Why in the News?

• A recent Delhi-NCR air pollution report tabled in Parliament has highlighted the urgent need to curb vehicular emissions, recommending a comprehensive review of India’s emission standards.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Air Pollution (Parliamentary Panel Recommendations, Need to Strengthen Vehicular Emission, Adoption of Electric Vehicles, Air Purifiers, NAAQS, Stubble Burning, etc.)

Delhi-NCR Air Pollution: Parliamentary Panel Calls for Stronger Standards and Systemic Reforms

• Air pollution in Delhi-NCR continues to be one of India’s most complex environmental challenges, driven by vehicular emissions, industrial activities, stubble burning, and unfavourable meteorological conditions.
• A recent report by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change has made several policy recommendations aimed at strengthening India’s regulatory and technological response to deteriorating air quality.
• These recommendations are designed to guide government action, address existing gaps, and protect vulnerable populations.

Need to Strengthen Vehicular Emission Standards

• Vehicular emissions remain a major contributor to Delhi-NCR’s particulate matter and ozone levels.
• The panel has emphasised that a comprehensive review of India’s vehicular emission standards is necessary to align with evolving scientific knowledge and global best practices.
• While acknowledging the government’s push for ethanol blending to enhance energy security, the panel cautioned against unintended environmental impacts.
• Increased nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from ethanol-blended fuels and the problem of evaporative emissions, fuel vapours escaping from vehicles and generating ground-level ozone, require closer scrutiny.
• To mitigate this, the panel recommended adopting more stringent evaporative emission standards, which would require automobile manufacturers to incorporate better emission control systems.
• This is crucial for India’s transition to cleaner fuels and sustainable mobility.

Encouraging Adoption of Electric Vehicles

• The report highlights that while India aims to increase the adoption of EVs, several bottlenecks continue to hinder progress.
• To accelerate EV uptake, the committee suggested a combination of incentives and disincentives:

• Cheaper or free public parking for EVs
• Higher parking rates for petrol and diesel vehicles
• Offering tax incentives on EV loans
• Considering an annual ceiling on the registration of non-electric vehicles in Delhi-NCR

• These measures aim to shift consumer behaviour while simultaneously easing the region’s pollution burden.

Air Purifiers in Schools, Hospitals, and Government Offices

• Children and patients are among the most vulnerable to toxic air. The committee therefore recommended mandatory installation of air purifiers in:

• All public schools in Delhi-NCR
• All public hospitals, especially the critical wards
• All government offices

• It also pointed out that levying GST on air purifiers, devices essential for mitigating public health risks, effectively “monetises a public health failure.”
• The panel suggested abolishing or reducing GST on air purifiers and HEPA filters to increase accessibility.

Upgrading National Ambient Air Quality Standards

• The panel called for the Centre to expedite the revision of National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).
• These standards, last updated in 2009, need to reflect new scientific research, health data, and WHO benchmarks.
• The committee also recommended installing pollution-cutting devices in all thermal power plants within a 300-km radius of Delhi-NCR.
• This would ensure a significant reduction in SO₂, NOx, and particulate emissions from one of the region’s largest polluting sources.
• Delhi’s PM2.5 levels, the report noted, must fall by 62% to meet India’s air quality norms and by 95% to meet WHO standards, indicating the magnitude of intervention required.

Monitoring Stubble Burning More Effectively

• Stubble burning remains a recurrent seasonal crisis in North India. The panel expressed concern that some farmers are finding ways to evade satellite detection of crop fires.
• To strengthen enforcement, the committee recommended:

• Launch of a high-resolution ISRO satellite dedicated to monitoring farm fires 24×7
• Integration of satellite data with digital farm records for real-time tracking

• This would help the government respond more effectively while also supporting early warning systems and targeted assistance programmes.

Holistic Approach to Air Quality Management

• The report stresses that no single policy can solve the region’s pollution crisis. Instead, a coordinated approach, combining emissions control, technological investment, regulatory reform, and behavioural incentives, is essential.
• By addressing systemic issues in transportation, energy production, agriculture, and urban infrastructure, the recommendations aim to align Delhi-NCR’s air quality management with global best practices.

Context

• India’s reported 8.2% GDP growth in the second quarter generated widespread optimism and celebratory media coverage.
• However, this enthusiasm coincided with a critical development: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) assigned India’s national accounts statistics a ‘C’ grade, the second lowest possible.
• This assessment raised serious concerns about the credibility and reliability of India’s GDP and Gross Value Added (GVA) estimates.
• The limited media attention given to this issue underscores both statistical weaknesses and failures in economic journalism, warranting closer examination.

IMF’s Assessment of India’s National Accounts

• What the ‘C’ Grade Indicate?
  • The IMF’s grading reflects the quality, consistency, and transparency of national economic data.
  • India’s ‘C’ grade indicates significant deficiencies in data compilation and methodology, casting doubt on headline growth figures.
  • When strong growth numbers coexist with low data credibility, economic performance becomes difficult to interpret accurately.
• Media Response to the IMF Report
  • Despite the seriousness of the IMF’s evaluation, most mainstream and financial newspapers offered minimal coverage.
  • Only limited reporting brought the issue to public attention, while many outlets either ignored it or relegated it to less visible pages.
  • This lack of prominence prevented informed public debate and reinforced a one-sided growth narrative.

Methodological Issues in GDP Estimation

• Reliance on the Organised Sector as a Proxy
  • A central concern lies in India’s method of estimating the unorganised sector.
  • Growth in the informal economy is calculated using organised sector data as a proxy, despite the unorganised sector, excluding agriculture, accounting for around 30% of GDP.
  • Estimating such a large segment indirectly raises serious questions about accuracy and reliability.
• Divergence Between Organised and Unorganised Sectors
  • This proxy-based approach assumes that organised and unorganised sectors move in the same direction.
  • However, this assumption fails during periods of disruption. Events such as demonetisation, the introduction of GST, and the COVID-19 pandemic affected the two sectors very differently.
  • While the organised sector expanded or recovered, the unorganised sector contracted sharply, resulting in systematic overestimation of economic growth.

Challenges in Quarterly GDP Estimates

• Dependence on Assumptions and Historical Trends
  • Quarterly GDP estimates face additional limitations due to the absence of comprehensive high-frequency data.
  • As a result, calculations rely heavily on assumptions, past trends, and historical relationships rather than real-time information.
  • During periods of structural change, these assumptions become increasingly unreliable.
• Implications for Reported Growth Rates
  • The celebrated 8.2% quarterly growth figure must therefore be viewed cautiously.
  • Given the methodological constraints and data gaps, quarterly estimates may reflect statistical modelling rather than actual economic conditions, especially in the informal sector.

Can the IMF’s Concerns Be Resolved?

• Limits of Methodological Revisions
  • Efforts are underway to update the GDP base year and revise estimation methods, but such technical changes alone cannot address deeper structural problems.
  • The lack of direct, reliable data on the unorganised sector remains a fundamental weakness in India’s national accounts system.
• A Pessimistic Expert Assessment
  • Expert assessments suggest that fully resolving the IMF’s concerns is unlikely in the near future.
  • The challenges are systemic, rooted in data collection capacity rather than merely calculation techniques.

The Role of the Media in Economic Understanding

• Media as an Informational Gatekeeper
  • The media plays a crucial role in shaping public understanding of economic performance.
  • By downplaying or ignoring critical evaluations, it limits the public’s ability to interpret growth figures critically and independently.
• Consequences of Media Silence
  • This selective reporting results in an uninformed public and weakened accountability.
  • When methodological flaws are sidelined, policymakers face less scrutiny, and economic narratives remain incomplete.

Conclusion

• The IMF’s low grading of India’s national accounts highlights serious weaknesses in GDP estimation, particularly concerning the unorganised sector and quarterly data compilation.
• While headline growth figures may appear strong, their credibility is undermined by methodological limitations and inadequate data.
• The media’s failure to engage meaningfully with these issues further compounds the problem.
• Sustainable and credible economic assessment requires transparent statistical practices and responsible journalism, without which growth narratives risk becoming misleading rather than informative.

Why in news?

India’s resolution on “Strengthening the Global Management of Wildfires” was adopted at the 7th session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-7) in Nairobi.

Backed by broad support from Member States, the move underscores global acknowledgement of the growing wildfire threat and the need for coordinated international action.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• UN Environment Assembly (UNEA): An Overview
• Wildfires as a Growing Global Environmental Risk
• Towards Integrated Fire Management
• Other Highlights of UNEA-7

UN Environment Assembly (UNEA): An Overview

• UNEA is the world’s highest-level decision-making body on environmental matters.
• It provides a global platform for addressing pressing environmental challenges.
• UNEA was established in 2012 following the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) held in Brazil, as part of efforts to strengthen global environmental governance.
• Membership and Participation
  • UNEA has universal membership, comprising all 193 UN Member States, with active participation from major groups and stakeholders.
  • It convenes every two years in Nairobi, Kenya, bringing together environment ministers from across the world.
• Functions and Mandate
  • UNEA:
    • Sets the global environmental agenda
    • Provides overarching policy guidance and responses to emerging environmental issues
    • Reviews policies, facilitates dialogue, and promotes exchange of experiences
    • Defines the strategic direction of UNEP
    • Encourages partnerships and mobilises resources for environmental goals
• UNEA-7 (2025) Session
  • The seventh session of UNEA (2025) is being held in Nairobi, Kenya, under the theme: “Advancing sustainable solutions for a resilient planet.”

Wildfires as a Growing Global Environmental Risk

• India highlighted that wildfires have evolved from seasonal events into frequent and prolonged disasters worldwide.
• Climate change, rising temperatures, extended droughts, and human activities are driving increases in their scale and intensity, causing widespread ecological and economic damage.
• Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts
  • Each year, millions of hectares are affected by fires, leading to the loss of forests and biodiversity, degradation of water and soil health, deterioration of air quality, and disruption of livelihoods.
  • Wildfires also emit large volumes of greenhouse gases, weaken carbon sinks, and severely impact forest-dependent communities and national economies.
• Scientific Warnings and Need for Proactive Action
  • Citing UNEP’s Spreading Like Wildfire report, India noted projections that wildfires could increase by 14% by 2030, 30% by 2050, and 50% by 2100 if current trends persist.
  • These findings underline wildfires as a long-term, climate-driven global risk requiring coordinated international action and a shift from reactive response to proactive prevention.

Towards Integrated Fire Management

• India emphasised a global transition towards Integrated Fire Management, focusing on early-warning systems, risk mapping, satellite-based monitoring, and the involvement of local communities and frontline personnel.
• UNEP’s role in supporting adaptation, ecosystem restoration, and strategy development was underscored, along with the importance of the Global Fire Management Hub established by FAO and UNEP in 2023.
• Key Provisions of the Resolution
  • The resolution calls for:
    • Stronger international cooperation on early-warning systems, risk assessment tools, ecosystem monitoring, and community-based alerts.
    • Enhanced regional and global collaboration for prevention, recovery, and ecosystem restoration.
    • Knowledge sharing and capacity building through best-practice platforms and training programmes.
    • Support for national and regional action plans on integrated fire management and wildfire resilience.
    • Improved access to international finance, including assistance in project preparation for multilateral and results-based funding mechanisms.

Other Highlights of UNEA-7

• The seventh session of UNEA ended in Nairobi with the adoption of 11 resolutions.
• This marked both strong multilateral environmental commitments and sharp political disagreements, most notably the United States’ withdrawal from all resolution negotiations.
• Wide Range of Environmental Issues Addressed
  • Alongside the wildfire resolution, UNEA-7 adopted decisions on:
    • coral reef protection,
    • minerals and metals governance,
    • sargassum management,
    • chemicals and waste,
    • antimicrobial resistance,
    • AI sustainability,
    • glacier and cryosphere protection,
    • youth participation, and
    • coordination among multilateral environmental agreements.
  • With Jamaica set to assume the Presidency for UNEA-8, member states emphasised the need to rebuild trust, strengthen multilateral cooperation, and sustain momentum in the face of escalating global environmental crises.
• US Withdrawal Casts a Shadow Over the Assembly
  • Despite broad consensus on several issues, UNEA-7 was overshadowed by the US decision to disengage from negotiations.
  • Washington criticised resolutions for including contentious language and themes beyond UNEA’s environmental mandate, disassociated itself from all adopted outcomes, and signalled a review of its participation in global environmental bodies.
  • Diplomats described the US stance as a setback for collective environmental ambition.
  • Several delegates warned that disengagement could undermine progress on chemicals management, biodiversity loss linked to climate change, and environmental finance.

Why in news?

The World Inequality Report 2026 highlights stark and widening global disparities. It shows that the top 10% of income earners receive more than the remaining 90% combined, while the poorest half earns under 10% of global income.

