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Type: Op-ed

  • Chief Election Commissioner is not the Election Commission of India

    Why in the News

    Decisions issued in the name of the Election Commission of India (ECI) without being placed before two of its three Commissioners are prima facie ultra vires, meaning taken beyond the authority the statute confers. The position answers an investigation reporting that two Election Commissioners recorded objections at least 14 times in 10 months to decisions and orders taken without their knowledge. Those objections covered the registration and deletion of voters, the restoration of names, Form 6, appeals in electoral roll cases, and control over the digital architecture of the rolls. Two of three members are a majority of the Commission, so they were not outvoted. The contested point is no longer whether the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls was wise or fair, but whether the decisions taken in the Commission’s name were decisions of the Commission at all.

    How does the Election Commission of India take a decision?

    1. Constitutional vesting: Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of elections in the Election Commission of India. The power is conferred on the body, not on its chairman.
    2. Unanimity as the statutory norm: Section 18(2) of the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023 requires all business of the Commission to be transacted unanimously as far as possible.
    3. The fallback rule: Where the Chief Election Commissioner and the Election Commissioners differ, the matter “shall be decided according to the opinion of the majority”.
    4. Allocation of business: Section 18(1) allows the procedure for the transaction and allocation of business to be regulated only by a unanimous decision. A unilaterally settled allocation cannot supply authority for a unilateral decision.

    Why would a bypassed decision be legally vulnerable?

    1. The nature of the defect: A substantive decision the law vests in “the Election Commission”, taken in its name without being placed before the Commission, is void for want of authority.
    2. No cover from an allocation: Such a decision also lacks cover where no lawfully adopted allocation of business authorised a single member to take it. A letterhead does not supply authority the statute withholds.
    3. The governing precedent: T N Seshan vs Union of India (1995) held that the Constitution entrusts elections to the Election Commission and not to an individual. The Court warned that “It would be wrong to project the individual and eclipse the Election Commission.”
    4. A majority is not a dissent: The objections did not come from one Commissioner differing with two colleagues. They came from two of three members, which is the number the statute makes decisive.

    Which specific decisions are in question?

    1. Form 6 alteration: An Election Commissioner recorded in May that Form 6, prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, could not be altered by an SIR direction without amending the Rules. The second Commissioner concurred, and the altered form appeared on ECINet regardless.
    2. A recorded majority against the change: In August one of them called the change “unauthorised/illegal” and sought its immediate removal. There was not merely an absence of consensus, but a recorded majority view against the change.
    3. Centralisation of the roll database: Both Commissioners warned that access to the electoral roll database was being centralised in Delhi. Both sought safeguards, including an independent technical audit.
    4. Restoration blocked in Goa: Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), the statutory authorities for additions, deletions and corrections, found 97 people eligible after they produced documents, and the software did not permit their restoration. A computer programme cannot overrule a statutory officer.
    5. The West Bengal appeals: Of 38.31 lakh appeals filed before tribunals, 22.21 lakh came from deleted voters seeking restoration. Another 16.10 lakh were reportedly filed by the Commission itself, seeking deletion of voters.
    6. Authority for that litigation: An Election Commissioner asked who had authorised appeals “on behalf of ECI”, recording that neither he nor his colleague had been informed.

    What would an institutional response require?

    1. Disclosure of the decision record: The Commission, meeting as a Commission, should disclose which major SIR decisions were approved unanimously, which were decided by majority, and under what valid allocation any others were issued.
    2. Review of the challenged decisions: Every decision the two Commissioners have challenged as lacking approval should be reviewed, and any found to have been taken without lawful authority should be withdrawn.
    3. Form 6 restored to the Rules: The form should be brought back into conformity with the statutory Rules that prescribe it.
    4. An independent audit of the platform: ECINet should be subjected to an independent technical and legal audit.
    5. Restoring the statutory officer’s powers: EROs should be able to exercise the powers Parliament gave them, without a software permission standing between the decision and the roll.
    6. Disclosure of litigation authority: The authority under which appeals were filed in the Commission’s name should be placed on record.
    7. The forum if the Commission does not act: Where the Commission will not act on its own, the Supreme Court is the only remaining route.

    Challenges to collective decision making in the Election Commission

    1. The allocation of business is not published: A reader cannot tell from an order whether it was collective, because the allocation under which a member may act alone is not in the public domain. Eg. The disclosure now sought is of which SIR decisions were unanimous, which were by majority, and under what allocation the rest were issued.
      The Fix: Publish the allocation of business and record every substantive decision against it, so authority is visible on the face of the order.
    2. No quorum or meeting rule: The statute fixes unanimity and a majority fallback, and prescribes no quorum, no meeting calendar and no record of how a file is circulated. Eg. The objections were written on file across ten months rather than resolved at a sitting of the full Commission.
      The Fix: Frame regulations under Section 18(1) fixing a minimum meeting frequency and requiring each substantive decision to carry the members’ recorded assent.
    3. No internal remedy against an invalid decision: A member who holds a decision to be unauthorised has no forum inside the Commission to set it aside, so the dispute leaves the institution. Eg. The two Commissioners approached the Cabinet Secretary when they believed institutional processes had been breached.
      The Fix: Provide that a contested instruction is placed before the full Commission before it takes effect.
    4. Asymmetric removal protection: The Chief Election Commissioner can be removed only in the manner of a judge of the Supreme Court, while an Election Commissioner can be removed on the Chief Election Commissioner’s recommendation. Eg. The Tarkunde Committee of 1975 and the Goswami Committee of 1990 both recommended the same protection for every member.
      The Fix: Extend the Chief Election Commissioner’s removal protection to all members through an amendment to Article 324(5).
    5. Executive weight in appointments: The 2023 Act placed a Union Cabinet Minister on the three member selection panel in place of the Chief Justice of India, giving the Union two of three votes. Eg. Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India (2023) had set an interim panel of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India.
      The Fix: Restore a selector drawn from outside the executive, so the panel cannot be carried by the government of the day alone.

    Conclusion

    For years the standing question about the Election Commission was whether it is independent of the executive. The question now is whether it is functioning as a Commission at all. A constitutional authority that demands strict compliance with electoral law from nearly a billion voters has to begin by complying with the law that governs itself. What is unresolved is that the only forum able to test a decision taken without the Commission sits outside it, so a defect in collective authority becomes litigation rather than correction.

    Schemes and Initiatives for Electoral Administration

    1. cVIGIL: A citizen reporting application for Model Code of Conduct violations, with a 100 minute turnaround mandated for the investigating officer.
    2. National Voters’ Services Portal: An online route through which an elector can register, modify and confirm their electoral details.
    3. Accessible voting measures: Braille enabled elector photo identity cards, free transport for persons with disabilities, and a vote from home facility for senior citizens.
    4. Delisting of unrecognised parties: Over 808 registered unrecognised political parties that failed to meet essential conditions were delisted by early 2026, curbing misuse of tax exemptions.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026, GS2, 10 marks] Is the right to vote a fundamental right? Discuss the position of the Election Commission of India while undertaking the revision of electoral rolls. Can it also examine the question of citizenship of voters?”

  • [23rd September 2026] The Hindu OpED: Water wealth

    [23rd September 2026] The Hindu OpED: Water wealth

    Question (2025, GS3 – 15 Marks):Examine the factors responsible for depleting groundwater in India. What are the steps taken by the government to mitigate such depletion of groundwater?”
    Linkage: Directly targets the root causes of aquifer depletion in intensive agrarian states—such as flood irrigation, crop-choice mismatch (paddy in semi-arid zones), and unrestricted deep tube-well extraction—while demanding policy interventions to reverse the trend.

    Mentor Comment

    Punjab’s groundwater extraction rate stands at 152 per cent, meaning the State draws half again as much each year as is annually replenished. Depletion has now begun to redistribute wealth among farmers. Those who can afford deeper tube wells continue to reach the falling water table. Those who cannot are forced to buy water from them, which hands larger landowners a claim on smaller cultivators. The conflict is between an electricity and procurement structure that makes extraction the safe choice and a conservation goal that requires additional extraction to become expensive.

    How far has Punjab’s groundwater been drawn down?

    1. Extraction rate: The 2025-26 Dynamic Groundwater Assessment records the State’s groundwater extraction rate at 152 per cent.
    2. Blocks in the red zone: 72 per cent of Punjab’s 153 blocks sit in the red zone, the highest share among States.
    3. Marginal improvement: Interventions reduced the number of over-exploited blocks by five across the last two assessments.
    4. Deepening wells: The fraction of observation wells with water below 40 metres in the post-monsoon period grew by two percentage points between 2022 and 2025.
    5. Principal consumer: Irrigation for rice and wheat accounts for nearly 25 billion cubic metres a year in the latest estimate.

