s position on Kashmir: Türkiye is Pakistan’s most vocal major supporter on Kashmir.
    4. Pakistan’s nuclear status as currency: Pakistan’s nuclear status enhances its strategic value to Arab states concerned about an unstable regional order created by a nuclear armed Israel’s policies.

    Why could the same turn weaken Pakistan against India?

    1. Pakistan’s India centric security establishment: Pakistan’s security establishment has historically concentrated overwhelmingly on India.
    2. The new commitments pull resources away: Diplomatic, military and intelligence resources now have to be devoted to Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, Yemen and the Red Sea, leaving fewer to concentrate on India.
    3. Entanglement is the price of entry: The deeper Pakistan becomes embedded in West Asian security arrangements, the harder it becomes to remain aloof from the region’s conflicts.
    4. The Riyadh versus Tehran choice: If the Houthi Saudi confrontation escalates, Islamabad may have to choose between honouring the credibility of its collective defence commitments and maintaining its relationship with Tehran, the Houthis’ principal ally.

    How should India read it?

    1. Exposure that comes with the new role: Pakistan’s growing West Asian role should not be interpreted in purely negative terms, because the same relationships expose it to some of the world’s most combustible rivalries.
    2. The Gulf states have their own stake in India: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the other Gulf states hold major economic and strategic relationships with India that they are unlikely to sacrifice for Pakistan.
    3. India’s response, deeper Gulf engagement: New Delhi should continue deepening those relationships as the counter to Pakistan’s expanding footprint in West Asia.

    Challenges to the Makkah Agreement

    1. A collective defence clause invites the very conflict it deters: A guarantee that is credible draws its guarantor into wars it did not choose, and a guarantee that is not credible is worthless. Eg. The pact’s first test arrived within weeks, through Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia.
      The Fix: Define the triggering threshold in writing, naming what constitutes an armed attack and what response is owed, so the guarantee is bounded rather than open ended.
    2. The three signatories do not share an adversary: Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan each face different threats, and a pact without a common opponent has no agreed contingency to plan against. Eg. Türkiye’s principal security concerns lie in the eastern Mediterranean and northern Syria, not in the Red Sea.
      The Fix: Restrict joint planning to the functional areas already agreed, meaning interoperability and defence industrial production, rather than to a shared war plan that does not exist.
    3. A permanent secretariat does not create a command: Standing staff can coordinate procurement and exercises, and none of that generates a force able to act on the clause. Eg. The secretariat’s first Secretary General holds a three year term with no operational forces assigned to the arrangement.
      The Fix: Establish a standing combined planning cell with earmarked national units, so the commitment has a force attached to it rather than an office.
    4. Pakistan’s fiscal position limits what it can actually provide: A security guarantor needs sustained defence spending, and Pakistan’s is constrained by repeated recourse to external financing. Eg. Pakistan has been a recurring borrower from the International Monetary Fund across successive programmes.
      The Fix: Convert the arrangement’s defence industrial pillar into Saudi and Turkish funded production inside Pakistan, so the commitment generates revenue rather than consuming it.
    5. The arrangement cuts across Pakistan’s Iran relationship: A pact aimed at protecting Saudi Arabia from an Iran aligned force is difficult to reconcile with an intermediary role between Tehran and Washington. Eg. Pakistan shares a long land border with Iran, across which both states have previously conducted strikes.
      The Fix: Keep the intermediary role at the level of the Foreign Ministry and separate from the pact’s military structures, so one function does not discredit the other.

    Conclusion

    The institutional step taken in August converts a long standing set of bilateral military relationships into a commitment Pakistan can be called on to honour, at a moment when the region is already at war. That is a different proposition from the financial and manpower arrangements it has run with the Gulf for fifty years, because those could be scaled back quietly and a collective defence clause cannot. For India the reading should be neither alarm nor relief, since the same arrangement that adds to Pakistan’s depth also adds to the claims on its attention. The marker to watch is whether Riyadh invokes the clause against the Houthis, because that is the point at which the commitment stops being a document.

    West Asia in India’s Foreign Policy

    1. Evolution of India’s West Asia policy: Guided after Independence by non alignment and a pro Arab position, it moved to full diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992, a Look West launch in 2005 centred on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and a Think West approach from 2014 extending to maritime security, counter terrorism and investment.
    2. The energy dependence: The region supplies nearly 60% of India’s crude and about 70% of its liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas needs.
    3. The economic weight: India GCC bilateral trade stood at $178 billion in FY 2024-25, making the GCC India’s largest trading partner bloc, and the region contributes about 38% of India’s global remittances.
    4. The human stake: A diaspora of about 10 million people works across the region, which makes West Asian stability a domestic political question in India.

    Back2Basics: Central Treaty Organization

    1. CENTO’s origin as the Baghdad Pact: A Cold War defence pact, originally the Baghdad Pact of 1955, renamed CENTO after Iraq withdrew in 1959.
    2. Membership: Its members were Iran, Türkiye, Pakistan and the United Kingdom, with the United States as an associate rather than a full member.
    3. Purpose, containment of Soviet expansion: It was built to contain Soviet expansion along its southern periphery, linking the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.
    4. Dissolution in 1979: It dissolved in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution, and Pakistan’s withdrawal followed.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS2, 10 marks] With the waning of globalization, post-Cold War world is becoming a site of sovereign nationalism. Elucidate.”

  • India & China are at a Nash equilibrium. Will it hold – that’s the question

    Why in the News

    India and China issued an Eight Points of Outcomes and Consensus statement on the border on 25 August 2026, directing their negotiators to seek an early and substantial harvest on the boundary question. The Prime Minister and the Chinese President then met at the just concluded 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi. Read together, the statement and the two national readouts indicate that the two sides have settled into a Nash equilibrium on the border. The assessment is that neither can improve its position by negotiation and neither can improve it by force, so the current line holds by default rather than by agreement. The tension is that a stable outcome nobody chose is also an outcome nobody is defending, and two specific contingencies could remove it.

    What is a Nash equilibrium?

    1. Nash equilibrium, defined: A Nash equilibrium is an outcome in a non cooperative game in which no player’s expected outcome can be improved by changing one’s own strategy.
    2. Application to the India China border: India and China at least tacitly recognise that in any foreseeable future neither can aspire to or achieve a better position in the border quarrel.
    3. Room left for friction along the LAC: The two sides may still spar diplomatically and militarily on occasion, as they have since 2013, and the intermittent exchange of words and of hardware over the high Himalaya can only move the Line of Actual Control (LAC) slightly.

    Why has 45 years of negotiation produced only one agreement?

    1. Continuity of negotiation since 1981: India and China have been negotiating a border deal almost without interruption since 1981.
    2. The three negotiating mechanisms: The Secretary and Vice Minister level talks (1981-88), the Joint Working Group (1989-2005) and the Special Representative Mechanism (2003 to the present).
    3. The pace of engagement: Over more than 45 years the two sides have met once a year on average.
    4. The 2005 agreement as the single substantive outcome: The 2005 Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India China Boundary Question is the single substantive outcome of that entire period.

    What did the 2005 agreement actually fix?

    1. A package deal principle: A settlement would be reached as a package, meaning nothing is settled until everything on the border is settled.
    2. The political settlement standard: The final agreement would be a political settlement.
    3. Criteria the settlement must weigh: It would consider strategic concerns, history, national sentiment, practicality, geography and the interests of settled populations in the borderlands.

    What is the package deal principle?

    1. The rule itself: A package deal principle requires that every sector of a disputed boundary be settled in a single agreement, so no stretch of the border is treated as closed on its own.
    2. Why a package rule was adopted: It stops either side from banking a concession in an easy sector and then reopening a hard one, since a party that has already pocketed a gain has no reason to compromise on what is left. Eg. The 2005 agreement applies the principle across the western, middle and eastern sectors together.
    3. What an early harvest does inside it: An early harvest lets negotiators work one sector at a time, and the result stays provisional until the remaining sectors are agreed. Eg. The August 2026 eight point statement directs an early and substantial harvest without altering the ratification condition.
    4. What the principle rules out: A standalone sectoral treaty, a partial exchange of territory, and any agreed line that takes legal effect before the whole boundary is settled.

    What does the August 2026 eight point statement change?

    1. Early harvest and the package rule: The statement directs negotiators to seek an early and substantial harvest on the border, and this does not violate the package deal idea.
    2. Sector by sector sequencing: It suggests the two sides focus on success in one area instead of negotiating everything everywhere at once, and then move on to another section of the border.
    3. The ratification condition: Under the 2005 agreement, each sectional success would only be finally accepted and ratified when the entire border is settled.
    4. The BRICS summit readouts: Nothing in the two readouts from the leaders’ meeting alters either the 2005 agreement or the eight point early harvest statement.

    Why can neither side improve its position by negotiation or by force?

    1. India’s maximal objective: India seeks to recover Aksai Chin up to its original claim and to keep everything it holds in the other sectors.
    2. China’s maximal objective: China seeks Arunachal Pradesh all the way to the southern slopes, which is most of the State, and to keep everything else it holds.
    3. Limits of diplomatic bargaining: It is inconceivable that Indian or Chinese negotiators can achieve their maximal objectives, so diplomatic bargaining now or in the future cannot close the gap.
    4. Conquest as an unavailable option: India cannot conquer Aksai Chin up to its original claim line, and China cannot conquer Arunachal Pradesh up to the southern slopes.
    5. Terrain, climate and logistics: Terrain, climate, logistics and military defences make any dramatic and lasting military gain almost impossible.
    6. Basis of the current stability: Short of extremely bad strategy by commanders or internal political chaos that distracts from deterrence, the status quo on the border is stable.