Wealth inequality is even sharper, with the top 10% owning about 75% of global wealth and the bottom 50% holding just 2%.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Deep Regional Divides in Income Levels
• Inequality Debates Miss the Core Issue
• Public Investment: The Strongest Equaliser
• Education as a Pathway to Reducing Inequality
• The Nexus between Inequality, Education and Growth
• Conclusion

Deep Regional Divides in Income Levels

• Global averages mask vast regional inequalities. The world is divided into income tiers:
  • High-income regions: North America & Oceania, Europe
  • Middle-income regions: Russia & Central Asia, East Asia, Middle East & North Africa
  • Low-income, populous regions: Latin America, South & Southeast Asia (including India), Sub-Saharan Africa
• Even after adjusting for price differences, income gaps remain extreme.
• An average person in North America & Oceania earns about 13 times more than someone in Sub-Saharan Africa and three times the global average.
• Daily average income stands at around €125 in North America & Oceania versus €10 in Sub-Saharan Africa — and many earn far less than these averages.

Inequality Debates Miss the Core Issue

• Discussions often get stuck on whether inequality exists or how severe it is, diverting attention from more critical questions — especially which policies can actually reduce inequality.
• This distraction prevents meaningful engagement with solutions.

Public Investment: The Strongest Equaliser

• The report identifies public investment in education and health as the most powerful tool to reduce inequality.
• Free, high-quality schools, universal healthcare, childcare, and nutrition programs help narrow early-life gaps, promote lifelong learning, and ensure that opportunity depends on talent and effort rather than background.
• Education Spending: A 1-to-41 Gap Across Regions
  • Public education expenditure varies dramatically by region.
  • In 2025, average government spending per school-age individual (ages 0–24) ranged from €220 in Sub-Saharan Africa to €9,025 in North America & Oceania (PPP, 2025 prices).
  • This represents an almost 1:41 gap, underlining how unequal public investment reinforces global inequality.

The Nexus between Inequality, Education and Growth

• The Inequality–Education–Growth Nexus describes a critical relationship where these three factors reinforce one another.
• High economic inequality creates a vicious cycle
  • Poor families face credit constraints, limiting investment in quality education for their children.
  • This leads to educational inequality and an inefficient allocation of human capital across the workforce.
  • The result is lower aggregate productivity, slower innovation, and ultimately, dampened long-term economic growth.
  • Conversely, promoting educational equity for all fuels a virtuous cycle, raising the entire nation's skill level, boosting productivity, and generating inclusive, sustained economic growth that helps reduce inequality over time.

Education as a Pathway to Reducing Inequality

• Education is widely recognised as a key tool for reducing economic, social, and environmental inequalities.
• SDG 4 reflects the global commitment to “leave no one behind.” While access to education has expanded, gains have largely benefited the least marginalised, leaving deep inequalities unresolved.
• Instead of fostering social mobility and cohesion, many education systems are reinforcing existing fault lines.
• Marginalised communities remain underserved due to gaps in funding, weak data systems, and exclusionary practices, limiting their access to broader social and economic opportunities.

Conclusion

• Inequality is not only about income and wealth distribution but also about who gets access to quality public services.
• Without substantial and equitable public investment — especially in education — global and national inequalities will continue to widen rather than narrow.

Context:

• India has long viewed the oceans as central to global equity and its own future.
• During the negotiation of United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it stood with vulnerable island states to uphold the seabed as the “common heritage of mankind,” reflecting a principled commitment to fairness.
• This stance built on Jawaharlal Nehru’s early recognition of the ocean’s importance to India’s security and prosperity.
• Today, as climate change, rising sea levels, and overfishing place unprecedented stress on marine ecosystems—especially in the highly vulnerable Indian Ocean—India again faces a historic responsibility.
• The challenge now is to lead in practice, transforming the Indian Ocean into a space of sustainability, innovation, and resilience rather than competition.
• This article highlights India’s historic responsibility and emerging opportunity to transform the Indian Ocean into the cradle of a new blue economy—anchored in sustainability, resilience, equity, and cooperative regional leadership.

India’s Blue Ocean Strategy: A New Vision for the Indian Ocean

• India’s proposed Blue Ocean Strategy rests on three core pillars—stewardship, resilience, and inclusive growth.
• This is aimed at transforming the Indian Ocean into a zone of cooperation and sustainability rather than rivalry.
• Stewardship of the Ocean Commons
  • India should reinforce the idea of the Indian Ocean as a shared global commons.
  • By promoting ecosystem restoration, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable fisheries, India can lead cooperative ocean governance and discourage competitive exploitation.
• Building Climate Resilience
  • With climate risks intensifying, India can champion resilience by creating a Regional Resilience and Ocean Innovation Hub.
  • Such a platform would enhance ocean monitoring, early-warning systems, and technology transfer to vulnerable island and African coastal states.
• Promoting Inclusive and Green Growth
  • Sectors like green shipping, offshore renewables, sustainable aquaculture, and marine biotechnology offer climate-compatible growth opportunities.
  • Unlocking this potential requires long-term investment and coordinated regional action.

Global Finance Turning Blue

• Recent global initiatives signal rising financial commitment to ocean action.
• Forums like Blue Economy and Finance Forum (BEFF) 2025 and COP30 have mobilised tens of billions of dollars for blue economy projects, bringing oceans firmly into climate finance priorities.
  • At the 2025 BEFF in Monaco, stakeholders showcased a €25 billion pipeline of ocean investments and announced €8.7 billion in new commitments, evenly split between public and private sources.
  • Public development banks, through the Finance in Common Ocean Coalition, pledged $7.5 billion annually, while the Development Bank of Latin America raised its blue economy target to $2.5 billion by 2030.
  • This push was reinforced at COP30 in Belém, where Brazil launched the One Ocean Partnership, committing to mobilise $20 billion for ocean action by 2030.
• India should capitalise on this momentum by establishing an Indian Ocean Blue Fund.
• Seeded by India and supported by development banks, philanthropy, and private investors, it could convert global pledges into tangible regional projects.

Security Through Sustainability in the Indian Ocean

• Debates on the Indian Ocean often focus on naval power and strategic competition, but true ocean security begins with protecting ecosystems and addressing climate threats.
• Challenges such as illegal fishing, coral degradation, and rising storm intensity undermine livelihoods and regional stability.
• India’s SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) doctrine reframes maritime security around sustainability, cooperation, and shared prosperity.
• By integrating environmental stewardship with maritime awareness, disaster response, and regional collaboration, India can promote a vision of responsibility over rivalry — positioning the Indian Ocean as a global model of sustainable and cooperative security.

India’s Enduring Environmental Vision

• India’s commitment to balancing development and environmental protection dates back to 1972, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi warned against impoverishing either people or nature — a principle that remains deeply relevant today.
• Recent forums such as COP30 in Belém and the G-20 Summit in Johannesburg have underscored the central role of marine and terrestrial ecosystems in climate stability, sustainable development, and resilience, while emphasising equity and finance for developing countries.
• Momentum is Building
  • With the outcomes of the 3rd United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3) in Nice, COP30 in Belém, and the entry into force of the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement, 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for ocean governance.
  • India’s potential ratification of BBNJ offers a chance to lead through innovations like green shipping corridors, blue bonds, inclusive technology transfer, and well-governed ocean carbon solutions.

India’s Opportunity to Lead the Indian Ocean Region

• India’s ocean diplomacy legacy gives it credibility, while its future ambitions confer responsibility.
• Through platforms like the Indian Ocean Rim Association, India can help shape a sustainable and just blue economy for the region.
• The challenge ahead is to translate vision into finance, partnerships, and lasting institutions.
• By leading with ambition, humility, and inclusivity, India can show that cooperation and solidarity in ocean governance can prevail over rivalry — and that the Indian Ocean can anchor a new, sustainable global future.

Context:

• India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem has historically been constrained by an overbearing regulatory framework shaped by statist interventions in 1956, 1967 and 1976.
• While the 1991 economic reforms partially restored trust between the state and markets, deregulation remains incomplete.
• The proposed Jan Vishwas Siddhant seeks to shift India from a permission-based regulatory regime to a trust-based governance model, with deep implications for entrepreneurship, job creation, and economic growth.

Core Argument:

• Entrepreneurship is inherently permissionless, protected under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution.
• However, India’s regulatory “cholesterol” has created systemic barriers that prevent firms from scaling, leading to a predominance of dwarfs rather than babies in India’s enterprise ecosystem.

Six Pathologies of India’s Regulatory Framework:

• Prior approval raj:
  • Excessive ex-ante approvals (based on forecast rather than actual results) undermine innovation. Entrepreneurs face almost 500 central and over 3,200 state-level approvals.
  • It contradicts the constitutional idea of freedom to practice any profession or business.
• Instrument proliferation:
  • Beyond Acts and Rules, the state uses notifications, circulars, guidelines, SOPs, FAQs, office orders, etc.
  • Over 12,000 estimated non-law, non-rule instruments affecting employers, and creates opacity, uncertainty, and compliance overload.
• Compliance blind spot:
  • Compliance is legally enforceable “shall” obligations, not guidance.
  • Policymakers focus on laws, ignoring cumulative compliance burden. For example, 2025 began with over 69,000 compliances.
  • Though labour codes reduced labour compliances by 75%, replication is pending.
• Enforcing the unenforceable:
  • Unenforceable laws breed corruption, discretion, and implementation gaps. Example, one inspector checking 3.3 lakh weight and measuring instruments.
  • It violates constitutional wisdom distinguishing Fundamental Rights from Directive Principles.
• Process as punishment:
  • Criminal provisions rarely lead to conviction but are used as threats.
  • It results in judicial backlog, regulatory harassment. Example: Cheque bounce criminalisation - constitute 43 lakh cases and 10% of court pendency.
• No single source of truth: Absence of a unified, live database of obligations. Entrepreneurs face unverifiable and outdated compliance demands, encouraging rent-seeking and corruption.

Jan Vishwas Siddhant - Key Features:

• Trust-based deregulation - “Everything is permitted till prohibited”: All licences outside the four areas of national security, public safety, human health and environment will be converted to perpetual self-registration.
• Risk-based and third-party inspections: Random, data-driven inspections to reduce inspector discretion.
• Decriminalisation and proportionality: Apply DPIIT decriminalisation principles across all laws. Replace jail terms with civil penalties where appropriate.
• Regulatory predictability: Mandatory consultations, adequate transition periods, annual fixed date for regulatory changes (e.g., January 1).
• Digitisation and legal clarity: Filings will be digitised, and regulatory instruments with penal provisions will be restricted to laws and rules.
• Single source of truth:
  • IndiaCode will become the live database with all Acts and rules, and after integration with e-gazette, a single source of truth for all obligations.
  • An annual regulatory impact assessment framework by all central ministries will lead to annual reports on compliance and punishment.

Challenges and Way Forward:

• Resistance from entrenched bureaucratic structures: Strengthen civil service performance management.
• Capacity constraints in risk-based regulation: Shift regulatory focus from micro-specification to outcomes.
• Need for coordination between Centre and States: Promote cooperative federalism in regulatory reforms.
• Ensuring accountability without over-regulation: Replicate labour law compliance rationalisation across sectors.

Conclusion:

• The Jan Vishwas Siddhant represents a paradigm shift from ruling to governing, and from praja (subjects) to nagrik (citizens).
• By freeing entrepreneurs from ijaazat and empowering them to focus on koshish, India can unlock non-farm job creation, firm scaling, and global competitiveness.
• Entrepreneurship thrives not on the absence of the state, but on a credible, minimal, and trust-based state—a necessary condition for India’s aspirations of mass prosperity and global power.

Why in news?

US President Donald Trump has launched the long-awaited ‘Gold Card’ visa programme, inviting individuals and companies to invest at least $1 million. The initiative aims to attract global talent, generate significant revenue for the US Treasury, and offer a faster, more advantageous route compared to the conventional EB-5 visa system.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Trump Gold Card
• Growing Interest Among Indians in Investment-Based US Residency
• Why Experts Still Prefer EB-5?

Trump Gold Card

• The Trump Gold Card is a newly launched US visa programme offering permanent residency and a pathway to citizenship in exchange for high-value investments.
• It replaces the EB-5 visa system and is designed to draw foreign capital and skilled talent into the US.
• Who Can Apply?
  • Individuals: Must qualify for lawful permanent residency and be admissible to the US.
  • Corporations: Can sponsor foreign-born employees.
  • Families: Spouses and unmarried children under 21 may apply but must pay additional fees.
• Costs and Fees
  • Processing Fee: $15,000 per applicant or corporate sponsor (non-refundable).
  • Investment/Gift: $1 million for individual applicants; $2 million per employee for corporate sponsors
  • Additional Costs: Visa fees and medical exam charges.
• Benefits of the Gold Card
  • Grants US permanent residency through EB-1 or EB-2 categories.
  • Faster processing than traditional visa routes.
  • Eligible family members may join.
  • Offers a direct path to US citizenship.
• Key Rules and Restrictions
  • Status may be revoked for security risks or serious criminal offences.
  • Applicants from some countries may face year-long waits.
  • All recipients must pay US taxes on global income.