    Why has the rice-wheat system held against its water cost?

    1. Origin in food security: The pattern began as a strategy to improve food security and settled into a concentrated rice-wheat cropping system.
    2. Three supports that removed risk: Assured procurement, subsidised electricity and access to groundwater made high-yield varieties, intensive irrigation, fertilizer use and mechanisation less risky than alternative modes of cultivation.
    3. Unaddressed barriers to switching: Farmers’ reluctance to take up other crops rests on uncertainties in storage options, prices, processing infrastructure and supply chains, and that reluctance has gone relatively unaddressed.

    How does groundwater depletion widen the gap between farmers?

    1. Efficiency against capacity: A study in the Economic and Political Weekly found that farmers with marginal landholdings use water more efficiently. The same study found wealthier farmers better equipped to access lower water tables and to draw higher volumes.
    2. Forced water purchase: Farmers unable to afford the requisite tube wells buy water from those who own them. The purchase transfers wealth to larger landowners and creates unregulated dependencies.
    3. Returns against productivity: A study in Discover Sustainability reported that in Sangrur and Barnala larger farms earned higher returns and recorded lower groundwater productivity for paddy than smaller farms.
    4. Capital as the gate: Depletion raises the capital required for irrigation, which systematically privileges farmers with better access to finance.

    What would make conservation pay the cultivator?

    1. Pani Bachao, Paisa Kamao: The scheme entitles a farmer to cash for every unused kilowatt-hour of pumping electricity below a threshold.
    2. Redirecting the electricity subsidy: Part of the electricity subsidy bill can instead directly support smallholder farmers.
    3. Collective irrigation assets: Irrigation infrastructure can be collectivised, so that access to water stops depending on owning a tube well.
    4. Benefit tied to the cultivator: Where benefits follow the cultivator, including tenants, rather than the owner of the land or the pump, welfare subsidises access to water rather than groundwater extraction.

    Challenges to groundwater regulation in Punjab

    1. Efficiency gains overwhelmed by scale: State efforts to manage demand continue, and the volume of extraction outruns the gains those efforts produce. Eg. The count of over-exploited blocks fell by five and most of the State’s blocks stayed in the red zone.
      The Fix: Set a declining annual extraction ceiling for each red zone block, so efficiency measures are judged against a volume target rather than against a block count.
    2. Incentives measured in electricity, not water: Conservation payments are calculated on unused pumping units, which is a proxy for water and not a measure of it. Eg. Pani Bachao, Paisa Kamao pays for kilowatt-hours left unused below a threshold.
      The Fix: Meter pumped volume at the connection, so payment tracks abstraction directly.
    3. Voluntary enrolment: A scheme a farmer must opt into reaches those already confident about their water access, and not those most exposed to a falling table. Eg. Enrolment in Pani Bachao, Paisa Kamao remains low.
      The Fix: Enrol every metered connection by default and allow farmers to opt out.

    Conclusion

    Punjab’s groundwater question has stopped being only a question about the aquifer. Depletion now decides which farmers can irrigate at all, and it converts water access into a form of wealth that moves from the smaller cultivator to the larger one. Conservation has to be paid for in a form that reaches the person farming the land, including the tenant, rather than the person who owns the pump. The thing to watch is whether the State converts part of its electricity subsidy into direct support tied to the cultivator.

  • In IIT, student death and a reckoning

    Why in the News

    A second-year BTech student at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay took his life hours after he was allegedly found adopting unfair means in an examination. Following student agitation, the institute has suspended the dean who reported him. Faculty members have rallied behind their colleague. The death comes a month after the death by suicide of an MSc student at IIT-Delhi, which set off weeks of protest and questions about the responsibilities of an institution towards those in its care. The family of the IIT-Bombay student has alleged caste discrimination. The contested point is whether a campus can hold academic integrity and a duty of care at the same time.

    Why is individual resilience the wrong frame for these deaths?

    1. Endurance already demonstrated: Students who clear these competitive entrance examinations have proved a formidable capacity for endurance, so a want of resilience does not explain the outcome.
    2. Scale of the pattern: Between 2006 and 2026 there have reportedly been over 170 student deaths across various IIT campuses, which makes this a recurring institutional outcome rather than a set of individual failures.
    3. The actual question: What is at issue is the old imagination of authority in premier campuses, which have become more socially and culturally diverse than ever before.

    How has the social composition of premier campuses outrun their institutional culture?

    1. What diversity brings in: A more diverse intake carries different experiences of class, caste, language, aspiration and vulnerability into the same classroom and hostel.
    2. New forms of exclusion: Diversity without a corresponding shift in institutional culture creates fresh exclusions rather than removing old ones.
    3. Design of the institution: These campuses were built principally around teaching, testing, rigour and discipline, and that design has no place to receive what a changed student body reports.

    Why can a counsellor’s office not address the change on campus?

    1. A structural change met with an addition: A system organised around examination and discipline cannot absorb a change in who its students are through the addition of a counsellor’s office alone.
    2. What students are reporting: Many students are away from home for the first time and are describing isolation, stigma and fear, which are conditions of the campus rather than clinical complaints.
    3. Where the listening has to happen: Professors and administrators are the people placed to hear this, so the response has to sit inside the academic relationship and not only beside it.

    Where does the faculty sit between accountability and compassion?

    1. The disciplinary act and its consequence: The dean who reported an examination irregularity was suspended after student agitation, while faculty members rallied behind him, so the same act was read as duty by one side and as cause by the other.
    2. Crises they were not trained for: Faculty work inside a system of administrative protocol and are expected to anticipate crises for which they received no training.
    3. The clarity they lack: Faculty have no settled statement of what is expected of them when a student is in distress.
    4. The assurance they lack: A decision taken in a student’s best interest and in line with guidelines carries the risk of being used to scapegoat the person who took it.

    Challenges to anchoring academic excellence in student wellbeing

    1. Caste and hierarchy inside the department: Counselling and grievance machinery does not reach the hierarchy that operates between a student and the people who grade him. Eg. The deceased student’s family has alleged caste discrimination.
      The Fix: Conduct a frank institutional reckoning with caste and hierarchy as a standing exercise, separate from the grievance process.
    2. Response confined to the aftermath: Institutional change is attempted in the sound and fury that follows a death and not before one. Eg. The IIT-Delhi death produced weeks of protest before the question of institutional responsibility was asked.
      The Fix: Make meaningful student representation ordinary institutional practice, so distress reaches the administration without a tragedy to carry it.
    3. Integrity procedure without a care protocol: Reporting examination misconduct and responding to a student in distress are handled by the same staff under a single disciplinary rulebook. Eg. A report of unfair means was made and the institution had no parallel process for what followed it.
      The Fix: Write guidelines that preserve academic integrity alongside strong counselling and grievance mechanisms, so one report triggers both tracks.
    4. Purpose narrowed to high performers: An institution of excellence measures itself by what its best students achieve, which leaves failure unaccommodated. Eg. Both deaths involved students at the point of academic or disciplinary difficulty rather than at the point of selection.
      The Fix: Define the mentoring mandate to cover the student who fails, so that failure is survivable inside the institution.

    Conclusion

    Two institutions are being asked to hold accountability and compassion in the same set of rules, and they currently have a language for only one of them. The suspension of one office holder settles nothing, because the difficulty is that a disciplinary system and a duty of care are running on the same staff with no protocol connecting them. What remains unresolved is who is answerable when a procedure correctly followed ends in a death. The measure to watch is whether the IITs issue a distress response protocol that sits beside their integrity rules rather than beneath them.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2014, GS2, 12.5 marks] Should the premier institutes like IITs/IIMs be allowed to retain premier status, allowed more academic independence in designing courses and also decide mode/criteria of selection of students. Discuss in light of the growing challenges.”

  • Building trust is key in warnings on melting glaciers

    Why in the News

    The disaster that unfolded in Nepal and Tibet began with a rock-ice avalanche that transformed into a devastating debris flow. First reports read the event as an earthquake and possibly a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF), a flood released when a lake held back by glacial ice or debris gives way. The shaking was in fact the force of the rock-ice avalanche hitting the valley floor. There was no glacial lake in the valley at all. The same sequence produced the Chamoli disaster in 2021, from a rock-ice avalanche off Ronti Peak, and the Dharali disaster in 2025. Himalayan warning systems are organised around glacial lakes whose location is known. The hazard that killed at Rasuwa can begin on any of hundreds of thousands of thawing slopes.