    What could break the equilibrium?

    1. The succession to the Dalai Lama: Beijing will eventually appoint its preferred Dalai Lama and the Tibetans will almost certainly choose their own, leaving New Delhi caught in the middle.
    2. The 1962 precedent: India China tensions could consequently spiral, and China could lash out as it did in 1962, when instabilities in Tibet were a factor leading to war.
    3. An India Pakistan conflict that pulls China in: In 2025 New Delhi detected a Chinese helping hand to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, and in a future South Asian confrontation China might be more openly involved.
    4. A two front war for India: New Delhi or Beijing could then be drawn into a fight that threatens the status quo, and for India that means a two front war.
    5. Insulation offered by the present détente: The current détente promises trade, visas, supply chain resilience and river water cooperation, and the open question is whether those gains can insulate the relationship from a Tibet transition or a South Asian conflict.

    Challenges to a settlement of the India China boundary

    1. The line itself is undefined on the ground: The 3,488 km LAC has never been mutually delineated, so patrolling limits rather than a map decide where each side believes it may go. Eg. Friction points such as the Depsang Plains and Charding Ninglung Nala remain unresolved even after disengagement elsewhere.
      The Fix: Complete the exchange of maps sector by sector as a technical exercise separated from the sovereignty claim, so incidents arise from choice rather than from ambiguity.
    2. The two sides inherit different colonial alignments: In the western sector India relies on the Johnson Line of 1865 while China claims the Macartney MacDonald Line of 1899, so each reads the same ground from a different document. Eg. In the eastern sector the LAC follows the McMahon Line drawn at the Simla Convention of 1914, which China does not accept.
      The Fix: Anchor the negotiation on the 2005 agreement’s own criteria of settled populations and practicality, since neither colonial line can be conceded by the other side.
    3. Ground realities are being changed while talks continue: Incremental construction alters what a future settlement would have to ratify, which reduces the incentive to conclude one. Eg. Dual use border villages and road networks shift the position on the ground without a single formal claim being advanced.
      The Fix: Extend the confidence building agreements to cover permanent construction within an agreed depth of the LAC, with mutual verification.
    4. Economic dependence cuts against leverage: A widening trade imbalance gives the larger supplier a channel of pressure that has nothing to do with the border. Eg. India’s trade deficit with China reached an all time high of about $112.16 billion in March 2026, with the bulk of imports being industrial goods.
      The Fix: Convert the China plus one opening into domestic capacity in the specific intermediate goods where import dependence is highest, so the deficit narrows at the source.
    5. China Pakistan axis as an embedded third party: China’s relationship with Pakistan turns any India Pakistan conflict into a potential two front problem, which is the precise contingency the article identifies. Eg. Infrastructure built under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor runs through territory India claims.
      The Fix: Build the capability and the deployment posture for a simultaneous two front contingency, so the possibility does not itself become a bargaining lever.

    Conclusion

    A stalemate that holds because neither side can improve on it is not the same thing as a settlement, and it carries no mechanism of its own to survive a shock. The whole of the negotiating record, from 1981 to the eight point statement, has produced one agreement on principles and no agreed line. What should now be examined is whether the gains from the present détente can be built into insulation against the two contingencies named, the succession in Tibet and a South Asian conflict that draws China in. The marker to watch is whether the early harvest approach produces a settled sector, since that is the first test of whether sequencing can do what package bargaining could not.

    India China Relations in Brief

    1. The diplomatic starting point: On 1 April 1950 India became the first country outside the socialist bloc to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.
    2. The founding framework: The Panchsheel Agreement of 29 April 1954 set out five principles, mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non aggression, mutual non interference, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.
    3. The rupture and the reopening: The 1962 border conflict was a serious setback, and the Prime Minister’s visit in 1988 began a phase of improvement in bilateral relations.
    4. The Peace and Tranquility Agreement of 1993: The Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility along the Line of Actual Control was signed in 1993.

    Back2Basics: Operation Sindoor

    1. Scope of the strikes: Indian armed forces strikes launched on 6 and 7 May 2025 against terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan occupied territory.
    2. Trigger, the Pahalgam attack: It followed the terror attack at Pahalgam on 22 April 2025.
    3. Targets struck: Leadership and headquarters of the Lashkar e Taiba and Jaish e Mohammed networks were targeted, along with Pakistani military assets.
    4. Policy declared after the operation: India declared that any future act of cross border terrorism emanating from Pakistan would be treated as an act of war, and that nuclear blackmail would no longer be a restraining factor.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026, GS2, 15 marks] “China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has transformed South Asia from a regional space into a theatre of great power competition.” Analyse the strategic implications of the BRI for India’s security and regional influence in South Asia.”

  • At BRICS, India must bank on the NDB

    Why in the News

    The 18th BRICS Summit, chaired by India at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on 12 September, closed without a meaningful agreement on mobilising the New Development Bank (NDB), the grouping’s one tangible financial instrument and one that has under delivered for a decade. The grouping’s economic weight has grown without its institutional weight following. When BRICS came together in 2011 its five members contributed 20% of global GDP but held just 11% of the voting share at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The expanded grouping now accounts for nearly 40% of global GDP and 55% of the world’s population, and the voting share has barely expanded. The contest is over what India should do with that gap. Russia and China press a de dollarisation agenda that India cannot join without damaging its ties with Washington.

    What is the New Development Bank?

    1. The New Development Bank: The NDB was established by the BRICS countries in 2015 to “mobilise resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging markets and developing countries”.
    2. Headquarters in Shanghai: It is headquartered in Shanghai.
    3. Equal voting among the five founders: The bank’s rules mandate equal voting shares among the five founders, so no founder can outvote another whatever it contributes.
    4. The floor on founder control: The bank has opened its doors to new members, and the founders’ collective voting share cannot fall below 55%.

    Why can India not join the de dollarisation push?

    1. The grouping has no single geopolitical identity: Russia, China and Iran would like BRICS to be anti West, while India, Brazil and South Africa insist it is better understood as non West.
    2. India United States ties: Lending itself to the Beijing and Moscow de dollarisation campaign would add to strain in India United States ties at a moment when those ties are already strained.
    3. Medium term sustainability of the position: De dollarisation is an unsustainable proposition to advocate in the medium term.
    4. Maximising the grouping without strengthening Beijing: India’s approach has to maximise the grouping’s potential without strengthening Beijing’s overall strategic position.

    What is de dollarisation?

    1. What the term claims: De dollarisation is the effort to cut the dollar’s role as the currency in which trade is invoiced, cross border payments are settled and reserves are held, and to move that role to another currency or to a basket of them.
    2. What displacing the dollar would require: A substitute has to be fully convertible, deep enough to absorb reserve holdings, and served by a clearing system that sits outside dollar correspondent banking, and no member currency of the grouping meets all three conditions.
    3. Why sanctioned economies press it hardest: A settlement route outside dollar clearing removes the leverage sanctions exercise through correspondent banks, which is what makes the campaign valuable to Moscow and Beijing. Eg. The NDB itself has extended no new credit to Russia since March 2022 in order to protect its own credit rating and dollar funding costs.
    4. Contrast with local currency lending: Local currency lending denominates a loan in the borrower’s own currency to cut exchange rate risk, and it leaves the dollar’s invoicing role intact, so a member that will not join a displacement campaign can still use it.

    How far behind its counterpart is the NDB, and where does its money go?

    1. A decade of approvals: The NDB has approved only 139 projects worth about $43 billion since 2015, distributed mostly among its core members.
    2. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank comparison: The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), established around the same time, has gathered 111 approved members and committed about $69 billion across 350 projects.
    3. The credit rating gap: The AIIB is backed by a AAA credit rating that the NDB cannot easily attain.
    4. Money approved is not money moved: Only about $20 billion of approved loans had been disbursed, according to the bank’s own count.
    5. The balance sheet is not growing: Stagnant asset growth continues to restrict the bank’s lending capacity.
    6. The active portfolio: The active portfolio stands at $35.6 billion across 115 projects, since 24 projects and about $7.4 billion have been fully repaid or cancelled.
    7. China and India as the two largest borrowers: China holds $9.41 billion at 26% and India $8.86 billion at 25%, together 51% of the active portfolio.
    8. The remaining founders: Brazil holds $6.69 billion at 19%, South Africa $6.41 billion at 18% and Russia $3.78 billion at 11%, with Bangladesh the only non founder at $445 million.
    9. Transport infrastructure and COVID-19 assistance: Transport infrastructure takes $13.5 billion at 38%, followed by COVID-19 emergency assistance at $9.00 billion and 25%.
    10. The clean energy, water and digital shares: Clean energy and energy efficiency accounts for $3.69 billion at 10%, water and sanitation $3.22 billion at 9.1%, social infrastructure $1.28 billion at 3.6% and digital infrastructure $300 million at 0.8%.

    Why can the founders not simply put in more capital?