Growing Interest Among Indians in Investment-Based US Residency

• With long delays in employment-based Green Card processing, many Indians — especially H-1B holders and wealthy families — are turning to investment pathways for faster US residency.
• EB-5: A Favoured Route for Indian Investors
  • The EB-5 visa offers a comparatively quicker route to permanent residency.
    • Requires $800,000–$1,050,000 investment based on project type and location.
    • Must create or preserve 10 full-time US jobs.
    • Typically done through USCIS-approved regional centres, which handle over 90% of EB-5 applications.
    • Begins with a conditional Green Card, later becoming permanent.
  • This programme appeals strongly to Indian HNIs aiming to secure their children’s future in the US.
• Gold Card vs EB-5: Key Differences
  • The Trump Gold Card provides permanent residency but differs fundamentally from EB-5:
    • Gold Card requires a non-refundable $1 million (individual) or $2 million (corporate) contribution directly to the US government.
    • No specified job-creation requirement, unlike EB-5.
    • Not an investment, offering no capital return, whereas EB-5 allows potential returns.
    • Applicants must still meet EB-1A or EB-2 NIW criteria of extraordinary ability or national interest.
  • Experts note that while Gold Card may offer faster processing, it does not simplify eligibility requirements or reduce costs compared to EB-5.

Why Experts Still Prefer EB-5?

• Immigration specialists argue that:
  • EB-5 remains the fastest, most cost-effective path to US residency for many.
  • It does not require extraordinary ability, making it more accessible.
  • It helps prevent dependent children from “aging out” while awaiting EB-2 or EB-3 priority dates.
  • Unlike Gold Card, EB-5 offers predictability and potential investment returns.
• EB-5 Stability After Legal Reforms
  • The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act (RIA) 2022 extended the Regional Centre Programme to 2027.
  • Investments made before September 2026 are grandfathered, offering protection even if the programme changes later.
  • This has increased investor confidence and reduced uncertainty.
• Rising EB-5 Demand Among Indians
  • EB-5 has seen strong Indian uptake:
    • $4.1 billion invested in the first three quarters of FY2025 alone.
    • 1,050–1,150 Indian applicants post-RIA, making India the second-largest source of EB-5 submissions (20–22%).
    • Growing interest is driven by:
    • H-1B holders frustrated with long Green Card delays.
    • Wealthy families seeking secure US residency and education opportunities for their children.

Why in news?

India’s capital markets are undergoing a major shift as domestic household savings replace foreign institutional investment, reducing dependence on volatile global capital.

While this strengthens market stability, the rapid rise of inexperienced retail investors poses risks. As the country pursues “Viksit Bharat 2047,” concerns remain over whether a market driven by uneven participation and modest returns can truly support inclusive and sustainable economic growth.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Domestic Investors Becoming the Market’s New Anchor
• Primary Markets Surge on Domestic Capital Strength
• Unequal Wealth Distribution and Rising Risks for New Investors
• Correcting Access Asymmetry in India’s Financial System
• Strengthening Market Structures and Governance
• Data-Driven Inclusion and Targeted Policy Support

Domestic Investors Becoming the Market’s New Anchor

• Foreign Portfolio Investor (FPI) ownership has fallen to a 15-month low, while domestic Mutual Funds and retail investors are reaching record levels of market participation.
• SIP inflows continue to surge, and individual investors now hold nearly 19% of the equity market — the highest in over 20 years.
• This growing domestic base is stabilising markets and cushioning volatility, as reflected in the NIFTY 50’s strong performance in October.
• Policy Impact: Greater Flexibility for the RBI
  • With domestic money replacing volatile foreign capital, the Reserve Bank of India gains more policy room.
  • Record-low inflation and robust household inflows mean less pressure to defend the rupee and more scope to stimulate credit growth and balance growth–inflation objectives.
• A New Risk: Fragility Beneath the Stability
  • This policy comfort is not guaranteed. If household sentiment weakens or downturns hit vulnerable investors hardest, the very shift that stabilises markets today could trigger instability tomorrow.
  • Careful management is essential to ensure this transformation strengthens — rather than threatens — long-term resilience.

Primary Markets Surge on Domestic Capital Strength

• India’s primary markets are booming, with 71 mainboard IPOs raising over ₹1 lakh crore this fiscal year.
• Strong domestic confidence is driving record capital formation, as companies announce over ₹32 lakh crore in investments — a 39% jump from last year.
• Private sector participation now accounts for nearly 70% of these commitments, signalling robust economic momentum.
• Beneath the Boom: Concerns About Valuation and Risk
  • Despite strong growth, rising valuations raise red flags. IPOs such as Lenskart, Mamaearth and Nykaa reflect sky-high price-to-earnings ratios, prompting concerns that enthusiasm may be outpacing business fundamentals.
  • Retail investors, drawn into the excitement, risk taking on outsized exposure without fully understanding long-term implications.
• The Advice and Performance Gap in India’s Investment Landscape
  • The celebration of retail participation and mutual fund growth often overlooks the uneven quality of financial advice and unequal wealth outcomes.
  • Financial research underscores a persistent “performance problem” — most active fund managers fail to consistently outperform markets after adjusting for risk and fees.
  • This suggests that increased participation does not automatically translate into better returns, especially for less-informed investors.

Unequal Wealth Distribution and Rising Risks for New Investors

• Structural inefficiencies in India’s equity markets are deepening wealth inequality, as equity gains disproportionately accrue to higher-income groups with better financial access.
• The recent ₹2.6 lakh crore decline in household equity wealth raises alarm, especially if losses are borne by new, vulnerable investors.
• While rising retail participation is often viewed as financial democratisation, inadequate safeguards and weak financial literacy expose inexperienced investors to heightened risks.
• When market corrections inflict concentrated losses on first-time participants, long-term trust erodes, undermining both inclusive growth and overall economic demand.

Correcting Access Asymmetry in India’s Financial System

• India’s growing investor base requires more than higher savings — it demands solutions to the persistent “access asymmetry problem.”
• Protecting everyday investors means moving beyond mere disclosures to structural safeguards, including lower fees and wider adoption of passive, low-cost investment vehicles.
• With active funds holding 9% of the market versus just 1% for passive funds, reducing expense ratios and improving investor awareness of indexing are essential to addressing the broader “performance problem.”

Strengthening Market Structures and Governance

• Falling promoter holdings in the NIFTY 50 — now at a 23-year low of 40% — underscore the need to ensure that such trends reflect healthy capital raising rather than opportunistic exits.
• Enhancing corporate governance, transparency, and long-term stewardship is crucial to protecting domestic savers’ wealth and market confidence.

Data-Driven Inclusion and Targeted Policy Support

• Improving financial access requires granular, gender- and location-specific data to identify and address participation gaps.
• Bringing more women and underrepresented groups into the financial mainstream must become a core policy priority, not an afterthought.

The Path Forward: From Fund Mobilisation to Institutional Integrity

• India’s new market foundation—built increasingly on domestic savings—offers promise.
• But the next phase demands a shift from merely attracting capital to strengthening institutional integrity, deepening financial literacy, and addressing inherent asymmetries.
• Ensuring fair, inclusive, and informed participation is now a fiduciary necessity, not a peripheral goal.

Context:

• High Court judge appointments are first recommended by the Collegium — the Chief Justice of the High Court and its two senior-most judges.
• The recommendation goes to the State government, which may raise objections or request clarifications.
• However, once the Collegium reiterates its recommendation or provides the required clarifications, the State government is obliged to accept the decision.
• In this context, this article highlights the growing constitutional concerns surrounding the Madras High Court Collegium’s recent recommendations, focusing on procedural irregularities, the exclusion of a senior judge, and the urgent need for transparency and systemic reform.

Clarification Sought on Composition of the Madras High Court Collegium

• The Madras High Court Collegium recommended six district judges for elevation in November 2025.
• While the State government raised no objections regarding the candidates’ merit, it sought clarification on a procedural issue — the constitution of the Collegium itself.
• The Case of Justice Nisha Banu
  • Justice J. Nisha Banu, elevated in 2016, is the second most senior judge of the Madras High Court and thus a rightful Collegium member.
  • However, a Supreme Court Collegium recommendation dated October 14, 2025 ordered her transfer to the Kerala High Court and placed her ninth in seniority there.
  • Despite this transfer order, she has not joined the Kerala High Court and continues to serve at Madras, making her de facto a Collegium judge.

State Government’s Concern: Why Was She Excluded?

• The State questioned why Justice Nisha Banu was excluded from the Collegium consultations and why Justice M.S. Ramesh, the next senior judge, was included instead.
• It sought clarification on:
  • The legal authority behind this substitution
  • Whether any Supreme Court directive or constitutional principle justified bypassing a senior judge
  • Whether the Collegium assumed that Justice Nisha Banu was no longer part of the Madras High Court
• The Collegium did not address these concerns and instead proceeded to recommend nine more advocates for additional vacancies.

Constitutional and Procedural Implications

• The Memorandum of Procedure clearly states that the Chief Justice and the two seniormost judges of the High Court must form the Collegium for recommending appointments.
• Ignoring a senior judge raises questions about constitutional validity, institutional integrity, and adherence to established norms.
• Core Issue
  • Whether intentionally or by oversight, the non-inclusion of Justice Nisha Banu in the Madras High Court Collegium contradicts the prescribed procedure.
  • The State government is therefore entitled to a clarification, as transparency and adherence to constitutional norms lie at the heart of judicial appointments.

When Procedural Lapses Threaten Constitutional Legitimacy

• Procedural norms in judicial appointments are not trivial technicalities but the very basis of the Collegium’s constitutional legitimacy.
• Since the Collegium system is built entirely on judicial precedent, it must strictly follow established procedures to maintain credibility.
• Excluding a judge who continues to hold administrative authority, without recorded reasons, and replacing them with another judge lacking jurisdictional basis, undermines the validity of the Collegium’s decisions.
• An improperly constituted Collegium risks rendering its recommendations void, creating a constitutional crisis rooted in uncertainty over who is authorised to decide.
• These concerns intensify long-standing criticisms of the Collegium system — including opacity, alleged nepotism, inadequate representation, political influence, and limited accountability.

Need for Transparency and Clarification

• The Madras High Court Collegium must explain, in law and procedure, why Justice Nisha Banu was excluded and Justice M.S. Ramesh included.
• Silence threatens structural judicial integrity and fuels speculation about motive.
• A judge’s ideological or personal background cannot justify deviation from constitutional norms.
• Impartiality, consultation, and adherence to justice must guide judicial decisions. Any departure from this principle weakens public trust.

Call for Supreme Court–Led Collegium Reforms

• The situation highlights the need for long-pending reforms:
  • Clear rules on Collegium composition
  • Published reasons for decisions
  • Mandatory disclosures to enhance transparency
• The Supreme Court must revisit the system to prevent ambiguity and inconsistency.

Core Issue: Legality of the Appointment Process

• The controversy is not about the capability of the six district judges or nine advocates recommended.
• The question is whether their elevation followed Article 217 and the Memorandum of Procedure, which requires recommendations from the Chief Justice and the two seniormost High Court judges.
• If the Collegium’s constitution itself is questionable, then its recommendations also lose validity.
• This creates a constitutional conflict between the judiciary and the State government — a crisis that can only be resolved through transparency, adherence to procedure, and systemic reform.

Why in the News?

• The Supreme Court has set aside a Patna High Court order permitting an involuntary narco test in Amlesh Kumar v. State of Bihar (2025).

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Narco Analysis (Basics, Constitutional Protection, Concerns, Judicial Precedents, Ethical Principles, Implications, etc.)

Understanding Narco Analysis in Criminal Investigations

• A narco test involves administering sedatives such as Sodium Pentothal, classified under barbiturates, to suppress an individual’s inhibitions and enhance the likelihood of divulging information.
• The technique functions similarly to polygraph tests and brain mapping, aiming to extract concealed facts by reducing conscious control.
• However, despite being non-violent, narco analysis interferes with cognitive autonomy and has been a subject of constitutional scrutiny.

Constitutional Protection and Why Narco Tests Raise Concerns?

• Right Against Self-Incrimination (Article 20(3))
  • Article 20(3) protects an accused from being compelled to provide testimonial evidence against themselves.
  • Any involuntary narco test breaches this protection by forcing the individual to speak in a drug-induced state, thereby suppressing free will.
  • The Court clarified that without free, informed consent, any statement or information obtained from narco analysis is inadmissible as evidence.
• Personal Liberty and Privacy (Article 21)
  • Article 21 covers the right to life and personal liberty, which includes physical autonomy and mental privacy.
  • The judgment reiterates that forced narco testing violates the right to Privacy & Personal autonomy.

• ‘Procedure established by law’ requirement, meaning any investigative procedure must be fair, just and reasonable
• The Court linked this to the Golden Triangle of Articles 14, 19, and 21, an essential framework that safeguards constitutional liberties as established in Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978).