    What is a rock-ice avalanche hazard cascade?

    1. Rock-ice avalanche: A mass of rock and ice detaches from a steep, deglaciating slope and falls to the valley floor.
    2. Transformation into a debris flow: The impact converts the avalanche into a debris flow, which then travels down the valley and destroys what stands in its path.
    3. Hazard cascade: One process sets off the next, so the damaging flood has no single identifiable source waiting to be watched.
    4. Disaster rather than natural event: Many rock avalanches and thousands of debris flows occur every year, and they become disasters only where they strike lives and surroundings.

    Why is a hazard cascade harder to plan for than a glacial lake flood?

    1. Known water source in a GLOF: For a glacial lake outburst flood, the origin of the water is the glacial lake itself.
    2. Three interventions available at a lake: A lake can be modelled to forecast flood behaviour, drained where it is judged dangerous, or fitted with real-time monitoring.
    3. No lake at Rasuwa: There was no large lake in that valley, so none of those three options was available and the event was as difficult to plan for as Chamoli.
    4. Number of possible sources: Rock-ice avalanches could originate from many hundreds of thousands of steep, rapidly deglaciating slopes with thawing permafrost in the Himalaya.
    5. Limits of failure prediction: Detecting slopes that are already moving is perhaps possible, and working out which of them will fail catastrophically is not yet reliable.

    Who is exposed to these hazards, and where did the deaths occur?

    1. Global GLOF exposure: 15 million people worldwide live with glacial lake outburst flood danger.
    2. Concentration in High Mountain Asia: Over 9 million of those people are in High Mountain Asia, and nearly 3 million are in India alone.
    3. Hydropower workers among the dead: In both Chamoli and Rasuwa, a significant number of the dead and missing were workers at hydropower infrastructure standing in the path of the flows.
    4. Decisions downstream: The open questions are where people can and cannot live below such slopes, and what the benefits and risks of hydropower development in these environments are.

    What would a denser seismic station network deliver?

    1. Detection of landslide-generated earthquakes: Seismic stations can detect and locate the earthquake that a landslide itself generates.
    2. Seismic signature of the flood: Extreme flood events produce continuous seismic noise as they move down a valley, in the same way glacial lake outburst floods do.
    3. Technically possible, not yet built: The denser network is achievable with existing science and has not been done.
    4. Cost and cross-border requirement: It would need co-operation across the Himalaya’s international borders and tens of millions of dollars.

    Challenges to early warning for Himalayan hazard cascades

    1. Instrumenting every valley is impractical: River gauges or monitoring in every single high mountain valley cannot realistically deliver warning in time. Eg. At Rasuwa the cascade began where there was no lake and no instrumented source to watch.
      The Fix: Concentrate instruments on the valleys that carry settlements or hydropower works below a rapidly deglaciating slope.
    2. No usable lead time near the source: Warning shrinks to nothing for people living close to where the cascade begins. Eg. The system in place during the Rasuwa event gave enough warning for those further downstream and not enough for those upstream.
      The Fix: Pair instrumented warning with pre-agreed evacuation routes for the upstream valley, where no alert will ever arrive early enough.
    3. Warning as a communication problem: Detection has to be followed by the news reaching people, by the speed at which they respond, and by what they actually do. Eg. Workers at hydropower sites in the flow path died in both Chamoli and Rasuwa.
      The Fix: Embed the warning system in the communities expected to act on it, so an alert is trusted and attached to a rehearsed response.
    4. Cost of a wrong call: Naming a slope as dangerous, and failing to name one, both carry high consequences. Eg. Identifying which moving slopes will catastrophically fail is not yet reliable science.
      The Fix: Publish slope hazard assessments with their stated uncertainty, so the confidence attached to a warning travels with the warning.

    Conclusion

    Himalayan risk planning is built around a hazard whose source can be located, and the events now killing people begin on slopes nobody is watching. The science to close that gap exists and the network to carry it does not, because it requires money and agreement between countries that share the range. A warning that communities do not trust, or do not know how to act on, saves nobody, which makes trust part of the engineering rather than an afterthought. Lives can be saved on those terms, and the places cannot, which turns the harder question into where building should be permitted at all.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2020, GS1, 10 marks] How will the melting of Himalayan glaciers have a far-reaching impact on the water resources of India? (हिमालय के हिमनदों के पिघलने का भारत के जल-संसाधनों पर किस प्रकार दूरगामी प्रभाव होगा ?)”

  • Saving the rhino, restoring grasslands

    Why in the News

    The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has set out a shift in India’s rhino conservation strategy on World Rhino Day, September 22, from safeguarding existing concentrations of the greater one-horned rhinoceros to establishing secure populations across suitable parts of its historical range. The framework for that shift is the National Conservation Strategy for the rhinoceros, launched in 2019, which had already committed to restoring the species to suitable former habitats. The species has recovered from around 1,500 animals in the 1980s to more than 4,000 as of September 2024. The recovery now runs into a habitat problem rather than a protection problem, because the grasslands the species depends on degrade without active management.

    What is the National Conservation Strategy for the rhinoceros?

    1. Scope of the strategy: It provides the framework for strengthening existing rhino populations and for restoring the species to suitable former habitats.
    2. Genetic and spatial security: It commits to maintaining genetic security and habitat connectivity, so separated populations do not become isolated breeding units.
    3. Planned movement of animals: It promotes scientifically planned translocation, the deliberate capture and release of animals into a new site to found a population there.
    4. Climate in the protection framework: It recognises climate-resilient management as part of the protection framework for the species rather than as a separate exercise.

    Where does the rhino live now, and where did it once live?

    1. Present distribution: The wild population in India is concentrated mainly in Assam, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
    2. Historical range: The animal’s range extended across the northern Indian Subcontinent, along the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra river systems.
    3. The two landscapes it belongs to: It is an integral part of the ecological and cultural landscape of the Brahmaputra floodplains and the Terai grasslands.
    4. The strategic consequence: Conservation confined to existing concentrations leaves most of that historical range empty, which is the gap range expansion is meant to close.

    What does Phase I of the range expansion commit to?

    1. Duration and funding route: The five-year Phase I runs from 2026 to 2031 and is proposed for support through the National CAMPA Authority, which holds compensatory afforestation funds collected when forest land is diverted.
    2. States brought together: It covers Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
    3. Named focus areas: Scientific monitoring, protection, habitat restoration and management, translocation planning, coexistence and capacity building.
    4. The expansion target: Beyond consolidating existing populations, it seeks to support the species’ expansion into suitable areas in Bihar and Arunachal Pradesh.
    5. The habitat instrument: The Rhino Conservation Action Plan provides for mapping grasslands and wetlands, identifying invasive species, prioritising habitats for intensive restoration and developing management protocols specific to each protected area.

    Why does saving the rhino depend on how grasslands and floodplains are managed?

    1. Grasslands as dynamic systems: Grasslands require science-based management to prevent degradation, inappropriate succession, meaning the drift of grassland into woody cover, and the spread of invasive species.
    2. Species riding on the same habitat: Rhino habitat also carries swamp deer, wild buffalo, elephants, tigers, grassland birds and several smaller species, so habitat condition decides outcomes well beyond one animal.
    3. A national grassland assessment: A five-year project running from 2026 to 2031 on the Comprehensive Assessment of Indian Grasslands will be implemented by the Wildlife Institute of India, the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education and the Forest Survey of India.
    4. What it will measure: It will assess grassland extent, ecological condition, biodiversity, degradation, ecosystem services and carbon potential, and will support a National Grassland Atlas, restoration priorities and long-term management guidelines.
    5. Flooding as a design condition: Flooding is intrinsic to landscapes such as Kaziranga, and the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events create new conservation pressures on top of it.
    6. What flood management requires: Maintaining access to higher ground, securing ecological connectivity, protecting dispersal routes and managing habitats are the named requirements.

    Who actually delivers protection on the ground?

    1. What technology adds: Modern surveillance, spatial monitoring, veterinary diagnostics, genetic tools and decision-support systems reinforce traditional fieldcraft.
    2. What technology cannot replace: No technology substitutes the forest guards, watchers, mahouts, veterinarians and field officers who patrol these landscapes.
    3. Communities around the habitat: The communities living around rhino habitats are equally important to the outcome, since the animals move through land those communities use.
    4. Conservation as shared enterprise: The future of the species depends on conservation being treated as a shared enterprise rather than an isolated governmental activity.