    1. Paid up capital as the route: Breaking the asset bottleneck would require the five founders to increase their paid up capital.
    2. Russia’s constrained contribution: Severe domestic and geopolitical constraints mean not all founders can match higher commitments, most notably Russia, which is heavily sanctioned.
    3. Sanctions reach the bank itself: Sanctions have strained the bank’s credit standing and its dollar funding costs.
    4. Suspension of new credit to Russia: The NDB has extended no new credit to Russia since March 2022 to protect its AA/AA+ credit rating, even as Moscow and Beijing champion de dollarisation through the bank.
    5. Equal voting as a veto on capital expansion: Any capital expansion is effectively held hostage by the financially weakest founder, because of the bank’s equal voting rule.

    What has the NDB delivered for India?

    1. The scale of commitments: The bank has secured commitments of nearly $10 billion across 32 projects for India.
    2. Metro rail and the RRTS corridor: These include metro rail systems and the Delhi Ghaziabad Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) corridor.
    3. The case for a wider borrower base: Expanding the bank’s operations to be on par with other multilateral lenders requires extending the same bargain to many more emerging markets and developing countries.

    Why is local currency lending the more practical goal, and what does the rupee bond show?

    1. The bank’s declared preference: The NDB has a marked preference for local currency lending, which appeals to emerging economies while volatility in foreign exchange markets is sustained by wars that are both military and economic.
    2. Local currency lending against dollar replacement: Local currency lending reduces reliance on the dollar without replacing it as the currency for trade invoicing.
    3. The 30% local currency target: The bank’s 2022-26 General Strategy commits 30% of its lending and borrowing to member countries’ local currencies, and the bulk of both still remains in dollars.
    4. Renminbi skew in the local currency book: What local currency lending exists is skewed heavily in favour of the Renminbi.
    5. The ¥7 billion Panda bond: The NDB priced a ¥7 billion three year Panda bond, meaning a Renminbi denominated bond issued in China by a foreign issuer, in the China Interbank bond market, and issuance of such bonds in 2026 has risen approximately 91% year on year.
    6. A rupee bond deferred since 2016: The rupee bond was first discussed in 2016, then slated for October 2023 and then for end March 2026, and has still not been issued.
    7. The Rs 25,000 crore rupee bond programme: The bank floated a rupee bond programme to mobilise around Rs 25,000 crore over five years, and the NDB President described the debut issuance in May as being at its “final stage”.
    8. The 2026 New Delhi Declaration: The 2026 New Delhi Declaration did not feature a meaningful agreement on mobilising the NDB.
    9. India’s focus on simpler local currency fixes: India’s focus in BRICS next year should be on simpler fixes to local currency challenges rather than on a currency project.

    Challenges to the New Development Bank

    1. Most of its capital cannot be lent: The bank’s authorised capital is largely callable rather than paid in, so its usable balance sheet is a fraction of the headline figure. Eg. Of an initial subscribed capital of $50 billion, only $10 billion was paid in, phased over seven years.
      The Fix: Fix a dated schedule for the remaining paid in tranches, so the lending capacity is set by a calendar rather than by each founder’s fiscal position in a given year.
    2. Absence of a concessional window: The bank lends on near market terms, which prices out the low income borrowers a development bank exists to reach. Eg. The World Bank runs the International Development Association as a separate concessional arm, and the NDB has no equivalent.
      The Fix: Create a concessional facility inside the bank, funded by grant contributions from its larger members, so the poorest borrowers have a window they can actually use.
    3. Membership growth has been slow and shallow: A narrow membership keeps both the capital base and the political constituency small, which is what limits a multilateral lender’s reach. Eg. Only Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Algeria have been admitted beyond the five founders.
      The Fix: Publish an accession timetable with stated capital subscription terms, so a prospective member can plan its entry instead of waiting on a founders’ decision.
    4. Borrowers outside the founding five have no voice: New members join without altering founder control, so a borrowing country cannot shape the terms on which it borrows. Eg. The AIIB scales voting power to capital subscription, so a new member’s stake translates into influence.
      The Fix: Reserve a fixed bloc of Board seats for non founder borrowing members, so the terms of lending are set with the borrowers in the room.

    Conclusion

    The grouping’s problem is not that it lacks instruments but that its most usable one has been left idle. A bank whose disbursement runs at under half its approvals, and whose capital expansion is blocked by its own voting rule, is not a challenge to anyone’s financial order. India chairs the grouping and holds a quarter of the bank’s active book, which is the position from which a governance change can be pressed. The marker to watch is the debut rupee issuance, since a programme deferred three times will only be believable once the paper is priced.

    About BRICS

    1. Origins of the grouping: The acronym BRIC was coined in 2001 by a Goldman Sachs economist to identify high growth emerging economies, the first meeting of Foreign Ministers took place on the United Nations General Assembly margins in 2006, and the first formal Leaders’ Summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 2009.
    2. Expansion and the Partner Country category: South Africa joined in 2011, expansion was decided at the 2023 Johannesburg Summit with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE joining in 2024 and Indonesia in 2025, and a Partner Country category was introduced in 2024 for states such as Malaysia, Thailand and Nigeria.
    3. Stated objectives: Its stated objectives are reform of the UNSC, IMF and World Bank for equitable representation, a multipolar order, financial autonomy from the dollar and SWIFT, sustainable development and synchronised stances on counter terrorism and cybersecurity.
    4. The Contingent Reserve Arrangement and BRICS Pay: Beyond the NDB, the grouping runs the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, a $100 billion short term liquidity backstop, BRICS Pay as a cross border payments pilot, a remote sensing satellite constellation and the Partnership on New Industrial Revolution.

    Back2Basics: Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

    1. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: A multilateral development bank that finances infrastructure and other productive sectors across Asia and beyond.
    2. Proposed 2013, operational January 2016: It was proposed in 2013 and began operations in January 2016, with its headquarters in Beijing.
    3. India’s shareholding: India is a founding member and its second largest shareholder after China.
    4. AIIB as the benchmark for the NDB: It was established at the same time as the NDB and is the standard against which the NDB’s approvals, membership and credit rating are measured.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2014, GS2, 12 marks] India has recently signed to become founding a New Development Bank (NDB) and also the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) .How will the role of the two Banks be different? Discuss the significance of these two Banks for India.”

  • The rebuilding of the city must begin, after Satya Niketan

    Why in the News

    A building collapse at Satya Niketan in Delhi killed seven of the 50 Delhi University students living in a makeshift arrangement inside an unauthorised structure, with many others hospitalised in serious condition. The collapse followed monsoon water reaching the basement and foundations of a structure almost half a century old, in which alterations were being carried out at basement level at the time. Given the building’s age, its condition, its unauthorised status and its position in a dense neighbourhood, the event was not preventable at the moment it happened. The tension is that almost 60 per cent of Delhi’s population lives in structures of this kind, and the city will hold nearly 40 million people by 2030, so the response has to be a documentation and licensing regime rather than an inquiry into one building.

    What is a Lal Dora area?

    1. Lal Dora, the village habitation core: A Lal Dora area is the settled habitation core of a village that was recorded separately from its agricultural land, and which municipal planning and building regulation historically did not reach.
    2. Shadow pockets outside municipal planning: These are shadow pockets that evade municipal planning, and they exist in virtually all large Indian cities rather than in Delhi alone.
    3. High density construction in urbanised villages: Urbanised villages of this kind now carry high density four and five storey buildings put up outside the building bye laws that apply elsewhere in the city.

    Why is the city’s building stock undocumented?

    1. The scale of the unregulated stock: Almost 60 per cent of Delhi’s population lives in unauthorised structures, mostly slums, low rise makeshift tenements, or high density four and five storey buildings in urbanised villages.
    2. Existing street maps of illegal colonies: Street maps of most illegal colonies already exist, so the gap is not location but the building itself.
    3. The missing building by building record: There is no building by building documentation of the type and size of each structure, no assessment of its physical condition, and no enumeration of who lives inside it.
    4. Infra red structural imaging: Advanced infra red and other imaging techniques allow a reasonably accurate assessment of a building’s structural condition without dismantling it.

    Why does the age of the stock make documentation urgent?

    1. Buildings are no longer built to last: The lifespan of structures built in this century is barely 30 to 40 years, against the generational life expected of older construction.
    2. Non compliant buildings last less: Structures such as those at Satya Niketan follow none of the required safety codes, which shortens that span further.
    3. A finite lifespan and the inspection cycle: A building stock with a known expiry has to be checked on a cycle, and partially or wholly demolished and replaced when it fails, rather than inspected only after a collapse.

    Why does the use of a building matter as much as its construction?

    1. A structure is designed for one function: Every building is engineered for a specific use, and inappropriate use with heavy loads on floors weakens and damages the structure.
    2. Residential to commercial conversion: In unauthorised colonies, blocks of flats designed for domestic use are converted into stores and restaurants, which raises the number of occupants and alters the weight carried by the floors.
    3. Makeshift student hostels: Makeshift hostels compress living space to raise the return to the property owner, which is the arrangement the Satya Niketan students were housed under.
    4. Occupancy permit tied to a designated function: No occupancy permit should be issued unless the building authority has approved a designated function for the building and allocated a minimum floor space per person.

    What does the layout of a colony do to the water?

    1. Nobody owns the shared ground: Builders take no responsibility for the ground they share with neighbouring buildings, so no one assesses the plot as part of a layout.
    2. Permeable ground and drain capacity: Whether there is adequate natural ground around a structure to absorb rainwater, and whether there are enough wide mouth drains to move water away quickly.
    3. The mechanism of failure: Too much building in too small a ground area traps excess water, directs it into basements and foundations, and destabilises the structure from below.
    4. Climate change and drainage capacity: Climate change is altering weather patterns, producing flash floods and sudden very large volumes of rain, so drainage capacity has become a structural safety question rather than a convenience one.