Judicial Precedents Governing Narco Tests

• Selvi v. State of Karnataka (2010)
  • This landmark case prohibited the involuntary administration of narco tests, polygraph tests, and brain mapping. It mandated that:
    • Consent must be free, informed, and recorded before a magistrate.
    • Medical and legal safeguards must be strictly followed.
    • Test results have no standalone evidentiary value and must be corroborated.
  • The Patna High Court order was struck down because it contradicted these binding guidelines.
• Courts have consistently held Manoj Kumar Saini v. State of MP (2023) & Vinobhai v. State of Kerala (2025).
• Both cases reaffirm that narco test results cannot directly confirm guilt; they may only aid investigations and must always be corroborated with independent evidence.

Consent and Ethical Principles in Criminal Justice

• Importance of Informed Consent
  • The Supreme Court stressed that narco tests can be conducted only when the accused requests or agrees to undergo such testing.
  • Testing at the stage of defence evidence may be permitted under Section 253 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNSS), but even then, there is no absolute right to demand the test.
• Ethical Foundations
  • The Court referenced philosophical principles of autonomy, particularly Kantian ethics, which emphasise that an act is ethical only when performed with consent. Forced narco analysis violates:
    • Human dignity
    • Bodily integrity
    • Natural justice principles
• Thus, ethical considerations reinforce the constitutional bar on involuntary tests.

Implications for India’s Criminal Justice System

• Strengthening Rights-Based Policing
  • The ruling strengthens procedural fairness and reinforces that investigative efficiency cannot override fundamental rights.
• Balancing Victims’ Rights and Accused Rights
  • While investigation agencies seek tools to expedite probe outcomes, the judiciary has reaffirmed that constitutional morality must guide criminal justice.
• Reasserting Judicial Consistency
  • By relying on Selvi (2010) and subsequent cases, the Court reinforces stability and predictability in criminal jurisprudence, crucial for legal integrity and protection of civil liberties.

Why in News?

• Organ transplantation in India continues to face a severe gap between demand and supply.
• Recent data submitted by the Union Health Ministry in Parliament (2020–2024) highlights a growing crisis, marked by long waiting lists, state-level disparities, and the dominance of living-donor transplants over deceased organ donations.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Organ Donation in India
• Magnitude of the Crisis
• State-wise Burden of Organ Demand
• Organ Allocation Systems in India
• Challenges in India’s Organ Allocation System
• Government Steps to Boost Organ Donation in India
• Policy Response and Way Forward
• Conclusion

Organ Donation in India:

• Overview:
  • While India ranks third globally in the total number of organ transplants (over 18,900 in 2024), the country's organ donation rate remains critically low, particularly for deceased donations.
  • Though India reports 1,60,000 road traffic deaths annually, only 1,000–1,200 deceased organ donations occur per year.
  • This means, India is heavily reliant on living donors for most transplants, especially for kidneys (for which, overall 13,476 transplants performed in 2024) and liver (4,901 transplants).
• Statistics:
  • Living vs. deceased donors: In 2024, India recorded just 1,128 deceased donors compared to over 15,000 living donors. Over 700 of these deceased donors came from just six southern states.
  • Donor-per-million rate: India's donation rate is less than 1 donor per million population, far behind developed countries like Spain (~48 per million) and the US (~36 per million).
  • Supply-demand gap: With over 63,000 people needing a kidney transplant and 22,000 needing a liver, the demand for organs vastly outstrips the supply, and thousands die each year while waiting.

Magnitude of the Crisis:

• Rising deaths while waiting: 2,805 deaths between 2020–2024 while waiting for organs. Delhi accounts for nearly half (1,425 deaths), despite being the state with the highest number of transplants. Maharashtra (297) and Tamil Nadu (233) follow.
• Large and growing waiting lists: Total patients awaiting transplants are 82,285 (as of December 2025). Out of this, the majority are kidney patients (60,590), followed by liver (18,724), heart (1,695), lungs (970), and pancreas (306).

State-wise Burden of Organ Demand:

• High-burden states:
  • Maharashtra: 20,553 total (13,045 kidney).
  • Gujarat: 9,592 total (7,405 kidney; 2,019 liver).
  • Tamil Nadu: 9,166 total (6,448 kidney; 2,020 liver).
  • Delhi: 8,853 total (5,894 kidney; 2,835 liver).
• Why Delhi has the highest deaths: Though it conducts the most transplants, the majority are from living relatives, not deceased donors. Demand-surpass-supply dynamic leads to longer queues and higher mortality.

Organ Allocation Systems in India:

• State-specific criteria (fragmented system):
  • Different states follow distinct allocation methods: state-specific scoring systems (Telangana, Maharashtra, Gujarat); first-come, first-served (West Bengal, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Kerala) - allocation based on registration date.
• Zonal allocation (Tamil Nadu): Divided into three zones; organs circulated zone-wise, then statewide.
• Priority-based allocation (MP and Chhattisgarh): Priority to patients without a living donor or where a matched donor refuses in writing.

Challenges in India’s Organ Transplant Ecosystem:

• Heavy reliance on living donors: Creates inequity for patients without eligible relatives.
• Fragmented allocation policies: Lack of a uniform national standard leads to inconsistency and regional disparities.
• Long waiting times: Waiting periods range from months to years, influenced by: blood type compatibility, body size, health status, and organ availability.
• State capacities vary widely: Some states have advanced transplant infrastructures; others remain underdeveloped.
• High mortality among waiting patients: Nearly 3,000 deaths in five years underline systemic gaps.

Government Steps to Boost Organ Donation in India:

• Institutional reforms:
  • The Indian government has taken several steps to improve organ donation rates through the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO).
  • These include establishing the National Organ Transplant Programme (NOTP) to provide financial support for infrastructure and setting up regional and state bodies (ROTTOs and SOTTOs).
• Legal reforms: In 2023, the government removed the upper age limit for deceased donor registration and the state domicile requirement.
• Digital initiatives: Include a unique NOTTO-ID system to monitor transplants.

Policy Response and Way Forward:

• Move toward uniform allocation: The NOTTO is working on:
  • A standardized national allocation model
  • Essential and optional variables for registration
  • Ensuring equitable and transparent organ distribution
  • Reducing regional disparities and improving fairness
• Nationwide awareness campaigns: To strengthen deceased organ donation, streamline declaration of brain death, incentivize hospitals to improve organ retrieval rates.
• Expanding transplant infrastructure: Increasing dedicated transplant centres, enhancing human resource training, and ensuring last-mile cold-chain logistics for organ transport.
• Digital integration: Real-time, nationwide waitlist and organ availability system. Mandatory online reporting by all hospitals.
• Ethical safeguards: Monitoring to prevent organ trafficking. Oversight mechanisms for living donor consent.

Conclusion:

• India’s organ transplant ecosystem is at a critical juncture, with over 82,000 patients waiting and nearly 3,000 deaths in the last five years.
• The need for systemic reform is urgent - to make the organ transplant system equitable, transparent, and efficient.
• Addressing these gaps is vital to fulfilling the constitutional mandate of the Right to Life (Article 21) and ensuring accessible, affordable healthcare for all.

Context

• Education is a constitutionally guaranteed right in India. Article 21A ensures free and compulsory education for children aged six to 14, while the NEP 2020 extends this vision to cover ages three to 18.
• Despite these commitments, schooling continues to impose a substantial financial burden on families, as shown by recent national data.
• Therefore, it is important to analyse enrolment patterns, educational expenditure, and the growth of private coaching to assess the widening gap between constitutional promises and the reality faced by households.

Enrolment Patterns: The Growing Shift to Private Schools

• Government schools still enrol 55.9% of students nationally, yet private unaided schools account for a significant 31.9% of enrolments.
• This shift is far more prominent in urban areas, where 51.4% of students attend private institutions compared to 24.3% in rural regions.
• The gender gap remains small, with 34% of boys and 29.5% of girls enrolled in private schools.
• Across all levels of schooling, urban private enrolment is consistently higher, reaching 62.9% at the pre-primary stage and declining to 42.3% at higher secondary.
• Compared with previous NSS data, private school enrolment has risen across both rural and urban India, particularly at the primary and middle levels.
• This upward trend reflects increasing parental preference for private institutions, driven by perceptions of better quality.

Educational Expenditure: The Financial Burden on Households

• Despite official guarantees of free education, many government school students still incur costs. 25.3% of rural and 34.7% of urban government school students report paying course fees.
• In private schools, the figure is almost universal, with around 98% of students paying fees.
• The fee gap between government and private schools is stark. In rural government schools, annual fees range from ₹823 to ₹7,308, while in rural private schools they range from ₹17,988 to ₹33,567.
• Urban households face even higher private school fees, from ₹26,188 at pre-primary to ₹49,075 at higher secondary.
• When converted into monthly terms, private schooling represents a heavy burden: rural families spend ₹1,499–₹2,797 per month, while urban families spend ₹2,182–₹4,089.
• These costs align with the monthly consumption of the poorest 5% to the third income decile, indicating that private schooling consumes a disproportionate share of household budgets.
• This challenges the notion that basic education in India is effectively free.

Private Coaching: An Additional Layer of Inequality

• Private coaching has become widespread, with 25.5% of rural and 30.7% of urban students relying on it.
• The proportion rises sharply at higher levels of education, reaching 36.7% in rural and 40.2% in urban secondary schooling.
• Coaching costs add another burden. Urban students spend an average of ₹13,026 annually on tuition, almost double the rural average of ₹7,066. At the higher secondary stage, expenditures rise to ₹22,394 in urban and ₹13,803 in rural
• The demand for coaching is driven by higher household income, better parental education, and urban residence.
• It is particularly common among students in private schools, where teachers are often underpaid and underqualified, compelling families to seek external academic support.
• Coaching has also become a symbol of academic prestige, deepening inequalities between socio-economic groups.

Implications for Equity and the Public Education System

• The rise in private schooling and coaching has significant implications for educational equity.
• Families with limited means face difficult choices, often stretching their finances to provide what they perceive as better educational opportunities.
• Declining enrolment in government schools further weakens these institutions by reducing demand and resource support.
• Private coaching amplifies learning disparities. Students from wealthier households gain academic advantages that poorer students cannot afford, widening long-term socio-economic gaps.
• Strengthening public school quality is therefore critical to reducing reliance on both private schools and tutoring.

The Path Forward: Strengthening Publicly Funded Schools

• Achieving the NEP 2020 vision of universal and equitable education requires a revitalised public education system.
• Improved infrastructure, better-trained teachers, and strengthened classroom processes can help rebuild public confidence.
• High-quality government schools would reduce the need for costly private schooling and limit dependence on coaching.
• Research links school quality directly to reduced reliance on private tuition, indicating that systemic improvements in government schools can create more equal learning conditions for all students.
• Investment in teacher development, foundational learning, and early education is essential for inclusive progress.

Conclusion

• Schooling in India remains financially demanding, despite constitutional guarantees of free education.
• Rising private school enrolment, high fees, and the normalisation of private coaching impose heavy burdens on households and reinforce educational inequality.
• Strengthening public schools is essential to ensuring that education remains a right rather than a privilege, and to creating a system that is both equitable and accessible for all children.

Why in news?

Deepavali, the Festival of Lights, has been inscribed on UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity during the 20th Intergovernmental Committee session held at New Delhi’s Red Fort.

It is now the 16th Indian cultural element on the prestigious list. The inscription recognises Deepavali as a living tradition continuously recreated by communities, fostering social cohesion and contributing to cultural continuity and development.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Understanding UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List
• How a Tradition Gets Inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage List?
• India’s Cultural Heritages Recognised by UNESCO
• Deepavali in UNESCO Intangible Heritage List
• UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List 2025: Key Additions

Understanding UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List

• UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List recognises living traditions and skills — unlike monuments or archaeological sites.
• It includes oral traditions, performing arts, festivals, social practices, traditional craftsmanship, and knowledge of nature.
• These practices, such as India’s Garba and Kumbh Mela or France’s baguette-making, are passed across generations, strengthen cultural identity, and preserve humanity’s shared heritage.

How a Tradition Gets Inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage List?

• For a cultural practice to be inscribed, UNESCO requires it to be inclusive, representative, and rooted in the community.
• The aim is to recognise living traditions that embody shared identity and social habits — such as France’s baguette-making, which UNESCO says reflects everyday rituals and conviviality.
• To include an element on UNESCO’s Representative List of ICH, states must submit a nomination dossier for evaluation. Each country can nominate one element every two years.
  • India nominated the ‘Deepavali’ Festival for the 2024–25 cycle.
• As globalisation and conflict threaten cultural diversity, UNESCO emphasises preserving these social histories.
• The list also highlights traditions at risk: in 2022, four elements were marked for urgent safeguarding, including Vietnam’s Chăm pottery-making, Chile’s Santa Cruz de Cuca pottery, Albania’s Xhubleta garment craft, and Türkiye’s traditional Ahlat stonework.