    How far does cooperation extend beyond national boundaries?

    1. The regional forum: The Second Asian Rhino Range States Conservation Meeting was held in New Delhi in 2019.
    2. The New Delhi Declaration: India joined Bhutan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Nepal in adopting the Declaration to strengthen conservation cooperation for Asian rhinoceros species.
    3. What followed: The Centre and the rhino-bearing states have continued to work within that broader framework, which places a domestic range expansion inside a regional commitment.

    Challenges to rhino range expansion

    1. Founder population size at a new site: A population begun from a few released animals carries low genetic variation and can fail to establish. Eg. Rhinos moved to Manas National Park under Indian Rhino Vision 2020 were lost to poaching in the years after release, setting that site back.
      The Fix: Fix a minimum release cohort and sex ratio for each new site before a release is authorised, with monitoring obligations running for a set number of years afterwards.
    2. Invaded habitat at the release site: Grassland taken over by weedy or woody cover no longer carries the grazing biomass a rhino needs, so a site can be legally protected and biologically unsuitable. Eg. Mikania micrantha has spread through Kaziranga’s grasslands and displaced native forage.
      The Fix: Make invasive removal and a measured forage-biomass threshold conditions of certifying a site as suitable, rather than treating protected status as sufficient.
    3. Mortality outside the protected area during floods: Animals leaving a flooded park cross roads and settlements, so deaths occur where the park’s protection does not reach. Eg. Animals crossing from Kaziranga to the Karbi Anglong hills during floods are killed by vehicles on the national highway that separates the two.
      The Fix: Complete elevated animal passages on the highway stretches identified as crossing points and enforce speed restrictions through the flood months.
    4. Persistent demand for horn: The horn holds high value in illegal trade, so the cost of protection does not fall as the population grows. Eg. Assam publicly burned a stockpile of over 2,400 rhino horns in 2021 to signal that the horn carries no medicinal value.
      The Fix: Extend stockpile audits and DNA profiling of seized horn to every rhino-bearing state, so a seizure can be traced back to the population it came from.

    Conclusion

    The rhino’s recovery was achieved inside a small number of well-protected areas, and it is a genuine result. Expansion asks a harder question, whether land outside those areas can be brought to a condition that will hold a founder population and keep it. That makes habitat condition, and not animal numbers, the binding constraint on the next phase. What to watch is whether the programme begins reporting grassland condition alongside population counts, because a range that cannot feed the species is not range.

    Grasslands in India

    1. Extent and loss: Grassland area has declined by 31 per cent, from 18 million hectares to 12.3 million hectares, and common lands by 19 per cent, from 90.5 million hectares to 73.02 million hectares.
    2. Conversion pressure: Humans have converted 70 per cent of the world’s grasslands and 50 per cent of savannahs for agriculture and grazing, compacting soil and accelerating desertification.
    3. Species that depend on them: Grassland conversion has contributed to the decline of the Great Indian Bustard and the Lesser Florican.
    4. Invasive spread: Prosopis juliflora is spreading across Rajasthan and degrading grassland there.

    Government Initiatives for wildlife habitat conservation

    1. Project Tiger (1973): Uses core and buffer reserve management to reduce habitat pressure and limit human-tiger interaction in tiger-bearing landscapes.
    2. Project Elephant (1992): Protects elephant habitats and corridors, which reduces crop damage and accidental deaths in the districts those corridors run through.
    3. National Wildlife Action Plan (2017-31): Sets the national agenda on habitat conservation, protection of endangered species and coexistence strategies.
    4. Mission Sahbhagita (2022) and the Save Wetlands Campaign (2023): Mobilised more than 2 million citizens, resulting in the ground-truthing of over 170,000 wetlands and boundary demarcation of nearly 100,000 of them.

    Back2Basics: Greater one-horned rhinoceros

    1. Conservation status: Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, listed in CITES Appendix I, and placed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
    2. The only rhino in India: It is the sole rhino species found in India, also called the Indian rhino, and is Asia’s largest rhino among the five rhino species worldwide.
    3. Core protected areas: Pabitora Wildlife Reserve, Rajiv Gandhi Orang National Park, Kaziranga National Park and Manas National Park.
    4. Identification: A single black horn and a grey-brown hide with pronounced skin folds, and it is an excellent swimmer.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2019] Consider the following statements: 1. Asiatic lion is naturally found In India only. 2. Double-humped camel is naturally found in India only. 3. One-horned rhinoceros is naturally found in India only. Which of the statements given above is / are correct? (a) 1 only (b) 2 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3 (a)”

  • AI is now a great-power game. Three difficult questions for India

    Why in the News

    The United States and China are opening a formal bilateral dialogue on artificial intelligence (AI) and its risks, with the Chinese President received in Washington by the US President on Thursday for their third summit in less than 10 months. The meeting comes barely 10 days after the Delhi BRICS summit, where China offered its own vision of international cooperation on AI. The two events set out opposite agendas for the same technology, one built on openness and diffusion and the other on preventing accidents, miscalculation and misuse. BRICS rhetoric on AI may be multipolar. Technological power at the frontier remains concentrated in the United States and China.

    What is strategic stability in the AI age?

    1. Strategic stability: A condition in which neither of two rival powers has an incentive to strike first or to race, sustained by shared understanding of each other’s capabilities and by channels that stop an accident being read as an attack.
    2. Origin of the term: It comes from nuclear arms control, where the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated rules to reduce mutual risk during an active contest for advantage.
    3. What it covers in AI: Preventing accidents, miscalculation and misuse arising from the most capable models, including their military applications.
    4. What it does not cover: It is narrower than agreement on the technological order as a whole, so a strategic stability understanding can be reached with chips, export controls and market access still contested.

    What does China’s BRICS offer on AI amount to?

    1. Openness, access and diffusion: The Chinese framing at Delhi placed the emphasis on spreading AI capability rather than on containing its risks.
    2. World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (WAICO): BRICS members were invited to join this body, which China launched in Shanghai this summer as a venue for international AI cooperation.
    3. Open models for the forum: China proposed that BRICS host an open-source AI community, which makes models and tools available for others to use and adapt.
    4. Champion of affordable access: China presented itself as the advocate of developing countries seeking affordable access to AI models and applications.

    Why does the Washington agenda invert the BRICS agenda?

    1. Subject of the conversation: The Washington discussion concerns the dangers generated by increasingly powerful models and the need to prevent accidents, miscalculation and misuse, which is the opposite end of the technology from access and diffusion.
    2. Who is writing the security rules: As the world’s leading AI powers, the United States and China are beginning to shape the security and geopolitical architecture of the new technology.
    3. The distance between rhetoric and capability: Multipolar language at BRICS does not change where the most advanced capability sits, and the journey from Delhi to Washington in barely 10 days is what makes that visible.
    4. Cold War precedent: The United States and the Soviet Union competed and cooperated in the nuclear and space domains at the same time, and the rules they negotiated inevitably affected the rest of the world.

    What has the US-China AI channel produced, and where does it still diverge?

    1. Opening of the channel: A tentative channel was opened by the Biden administration after the two leaders met at Woodside, California, in November 2023.
    2. The one concrete outcome: At Lima a year later the two leaders affirmed that humans, not artificial intelligence, must control decisions on the use of nuclear weapons.
    3. Guardrails discussed without result: The two leaders discussed possible AI “guardrails” when they met in Beijing in May, and no formal arrangement followed.
    4. What is now on the table: After talks in New York last weekend between the US Treasury Secretary and the Chinese Vice-Premier, Washington said the two sides had considered a standing AI dialogue and a notification system for incidents with national-security consequences.
    5. Why such a mechanism matters: In a crisis the first requirement is not agreement on the entire technological order. It is the ability to establish what has happened, whether it was accidental or deliberate, and who is responsible.
    6. The American objective: The United States wants a framework to manage the risks posed by powerful models and their military applications.
    7. The Chinese objection: China treats safety discussions as a possible instrument for preserving American technological advantage and for legitimising restrictions on its own access to advanced computing.
    8. The named disagreements: The two also disagree on open-source models, data governance, state regulation and the legitimacy of export controls.
    9. Entanglement with trade: Safety discussion under the present US administration runs alongside disputes over advanced chips, export controls, rare earths, tariffs, computing power and the race to build the most capable models, so no grand bargain is at hand and what is sought is a narrower understanding on strategic stability.