    Why does enforcement fail even where rules exist?

    1. The bye laws are not the binding constraint: A battery of building bye laws carries no value if it cannot be enforced, and the enforcement machinery is the part that has not been built.
    2. Inspection is purchasable: Structural evaluation of buildings achieves nothing where inspectors and site engineers can be bribed to record a passing assessment.
    3. The Bengaluru apartment collapse: A newly completed apartment building in Bengaluru collapsed after the builder added two floors beyond the three approved, weakening the structural capacity of the columns. The collapse killed 12 people.
    4. Authority is split across agencies: Control of roads, buildings, transport and other infrastructure sits with different political parties and municipal agencies, which raises the question of whether all of it should be brought under one legal entity such as the mayor.

    Challenges to regulating unauthorised construction in Delhi

    1. Regularisation has become the expected endpoint: Repeated amnesty for unauthorised colonies teaches builders and residents that non compliance is a delay rather than a risk, so the next structure is also built outside the code. Eg. Delhi has run successive rounds of recognition and regularisation of unauthorised colonies over decades.
      The Fix: Tie any future regularisation to a passed structural assessment and a registered occupancy function, so recognition follows safety rather than substituting for it.
    2. Enforcement is fragmented across agencies with no single accountable office: Land, building approval, drainage and services sit with separate bodies, so no one authority can be held responsible for a collapse. Eg. The proposal on the table is to bring roads, buildings, transport and infrastructure under one legal entity such as the mayor.
      The Fix: Vest building safety, drainage and occupancy licensing in one municipal office with statutory liability for a structural failure in its jurisdiction.
    3. The inspector’s incentive runs against the resident’s safety: A single site engineer signs off on a structure whose owner gains directly from an extra floor, and detection is unlikely. Eg. A Bengaluru apartment approved for three storeys was completed with five and collapsed, killing 12 people.
      The Fix: Move structural certification to empanelled third party engineers who are randomly assigned to sites and carry personal liability for their certificate.
    4. A hostel or a paying guest establishment sits outside the licensing net entirely: Converting a residential flat to shared student accommodation multiplies occupancy without triggering any approval. Eg. Fifty students were living in a makeshift arrangement inside one unauthorised Satya Niketan building.
      The Fix: Require a separate occupancy licence keyed to persons per unit for any shared residential use, renewable annually against a fire and structural check.
    5. Drainage capacity is planned at city scale while the failure happens at plot scale: Storm water design covers arterial drains, and the ground condition immediately around a building is nobody’s design responsibility. Eg. Water reaching a basement and foundation is what destabilised an almost fifty year old structure.
      The Fix: Make a layout level permeable ground and drainage assessment a condition of building approval, so the plot’s water behaviour is fixed before construction rather than after flooding.
    6. Demolition is politically impossible at the scale the stock requires: Sixty per cent of the population cannot be displaced, so unsafe structures stay occupied while the enforcement file remains open. Eg. Delhi will approach 40 million people by 2030, with continued in migration from nearby towns.
      The Fix: Pair every condemnation order with an in situ rental rehousing entitlement, so removing an unsafe structure does not require removing the household from the city.

    Conclusion

    The city’s governing problem is not that its bye laws are wrong but that most of its building stock sits outside any record that a bye law could be applied to. Documentation, a licensed function with a stated occupancy, a plot level drainage assessment and a single accountable authority are four separate instruments, and none of them requires a new law before it can begin. Delhi is heading towards nearly 40 million residents and the stock it will house them in has a working life measured in decades, not generations. The thing to watch is whether any municipal agency begins building by building documentation of a single Lal Dora pocket, since every other measure depends on that record existing first.

    Urban Local Bodies in India

    1. Urban local bodies: Urban local bodies (ULBs) are the elected municipal governments of Indian cities and towns, governed by Part IX-A of the Constitution as introduced by the 74th Amendment Act, 1992.
    2. Municipal planning and service functions: They prepare master plans, regulate land use, provide basic services and guide urban growth, with reserved seats for women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes built into their composition.
    3. Own revenue and property tax collection: Own revenue of Indian ULBs is under 1 per cent of GDP, against 6 per cent to 7 per cent in Brazil and South Africa, and property tax collection efficiency stays at 35 per cent to 40 per cent.
    4. The planning deficit: About 65 per cent of Indian cities operate without an updated master plan, per NITI Aayog.

    Government Initiatives for Urban Local Bodies

    1. AMRUT 2.0: Targets 100 per cent water tap coverage in all 4,800 and more ULBs and 100 per cent sewerage coverage in 500 major cities, with mandatory rejuvenation of at least one water body in every city.
    2. Swachh Bharat Mission Urban 2.0: Works to a Garbage Free City star rating, requires material recovery facilities in cities above five lakh population, and targets remediation of all 2,400 and more legacy dumpsites by 2027.
    3. Urban Challenge Fund: Rs 1,00,000 crore of central assistance aimed at catalysing Rs 4 lakh crore of investment, with the Centre funding 25 per cent of a project only where the ULB raises 50 per cent from the market.
    4. Urban Infrastructure Development Fund: Managed by the National Housing Bank, it lends to Tier 2 and Tier 3 ULBs at low interest for water supply, sanitation and storm water drainage.
    5. City Economic Regions: A Budget 2026-27 framework linking a core city with its satellite towns and industrial hubs into one labour market, with Rs 5,000 crore per region for 14 identified regions.
    6. Smart Cities Mission legacy: The mission concluded on 31 March 2025, and its Integrated Command and Control Centres now operate in all 100 cities as traffic and emergency monitoring hubs.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2023, GS2, 10 marks] “The states in India seem reluctant to empower urban local bodies both functionally as well as financially.” Comment.”

  • The evidence gap in dole politics

    Why in the News

    Unconditional cash transfers to women have spread from two States in 2022-23 to 12 States in 2025-26, at an estimated annual cost of Rs 1.68 lakh crore, about 0.5 per cent of GDP, per PRS Legislative Research. Governments attach purposes such as dignity and empowerment to these payments but publish no model linking the payment to an outcome, and a study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) prepared for the 16th Finance Commission found that India has no systematic dataset of government expenditure on cash transfer schemes at all. The comparison drawn is the Speenhamland system of 1795, under which English parishes topped up agricultural wages from public funds and folded wage support, poor relief and public finance into a single instrument. The tension is that the fewer the conditions attached to a transfer, the heavier the obligation to prove what it does, and Indian cash transfer politics has grown in exactly the opposite direction.

    What was the Speenhamland system?

    1. The 1795 Speenhamland resolution: English magistrates meeting at Speenhamland in Berkshire in May 1795 resolved to top up agricultural wages from parish funds, with the payout linked to bread prices and to family size.
    2. Rising bread prices and political unrest: Food prices were rising and the French Revolution had unsettled the English establishment, so relief was framed as social stabilisation rather than as poverty policy.
    3. Polanyi’s reading against the critics’ reading: The economic historian Karl Polanyi treated it as an early assertion of a human “right to live” against the harshness of the market. Critics held that folding wage support, poor relief and public finance into one instrument blurred price signals and weakened incentives.
    4. The merged purposes problem: Once the three purposes were merged, it became unclear whether the system was protecting poor families, the wage structure, employers, or social peace, which is the test any relief instrument still has to meet.

    How large has India’s cash transfer commitment become?

    1. The spread across States: Unconditional transfers to women alone moved from two States to 12 States in three years, per PRS Legislative Research.
    2. West Bengal: The State has moved from Lakshmir Bhandar to Annapurna Yojana, budgeting Rs 36,000 crore for a Rs 3,000 monthly transfer to about 1.3 crore women.
    3. Tamil Nadu: The State allocated Rs 14,412 crore for the Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thogai in its 2026-27 interim budget.
    4. Assam: The State set aside Rs 5,000 crore for Orunodoi.
    5. The wider family of instruments: Cash transfers sit alongside free electricity, free bus travel, subsidised food and utility subsidies, so the monthly payment is one line inside a larger recurring claim on State finances.

    What does the transfer actually do for the recipient?

    1. Transfer as a share of a woman’s monthly income: Transfers to women amount to 11 per cent to 24 per cent of the monthly income of women daily wage workers, and 11 per cent to 87 per cent of that of self employed women, per the Economic Survey 2025-26.
    2. Cash is genuinely useful in an informal economy: In a poor economy with irregular earnings, a predictable monthly payment does work that no in kind benefit can.
    3. Services a transfer cannot substitute for: The same woman who values Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 a month also needs a functioning health centre, childcare, a good government school and access to better work, and a transfer softens the strain created by weak institutions without addressing them.
    4. Relief hardening into a permanent commitment: A transfer that begins as relief turns into a permanent fiscal commitment unless there is a clear account of who receives it, what it changes and what it displaces.

    Where exactly is the evidence gap?

    1. No published model connects payment to outcome: Governments state social purposes for these transfers but do not publish the model that links the payment to the result claimed for it.
    2. The design questions are unanswered: Who is being targeted, and what baseline data justifies the scheme, are not established before rollout.
    3. The outcome questions are unmeasured: No anticipated effect is stated for consumption, debt, nutrition, schooling, health spending, labour supply or women’s bargaining power.
    4. Expenditure data on cash transfer schemes: The ADB study for the 16th Finance Commission found that India lacks a systematic dataset of government expenditure on cash transfer schemes.
    5. Moral language in place of evidence: With those answers missing, cash transfer politics is defended through the moral language of welfare rather than through evidence.