India’s Cultural Heritages Recognised by UNESCO

• Apart from Deepavali added in 2025, India has several cultural traditions inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
• These include:
  • Festivals & Rituals: Durga Puja in Kolkata (2021), Kumbh Mela (2017), Nowruz (2016), Ramman festival of Garhwal (2009).
  • Performing Arts & Theatre: Sankirtana of Manipur (2013); Chhau dance, Kalbelia dance of Rajasthan, Mudiyettu of Kerala (2010); Kutiyattam Sanskrit theatre and Ramlila (2008).
  • Oral & Spiritual Traditions: Buddhist chanting of Ladakh (2012); Vedic chanting (2008).
  • Traditional Craftsmanship: Brass and copper utensil-making of the Thatheras of Jandiala Guru, Punjab (2014).
• These entries reflect the diversity and richness of India’s living heritage.

Deepavali in UNESCO Intangible Heritage List

• Deepavali, India’s iconic festival of lights, has been inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, alongside 19 other global traditions in 2025.
• This came a year after West Bengal’s Durga Puja made it to the prestigious list. The decision was taken during a key meeting of UNESCO being hosted at the Red Fort.
• What UNESCO Recognition Means for Deepavali?
  • Deepavali’s inscription enhances the festival’s global stature, strengthens efforts to preserve its traditions, and supports India’s cultural diplomacy, including among the diaspora.
  • The Intergovernmental Committee guiding the 2003 Convention promotes safeguarding measures, best practices, and funding support.
  • The recognition also boosts tourism, fosters cultural exchange, and helps sustain the artisans and communities who keep Deepavali’s living traditions vibrant.

UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List 2025: Key Additions

• The 2025 Representative List features a diverse set of cultural traditions from across the world.
• Highlights include:
  • Performing Arts & Music: Amateur theatre of Czechia; Cuarteto music of Argentina; Cuban Son; Joropo of Venezuela; Mvet Oyeng musical art of Central Africa.
  • Festivals & Rituals: Deepavali (India); Gifaataa New Year festival (Ethiopia); Festivity of the Virgen of Guadalupe (Bolivia); Christmas Bram and Sambai (Belize).
  • Crafts & Traditional Skills: Brussels’ rod marionettes; Behzad’s miniature art (Afghanistan); Bisht weaving and practices across West Asia; Tangail saree weaving (Bangladesh); zaffa wedding tradition in parts of the Arab world.
  • Culinary Heritage: Commandaria wine (Cyprus); Koshary dish traditions (Egypt).
  • Community Practices: Guruna pastoral retreats (Chad–Cameroon); family circus tradition (Chile); Confraternity of flowers and palms (El Salvador); bagpipe craftsmanship in Bulgaria.

Why in news?

Australia has implemented a first-of-its-kind ban preventing anyone under 16 from using major social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X, Snapchat, and Threads.

Under the new rules, minors cannot create new accounts and any existing profiles are being shut down. The move is historic and is drawing global attention, as other countries observe how the ban unfolds and whether it effectively protects children online.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Australia Sets Global Precedent With Social Media Age Ban
• Why Australia Introduced the Under-16 Social Media Ban?
• Concerns Over Rights and Feasibility
• How Australia’s Rule Differs From India’s Approach?

Australia Sets Global Precedent With Social Media Age Ban

• Australia has become the first country to legally enforce a minimum age of 16 for social media use.
• Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and others must now block over a million underage accounts, marking a major shift in global online safety regulation.
• What the New Australian Law Mandates?
  • Under the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act, platforms must:
    • Take “reasonable steps” to identify under-16 users and deactivate their accounts.
    • Block new account creation by anyone below 16.
    • Prevent workarounds, such as fake birthdays or identity misrepresentation.
    • Have a grievance mechanism to fix errors where someone is wrongly blocked or allowed.
  • This shift places direct responsibility on tech platforms to verify user ages and enforce compliance — something never before mandated at this scale.
• Key Exemptions in the Law
  • The Australian government has excluded several online services from the age-ban:
    • Dating apps
    • Gaming platforms
    • AI chatbots
  • This has raised questions, especially as some AI tools have recently been found allowing inappropriate or “sensual” conversations with minors.

Why Australia Introduced the Under-16 Social Media Ban?

• The Australian government says the ban aims to shield young users from the “pressures and risks” created by social media platforms.
• These include:
  • Addictive design features that encourage excessive screen time
  • Harmful or unsafe content affecting mental health and well-being
  • High levels of cyberbullying — over half of young Australians report experiencing it
• The government argues that stronger safeguards are required because existing platform policies have failed to protect minors.
• Regulatory Impact: Big Tech Under Pressure
  • The new law has forced major companies such as Meta, Google and TikTok to overhaul their systems.
  • Meta has reportedly begun deactivating under-16 accounts.
  • Platforms that fail to block under-16 users face penalties up to AUD 33 million.
  • Although tech companies oppose the law publicly, all have stated they will comply.
  • Importantly, children themselves aren’t penalised for attempting to access social media — only platforms are.

Concerns Over Rights and Feasibility

• The Australian Human Rights Commission has criticised the blanket ban, arguing that:
  • It may restrict a child’s right to free expression
  • It risks pushing children to unsafe, unregulated online spaces
  • Enforcement challenges could weaken the effectiveness of the law
• Debate continues over whether this strict ban is the right solution or if more balanced, protective alternatives exist.
• The Risk of State Overreach
  • Digital rights advocates warn that child-safety regulations can expand into tools of state control. Examples include:
    • Turkey, where child-safety powers were used to remove political posts.
    • Brazil, where similar laws restricted election content.
    • India, where online speech is already heavily regulated.
  • Safety rules can become a gateway to censorship.
• Why Bans Often Fail in Practice?
  • Teenagers repeatedly bypass restrictions using VPNs, fake ages, and loopholes.
  • The internet’s decentralised design — originally meant for resilience — makes enforcing bans extremely difficult.
  • Meanwhile, platforms like Twitch host thriving creator economies, complicating blanket restrictions.
• Reactions: Tech Pushback, Parental Support
  • Tech companies warn the new rules may be impractical and intrusive.
  • Parents and safety advocates widely support the move, citing rising online harms, bullying, and mental-health concerns among teenagers.
  • The law is now being closely watched by other governments as a possible model for future regulation.

How Australia’s Rule Differs From India’s Approach?

• Unlike Australia’s blanket ban, India does not restrict children from using social media.
• Instead, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 focuses on parental consent and data safeguards.
• Key points:
  • No minimum age for social media use, but anyone under 18 is treated as a child under the law.
  • Platforms must implement a “verifiable parental consent” mechanism before processing children’s data — though the law does not prescribe how this must be done.
  • Companies are prohibited from processing children’s data in ways that may harm their well-being.
  • Platforms cannot track, monitor behaviour, or run targeted ads toward children.
• India’s model is therefore data-protection–centric, not access-restricting, unlike Australia’s outright ban for under-16s.

Context:

• The Supreme Court’s judgment in the 16th Presidential Reference has attracted both criticism and praise. The debate centres on whether the Court should fix timelines for high constitutional authorities such as the President, Governors, and Speakers.
• The judgment emphasises strict adherence to the written Constitution, avoiding judicial innovation where the text is silent.
• However, critics argue that this reflects a reluctance to exercise the Court’s broader constitutional duty—interpreting the Constitution in a manner suited to present-day realities.
• Such judicial restraint, they warn, weakens the Court’s role as a guardian of constitutional accountability.
• The Constitution does not prescribe timelines for many crucial functions of constitutional authorities.
  • A key example is the Speaker’s quasi-judicial role under the Tenth Schedule, where they decide disqualification cases due to defection.
  • Despite the importance of these decisions, no time limits have been specified, often leading to long delays and political misuse.
• This article highlights how the Supreme Court’s judgment in the 16th Presidential Reference has raised serious concerns about judicial restraint, constitutional accountability, and the misuse of constitutional silences by authorities such as Governors and Speakers.

The Lack of Timelines Creates a Constitutional Anomaly

• The absence of fixed timelines for key constitutional actions has produced a serious anomaly.
• Legislatures have a fixed five-year term, yet defection cases under the Tenth Schedule can remain undecided until the term expires — allowing defecting legislators to escape consequences entirely. This undermines the very purpose of the anti-defection law.
• Similar issues arise with Governors withholding assent or delaying action on Bills.
• While Governors may return a Bill for reconsideration, they cannot indefinitely sit on legislation and effectively block laws without justification.
• Such inaction contradicts the Constitution’s design, as only courts — not Governors — have the authority to invalidate legislative or executive acts.

The Irony in the Supreme Court’s Verdict

• The Supreme Court’s decision in the Presidential Reference ironically strengthens the very problem it was expected to resolve.
• By refusing to impose timelines on constitutional authorities — particularly Governors — the Court held that since Article 200 contains no explicit timeline, none should be read into it.
• This effectively legitimises Governors indefinitely withholding assent to Bills, allowing them to stall laws passed by elected Assemblies.
• In doing so, the Court not only ceded ground to the executive but also failed to recognise how constitutional silence can be misused to undermine democratic functioning.

A Missed Opportunity to Uphold Constitutional Morality

• The judgment also overlooks the doctrine of constitutional morality — a principle championed by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in 1948.
• He urged that constitutional morality must guide those interpreting and operating the Constitution so that its spirit prevails even where the text is silent.
• In recent years, courts have invoked constitutional morality to advance progressive values in cases such as Sabarimala (women’s entry) and LGBTQIA+
• Here, however, the Court declined to use that interpretive tool, missing an opportunity to protect the Constitution from misuse and ensure that its foundational ideals are upheld.

Ambedkar’s Warning and the Costs of Judicial Hesitation

• B.R. Ambedkar had cautioned that a Constitution could be subverted not by changing its text but by altering the form of administration.
• His warning is strikingly relevant today: Speakers delaying defection rulings and Governors withholding assent to Bills beyond the Assembly’s tenure exemplify how constitutional processes can be distorted without formally breaking the law.
• Ambedkar recognised that not every administrative detail could be written into the Constitution.
• Instead, he placed trust in future courts and institutions to uphold constitutional morality and protect the spirit of the document.
• Yet, the Supreme Court’s reluctance to mandate timelines for constitutional authorities undermines this very trust.
• By refusing to interpret constitutional silences in a way that prevents misuse, the Court risks enabling outcomes that contradict the Constitution’s purpose and democratic ideals.
• This moment serves as a reminder that constitutional morality — the principle Ambedkar saw as essential for the Republic’s future — remains far from fully realised in India’s political and administrative culture.

Context

• The controversy surrounding Vande Mataram reflects ongoing struggles over historical memory, constitutional values, and the political ownership of nationalism.
• Although the song occupies a revered place in India’s anti-colonial heritage, its meaning has repeatedly been reshaped by competing visions of national identity.
• The current revival of debate in Parliament suggests an effort to reinterpret settled questions and redefine symbolic markers of national unity.

Historical Roots of the Song and Its Early Controversies

• Rabindranath Tagore’s 1896 Rendition and Controversy
  • Vande Mataram, composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1875, became a powerful emblem of India’s freedom struggle.
  • Rabindranath Tagore’s 1896 rendition at the Congress session embedded it within the nationalist imagination.
  • Yet its later stanzas, rich in Hindu goddess imagery, raised concerns among Muslim leaders who regarded certain verses as religiously exclusionary.
  • These objections gained urgency after the Government of India Act, 1935 ushered in provincial elections, compelling the Congress to adopt a more inclusive public posture.
• CWC Adoption of First Two Stanzas
  • A turning point came in 1937 when the Congress Working Committee, chaired by Jawaharlal Nehru and attended by major leaders such as Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Maulana Azad, and Subhas Chandra Bose, unanimously resolved to adopt only the first two stanzas for public and official occasions.
  • Though Mahatma Gandhi was not a formal member, he was influential in shaping the final wording.
  • The committee affirmed the song’s historic significance while recognising the validity of Muslim objections.
  • The selected stanzas were deemed non-religious, inclusive, and reflective of the song’s essence.
  • This decision was guided by the need for communal harmony and the practical responsibility of administering provinces with diverse populations.

Constituent Assembly Debates: Settling the Question

• Following Independence, the Constituent Assembly revisited the status of national symbols.
• Its composition highlighted India’s pluralism: despite the post-Partition Hindu majority, leaders such as B.R. Ambedkar entered the Assembly through cross-community political arrangements.
• The Assembly considered three contenders, Vande Mataram, Sare Jahan Se Achha, and Jana Gana Mana.
• While Sare Jahan Se Achha carried secular appeal, concerns arose due to Allama Iqbal’s later association with the Pakistan movement.
• The Assembly ultimately selected Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem, while giving Vande Mataram a place of honour.
• Notably, the Constitution made no mention of a national song, allowing its status to remain customary rather than legal.
• The distinction became clearer in 1976 when the 42nd Constitutional Amendment introduced fundamental duties, including respect for the national anthem and flag, without extending similar provisions to the national song.