    What three questions does this leave India?

    1. Navigating the technological contest: India sits inside the US-led Pax Silica initiative on technology and supply chains, which follows from its deep integration with the American digital and AI ecosystem, and it has stayed out of China’s WAICO amid enduring security problems and mutual distrust. As a BRICS member it still cannot avoid AI rhetoric shaped by the forum’s dominant power.
    2. Competing offers to developing societies: India’s emphasis on making AI work for developing societies found considerable resonance at the Delhi AI summit earlier this year. China’s deeper capabilities in computing, infrastructure, hardware and advanced models let it offer the Global South a wider package of technological cooperation.
    3. Rule-setting by two powers: A dialogue that begins on strategic stability could become an effort to set rules for everyone else, producing discriminatory technology controls against states outside it.
      Counter-pressure: Geopolitical rivalry and competition for markets between the two powers could limit such collusion and create leverage for emerging technological powers such as India.

    Challenges to a US-China understanding on AI risk

    1. Absence of a countable unit: Model capability cannot be counted or inspected the way delivery systems were, so compliance with any understanding cannot be confirmed. Eg. The New START treaty rested on declared launcher numbers and on-site inspection, and neither has an analogue for a training run or a set of model weights.
      The Fix: Anchor the dialogue on physical proxies such as data-centre compute capacity and chip transfers, which are countable and already tracked.
    2. Controls that leak through third countries: Export controls bind firms rather than territory, so restricted chips move through intermediaries in jurisdictions outside any bilateral arrangement. Eg. Washington’s October 2022 controls on advanced computing chips were widened a year later after routes through third countries emerged.
      The Fix: Tie the notification commitment to a shared list of controlled items, so a transfer is traceable rather than disputed after the fact.
    3. Capability held by private developers: The most capable models are built by companies, so a state-to-state understanding does not bind the actors doing the building. Eg. The 2023 Bletchley Park declaration on frontier model safety rested on voluntary commitments from developers rather than obligations on them.
      The Fix: Require incident reporting from developers under domestic law, so a state can honour a notification commitment over conduct it does not itself control.
    4. Exclusion of the states the rules will govern: Terms settled between two powers become conditions of access for everyone else without their participation. Eg. India stayed outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and needed a separate Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver in 2008 before it could trade in nuclear material.
      The Fix: Route AI risk rules through a body with wider membership, so conditions of access are negotiated by the states they bind.

    Conclusion

    Two states are writing the safety rules for a technology they also lead, and the rules will reach states that were not in the room. India’s exposure is therefore not the rhetoric of any forum but the possibility of inheriting terms it did not negotiate. What decides its position is measurable and domestic: computing power, semiconductors, models, research, capital and talent. The thing to watch is whether the risk channel the two powers settle on is opened to third states or kept strictly bilateral.

    What is technology diplomacy?

    1. About: The use of a state’s technological assets, innovation ecosystem and digital standards to build international partnerships, influence global governance and secure national interests.
    2. Two halves: Tech-cooperation shares working tools such as digital payment systems with other states. Tech-governance shapes the norms for artificial intelligence and 6G.
    3. Named pillars: Exporting digital public infrastructure as a public good, securing lithium and cobalt through the Mineral Security Partnership, building trusted semiconductor supply chains, and cyber diplomacy.
    4. Why it is a distinct instrument: A state that sets a standard shapes the conduct of every state that adopts it, which gives technological capability a diplomatic return that trade or aid does not.

    Government Initiatives on artificial intelligence

    1. IndiaAI Mission (2024): Approved with an outlay of Rs 10,371 crore and implemented by IndiaAI under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), it builds compute, datasets, models, skills and safety capacity for startups, researchers and students.
    2. IndiaAI Compute: A national AI compute grid of over 38,000 graphics processing units, offering eligible users up to 40 per cent lower compute costs.
    3. AIKosh: The national AI dataset repository, carrying over 3,000 datasets and 243 models across 20 sectors for developers who cannot assemble their own data.
    4. IndiaAI Safety Institute: The mission’s trust pillar, covering bias mitigation, privacy, explainability and AI governance.

    Back2Basics: Pax Silica

    1. What it is: A United States-led initiative on technology and supply chains, which India is part of.
    2. Purpose: Building resilient semiconductor and electronics supply chains among trusted partners, so production is not concentrated in a single jurisdiction.
    3. Why it matters for India: Membership follows from India’s integration with the American digital and AI ecosystem, and it sits opposite the China-led venue India has declined to join.

    Matching Previous Year Question

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

  • How to ensure hospitals don’t cheat patients

    Why in the News

    Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released purchase and billing comparisons for medical items sold by hospitals, showing that a drip set costing a hospital Rs 11 carries a printed price of Rs 325. The figures follow an audit of the bills of critical patients at private hospitals across Maharashtra, facilitated by Jan Arogya Abhiyan. A Department of Pharmaceuticals committee chaired by Sudhansh Pant had recorded in 2016 that high maximum retail prices were “a tool to cheat the helpless consumer”, and had recommended capping trade margins on all medicines and implants. Statutory price regulation still reaches only 18 per cent of medicines, so the gap between what a hospital pays for an item and what it bills the patient is set by the manufacturer’s printed price rather than by a regulator.

    What is the trade margin on a medicine?

    1. Trade margin: The difference between the price at which a hospital or a chemist buys a medicine or a consumable and the maximum retail price (MRP) printed on the pack, which is what the patient pays.
    2. Who sets the ceiling: For a product outside statutory price control the manufacturer prints the MRP itself, so the margin available to the seller is decided at the point of manufacture and not by a regulator.
    3. What price control actually covers: The Drug (Prices Control) Order lets the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) fix a ceiling price for formulations in the National List of Essential Medicines. Formulations outside that list carry only a cap on the annual price increase a manufacturer may take.
    4. Why an in-patient bill is different: A hospital both dispenses the item and bills for it, so the margin a chemist would earn is captured inside the hospital bill and the patient has no comparison to make.

    How large is the gap between what a hospital pays and what a patient is billed?

    1. Consumables at the regulator’s own count: A syringe bought for under Rs 7 is marked for sale at Rs 57.
    2. Compliance with the pandemic markup limit: Not one of the 46 medicine brands examined in the audit was charged within the limit of 10 per cent markup on purchase price that was fixed during the pandemic.
    3. Spread of the overcharging: For nearly half the medicines examined, patients paid more than 150 per cent above what the hospital had paid.
    4. Named medicines: A paracetamol drip bought for about Rs 33 was billed at Rs 408. An antibiotic injection bought for about Rs 180 was billed at Rs 950.
    5. The common range: Margins most commonly ran between 200 and 400 per cent.
    6. Consumables run higher than medicines: A drip set bought for about Rs 12 is typically billed at Rs 160 and sometimes at Rs 270. An oxygen mask costing about Rs 55 can be charged up to Rs 570.

    Why has the 2016 recommendation to cap trade margins not changed billing?

    1. The committee’s finding on MRP: Fixing the MRP was recorded as “free for all and largely arbitrary in which the consumer is the net loser”, which locates the defect in the printed price itself rather than in any individual seller.
    2. The recommended cap: Trade margins on all medicines and implants, price-controlled or not, were to be capped between 35 per cent and 50 per cent depending on the product’s price.
    3. Coverage the cap would have had: The recommendation applied to items outside price control as well, which is where the largest margins sit.
    4. Ten years without action: The recommendations were not implemented and patients continue to pay unjustified margins on many medicines and consumables, which contributes to medical impoverishment.

    What three steps does the proposal put forward?

    1. Purchase price on the bill: State FDAs can direct every private hospital to print, for medicines and consumables above a set value, both the price the hospital paid and the price it is charging, which gives the patient the ground to seek a discount or to buy from another source.
    2. Statutory price regulation extended: The Centre should extend price regulation to all essential medicines and medical consumables, since the present 18 per cent coverage is applied in a manner that is often over-permissive. This requires amendments to the Drug (Prices Control) Order, with the Department of Pharmaceuticals and the NPPA carrying it.
    3. A patient right already in force: Maharashtra’s FDA ordered in 2016, and again in 2022, that hospitals cannot force admitted patients to buy medicines only from the hospital pharmacy. The National Consumer Commission has called such compulsion an unfair trade practice, the right appears in the National Patients’ Rights Charter, and every hospital must display it.