    What do other democracies attach to their transfers?

    1. Unemployment insurance: Payment is tied to a contribution record, so entitlement is earned through prior participation in the formal labour market rather than asserted by category.
    2. Food support: Eligibility rules govern who qualifies, and the benefit is reassessed periodically rather than treated as permanent.
    3. Healthcare subsidies: Support is conditioned on stated eligibility criteria that can be tested against a household’s circumstances.
    4. Job search obligations: Several systems attach a continuing behavioural requirement to receipt, which creates a record of what the benefit is meant to be bridging.
    5. Limits of the comparison: These systems are not immune to welfare politics, and India need not copy them mechanically, since transfers to women in poor households may be better left unconditional. The conditions in those systems generate evidence as a by product, and where India drops the conditions it has to generate that evidence directly.

    What would a welfare impact statement require?

    1. Pre rollout welfare impact statement: A large recurring transfer should carry a published statement setting out the objective, the eligibility rule, the expected coverage, the five year fiscal cost, the alternatives considered, the likely leakage and exclusion errors, and the measurable outcomes.
    2. Post rollout household survey: Household surveys should record not only whether the transfer was received but how it affected consumption, debt, health spending, schooling, mobility, work incentives, control over household expenditure and subjective well being.
    3. Open microdata: Anonymised microdata from those surveys should be released so that independent researchers can test the claims made for the scheme.
    4. Evidence as a check on the political claim: Evidence will not remove politics from welfare, and it is not intended to, but it makes the political claim about a scheme checkable rather than merely asserted.

    Challenges to India’s unconditional cash transfer regime

    1. A recurring transfer is politically irreversible: Once a monthly payment reaches a large identifiable group, no government can withdraw or shrink it, so the fiscal commitment compounds regardless of performance. Eg. West Bengal replaced Lakshmir Bhandar with a larger transfer under Annapurna Yojana rather than reviewing it.
      The Fix: Legislate a sunset clause and a mandatory reauthorisation vote on every large transfer, so continuation requires a positive decision rather than inertia.
    2. Transfers compete with the capital spending that builds public goods: State budgets are constrained, and a revenue commitment of this size crowds out the schools, health centres and childcare the same recipients need. Eg. Transfers to women alone now cost about 0.5 per cent of GDP a year across 12 States.
      The Fix: Require every transfer proposal to state the capital expenditure it displaces in the same budget document, so the trade off is visible at the point of approval.
    3. Category based targeting is not the same as need based targeting: A transfer keyed to gender or to a possession based exclusion reaches many households that do not need it and misses poor households outside the category. Eg. The National Food Security Act, 2013 still allocates State quotas on the 2011 Census, which has left later entrants to poverty outside the ration net.
      The Fix: Build eligibility on a periodically updated deprivation register rather than on a one time category list, and publish the exclusion error rate with each disbursal cycle.
    4. Digital delivery excludes at the last step: A transfer credited to an account still fails where the account is dormant, the seeding is wrong or the recipient cannot reach a banking point. Eg. Rejected and failed Direct Benefit Transfer credits arising from incorrect account seeding are a recurring finding in scheme audits.
      The Fix: Publish a failed credit register by block with a fixed resolution deadline, so a failure is a tracked case rather than a statistic.
    5. No independent evaluator exists for State transfers: State schemes are designed, disbursed and assessed by the same department, so there is no institution positioned to contradict the claim made for a scheme. Eg. The ADB study for the 16th Finance Commission had to record the absence of even an expenditure dataset before any evaluation could begin.
      The Fix: Route evaluation of large State transfers through an independent statutory evaluation office reporting to the State legislature, on the model applied to performance audit.
    6. Wage subsidies distort the labour market they operate in: A public top up to household income changes reservation wages and employer incentives, which is the specific mechanism the Speenhamland critics identified. Eg. The transfer equals up to 87 per cent of the monthly income of a self employed woman.
      The Fix: Track labour force participation and wage rates for recipient households in the post rollout survey, so the labour market effect is measured rather than argued about.

    Conclusion

    The instrument at issue is not indefensible, and cash in a poor informal economy does real work no in kind benefit does. What is missing is the apparatus that would let anyone, including the government paying for it, say whether a given transfer changed anything. The obligation runs in proportion to the freedom taken: a transfer with no conditions attached carries the heaviest evidentiary duty, not the lightest. The concrete marker is whether the 16th Finance Commission’s award period opens with a standard expenditure reporting format for State cash transfer schemes, since the dataset the ADB found missing has to exist before any evaluation can be built on it.

    Welfare Cash Transfers in India

    1. Welfare cash transfer: A welfare cash transfer pays money directly into a beneficiary’s bank account in place of a subsidised good or a price subsidy, so the State’s support reaches the household as purchasing power rather than as a commodity.
    2. The JAM trinity: Transfers move through the JAM trinity, meaning the Jan Dhan bank account, the Aadhaar identity number and the mobile phone, which together allow a payment to be authenticated and credited without an intermediary.
    3. Scale of the delivery system: More than 55 crore Jan Dhan accounts now exist, which is what makes near universal direct crediting technically possible.
    4. Claimed Direct Benefit Transfer savings: Aadhaar linked Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) is credited with cumulative savings of about Rs 3.48 lakh crore from removing duplicate and ghost beneficiaries across fertiliser, cooking gas and food subsidies.

    Government Initiatives for Welfare Transfers

    1. Direct Benefit Transfer, 2013: The umbrella architecture that routes scheme payments straight to beneficiary accounts, now covering several hundred central and State schemes.
    2. PM Jan Dhan Yojana, 2014: The financial inclusion mission that created the zero balance accounts into which transfers are credited.
    3. PM Kisan Samman Nidhi: An income support transfer paying landholding farmer families a fixed annual sum in three instalments.
    4. PM Ujjwala Yojana: A connection plus subsidy scheme for cooking gas, which distributed over 10 crore connections and moved the subsidy itself to the beneficiary’s account.
    5. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005: A rights based wage programme guaranteeing 100 days of work, with wages paid electronically into the worker’s own account.
    6. National Food Security Act, 2013: The statutory entitlement to subsidised grain, which also permits a State to substitute a cash transfer for the grain entitlement.

    Back2Basics: 16th Finance Commission

    1. Constitutional basis under Article 280: A constitutional body appointed under Article 280 to recommend how Union tax revenue is shared with the States and among them.
    2. Award period from 2026-27: Its recommendations cover the five years beginning 2026-27.
    3. Grants in aid and local body funds: It recommends the principles governing grants in aid to States from the Consolidated Fund of India, and the measures needed to augment State funds for panchayats and municipalities.
    4. Commissioned studies as the evidence base: Commissioned studies form part of the evidence base on which the transfer and grant architecture for the award period is fixed.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2022, GS2, 10 marks] Reforming the government delivery system through the Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme is a progressive step, but it has its limitations too. Comment.”

  • A blueprint to create productive jobs, a lesson from Tiruppur

    Why in the News

    The Prime Minister’s Independence Day address placed manufacturing power first among the seven Saptadhara streams meant to carry India towards a Viksit Bharat, and tied that effort to harnessing the potential of India’s youth. Research at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) answers the question that follows, which is which manufacturing sector can actually deliver jobs at the scale India needs, and its answer is textiles and apparel. The evidence offered is the Tiruppur knitwear cluster, an organically grown ecosystem that supports over a million livelihoods, set against the PM MITRA parks announced in 2021 to replicate it, of which only one appears operational. The tension is that India has closed its tariff gaps with competitors and still cannot convert that access into exports, because the binding constraint is not market access but the absence of the cluster ecosystem around the factory.

    Why is India’s job problem one of composition and of job quality?

    1. The size of the workforce: India had 61.6 crore employed persons aged more than 15 years in 2025.
    2. Agriculture’s share of employment: Agriculture still accounted for 43 per cent of employment against 12.1 per cent in manufacturing, per PLFS 2025.
    3. The arithmetic of any shift: Even a 1 percentage point shift in employment from agriculture to manufacturing would involve moving a large number of workers.
    4. The stated target has not been met: The governing alliance had promised to create 2 crore jobs every year, and the outcome is nowhere near that.
    5. Youth unemployment: Unemployment among those aged 15 to 29 was 9.9 per cent, rising to 13.6 per cent in urban areas, per PLFS 2025.
    6. Youth outside employment, education and training: 25 per cent of that age group were neither in employment nor in education or training.
    7. The gender gap in participation: Female labour force participation was 40 per cent, against 79.1 per cent for men.
    8. Student agitations over paper leaks: The recent student agitations over paper leaks reflected the underlying position that respectable formal sector jobs remain scarce even after a basic education.
    9. The PLFS usual status measure: The PLFS usual status measure counts people who worked for a long part of the year and also those who undertook economic activity for at least 30 days during the year.
    10. The limit of the employment count: Being counted as employed does not mean holding a regular or formal job.
    11. Regular formal employment with social security: Economic security requires regular formal employment carrying social security benefits such as the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) and Employees’ State Insurance (ESI).

    Why does apparel fit the gap better than the frontier sectors?