Legal and Judicial Interventions

• Courts have occasionally engaged with the question of Vande Mataram.
• In 2017, the Madras High Court suggested that schools sing it weekly and offices monthly, even recommending translation for those unable to sing it in Bengali or Sanskrit.
• The Delhi High Court considered petitions urging equal treatment of the national song and anthem.
• The Union government argued that while both deserve equal respect, only the national anthem enjoys legal protection under the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, which criminalises disruptions to the anthem but provides no parallel regime for the national song.
• This distinction underscores the enduring legal separation between the two symbols.

Contemporary Revival of the Controversy: Symbolic Politics or Constitutional Engineering?

• The renewed parliamentary debate is striking because the issue was conclusively settled both in 1937 and during constitution-making.
• One explanation for its revival lies in symbolic politics, where invoking Vande Mataram allows contemporary leaders to present themselves as champions of nationalism while indirectly questioning the judgment of earlier figures such as Patel, Nehru, and Gandhi.
• Selective memory transforms a nuanced historical decision into a simplistic narrative of compromise.
• A second possibility is the intention to elevate the national song’s legal status.
• Proposals to create a new fundamental duty to respect Vande Mataram suggest the potential to reshape national symbols without constitutional amendment, echoing procedural strategies used in other policy domains.
• Such a move could eventually facilitate the introduction of a new national anthem or alter the established symbolic framework of the Republic.

Conclusion

• The evolution of Vande Mataram demonstrates how national symbols must adapt to pluralistic realities.
• Leaders such as Nehru, Patel, Gandhi, and Rajendra Prasad acted not out of hesitation but out of a commitment to inclusive nationalism.
• By respecting the song while choosing an anthem aligned with India’s secular ethos, the Constituent Assembly safeguarded national unity.
• True patriotism lies in recognising the historical complexity of national symbols and preserving the pluralistic balance that has shaped India’s democratic identity.

Why in News?

• The World Inequality Report 2026 (3rd edition after 2018 and 2022), released by the World Inequality Lab and led by economists such as Thomas Piketty, highlights the deepening income, wealth, and gender inequalities across India and the globe.
• The findings are crucial for achieving inclusive growth, social justice, welfare economics, SDGs, and climate equity across India and the globe.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• India’s Income and Wealth Inequality
• Global Inequality Trends
• Geographic Inequality Shift (1980–2025)
• Gender Inequality
• Climate Inequality
• Reasons Behind Inequality
• Challenges Identified, Policy Recommendations and Way Forward
• Conclusion

India’s Income and Wealth Inequality:

• Average income and wealth: Average annual income per capita is around 6,200 euros (PPP), and average wealth stands at about 28,000 euros (PPP).
• Income inequality:
  • Top 10% earners capture 58% of national income. The bottom 50% receive only 15% of income.
  • This is a jump from 57% (top 10%) and 13% (bottom 50%) in the 2022 Report.
• Wealth inequality:
  • The richest 10% hold 65% of total wealth. The top 1% own 40% of India’s wealth.

Global Inequality Trends:

• The top 0.001% (~60,000 ultra-rich) own wealth three times the bottom 50% of humanity. Their share rose from 4% (1995) to 6% (2025).
• The global top 10% own 75% of world wealth; bottom 50% own just 2%.
• The top 1% control 37% of global wealth—more than eighteen times the wealth of the entire bottom half of the world population. 

Geographic Inequality Shift (1980–2025):

• China: By 2025, China’s position has shifted upward with much of its population having moved into the middle 40%, and a growing share having entered the upper-middle segments of the global distribution.
• India (lost relative ground): In 1980, a larger part of its population was in the middle 40%, but today almost all are in the bottom 50%.
• Sub-Saharan Africa: Remains concentrated in the lower half of the global distribution.

Gender Inequality:

• Indian perspective: Female labour force participation remains extremely low at 15.7%, and there are persistent income gaps across sectors.
• Global perspective:
  • Excluding unpaid work, women earn only 61% of what men earn per working hour; and when unpaid labor is included, this figure falls to just 32%.
  • Women capture just 25% of global labour income, a share that has barely shifted since 1990.
  • Regional shares of women’s labour income:
    • Middle East & North Africa (MENA): 16%
    • South & Southeast Asia: 20%
    • Sub-Saharan Africa: 28%
    • East Asia: 34%
    • Europe/North America: ~40%

Climate Inequality:

• The poorest 50% contribute only 3% of carbon emissions linked to private capital ownership. While the top 10% account for 77% of emissions.
• The wealthiest 1% account for 41% of private capital ownership emissions, almost double the amount of the entire bottom 90%.

Reasons Behind Inequality:

• The inequality in India (and globe) remains deeply entrenched across income, wealth, and gender dimensions, highlighting persistent structural divides within the economy.
• These structural divides are -
  • Low female workforce participation.
  • Weak multilateralism on global redistribution.
  • Rise of ultra-wealth concentration.
  • Weak taxation systems and loopholes for the ultra-rich.

Challenges Identified, Policy Recommendations and Way Forward:

• Regressive taxation:
  • Effective tax rates decline sharply for billionaires and centi-millionaires. As a result, States lose revenue, impacting education, healthcare, and climate action.
  • Strengthen progressive taxation - Implement wealth taxes on ultra-rich. Eliminate tax loopholes and ensure effective tax compliance.
• Gendered labour burden:
  • As unpaid work is undervalued, it depresses women’s economic mobility.
  • Addressing gender inequality - Recognize and reduce unpaid care work through public provisioning. Increase female labour participation through skilling, flexibility, childcare.
• Inter-country inequality:
  • India’s global position worsened compared to China. Limited transition of population into the global middle class.
  • Redistributive social protection - Expand cash transfers, pensions, unemployment benefits. Targeted support to vulnerable households.
• Climate responsibility gap:
  • High emitters evade accountability; vulnerable populations bear disproportionate impact.
  • Climate justice framework - Equitable sharing of emissions responsibility. Incentivize green technologies and sustainable consumption.
  • Strengthen global multilateralism - Coordinated global approach to taxation, climate, and redistribution.
• Inequality within the top:
  • Even within rich groups, inequality widens due to extreme concentration of power.
  • Public investment in human capital - Free, high-quality schooling; universal healthcare, nutrition, childcare; and closing early-life disparity.

Conclusion:

• The World Inequality Report 2026 underscores that India and the world are witnessing historic levels of inequality.
• India’s relative decline in the global distribution and persistently low female participation indicate deep structural issues.
• As Thomas Piketty notes, promoting equality is essential to tackle the social and climate challenges of the coming decades.
• For India, achieving inclusive growth, social justice, and SDG targets will require strong political will, effective governance, and sustained investment in human capital.

Why in the News?

• India posted a robust 8.2% GDP growth, supported by strong manufacturing and services activity.
• However, the IMF assigned India a ‘Grade C’ in national income accounting, highlighting structural weaknesses and statistical gaps.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• GDP Growth (Current performance, Macroeconomic Stability Indicators, IMF’s Assessment, Structural Vulnerabilities)

Current Growth Performance

• India’s economic output for the quarter reached 48.63 lakh crore, significantly higher than the previous year. The broad-based expansion shows that the current momentum goes beyond a mere post-pandemic rebound.

• Manufacturing grew 9.1%, indicating stronger industrial demand and higher capacity utilisation.
• Services expanded 9.2%, now forming 60% of GDP, with financial services at 10.2%, signalling buoyant credit growth and high transaction volumes.
• Agriculture, supported by improved reservoir levels and horticulture output, rose 3.5%, showing a slight improvement in rural incomes.
• Real GVA rose from Rs. 82.88 lakh crore to Rs. 89.41 lakh crore, confirming real value creation rather than price effects.

• Crucially, nominal GDP grew only 8.8%, showing that inflation, previously a major concern, remained under control through 2024-25.
• Household consumption grew 7.9%, reflecting resilient domestic demand.

Macroeconomic Stability Indicators

• Several macro indicators underline India’s economic resilience:

• Inflation eased, dipping even below target toward the end of 2024-25.
• Bank credit growth remained strong, with well-capitalised banks holding buffers above regulatory norms.
• Fiscal consolidation continued, supported by buoyant GST and direct tax revenues.
• The current account deficit remained modest, helped by strong services exports and diversified forex reserves.

• These signals collectively suggest that India continues to grow even as global economic activity weakens.

IMF's Grade C Assessment: What It Means

• Despite India’s strong growth numbers, the IMF assigned India a ‘Grade C’ for its national income accounting framework.
• This rating does not evaluate the GDP growth rate itself but the statistical system supporting it. Key shortcomings highlighted:
  • Use of an outdated base year (2011-12).
  • Dependence on the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) due to the absence of Producer Price Index (PPI) deflators.
  • Single deflation method, which introduces cyclical bias.
  • Significant gaps between production and expenditure data, indicating incomplete coverage of the informal sector and expenditure components.
  • Lack of seasonally adjusted data in quarterly accounts.
  • No consolidated datasets for States and local bodies after 2019.
• The IMF’s view suggests that India’s “statistical backbone” needs strengthening to match its economic muscle.

Uneven Recovery Across Sectors

• Despite strong headline numbers, the growth pattern shows unevenness:
  • Mining grew barely 0.04%, due to prolonged monsoon disruptions.
  • Electricity and utilities grew only 4.4%, affected by a mild winter, reducing peak load demand.
• These sectors are foundational for industrial growth. Their sluggish performance indicates that the recovery has not spread uniformly across the real economy.
• The sectoral contribution to GVA stands at: Primary: 14%, Secondary: 26%, Tertiary: 60%
• This structure mirrors a service-driven economy, but India’s employment profile still remains heavily tilted toward low-productivity agriculture and informal services.

Structural Vulnerabilities

• India’s long-term challenges, highlighted both by the RBI and IMF, include:
• Weak Export Competitiveness
  • Trade protectionism, tariff uncertainty, and global geopolitical tensions threaten India's export growth. Structural scaling of goods exports remains limited.
• Labour Productivity Issues
  • A mismatch exists between India’s output structure and its employment structure. A large share of the workforce remains in low-productivity sectors.
• Fragile Statistical and Institutional Capacity
  • The absence of updated base years, comprehensive data, and modern statistical tools weakens policy evaluation.
• External Pressures on the Rupee
  • Although seemingly stable, the rupee continued to face downward pressure due to a strong U.S. dollar and fluctuating foreign capital flows.
• These issues do not negate India’s growth achievement but underscore the need for deeper institutional reforms to sustain high growth over time.

Why in news?

• Google’s new Quantum Echoes experiment used a 65-qubit quantum processor to study how information moves around inside a quantum system.
• Unlike Google’s 2019 Sycamore experiment, which focused on speed, this work was about understanding how quantum bits behave.
• Scientists measured out-of-time-order correlators (OTOC) — tiny echoes that reveal how disturbances travel through a network of qubits.
  • Basically, scientists gave the system a tiny “poke,” reversed its evolution, and looked for a small “echo” that came back.
  • This echo helped them see how quickly information spreads or gets scrambled among qubits.
• These insights can help in studying new materials, superconductors, and chemical reactions.
• Even though the research is scientifically important, it does not bring us closer to Q-day — the point when quantum computers could break modern encryption. It poses no threat to security systems today.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Q-Day
• How Quantum Computers Work
• Why Quantum Computers Threaten RSA Encryption
• The Problem: Today’s Quantum Computers Are Too Small
• Shor’s Algorithm vs. Quantum Echoes: Why They Are Not the Same
• How Far Are We From Q-Day

Q-Day

• Q-day is the future moment when a powerful quantum computer can break today’s commonly used encryption systems.
• This doesn’t mean data will be exposed instantly — but anything stolen and stored today could be decoded later once such a machine exists.
  • This threat is called “harvest now, decrypt later.”
• How Are Governments Preparing?
  • Countries are already working on protections.
  • The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has approved new post-quantum cryptography (PQC) methods designed to stay secure even against quantum computers:
    • CRYSTALS-Kyber → for encryption
    • Dilithium → for digital signatures
  • These rely on tough mathematical problems that quantum computers are not expected to crack.
  • Experts believe breaking RSA-2048 — a widely used encryption standard — will require millions of stable (logical) qubits.
    • RSA encryption works by multiplying two huge prime numbers.
    • Multiplying them is easy. But figuring out the original primes from the final product is extremely hard — so hard that even supercomputers would need billions of years.
  • At current progress, this may take 5 to 8 years, so Q-day is still a future risk, not an immediate one.

How Quantum Computers Work?

• Quantum computers use special units called qubits. Unlike normal bits (0 or 1), qubits can be 0 and 1 at the same time (superposition).
• They can also be entangled, meaning a change in one instantly affects another, even far away.
• Because of this, quantum computers can test many possibilities at once, making them powerful for certain tasks.

Why Quantum Computers Threaten RSA Encryption?