    Challenges to statutory price control of medicines

    1. Scope tied to a list: A ceiling price binds only a formulation carried on the National List of Essential Medicines, so a product that moves outside the list escapes it. Eg. The list was revised in 2015 and again in 2022, leaving a long interval in which newer formulations stayed uncontrolled.
      The Fix: Fix a statutory revision cycle for the list, so a new formulation is assessed for inclusion on a schedule rather than at discretion.
    2. Devices and consumables outside formulation control: A syringe, a drip set or a mask is not a formulation, so it falls outside a price control system built around medicines. Eg. The NPPA had to notify cardiac stents and knee implants separately in 2017 to bring each under a ceiling price.
      The Fix: Bring consumables and implants under a single trade margin ceiling that applies by value rather than by product notification.
    3. Trade margin rationalisation used selectively: The regulator has capped trade margins on small sets of products rather than across the board, so the instrument exists without reach. Eg. In 2019 the NPPA capped trade margins at 30 per cent on 42 non-scheduled anti-cancer medicines.
      The Fix: Publish the purchase-to-billing margin for each notified product from hospital procurement records, so a cap is auditable rather than self-declared.
    4. Enforcement sits with understaffed state machinery: A ceiling price is notified centrally but detected at the point of sale by state drug inspectors, whose sanctioned strength is low. Eg. The Mashelkar Committee of 2003 recorded that state drug control departments were understaffed and recommended a centralised national drug authority.
      The Fix: Publish state-wise inspector strength and the amount of overcharging recovered against notified ceiling prices every year, so weak enforcement is visible before it is litigated.

    Conclusion

    Price regulation in India has been built around what a medicine may cost, not around what a seller may add to it. The patient’s money goes into the margin, so the margin is the variable that has to be capped, and a cap on it works whether or not the product is on any list. The test now is whether the Department of Pharmaceuticals acts on a margin cap that has been before it for a decade, or leaves billing disclosure to whichever state regulator chooses to order it.

    Health financing in India

    1. Public health expenditure: Government spending on health stands at 1.9 per cent of GDP, against the National Health Policy, 2017 target of 2.5 per cent, with the Centre’s own share at 0.29 per cent of GDP.
    2. Public and private together: Combined health expenditure is 3.8 per cent of GDP, so most health spending in India is private spending.
    3. Out-of-pocket expenditure: Payments households make directly at the point of care, without insurance or public cover absorbing them, fell from 55 per cent of health spending in 2017-18 to 39.4 per cent in 2021-22.
    4. The missing middle: About 30 per cent of the population carries no health insurance of any kind, being above the eligibility line for public cover and below the reach of private cover.

    Government Initiatives for affordable medicines and care

    1. Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana: Run by the Department of Pharmaceuticals, it sells quality generic medicines at low prices through Jan Aushadhi Kendras, aimed at patients paying for medicines themselves.
    2. AMRIT outlets: Affordable Medicines and Reliable Implants for Treatment stores inside government hospitals sell cancer and cardiovascular medicines, implants and devices at discounted prices.
    3. Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana: Provides hospitalisation cover to eligible households at empanelled public and private hospitals, with over 43.52 crore Ayushman cards created.
    4. Ayushman Vay Vandana: Extends a Rs 5 lakh health cover to citizens aged 70 and above irrespective of income, with over 93 lakh cards issued.

    Back2Basics: National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority

    1. What it is: An attached office of the Department of Pharmaceuticals under the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, set up in 1997 as the price regulator for medicines.
    2. Core function: It fixes and revises the ceiling prices of scheduled formulations and monitors the prices of medicines that are not under ceiling control.
    3. Recovery power: It can demand the amount overcharged, along with interest, from a company that sells above a notified ceiling price.
    4. Policy role: It advises the Centre on pricing policy for drugs and on changes to the Drug (Prices Control) Order.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS2, 15 marks] In a crucial domain like the public healthcare system, the Indian State should play a vital role to contain the adverse impact of marketisation of the system. Suggest some measures through which the State can enhance the reach of public healthcare at the grassroots level.”

  • From a jan sunwai in Delhi, lessons for poll body

    Why in the News

    Residents of Mangolpuri in Delhi lined up at a jan sunwai, a public hearing, to file claims and objections against being wrongfully excluded from the draft Special Intensive Revision (SIR) voter list. The hearing produced a documented record of wrongful deletion in every category the draft roll used. The draft roll had been published four days earlier, with over 47 lakh names in Delhi marked absent, permanently shifted, dead or duplicate (ASDD). A further 11 lakh voters were dropped from the list altogether and 32 lakh were to receive notices, so one in two voters in Delhi was trying to get a name back on the roll. The Chief Election Commissioner has certified the process, on the claim that zero appeals have been filed against deletions in the 12 states where the revision is complete. A certification of no grievance and a public record of proven error cannot both describe the same exercise.

    How does the Special Intensive Revision work?

    1. About: The SIR is a house to house revision of the electoral roll in which every voter files a fresh enumeration form.
    2. Draft roll: The revision produces a draft list. Voters then file claims and objections against exclusion from it.
    3. Markings on exclusion: A name not carried forward is marked absent, permanently shifted, dead or duplicate (ASDD). Other names are dropped from the list outright or issued notices.
    4. Logical discrepancies: Mismatches that the software throws up against older entries are recorded as “logical discrepancies”.

    What did the Mangolpuri public audit find?

    1. Wrongful deletion in every category: The audit showed wrongful deletions across all the ASDD categories.
    2. Spouses split: In 95 houses one spouse was marked as shifted. The other spouse remained on the SIR list.
    3. An elector marked dead: An elector named Kanta Prasad, recorded as dead, came to the microphone at the hearing and asked what he could do to come back to life.
    4. The basis for that entry: The Chief Electoral Officer’s press note said he was placed in the dead category on information furnished by a family member. That family member is his son.
    5. The son’s account: The son has recorded a statement that he was tricked into signing a blank sheet of paper, on the pretext that it would restore his father’s name.
    6. A resettlement colony: Mangolpuri is a resettlement colony. The scale of deletion there caused extreme insecurity among residents.

    What six lessons does the public audit yield for the poll body?

    1. Three mandated house visits: The booth level officer (BLO) cannot complete the mandated three visits to every house, whatever orders are passed. Many houses were not visited even once.
    2. Burden of registration: De novo filling of enumeration forms by all voters shifts the burden of voter registration from the Election Commission to the voter, and is bound to produce mass exclusions. In 2002 booth level officers instead used the previously frozen voter list to verify additions and deletions house to house.
    3. Lineage based proof of citizenship: Proving citizenship by mapping oneself or one’s direct lineage onto the 2002 voter list has proved a nightmare. It falls hardest on migrant workers and on women who have shifted after marriage.
    4. Amplified data entry errors: The logical discrepancies amplify wrong data entries made over the years. The burden of correcting data that the administration entered wrongly falls on the citizen.
    5. Grievance redress machinery: The appeal and grievance redress process lies with the same machinery that is implementing the exercise. The system is arbitrary by design and must go.
    6. Public hearing before deletion: The election manual already provides for a public hearing at the panchayat, ward or booth level before any name is deleted or added. Those provisions must be implemented in letter and spirit.

    What does the poll body’s response to the audit show?

    1. A press note in defence of the deletions: Two days after the hearing the Chief Electoral Officer’s office responded through a press note. It stood by its deletions in all six cases it addressed.
    2. Restoration treated as first time registration: A wrongly deleted voter is required to return to the roll by filling Form 6. That form makes the voter declare that they are “applying for inclusion in the electoral roll for the first time”, which is false in their case.
    3. Accountability not offered: No redress or accountability was offered for the incorrect deletions the audit established.

    Can a citizen led public audit become part of revising the roll?

    1. A demonstrated method: The audit did not merely prove incorrect exclusions. It also demonstrated an efficacious method to update and revise the electoral roll.
    2. Ignored by the Commission: The Election Commission has almost entirely ignored that method.
    3. Orders that cannot be executed: The Chief Electoral Officers of Karnataka, Telangana and Jharkhand have issued perfunctory orders for such hearings. One day has been allocated for the purpose, so the orders can never be carried out.

    Conclusion

    A revision that begins from a blank form makes the voter prove an entitlement the law already grants. The poll body’s own certification and the record produced at a public hearing cannot both be accurate. Nothing in the process decides between them, because the authority that deletes a name also hears the appeal against it. That is the question this exercise leaves open. What to watch is whether additions and deletions are put through an independent public audit before a roll is finalised, and Delhi is where that safeguard would be tested first.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2026, GS2, 10 marks] Is the right to vote a fundamental right? Discuss the position of the Election Commission of India while undertaking the revision of electoral rolls. Can it also examine the question of citizenship of voters?”