    1. Labour absorption in apparel: The apparel sector is labour intensive and employs women in large numbers.
    2. Training time for production roles: Workers can be trained in short periods, about 60 days for specific production roles, which is what allows a cluster to scale its workforce quickly.
    3. Fit with India’s skill distribution: Chip making, artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies serve a highly skilled workforce, while the majority of India’s labour force is at the bottom end of the skill distribution.
    4. The cost of a job is lower: Textiles and apparel offer higher employment intensity at relatively low cost, which is the path China, Bangladesh and Vietnam followed.

    Is the $100 billion export target achievable, and what do the international comparisons show about market access?

    1. The headline target: India has set a target of $100 billion in textiles and apparel exports by 2030, from $36 billion today.
    2. The apparel share of the target: $40 billion of that is for apparel exports specifically, from $15.7 billion today.
    3. Exporters do not accept the date: Interactions with exporters suggest the targets are not grounded in current realities and are more likely to be achieved by 2035, not 2030.
    4. The capacity gap behind the target: Closing it means building capacity of a scale that does not exist, not raising utilisation at existing units.
    5. The tariff gap has already closed: India has recently closed the tariff gaps with competitors such as Bangladesh and Vietnam in major markets including the EU and the UK.
    6. The India Japan agreement of 2011: Under the India Japan agreement of 2011, India’s apparel exports to Japan fell from $229 million in 2013 to $203 million in 2024.
    7. Market access without capacity: Market access alone does not ensure exports, and India needs the scale and capacity to tap free trade agreements before a concession converts into shipments.

    What made Tiruppur work, and what did its environmental crisis show about collective capacity?

    1. Tiruppur’s knitwear exports: Tiruppur’s knitwear exports rose from $3.3 billion in 2020-21 to $5.3 billion in 2024-25, per the Tiruppur Exporters Association in 2026.
    2. Share of India’s knitwear exports: The cluster accounts for about 68 per cent of India’s knitwear exports.
    3. The cluster’s employment base: It supports the livelihoods of more than a million workers, around 70 per cent of them women.
    4. The whole chain sits in one place: Within roughly 20 km, yarn, knitting, dyeing, printing, stitching, finishing, packaging and dispatch are woven into one production ecosystem, with nearly 20,000 units operating across the different stages.
    5. The ecosystem effect of density: Firms specialise, workers specialise, and thousands of jobs are created around a common market, which is the ecosystem effect the argument rests on.
    6. Institutions and common infrastructure built over decades: Entrepreneurs, industry associations and government built the institutions and common infrastructure over decades. The Tiruppur Exporters Association and the South India Hosiery Manufacturers Association built collective capabilities, and infrastructure such as the Netaji Apparel Park supported expansion.
    7. The Madras High Court’s 2011 zero liquid discharge order: The Madras High Court’s 2011 order applied to units failing to meet zero liquid discharge (ZLD) norms, meaning norms requiring that no effluent leave the unit as liquid waste.
    8. The response was collective, not firm by firm: The cluster invested more than Rs 850 crore in common effluent treatment infrastructure.
    9. Collective financing of the effluent plant: A single firm could not have financed that plant, which is the clearest demonstration that the cluster’s value lies in what its firms can do jointly.

    What is a cluster ecosystem?

    1. The cluster ecosystem: A concentration of firms in one trade inside a small geography, together with the suppliers, contractors, traders and service providers each of them draws on. A single factory then operates inside a supply chain it does not have to own.
    2. Why proximity lowers cost: Each stage of production is bought from a neighbouring specialist rather than built in house, so a firm carries only the stage it is good at. The cost and the time of moving material between stages fall close to nil.
    3. The shared labour pool: A workforce trained in that trade accumulates in one place, so a unit can add or shed capacity without training workers from scratch, and a worker can change employer without changing town.
    4. Collective capability: Facilities no single firm could finance become viable once the cost is spread across thousands of units. Eg. Tiruppur’s common effluent treatment infrastructure, built by the cluster after a court order.

    What still constrains Tiruppur?

    1. Dependence on migrant labour: The cluster depends heavily on migrant workers from Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and elsewhere.
    2. Housing is the retention problem: Worker housing and retention are named as the important challenges in taking the cluster to its next million jobs.
    3. The cluster’s planned upgrade path: The cluster plans to move into man made fibres, technical textiles and high value sustainable manufacturing to expand both exports and employment.

    Why has the national attempt to replicate it stalled?

    1. The seven PM MITRA parks announced in 2021: The government announced seven PM MITRA parks in 2021 as the instrument for creating more such clusters.
    2. Operational status of the parks: Only one park appears operational, at Warangal, and the others are still in the planning stages.
    3. The execution pace against the export target: Such a pace in the execution of even good ideas does not inspire confidence that the $100 billion export target can be reached, and it limits the speed at which jobs can be created.
    4. One cluster cannot carry a national target: Tiruppur alone cannot deliver the target, and India needs many more clusters of the same kind.

    Challenges to the PM MITRA parks model

    1. A greenfield park has to create the ecosystem a cluster inherits: Tiruppur’s advantage is the density of specialised units around a common market, and a new park begins with land and utilities alone. Eg. Nearly 20,000 specialised units in one cluster took decades to assemble.
      The Fix: Anchor each park on an existing textile concentration so tenants arrive with supplier relationships already in place, rather than siting parks to distribute them across states.
    2. Land and clearances drive the timeline more than the incentive does: The scheme’s outlay is committed at announcement while state level land transfer, environmental clearance and utility connection decide the commissioning date. Eg. Roughly 70 per cent of infrastructure project delays in India stem from complex land acquisition processes.
      The Fix: Make the release of central assistance conditional on dated state milestones for land handover and clearances, so delay has a financial consequence.
    3. Common effluent capacity is the binding utility for textiles: Dyeing and processing are the stages that cannot start without treatment capacity, and they are also the stages that create the most jobs per unit of investment. Eg. Tiruppur had to build more than Rs 850 crore of common effluent treatment infrastructure after a court order, long after the cluster had grown.
      The Fix: Commission the zero liquid discharge plant before tenant allotment rather than after, so processing units can begin operating from the first year.
    4. Worker housing is treated as outside the park: A labour intensive park draws migrant workers who need housing at the same moment the units need staff, and housing is rarely part of the industrial park’s own scope. Eg. Worker housing and retention are the named constraints on Tiruppur’s next million jobs.
      The Fix: Include rental worker housing within the park’s own master plan and viability gap funding, treating it as production infrastructure rather than welfare.

    Conclusion

    The evidence assembled here says the binding constraint on labour absorbing manufacturing is executional rather than strategic. India already has a demonstrated model, a closed tariff gap with its competitors and a stated national target, and the one instrument built to convert all three into jobs has produced a single operating park in five years. Whether the remaining six parks reach commissioning, and on what dated schedule, is the marker that will decide whether the $100 billion target slips to the exporters’ 2035 or fails altogether.

    Manufacturing Sector in India

    1. Share of GDP: Manufacturing contributes around 17 per cent of GDP, against a policy target of 25 per cent.
    2. Share of global manufacturing output: India holds about 2.8 per cent of global manufacturing output, compared with China’s roughly 29 per cent.
    3. The size of output: Manufacturing output is projected to reach approximately $1 trillion in FY 2025-26.
    4. What incentives have drawn: The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme had drawn over Rs 1.76 lakh crore across 14 sectors as of March 2025.

    Government Initiatives for Manufacturing

    1. Make in India (2014): Seeks to raise manufacturing’s share of GDP from around 17 per cent toward 25 per cent through ease of doing business reforms.
    2. Atmanirbhar Bharat (2020): Promotes self sufficiency, local industry and reduced import dependence without closing the economy off to the world.
    3. Production Linked Incentive Scheme (2020): Covers 14 sunrise and strategic sectors, including textiles, with outcome linked financial incentives paid on incremental production.
    4. National Manufacturing Mission: A Budget mission targeting a 25 per cent GDP share and 143 million jobs by 2035, unifying policy across clean and sustainable manufacturing.
    5. National Logistics Policy: Aims to cut logistics costs and improve supply chain efficiency, which is a direct input into export competitiveness.
    6. Industrial corridors: Eleven approved corridors bundle infrastructure to support clustered industrial development, with 12 new industrial nodes approved in 2024.

    Back2Basics: PM MITRA Parks

    1. What the name stands for: Pradhan Mantri Mega Integrated Textile Region and Apparel parks, administered by the Ministry of Textiles.
    2. The design idea: Each park brings spinning, weaving, processing, dyeing, printing and garmenting onto a single site, so a garment can be produced end to end within one location.
    3. The vision it implements: The 5F vision, meaning Farm to Fibre to Factory to Fashion to Foreign, which treats the textile value chain as a single continuum from cotton to export.
    4. How they are built: Each park is developed by a Special Purpose Vehicle owned jointly by the central and the concerned state government, with central support for development capital and for the first units to begin production.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS3, 15 marks] Discuss the rationale of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. What are its achievements? In what way can the functioning and outcomes of the scheme be improved?”