• RSA encryption is built on the difficulty of breaking a number into its prime factors — something classical computers take billions of years to do.
• But quantum computers can use Shor’s algorithm, which turns the factoring challenge into a search for hidden repeating patterns.
• The algorithm uses a special mathematical tool called the Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) to detect these patterns.
• If a quantum computer can run this algorithm on a large scale, it could break RSA encryption exponentially faster than classical computers.

The Problem: Today’s Quantum Computers Are Too Small

• Breaking a strong key like RSA-2048 requires enormous quantum machines.
• A 2019 study by Google researchers estimated that breaking RSA-2048 needs:
  • About 20 million physical qubits
  • 8 hours of computation
  • Perfect error correction
• But today’s biggest quantum machines (Google’s Willow, IBM’s Condor) only have a few hundred noisy qubits.
• Why We Need Millions of ‘Logical Qubits’?
  • Physical qubits make many errors.
  • To perform long, accurate calculations, we need logical qubits — stable units created by combining many physical qubits through error correction.
  • A future, powerful quantum computer would need millions of these logical qubits.
  • Right now, we aren’t even close to that technology.

Shor’s Algorithm vs. Quantum Echoes: Why They Are Not the Same

• Shor’s algorithm is a mathematical tool that could one day break modern encryption by rapidly factoring large numbers — something classical computers struggle to do. Its goal is computational power.
• Quantum Echoes, on the other hand, is a physics experiment. It studies how quantum information spreads and comes back like an “echo” inside entangled particles. Its purpose is scientific understanding, not breaking codes.

How Far Are We From Q-Day?

• Google’s Quantum Echoes experiment does not make that day arrive sooner.
• Instead, it marks progress in understanding how quantum systems behave, not in breaking codes.
• The experiment shows that quantum processors are getting better at studying complex interactions inside entangled particles. This is a scientific milestone, not a cybersecurity threat.
• While quantum machines are slowly advancing, their biggest potential right now is in understanding nature, chemistry, and materials — not cracking RSA.
• The real challenge is making sure our digital systems become quantum-safe before quantum computers eventually reach that power.
• The technology is evolving, but so must our defences.

Why in news?

US President Donald Trump recently alleged that India is “dumping” rice in the US and hurting American farmers, vowing to fix the issue with tariffs. However, trade data contradicts this claim.

The US is not a major rice producer and actually exports more rice than it imports. In 2024–25, US production was only 7.05 million tonnes—far below India’s 150 million tonnes—yet the US still exported 3 million tonnes while importing 1.6 million tonnes.

In value terms, the US imported $1.5 billion worth of rice in 2024, mainly from Thailand, while imports from India were much smaller. The data shows India’s rice exports to the US are limited, and the US is far from being flooded with Indian rice.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• India’s Dominance in Global Rice Exports
• U.S. Threatens Tariffs on Indian Rice
• US Rice Imports: Mostly Premium, Not Low-Value Dumping
• Impact of Potential New Tariffs on India’s Rice Exports

India’s Dominance in Global Rice Exports

• India remained the world’s leading rice exporter in 2024–25, shipping 198.65 lakh tonnes (19.86 million tonnes) of rice across multiple categories — basmati, parboiled, non-basmati white, broken and other varieties.
• In value terms, exports exceeded $12.95 billion, reinforcing India’s position as the top global supplier, controlling around 40% of international rice trade.
• Strong monsoons, competitive pricing and the removal of export restrictions on non-basmati rice boosted the sector.
• India produced 150 million tonnes of rice in 2024–25, accounting for 28% of global output, with yields increasing from 2.72 t/ha (2014–15) to 3.2 t/ha (2024–25) due to better seeds, agronomy and irrigation.
• India currently supplies rice to over 172 countries, and aims to expand exports to 26 additional markets, including the Philippines, Indonesia, the UK, and Mexico, according to APEDA.

U.S. Threatens Tariffs on Indian Rice

• Days before U.S. negotiators arrive in New Delhi, President Donald Trump suggested new tariffs on Indian rice, claiming India was “dumping” rice in the U.S.
• However, experts say the move appears aimed at pleasing U.S. farmers rather than reflecting genuine trade concerns.

US Rice Imports: Mostly Premium, Not Low-Value Dumping

• The US does not import cheap, low-value rice from India or Thailand. Instead, it buys premium aromatic varieties such as Thai Hom Mali, Jasmine, and Indian basmati—priced much higher than US-exported rice.
• These imported varieties cost between $690 and $1,125 per tonne, compared to $560–$675 per tonne for typical US export rice.
• Since the US exports more rice than it imports, and its imports consist mainly of high-value specialty rice, claims of India “dumping” cheap rice in the American market do not hold.

Impact of Potential New Tariffs on India’s Rice Exports

• India is the world’s biggest rice exporter, shipping 22.5–25 million tonnes annually. In comparison, the US is a very small buyer of Indian rice.
• US Share in Indian Exports Is Tiny
  • Basmati exports (2024–25):
    • Total: 60.65 lakh tonnes
    • To the US: 2.74 lakh tonnes (≈ 4.5%)
  • Non-basmati exports:
    • Total: 141.30 lakh tonnes
    • To the US: 0.61 lakh tonnes (≈ 0.4%)
  • This trend continues in the current fiscal year as well: the US takes only 1–2% of India’s rice shipments.
• Bigger Markets Lie Elsewhere
  • Basmati: West Asia dominates — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, UAE.
    • In the US, basmati sales are controlled by a few Indian companies like LT Foods, whose "Royal" brand holds 55% of the North American market.
  • Non-basmati: Africa is the main buyer — Benin, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Senegal, etc.
    • The US is almost irrelevant for this category.
• Tariff Impact: Minimal to Negligible
  • Even if Donald Trump imposes new tariffs, the effect on India will be small because:
    • The US is not a major rice market for India.
    • Indian exporters are not dependent on the US for volumes or revenue.
    • Other export items (shrimps, jewellery, garments) would feel tariffs much more than rice.
  • Experts believe that the proposed tariff would backfire on the US as:
    • Tariffs would barely affect India, which has strong global markets. But they would raise rice prices for U.S. households, hurting consumers.
    • The threat looks like election-season messaging to American farmers, not a policy shift.

Why in the News?

• India recently witnessed two major transport disruptions: severe overcrowding on Bihar-bound trains during October-November, and mass cancellation of Indigo flights in December.
• The events raise critical questions on pricing policies, regulatory oversight, monopolies, and the role of the state in ensuring accessible and efficient transport services.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Strain on Public Transport (Demand Pressures, Constraints of Fiscal Framework, Indigo Crisis, etc.)

Demand Pressures and the Strain on Public Transport

• During Chhath Puja and the Bihar elections, lakhs of migrants attempted to return home, producing a sharp, sudden demand shock for long-distance trains.
• With prices kept low for welfare purposes and limited train availability, passengers faced extreme overcrowding, unsafe travel conditions, and inhospitable unreserved compartments.
• Economic theory suggests that rising demand should push up prices to equilibrate the market.
• However, in essential public services like railways, artificially low prices are a welfare mandate.
• The resulting excess demand exposes the underinvestment in public transport infrastructure, rather than a pricing failure.
• Why Raising Prices Is Not the Solution?
  • Critics often argue that low fares create inefficiency. However, the core issue is inadequate supply, not affordability.
  • For essential sectors, health, education, and public transport, low pricing is integral to welfare. What is missing is state-led expansion in capacity.

Constraints of a Neo-Liberal Fiscal Framework

• Fiscal Limits on Public Investment
  • India’s fiscal rules constrain government spending, preventing large-scale expansion of railway capacity.
  • Strict deficit targets limit the ability to build additional trains, add new routes, or expand infrastructure.
• Impact on Public Welfare
  • Thus, the state is forced into a paradox:

• Keeping prices low to maintain welfare,
• But it lacks the fiscal bandwidth to expand services.

• This leads to systemic overcrowding, service degradation, and periodic crises.

Private Sector Vulnerabilities: The Indigo Flight Crisis

• In December, Indigo, India's dominant private airline, cancelled a large number of flights due to regulatory issues, creating a supply shock. This triggered:
  • Stranded passengers
  • Sharp spike in airfares across airlines
  • Market-wide disruption, despite the issue originating in one firm
• This is because Indigo holds a near-monopoly in several sectors of the Indian aviation market.
• In a competitive market, one airline’s supply cut would not cause such widespread chaos. The episode underscores the need for regulatory oversight to prevent monopolistic dominance.

Common Structural Thread Between the Crises

• At first glance, the train overcrowding and airline cancellations seem unrelated, one arising from public sector limitations, the other from private sector dominance. But both crises stem from a single underlying framework:
  • Underinvestment in essential public services
    • Public transport is priced low for welfare reasons, but cannot expand sufficiently under strict fiscal rules.
  • Overreliance on deregulated private markets
    • Private airlines operate with concentrated market power, enabling fare spikes and system-wide disruption when one firm fails.
  • Together, these factors reflect the constraints of a neo-liberal policy model, where the state is discouraged from expanding welfare services and private monopolies grow unchecked.
  • The result is recurring transport crises affecting millions.

Way Forward

• The lessons from recent events point to three clear policy needs:

• Expand public investment in railways and essential transport infrastructure.
• Strengthen regulatory oversight of private operators, especially monopolistic entities.
• Reassess fiscal rules to allow higher spending in welfare-critical sectors.

• Transport is not just an economic service; it is a public good.
• Ensuring reliability, affordability, and resilience requires a balanced model where both state capacity and market behaviour are aligned with public welfare.

Why in News?

• With the rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, concerns have intensified over the use of copyrighted content for AI training without consent or remuneration.
• Globally, this has triggered litigation, policy debates, and regulatory uncertainty due to intersection of technology, IPR, innovation, and regulation; the role of the State in rate regulation and compulsory licensing.
• In this backdrop, a Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT)-led committee has released a working paper proposing a statutory licensing framework to balance AI innovation with copyright protection in India.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Key Proposal - ‘One Nation, One Licence, One Payment’
• Institutional Mechanism - CRCAT
• Royalty Determination Framework
• Retroactive Application of Royalties
• Transparency and Burden of Proof
• Stakeholder Responses
• Challenges in the Proposed Framework and Way Forward
• Conclusion

Key Proposal - ‘One Nation, One Licence, One Payment’:

• Mandatory blanket licence for AI training:
  • All AI developers must pay royalties for using copyrighted works in AI training.
  • No opt-out mechanism for freely available online content.
  • Model inspired by compulsory licensing in radio broadcasting under Indian copyright law.
• Rejection of voluntary licensing:
  • The committee rejects bilateral licensing deals (e.g., OpenAI–Associated Press).
  • Reasons are high transaction costs, unequal bargaining power, and marginalisation of small creators and startups.
  • Voluntary licensing is seen as favouring big tech and big publishers only.

Institutional Mechanism - CRCAT:

• A new umbrella non-profit body (Copyright Royalties Collective for AI Training [CRCAT]) to be established under the Copyright Act, 1957.
• Functions of the body include collecting royalties from AI companies, distributing proceeds among copyright holders, etc.
• Membership: Only organisations (not individuals), one member per class of work.
• Coverage can expand gradually to unorganised sectors.

Royalty Determination Framework:

• Government-appointed rate-setting committee:
  • Composition: Senior government officers, legal experts, economic and financial experts, AI and emerging technology experts, AI developers’ and CRCAT representatives.
  • Powers: Fix fair, transparent, predictable rates; review rates every three years; decisions subject to judicial review.
• Likely pricing model:
  • Flat rate preferred initially.
  • Royalty as a percentage of gross global revenue earned from commercialised AI systems (excluding taxes).

Retroactive Application of Royalties:

• Royalties to apply retrospectively: AI developers already using copyrighted works and earning revenue must pay past dues.
• Justification:
  • Ensures fairness and accountability.
  • Not punitive, but corrective to restore balance in the creative ecosystem.

Transparency and Burden of Proof:

• Data disclosure by AI developers:
  • Mandatory submission of a ‘Sufficiently Detailed Summary’ of datasets used.
  • Includes:
    • Type of data (text, image, music, audiovisual)
    • Source (social media, publications, libraries, public datasets, proprietary data)
    • Nature of data usage
• Distribution of royalties: CRCAT to distribute funds proportionally based on extent of usage, heavily used categories (news, music, audiovisual) receive higher shares.
• Legal presumption: In litigation, content owners claim it is presumed valid. Burden shifts to AI developers to disprove misuse or non-payment.

Stakeholder Responses:

• Supporters (Committee view):
  • Ensures non-discriminatory access to training data
  • Prevents concentration of royalties among a few big players
  • Creates a predictable legal environment for AI development
• Opponents:
  • NASSCOM:
    • Calls forced royalties a “tax on innovation”
    • Supports opt-out mechanisms for content creators
  • Creative industry concerns:
    • Government-fixed rates are globally unprecedented
    • Fear undervaluation of premium content

Challenges in the Proposed Framework and Way Forward:

• Risk of over-regulation stifling AI innovation: Ensure robust stakeholder consultation.
• Administrative complexity in royalty distribution: Fine-tune royalty rates to avoid discouraging AI startups.
• Resistance: From both AI firms (cost burden) and content creators (flat-rate concerns). Strong judicial oversight to prevent arbitrariness.
• India becoming a global outlier in AI copyright regulation: Harmonisation with global AI governance norms.