  • Reiterating the basics of criminalisation

    Why in the News

    The Supreme Court has held that the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986 is “still-born” and that proceedings under it cannot survive. A two-judge Bench decided this in Shiv Pratap Singh vs. State of U.P. and Himanshu Srivastava vs. State of U.P. The Bench found that the Act never created an offence at all. Who counts as a gangster was fixed by Rules framed under the Act, so the determination was left to the “ipse dixit of the Executive”, an assertion resting on official say-so rather than on proof. The Act had governed gangsters and anti-social activities in the State for four decades. The contest is between a State’s claim to a special law against organised crime and the constitutional requirement that only a legislature may create a crime.

    What is the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986?

    1. Subject matter: The Act was the State’s dedicated special law against gangsters and anti-social activities in Uttar Pradesh.
    2. Determination of a gangster: The Act defines a gangster. Who is a gangster for the purpose of punishment is prescribed in the Rules framed under the Act.
    3. Gang chart: Chapter 3 prescribes the procedure for preparing the gang chart. This is the document through which administrative and police authorities record a person as a gangster.
    4. Section 23: Section 23 carries special provisions for trial and bail, together with the rule-making power.

    Why did the Court call the Act “still-born”?

    1. Creation of the crime: A penal law must create the crime by explicitly identifying the act made punishable. The Court applied the definition of “offence” in the General Clauses Act and concluded, “We cannot find any offence having been created.”
    2. Criminal law-making as a legislative function: Making an act or omission subject to penal consequences is “essentially a legislative function”. The Court held that this function “cannot be thrown away and left to sprout in the thicket of subordinate legislation”.
    3. Exclusion of the executive: The Rules left the determination of who a gangster is to the executive. The Court treated the exclusion of the executive from rule-making and from guilt determination as the desirable position.
    4. Punishment must follow the statute: The Court held that punishment must accord with what the penal law itself prescribes. A subordinate instrument cannot supply it.

    Why is criminal law-making reserved to the legislature?

    1. The definitional role: The role of defining crime and punishment is “assigned primarily and broadly to the legislature, secondarily and interstitially to the courts, and to no one else”. That formulation comes from Herbert L. Packer’s The Limits of the Criminal Sanction (1968).
    2. Deliberation before enactment: Enacting a criminal law through the legislature forces detailed debate and due deliberation. Subordinate legislation supplies neither.
    3. Unquestioned executive opinion: The problem arises when the opinions of the executive are accepted without question on categorisation and on punitive action.

    How does the principle of legality bar an executive-defined crime?

    1. Principle of legality: Criminalisation is rooted in the principle of legality. It requires the act and its punishment to exist in law before the conduct occurs.
    2. Two maxims: The principle draws on nullum crimen sine lege, no crime without law, and nulla poena sine lege, no punishment without law. An administrative classification satisfies neither.
    3. Bar on retrospective criminalisation: The principle also prohibits ex-post facto legislation. Conduct cannot be made punishable after it has taken place.
    4. Article 20(1): Article 20(1) creates a right against conviction except for violation of a law in force at the time of the act charged as an offence. It also bars a penalty greater than what the law in force prescribed.

    How did the Act turn a criminal trial into a formality?

    1. Status as the punishable thing: The Act punished mere status. That status was settled by administrative and police authorities rather than in court.
    2. Nothing left for the judge: Once the status is so determined, “nothing remains to be considered by the judicial officer but to punish him”, the Court held.
    3. A foregone conclusion: The Court described the end result of a trial under the Act as “a foregone conclusion, a statutory imprimatur to punish”.
    4. Culpability without reasons: Challenges in this and in earlier cases argued that executive authorities reached conclusions of culpability without verifiable evidence or reasoning.

    Can the gravity of a social menace justify an executive-defined offence?

    1. No licence for arbitrary action: However compelling or threatening the social menace, a penal enactment to curb it “cannot lead to arbitrary and capricious actions against the one, alleged with the commission of an offence”, the Court held.
    2. Loose labelling in public life: Indian public discourse applies labels such as deshdrohi and “urban naxal” at will. Precise definition of categories such as crime and offence is what keeps that habit out of statute.
    3. A reform agenda: The ruling sets out an agenda for reform of the Gangsters Act. It also restates the limits within which enforcement agencies may operate.

    Conclusion

    A State penal law can name a social danger without ever defining the act it punishes. That is what this ruling ends. The reform it invites is legislative, because the offence, its ingredients and its punishment have to sit in the statute a legislature passes rather than in rules the executive writes afterwards. The marker to watch is whether Uttar Pradesh re-enacts its special law with the offence on the face of the statute, and whether other State special laws that punish a status recorded by police are now tested on the same ground.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2021] A legislation which confers on the executive or administrative authority an unguided and uncontrolled discretionary power in the matter of application of law violates which one of the following Articles of the Constitution of India? (a) Article 14 (b) Article 28 (c) Article 32 (d) Article 44 (a)”

  • A Malacca-Singapore model for resolving Hormuz

    A Malacca-Singapore model for resolving Hormuz

    Question (2022, GS1 – 15 Marks): “Mention the significance of straits and isthmus in international trade.
    Linkage: This highlights how narrow bottlenecks like the Straits of Hormuz, Malacca, and Singapore handle vital portions of global trade and energy flows, making the legal rights of transit passage across these straits crucial to global supply chains.
    [2026] Ships from which of the following countries have to cross the Strait of Hormuz to reach out to the Indian Ocean?
    1. Bahrain
    2. Syria
    3. Qatar
    4. Egypt
    Select the answer using the code given below:
    [A] 1 and 2
    [B] 1 and 3
    [C] 2 and 3
    [D] 3 and 4

    Mentor Comment

    Siege warfare continues in the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait has not reopened. The Straits of Malacca and Singapore settled a structurally similar problem in the 1970s, when the territorial sea claims of the littoral States met in the middle and left no high seas corridor through them. That settlement produced the transit passage regime in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and, in 2007, a Cooperative Mechanism funding navigation safety without any toll on shipping. Iran and Oman have apparently agreed on a framework for reopening Hormuz, and the United States has not accepted the arrangement. The tension is that the technical parallels between the two waterways are close while the conditions that made the Malacca settlement possible, a convention still being negotiated and great powers willing to trade, no longer exist.

    What is transit passage and how does it differ from innocent passage?

    1. Innocent passage: It is the right of a foreign vessel to pass through another State’s territorial sea. The coastal State may suspend it for security reasons, and it excludes submerged submarines.
    2. Transit passage: It is a right of passage through straits used for international navigation that connect areas of high seas or exclusive economic zones, in a “continuous and expeditious” manner with no stopping or loitering.
    3. Why the difference matters: Transit passage applies to warships as well, and cannot be suspended by the coastal State, so it goes beyond mere innocent passage.
    4. Where it comes from: The concept was introduced by the United Kingdom as UNCLOS entered its final phase of formulation in the 1970s, specifically to solve the problem of straits narrower than two territorial seas.

    How did the Malacca and Singapore Straits stop being treated as international waters?

    1. The geography: The Strait of Malacca runs some 800 kilometres between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, connecting the Andaman Sea to the Strait of Singapore. The Strait of Singapore, some 105 km long, connects onward to the South China Sea.
    2. Indonesia’s archipelagic claim: A newly decolonised Indonesia feared for the security of its individual islands and in 1957 declared that all waters “surrounding, between and connecting the islands” were Indonesian waters.
    3. The 12 nautical mile claims: Indonesia insisted its territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles from the outermost islands. Malaysia revised the stance it had taken at the 1958 UNCLOS conference and also announced a 12 nautical mile territorial sea, despite its 1963 armed conflict with Indonesia over Borneo.
    4. The closure of the corridor: At their narrowest points the Straits are well under 24 nautical miles wide, so once both States claimed 12 nautical mile territorial seas the zones met in the middle, leaving no strip of high seas or exclusive economic zone (EEZ) between them.
    5. The consequence under the law of the time: The Straits became simply territorial seas, where foreign vessels enjoyed only innocent passage, a right Indonesia or Malaysia could suspend.
    6. The 1971 joint statement: Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore jointly challenged the older international character of the Straits and proposed a coordinating body of representatives of the three States to administer them.
    7. Singapore’s reservation: As an island nation dependent on trade and shipping, Singapore did not agree to declaring the Straits “not international”, but made common cause with Malaysia on the safety of navigation.