  • [12th September 2026] The Hindu OpED: A bigger BRICS, shaped by India’s vision

    [12th September 2026] The Hindu OpED: A bigger BRICS, shaped by India’s vision

    Question (2023, GS2): “‘Virus of Conflict is affecting the functioning of the SCO’. In the light of the above statement point out the role of India in mitigating problems.
    Linkage: This question directly mirrors the central tension of the New Delhi BRICS summit: holding a common line and delivering technical outputs when key member states are at war or experiencing severe conflict. It highlights India’s strategic role as a mediator and consensus-builder in multilateral forums

    Mentor Comment

    India has used its chairship of BRICS to convert the grouping’s agenda into a set of named functional outputs, and the New Delhi summit on 12 and 13 September 2026 is where those outputs are placed before the leaders. The chairship ran around 350 meetings across Indian cities, 22 of them at ministerial level, following the template India used for the G-20 Summit it hosted in New Delhi in 2023. India reframed the acronym around “building resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability”, and the deliverables track that framing: centres of excellence, a logistics framework, an enterprise portal and a set of research repositories. The grouping now carries 11 members and about 10 partner countries, and its collective output measured at purchasing power parity, meaning output adjusted for differences in domestic price levels, exceeds that of the G-7. The tension in the summit lies between the two things it is being asked to do at once, settle a set of technical cooperation outputs, and hold a common line among members several of whom are at war.

    Pillars of BRICS cooperation

    1. Political and security: The first pillar covers the grouping’s positions on conflicts, security cooperation and global governance questions.
    2. Finance and the economy: The second pillar covers trade, payments, development finance and economic cooperation among members.
    3. Culture and people-to-people exchanges: The third pillar covers education, health, skilling and social cooperation between member societies.
    4. Where India’s chairship agenda sits: The agenda India pursued relates more to the second and third pillars than to the first, since the leaders themselves settle the large geopolitical questions.

    Why is the Delhi summit a landmark?

    1. The backdrop: It takes place against geopolitical turbulence produced by a combination of forces, ongoing wars and conflicts, a breakdown in global governance, and the changing nature of global alliances.
    2. The grouping’s weight: BRICS now has 11 prominent members and about 10 partner countries, and its collective economic output in purchasing power parity terms outstrips that of the G-7, making it one of the largest and most important transcontinental groupings outside the West.
    3. The technology contest: Technological forces such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing are being weaponised, with both great powers trying to win the battle for tech supremacy.

    How did India prepare for the chairship?

    1. The template: India followed the approach it had used for the 2023 G-20 Summit in New Delhi.
    2. The scale of the process: Around 350 meetings were conducted in cities across the country, with 22 held at the ministerial level.
    3. The stated focus: India announced that it would focus on “building resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability”, giving a new expansion to the BRICS acronym.
    4. The intent behind the framing: The reframing was used to refocus and recalibrate the BRICS agenda rather than to inherit the previous year’s priorities unchanged.

    What has the chairship delivered on resilience?

    1. A digital centre for grids and storage: The BRICS Digital Centre of Excellence for Smart Grids and Energy Storage was launched under India’s stewardship.
    2. A logistics framework: The BRICS Logistics Supply Chain Cooperation Framework was adopted.
    3. Centres on farming systems: Centres of Excellence on Agro-Ecology and Regenerative Agriculture were established.
    4. What they are expected to do: Once operationalised, these initiatives are intended to provide the ballast that would make member economies genuinely resilient.

    What is on the innovation agenda?

    1. Capital for new firms: A start-up innovation fund and an incubator network were proposed.
    2. A digital public infrastructure repository: Members would pool digital public infrastructure, meaning the shared digital systems for identity, payments and data exchange that public services run on.
    3. A science and research repository: A common repository for scientific and research material was proposed alongside it.
    4. A plan for large research facilities: The action plan of the BRICS Working Group on research infrastructures and mega science projects sits within this pillar.
    5. Why pooling matters here: Members are not all at the same level of development in scientific research, so shared facilities and repositories are worth more to some members than to others.

    What does the cooperation pillar carry?

    1. Trade rules: Leaders are expected to endorse recommendations on revitalising the multilateral trading system.
    2. Health: A network of centres of excellence on mental wellness is to be welcomed by the leaders.
    3. Cities: A BRICS urbanisation forum is to be established.
    4. Women and digital access: Enhancing the digital capacity of women forms part of the recommendations.
    5. Skills and small enterprise: Cooperation is to be intensified in education and youth skilling, and through the BRICS Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Cooperation Portal.

    What does the sustainability agenda add?

    1. It continues the previous chair’s priority: Sustainability was the centrepiece of Brazil’s agenda in the preceding year, and India built on that base rather than replacing it.
    2. Land and forests: Combating desertification, and guidelines for disaster management and forest-fire preparedness, are specific areas of cooperation under this head.
    3. Aviation fuel: A BRICS forum on sustainable aviation fuels forms part of the agenda.
    4. Adaptation rather than mitigation: Advancing climate resilience through people-centric and community-based adaptation is included, which matters because international fora tend to focus almost exclusively on mitigation.

    Can a functional agenda hold when summit level geopolitics pulls the other way?

    1. The two tracks belong to different pillars: The chairship’s outputs sit in the economic and people-to-people pillars, and the large geopolitical questions are settled by the leaders under the first.
    2. The functional track is the more predictable of the two: Substantive outcomes appear assured on the strength of the ministerial and working group meetings already chaired, independent of what the leaders’ session produces.
    3. The caveat on the grouping: BRICS has to avoid being caught in geopolitical currents that are not of its own making and carry no strategic value for its members.
    4. Why it survives the contradiction: The grouping is now too large to be either ignored or allowed to fail, which gives members an interest in a working agenda even where they diverge politically.
    5. What it is ultimately for: The grouping helps members enhance their strategic options and push geopolitics towards a multipolar order, both of which are organising principles of India’s foreign policy.

    Challenges to India’s BRICS chairship agenda

    1. The deliverables are institutions without budgets: A centre of excellence, a framework and a portal each need a host, staff and recurring funding, none of which a one year chairship can commit on the group’s behalf. Eg. The BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Centre, announced in 2020, functions as a virtual network of national institutions rather than a staffed facility.
      The Fix: Attach each new centre to a named host institution with a member funded budget line recorded in the summit declaration.
    2. Repositories hold only what members choose to deposit: A digital public infrastructure repository and a science repository depend on voluntary contribution, and members operate under differing national data and procurement rules. Eg. Members’ identity and payment systems sit under separate data laws, so specifications and code are not equally shareable.
      The Fix: Settle a common licence and a deposit obligation for contributed material before the repositories open.
    3. A declaration carries no review of the last one: Outcomes are recorded as commitments in a communique, and no member reports against them the following year. Eg. The Rio declaration of July 2025 ran to 126 points with no implementation review attached to it.
      The Fix: Require the incoming chair to publish an implementation report against the previous declaration alongside the new one.
    4. The enterprise agenda needs a payments channel that is not yet working: An MSME portal and a start-up fund assume a listed supplier in one member country can be paid from another without routing through third currency correspondent banking. Eg. The grouping’s own cross border payment initiative remains at pilot stage.
      The Fix: Sequence the portal behind a working local currency settlement arrangement for the member pairs that already trade at scale.

    Conclusion

    The chairship’s output is a set of centres, frameworks, repositories and portals, and their value is decided after the summit closes rather than in its declaration. What converts an announced centre into a working institution is a host, a staff and a recurring budget, and none of those is a summit level decision. The grouping’s own design works against this, since priorities reset annually with the rotating chair and nothing obliges the next one to carry a predecessor’s working groups forward. What to watch is whether the declaration names a host institution and a funding source for the new centres, and whether the chair that follows India adopts the research infrastructure action plan rather than substituting its own themes.

    About BRICS

    1. What it started as: The acronym was coined in 2001 by a Goldman Sachs economist to identify a set of high growth emerging economies, and it was an investment category before it was a forum.
    2. How it became a grouping: The first meeting of Foreign Ministers took place on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in 2006, and the first formal Leaders’ Summit was held at Yekaterinburg in Russia in 2009.
    3. How it expanded: South Africa joined in 2011. The 2023 Johannesburg Summit opened membership further, with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joining in 2024 and Indonesia in 2025.
    4. The partner tier: A Partner Country category was introduced in 2024 to engage states such as Malaysia, Thailand and Nigeria without conferring full membership.

    Institutions and Initiatives of BRICS

    1. New Development Bank: Headquartered in Shanghai, it lends for infrastructure and sustainable development, and has approved over $35 billion in loans.
    2. Contingent Reserve Arrangement: A $100 billion pool of member foreign exchange reserves providing short term liquidity support to a member under balance of payments pressure.
    3. BRICS Pay: A cross border payment initiative intended to settle trade among members in local currencies rather than through existing dollar based messaging channels.
    4. Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation: Six satellites contributed by member states, sharing earth observation data for disaster management and resource monitoring.

    Key Facts about BRICS

    1. Population weight: The grouping represents over 45 per cent of the world’s population, about 3.6 billion people.
    2. Energy weight: Members account for roughly 42 per cent of global oil production and exports, which is what the inclusion of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates added to the bloc.