    How did the great powers respond to the littoral claim?

    1. Japan, cooperation over internationalisation: Japan was a major player through the Japan funded Malacca Strait Council, and offered cooperation with the three States rather than seeking an internationalised regime.
    2. The United States and the Soviet Union, aligned: Otherwise rivals, they were allies on this one issue, seeking to keep the Straits open for ships to retain the right of “continued, politically uncluttered transit”.
    3. The United Kingdom, a legal solution: It introduced the transit passage concept, which preserved great power naval mobility while conceding the littoral States’ territorial claim.
    4. Indonesia, a traded concession: It agreed to the transit passage formulation with reservations, trading its acceptance for greater security for its archipelago, which UNCLOS eventually addressed separately.
    5. Malaysia, technical conditions: Its concerns centred on environmental safety, insurance requirements and permissible vessel draught rather than on the passage right itself.

    What did the 2007 Cooperative Mechanism actually settle?

    1. What it built on: In 2007 the three States, working with the international community, arrived at a Cooperative Mechanism built on a traffic separation scheme similar to what Iran and Oman had agreed for the Strait of Hormuz in the 1960s.
    2. The core bargain: User States and industry contribute to a fund for aids to navigation, hydrographic surveys and safety projects, administered jointly with the littoral States.
    3. Who funds it: The Aids to Navigation Fund is supported by voluntary contributions from non profit organisations such as The Nippon Foundation and the International Foundation for Aids to Navigation, along with industry stakeholders and States with an interest in safe use of the Straits.
    4. How it is governed: The fund is administered on a rotation basis by a committee of representatives of the three littoral States and the contributors.
    5. The line that makes it work: These contributions do not amount to tolls, and Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore impose no fees, tolls or any other payment on ships exercising the right of transit passage.

    Where does the Hormuz geography match the Malacca case?

    1. The intersecting territorial seas: The territorial waters of Iran and Oman intersect, making sections of the Strait of Hormuz part of their territorial waters, which is the same structural condition that closed the high seas corridor through Malacca.
    2. The precedent already borrowed: The traffic separation scheme that the 2007 Cooperative Mechanism built on was itself modelled on the Iran and Oman arrangement of the 1960s, so the two waterways have shared technical machinery before.
    3. A regional sponsor exists: Qatar is among the Persian Gulf nations that have supported the Iran and Oman talks, and it had also mooted the Malacca and Singapore Straits as a model.
    4. Cooperation has precedent in the Gulf: Persian Gulf nations have a history of both conflict and cooperation, and the United Arab Emirates was among Iran’s leading trading partners.

    Why can the Malacca settlement not simply be transplanted?

    1. The convention moment has passed: The Malacca issue was resolved as UNCLOS itself was being put into effect, when trade offs were part of negotiating a convention intended to govern the world’s oceans. No comparable bargaining table exists now.
    2. One party is outside the convention: Iran has not ratified UNCLOS, so the transit passage compromise that bound the Malacca littorals does not bind it in the same way.
    3. A contrary domestic law is in force: In 1993 Iran passed a law requiring foreign warships to seek its authorisation to pass through the Strait, and this continues to be a sore point.
    4. The core issue is different: In the Malacca and Singapore Straits the key concerns were safety of navigation and the environment. In the Strait of Hormuz the key issue is Iran’s security, which no navigation fund can answer.
    5. The decisive user State may refuse: Even if the Gulf nations arrive at a framework they all agree on, the United States has shown it may not accept it, and it has not accepted the Iran and Oman framework already reached.

    Challenges to building a cooperative mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz

    1. A funding model cannot address a security demand: The Malacca fund bought navigation safety, which was what the littorals wanted. Hormuz is closed over sanctions and military pressure, which money does not purchase. Eg. The Iran and Oman framework has been agreed without the Strait reopening.
      The Fix: Pair any navigation mechanism with a separate sanctions and de escalation track, so the technical body is not asked to carry a political settlement it cannot deliver.
    2. Voluntary contributions leave the mechanism hostage to the largest funder: A body financed by user States and industry depends on the continued participation of the states with the biggest stake. Eg. The Aids to Navigation Fund for the Malacca and Singapore Straits rests on voluntary contributions from foundations and industry.
      The Fix: Fix assessed minimum contributions by volume of transiting tonnage, so the mechanism’s budget is not renegotiated every cycle.
    3. India’s exposure is concentrated and cannot be hedged quickly: A large share of India’s crude and liquefied petroleum gas moves through this one waterway, so a closure transmits directly into domestic fuel prices. Eg. Brent crude crossed $120 per barrel during the Hormuz blockade.
      The Fix: Accelerate use of the pipelines that bypass the Gulf, including the East West pipeline across Saudi Arabia and the Habshan to Fujairah line, and raise strategic petroleum reserve cover.
    4. War risk insurance can close a strait without a blockade: Premiums rise faster than any legal regime can respond, and a shipowner withdraws tonnage on commercial grounds alone. Eg. Marine war risk premiums for vessels entering the Gulf rose by over 1,000 percent during the crisis.
      The Fix: Create a sovereign backed reinsurance facility for Indian flagged and Indian chartered tonnage on the route, so freight does not stop before the diplomacy concludes.
    5. Seafarer safety has no institutional owner in a closure: Crews remain aboard commercial vessels inside a contested waterway with no flag State machinery to extract them. Eg. Nearly 700 Indian sailors were stuck on commercial ships near Hormuz during the 2026 crisis.
      The Fix: Negotiate a standing humanitarian corridor protocol with the littoral States covering crew relief and medical evacuation, activated automatically on a declared closure.

    Conclusion

    The two waterways share a legal problem and not a political one. Malacca was settled because the littoral claim could be traded inside a larger convention that every major power wanted concluded, and Hormuz offers no equivalent prize to trade against Iran’s security demand. The two things that cannot both hold are a littoral framework built by the Gulf States themselves and a user State that reserves the right to reject it. What to watch is whether the Iran and Oman framework attracts the acceptance of the principal user States, since the Strait’s reopening now turns on that acceptance rather than on the framework’s contents.

    Maritime Choke Points and India

    1. What a choke point is: It is a narrow section of a shipping route where traffic must converge, so a disruption at that point affects a disproportionate share of global trade and cannot be routed around cheaply.
    2. India’s exposure: India imports close to 85 percent of its crude requirement, and a large majority of its liquefied petroleum gas supply moves through the Strait of Hormuz, making the waterway a direct input into domestic energy prices.
    3. The eastern approach: The Strait of Malacca is the corresponding eastern choke point, through which a reported 60 percent of India’s trade passes, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands sit at its western approach.
    4. The other two that matter: The Gulf of Aden with the Bab el Mandeb, and the Suez Canal, complete the set on India’s westward routes to Europe, Africa and the Americas.

    Government Initiatives on Maritime Security and Choke Point Resilience

    1. Information Fusion Centre, Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR): Established at Gurugram to build maritime domain awareness across the region, it hosts international liaison officers and links with partner centres including the European Union’s Maritime Security Centre for the Horn of Africa.
    2. SAGAR and MAHASAGAR: Security and Growth for All in the Region is India’s maritime cooperation doctrine for the Indian Ocean littoral, covering capacity building, hydrography, surveillance and disaster response for smaller island and coastal States.
    3. Chabahar Port: India Ports Global Limited took over operations of the Shahid Beheshti terminal under a 10 year agreement signed in 2024, giving India a sea and land route to Afghanistan and Central Asia that avoids the Pakistan corridor.
    4. India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC): A rail and shipping corridor linking India to Europe through the Gulf and Israel, intended as a land and sea bridge that reduces dependence on the Suez route.
    5. Strategic Petroleum Reserves: Underground crude storage at Visakhapatnam, Mangaluru and Padur is held by Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited, with further capacity approved, to cover supply interruption at the import choke points.

    Back2Basics

    1. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS): Adopted in 1982 and in force from 1994, it is the framework treaty setting out the rights and duties of States in the use of the oceans.
    2. The maritime zones it fixes: A 12 nautical mile territorial sea, a 24 nautical mile contiguous zone, and a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone measured from the baseline.
    3. Its dispute machinery: Disputes may go to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea at Hamburg, the International Court of Justice, or arbitration under the Convention’s annexes.
    4. Membership relevant here: India ratified UNCLOS in 1995. Iran has signed but not ratified it, which is why its 1993 law on warship authorisation sits outside the Convention’s transit passage regime.