    Challenges in BRICS

    1. Consensus across 11 members with different political systems: A joint declaration needs every member’s assent, so the text settles at the level the most reluctant member accepts. Eg. Declarations avoid language on human rights and democratic norms, since the membership spans elected governments and authoritarian ones.
      The Fix: Adopt a variable geometry, letting a subset of willing members carry an initiative under the BRICS name without requiring unanimity.
    2. One member’s economic weight shapes the agenda: China’s size gives it disproportionate influence over what the grouping prioritises and whom it admits. Eg. It has pushed for the inclusion of states carrying heavy Chinese debt exposure, which would tilt the bloc towards a China centred platform.
      The Fix: Publish membership criteria weighted to economic complementarity and regional balance rather than to any single member’s sponsorship.
    3. Reducing dollar dependence moves slower than the rhetoric: Settlement habits, contract law and reserve holdings all favour the incumbent currency. Eg. The US dollar still settles over 80 per cent of global trade.
      The Fix: Target local currency invoicing on the bilateral pairs that already have settlement arrangements, rather than pursuing a common currency.
    4. There is no permanent secretariat or charter: Each chair runs the calendar from its own foreign ministry, so institutional memory travels out with the chair. Eg. Working group records and unfinished action plans are held by the outgoing chair rather than by the grouping.
      The Fix: Create a small standing secretariat funded by member contributions to hold working group records and track commitments between summits.
    5. Trade within the bloc remains thin: Members trade more with the industrialised economies than with each other, which limits what economic cooperation can deliver. Eg. Most members still rely on G7 markets for high technology imports and for services exports.
      The Fix: Negotiate a tariff preference schedule among members on a limited list of manufactured goods, which is achievable without a full trade agreement.

  • For Bihar flood problem, solution lies beyond

    Why in the News

    Bihar received 27 per cent below normal rainfall between 1 June and the first week of September, and large parts of the state are still under water. Six rivers, the Ganga, Gandak, Kosi, Budhi Gandak, Punpun and Ghaghra, have risen above danger levels in different stretches. The flooding therefore cannot be explained by how much rain fell on the state, which locates the cause in how its rivers and channels are managed. The state’s inherited answer has been containment, holding rivers inside defined channels behind embankments since colonial times. That method separates a river from its floodplain, and with silt raising the bed year on year it reduces the channel’s capacity to carry the discharge it is given. The contested question is whether flood works should keep aiming to hold the river in, or to give it space to spread safely.

    Why did rivers cross danger levels in a deficit monsoon?

    1. The rainfall record for the season: The state recorded 27 per cent below normal rainfall for the period from 1 June to the first week of September.
    2. Two causes acting together: High upstream river flows combined with erratic weather, meaning spells of heavy localised rainfall inside an overall seasonal deficit, pushed rivers over their banks.
    3. A tributary can flood because the main river is high: The unusually high level of the Ganga created a backwater effect in the Gandak and the Punpun, the condition where a high level in the receiving river obstructs the outflow of a river draining into it.
    4. What that effect did: Both tributaries drain into the Ganga, and its high level made their discharge difficult, so water backed up in the tributaries and added to the flooding.
    5. Danger level is a gauge based threshold: It is the level fixed for each gauge site above which a river threatens habitation and property, so six rivers crossing it in different stretches describes localised failures rather than one basin wide event.

    What does containment by embankment do to a river?

    1. It cuts the river off from its floodplain: Embankments separate rivers from the floodplains that would otherwise absorb and spread a high discharge.
    2. The bed rises inside the confined channel: Continuous silt deposition raises the riverbed and reduces the channel’s capacity to carry flow.
    3. A breach concentrates the damage: When an embankment breaches, artificially contained water rushes into homes and fields at a depth and force an unconfined flood would not produce.
    4. Each year of containment narrows the next year’s margin: A rising bed inside fixed embankments means the same discharge sits higher against the same defences, so the safety margin shrinks with no change in rainfall.

    Why will higher embankments not settle the problem?

    1. The premise needs revisiting: The state needs to reconsider the idea that higher or stronger embankments will by themselves contain floods, since the containment is what raises the bed against them.
    2. Maintenance remains an obligation: Existing embankments protect settlements and land that have grown up behind them, so the choice is not between maintaining them and abandoning them.
    3. The stated objective is the opposite of containment: Persistent monsoon floods point to the need to give the river space to spread safely during periods of high discharge, which a confined channel is designed to prevent.
    4. This is an execution problem, not a knowledge problem: The measures required are already identified in policy, and the flooding continues, which places the failure in implementation rather than in diagnosis.

    What must accompany embankment maintenance?

    1. Restoration of drainage channels: The natural and constructed drains that carry water off the land have to be reopened, since water that cannot drain stays on fields after the river level falls.
    2. Protection of floodplains: The land a river needs during high discharge has to be kept free of the construction and occupation that turns a spread into a disaster.
    3. Better land use planning: Where settlement, cropping and infrastructure are permitted has to follow the flood behaviour of the stretch rather than precede it.
    4. Restoration of wetlands: Wetlands in the basin hold and release flood water, and their loss transfers that volume to the channel and to the settlements behind the embankment.
    5. Deployment of early warning systems: Warning converts an unavoidable flood into an evacuated one, and it is the only measure on this list that reduces loss without altering the river.

    Why has an existing basin plan not changed the outcome?

    1. The imperatives are already on record: The Ganga Basin River Management Plan, implemented for more than a decade, acknowledges these requirements.
    2. The outcome has not followed: Persistent monsoon floods in Bihar show how much remains to be done to give the river room to spread during high discharge.
    3. One requirement sits outside the state’s control: Addressing Bihar’s concerns requires greater coordination between the riverine states on reservoir releases, since a downstream state’s peak is partly set by upstream release decisions.

    Where does the Farakka question sit in this argument?

    1. The state’s long standing contention: Bihar has argued that the barrage and the India-Bangladesh Ganga water sharing treaty compounded its river management challenges.
    2. The mechanism it alleges: Its case is that the barrage altered the Ganga’s flow regime, affecting the movement and deposition of the river’s sediment load.
    3. The causal claim is not settled: The extent to which this contributes to flooding in Bihar remains contested, so it cannot carry the whole explanation for the season’s flooding.
    4. The claim still belongs in the negotiation: Renegotiation of the 1996 treaty, which expires in December, should take account of Bihar’s concerns over silt accumulation and the state’s river management needs.
    5. The evidence base has to be current: Any new arrangement needs to be informed by updated data on river flows and climate change projections rather than on historical records alone.
    6. The principle extends past this treaty: In a period of erratic weather, states and countries sharing a river basin have to strengthen coordination to manage flows and reduce flood related distress.

    Challenges to embankment based flood control in Bihar

    1. The network is too long to maintain to standard: Bihar carries roughly 3,800 km of flood embankments, and every weak section of it is tested in the same few weeks each year. Eg. Breaches are recorded each season at several points across different river systems rather than at one predictable location.
      The Fix: Publish a stretch wise condition rating for the full embankment length before each monsoon, with repair funds released against the ratings rather than spread evenly.
    2. Containment creates waterlogging behind the line: An embankment that keeps a river out also keeps rainwater and local drainage in, so land behind it is lost to standing water rather than to flooding. Eg. Large areas in the Kosi and Gandak belts of north Bihar remain waterlogged well after river levels have fallen.
      The Fix: Build and maintain sluice and pump drainage at every point where an embankment crosses a natural drain, and treat the outfall as part of the embankment asset.
    3. People live between the embankments: Villages inside the embanked corridor are flooded every year by design, without the protection the structure was built to provide. Eg. Settlements between the eastern and western Kosi embankments are inundated annually while the land outside them is defended.
      The Fix: Fix a statutory resettlement and compensation entitlement for households inside the embanked corridor, separate from general flood relief.
    4. The decisive failure point can lie outside the state: The Kosi and the Gandak are regulated by structures in Nepalese territory, so a breach beyond Bihar’s jurisdiction can determine its flood year. Eg. The 2008 Kosi flood followed a breach at Kusaha, upstream of the barrage in Nepal, and displaced close to three million people in Bihar.
      The Fix: Establish a joint pre monsoon inspection and certification regime with Nepal for the Kosi and Gandak structures, with agreed repair timelines.
    5. Warning lead time is short because the catchment is foreign: Rainfall and discharge data from the upper catchments decide how much notice a district can be given, and that data is not generated within India. Eg. A peak on the Kosi can reach the Bihar plains within a day of heavy rainfall in its Nepalese catchment.
      The Fix: Extend real time telemetry sharing across the upper catchments and route it directly to district administrations rather than only to state control rooms.
    6. Silt removal has no funded programme: Reversing a raised bed is slow work with no annual budget head behind it, so the only measure reliably funded is raising the embankment. Eg. Dredging in the state is undertaken for navigation on specific stretches rather than for restoring channel capacity across a river.
      The Fix: Create a standing sediment management head in the state’s water resources budget, reporting channel capacity rather than embankment height as its outcome.

    Conclusion

    A flood season inside a rainfall deficit places the cause in the river system rather than in the monsoon, and that changes what a flood programme should be measured against. Protection built on confining rivers cannot hold once the beds inside those confinements keep rising. The question Bihar now faces is whether it makes channel capacity and floodplain space the stated objective of its flood works, or continues to judge success by the height and length of its defences. The water negotiation ahead is where the state’s sediment case will either become an operating rule or remain a grievance.

    Back2Basics: Ganga Basin River Management Plan

    1. What it is: A basin scale plan that treats the Ganga as a single hydrological unit, covering environmental flows and sediment alongside pollution abatement, rather than as a set of separate state level works.
    2. Why a basin frame: The Ganga basin covers about 861,000 sq km in India, close to 26 per cent of the country’s geographical area, spread across 11 states.
    3. Who carries the Ganga programme: The National Mission for Clean Ganga, under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, is the implementing arm of the National Ganga Council and was constituted as an authority under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
    4. What a basin plan can and cannot do: It sets requirements across the basin and depends on state departments and inter state coordination to execute them, which is how its imperatives can stand on record for years without changing outcomes on the ground.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2017, GS1, 15 marks] In what way can floods be converted into a sustainable source of irrigation and all – weather inland navigation in India?”