Conclusion:

• India’s proposed mandatory blanket licensing regime for AI training represents a bold and interventionist approach to reconciling innovation with copyright protection.
• By institutionalising royalty payments through a statutory mechanism, the Centre aims to ensure equitable compensation for creators while maintaining open access to training data for AI developers.
• The success of this model will ultimately depend on rate rationality, transparency, and adaptive governance, making it a critical test case for AI regulation in the Global South.

Context

• Timed between Human Rights Day and Universal Health Coverage Day, the National Convention on Health Rights convened in New Delhi in December 2025, gathering hundreds of health professionals, activists and community leaders.
• Organised by the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA), the convention outlined a comprehensive rights-based vision for strengthening India’s public health system.
• Its themes, privatisation, inequitable financing, exploitation of health workers and structural discrimination, highlight the systemic challenges shaping India’s health landscape.

Privatisation and the Erosion of Public Health

• A central concern is the rapid expansion of privatisation across medical colleges and public hospitals.
• Public–private partnerships are increasingly transferring public institutions to private hands, threatening to weaken already fragile public services.
• For millions dependent on public health facilities, this shift risks deepening financial and social barriers.
• Commercial private health care, driven by domestic and foreign investments, has grown without adequate regulation.
• Despite the Clinical Establishments Act of 2010, enforcement remains minimal, resulting in overcharging, unnecessary procedures such as excessive caesarean sections, opaque pricing and recurring violations of patient rights.

Justice and Dignity for Health Workers

• The indispensable role of frontline health workers during COVID-19 underscores the urgency of addressing their ongoing precarity.
• Many doctors, nurses, paramedics and support staff continue to face low wages, insecure contracts and inadequate social protection.
• The convention highlights that a resilient health system depends on fair compensation, safe working conditions, adequate staffing and comprehensive social security for all health workers.

Medicines, Market Failures, Public Access and Revitalising Public Health Systems

• Medicines, Market Failures and Public Access
  • Medicines account for a significant portion of household medical expenses.
  • With over 80% of medicines outside price control, patients are burdened by high retail markups, irrational drug combinations and aggressive marketing practices.
  • The convention calls for stronger regulatory oversight, removal of GST on essential medicines and the expansion of public sector pharmaceutical production to ensure equitable access to essential drugs.
• Revitalising Public Health Systems
  • Strong public health systems remain essential for the over 80 crore people who depend on public provisioning.
  • The convention highlights successful community-led models and innovative state-level approaches illustrating that improved health systems are achievable through decentralised planning, adequate financing and community participation.
  • The vision advanced is of a health system that is publicly funded, publicly accountable and grounded in the right to health.

The Way Forward

• Addressing Social Inequities in Health Care
  • Entrenched social hierarchies continue to shape health outcomes in India. Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, LGBTQ+ persons and persons with disabilities experience systemic discrimination and exclusion in accessing care.
  • A session on gender and social justice emphasises embedding inclusion, non-discrimination and equal access within health systems.
  • Recognising health as a product of broader determinants, the convention links health with food security, environmental degradation and climate change, calling for intersectoral, equity-focused approaches.
• A Legacy of Struggle and a Call for the Future
  • Marking its 25th anniversary, JSA reflects on decades of collaboration with women’s groups, science organisations, rural movements and patient advocacy networks.
  • The convention, held during the winter session of Parliament, facilitates dialogue with Members of Parliament to push for legislative and policy reforms anchored in health rights.
  • It celebrates past victories while outlining strategies for the decade ahead.

Conclusion

• The National Convention on Health Rights offers a powerful rights-based framework for transforming India’s health sector.
• By confronting the challenges of privatisation, inadequate public funding, weak regulation and structural inequalities, it articulates a clear demand: health care must serve people, not profits.
• Strengthening public systems, protecting health workers, regulating private care and embedding social justice are essential steps toward realising the right to health for all in India.

Context

• The experiences of people who grew up without care, endured homelessness after childhood abuse, or faced dehumanising psychiatric treatment reveal forms of suffering that cannot be captured through numerical indicators alone.
• These accounts show how distress emerges and manifests differently across lives shaped by deprivation, stigma, and systemic neglect.
• When mental health discourse focuses narrowly on symptoms and integration into predefined norms, barriers, social attitudes, and structural inequities remain overlooked.

Beyond the Deficit Lens

• Dominant approaches continue to view psychosocial disability through a deficit-oriented framework, emphasising integration into communities that reinforce narrow ideas of productivity and normality.
• This persists despite global gaps in mental health-care access of 70%–90% and despite advances in medication and therapy.
• These improvements have not addressed fundamental questions about the social conditions that produce suffering or the need for care grounded in dignity, agency, and equity.

Understanding Distress in Context

• A reimagined mental health system must centre dignity and disability justice, acknowledging that suffering arises from interactions between personal histories and broader societal forces.
• Material and relational deprivation often both precipitate and result from mental ill-health.
• Data linking suicides to family conflicts and relational ruptures point to deeper layers of shame, alienation, and abandonment, which are rarely spoken about or addressed.
• Explanations for distress, biological, psychological, social, cultural, political, and historical—are interlocking rather than competing frameworks.
• These influences intersect with caste, class, gender, and queer identities, shaping both experiences of distress and access to care.
• Effective mental health support requires attention to this overlapping complexity rather than reducing suffering to a single cause.

Care as Meaning-Making and Relational Justice

• People experiencing crises need space to explore uncertainty, identity, vulnerability, and purpose, yet mainstream models often prioritise biological or social determinants at the expense of these meaning-making processes.
• While tangible supports such as housing, medication, and financial assistance are essential, they cannot resolve feelings of disconnection or existential incoherence.
• Care must integrate material support with relational work, acknowledging that meaning and recovery unfold within a person’s social and ecological context.
• This orientation aligns with disability justice, which seeks liberation, wholeness, and autonomy, not mere integration into unequal systems.

The Way Forward

• Justice-Centred Model
  • A justice-centred model reframes treatment from ‘What is wrong with this person?’ to What does this person need to live the life they want?
  • This may include medication, community connection, spiritual grounding, or economic stability. This shift also strengthens trust and continuity of care, addressing common experiences of disillusionment and disengagement.
  • Building trust requires collaboration, dialogue, and acceptance of non-linear progress.
  • Justice, understood as recognising mutual obligations and repairing harms, demands that mental health care acknowledge the social contexts that create suffering.
  • Care cannot be ethical if it ignores the injustices that shaped a person’s distress.
• Transforming Care, Education, and Research
  • Transforming the system requires changes across training, practice, and research.
  • Mental health education should prepare practitioners to sit with uncertainty, navigate complex social realities, and value small wins.
  • Research must prioritise context-sensitive, granular insights over purely large-scale generalisations, employing transdisciplinary methods that link theory and practice to understand what works, for whom, and why.

Conclusion

• Those with lived experience and community members often labelled as non-specialists must be recognised as essential practitioners.
• Their experiential knowledge and contextual understanding provide forms of expertise that formal training cannot replace.
• They must receive fair compensation, training, and systemic support comparable to formally credentialed professionals.

Why in news?

Parliament held a special discussion to mark 150 years of Vande Mataram, a song deeply woven into India’s freedom movement yet continuously debated for its religious imagery and political interpretations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the Lok Sabha debate on this.

The commemoration comes amid fresh political contention over the song’s origins, symbolism, and the decisions made by national leaders regarding its usage.

Once a patriotic hymn in Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s novel, Vande Mataram evolved into a rallying cry for nationalism, though concerns over its later stanzas led the Congress in 1937 to officially adopt only the first two.

In the Constituent Assembly, the song was ultimately accorded “equal honour and status” with the National Anthem.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Origins of Vande Mataram
• From song to slogan: Birth of a nationalist cry
• The song and the Indian National Congress
• Constituent Assembly’s Resolution: Equal Status for Vande Mataram (1950)

Origins of Vande Mataram

• According to a historical account cited by the PIB, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay composed Vande Mataram around 1875.
• The song gained prominence when his novel Anandamath was serialized in Bangadarshan magazine in 1881.
• Sri Aurobindo wrote in Bande Mataram (1907) that the hymn captured the spirit of patriotic devotion.
• Literary Context: Anandamath
  • Anandamath tells the story of the Santanas, ascetic warriors committed to liberating the motherland from oppression.
  • Their loyalty is to Bharat Mata, represented as a personified motherland rather than a religious deity.
• Symbolism of the Three Mothers
  • In the Santanas’ temple, three forms of the Mother are depicted:
    • The Mother That Was – powerful and magnificent
    • The Mother That Is – weakened and suffering
    • The Mother That Will Be – rejuvenated and triumphant
  • These images symbolised India’s past glory, present subjugation, and envisioned future resurgence.

From song to slogan: Birth of a nationalist cry

• By the early 20th century, Vande Mataram transformed from a literary hymn into one of the most powerful rallying cries of India’s nationalist movement.
• Central Role in the Swadeshi and Anti-Partition Movement
  • After Lord Curzon’s 1905 partition of Bengal, the song became the emotional and political heartbeat of mass resistance.
  • It energised:
    • Boycott campaigns
    • Protest marches
    • Newspapers and political groups adopting its name
  • A historic moment came in 1906 at Barisal, where over 10,000 Hindus and Muslims marched together shouting Vande Mataram, demonstrating its early inclusive appeal.
  • Key leaders who popularised it included:
    • Rabindranath Tagore
    • Bipin Chandra Pal
    • Sri Aurobindo, whose writings elevated the phrase into a spiritual and political call for self-rule.
• Colonial Repression Against the Slogan
• Worried by its ability to mobilise masses, the British authorities attempted to suppress it by:
  • Fining students
  • Conducting police lathi-charges
  • Banning public marches
  • Threatening expulsion from schools and colleges
• Across Bengal and the Bombay Presidency, chanting Vande Mataram became an act of bold nationalist defiance.
• Vande Mataram on the Global Stage
  • In 1907, Madam Bhikaji Cama unfurled the first Indian tricolour at Stuttgart, with Vande Mataram written across it — marking its symbolic arrival on the international platform.

The song and the Indian National Congress

• The Indian National Congress not only appreciated Vande Mataram culturally but also adopted it formally in its national ceremonies.
• 1896: Tagore’s Iconic Rendition
  • At the Calcutta Congress session, Rabindranath Tagore sang Vande Mataram, giving the song national prominence and embedding it in the Congress’s cultural identity.
• 1905: Formal Adoption During the Swadeshi Movement
  • In Varanasi, the Congress formally adopted Vande Mataram for all-India events.
  • This came at the height of the anti-partition protests, when the song had already become the anthem of political awakening throughout the country.
• 1937: Congress Working Committee Removes Later Stanzas
  • By the 1930s, debates over the song’s Hindu goddess imagery became more pronounced.
  • To maintain a broad, inclusive national movement, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) decided in 1937 to use only the first two stanzas, which were considered free of sectarian symbolism.
  • Muslim leaders had objected to the later stanzas, arguing they evoked explicitly religious imagery inappropriate for a national movement meant to represent all communities.

Constituent Assembly’s Resolution: Equal Status for Vande Mataram (1950)

• In 1950, the Constituent Assembly faced no conflict between Jana Gana Mana and Vande Mataram when deciding national symbols.
• On January 24, 1950, Assembly President Dr. Rajendra Prasad formally declared:
  • Jana Gana Mana would be the National Anthem.
  • Vande Mataram, due to its historic significance in the freedom struggle, would receive equal honour and status.
• The announcement was met with applause and no objections from any member.
• This dual recognition balanced inclusivity with historical reverence—preserving national unity through the anthem while enshrining Vande Mataram as a pillar of India’s independence movement.

Why in news?

A Parliamentary Standing Committee has sharply criticised the National Testing Agency (NTA), stating that it “has not inspired much confidence” and must urgently improve its functioning.

The panel highlighted repeated delays in exam results, especially CUET, and noted that despite collecting a surplus of ₹448 crore over six years, the NTA has not built adequate in-house capacity to conduct tests independently.

The committee urged the agency to strengthen its systems, infrastructure, and accountability mechanisms to ensure reliable and timely examinations.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• About National Testing Agency
• House Panel Flags Serious Concerns Over NTA’s Functioning

About National Testing Agency(NTA)

• It was established in 2017 as an autonomous, self-sustaining organisation under the Education Ministry (formerly HRD Ministry).
• It is registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 and comes under the RTI Act.
• Before its creation, UGC, CBSE, and central universities like DU and JNU conducted their own entrance exams.
• Origins: When Was NTA First Envisioned?
  • The idea for a national exam-conducting body dates back to the 1992 Programme of Action under NEP 1986.
  • In 2010, a committee of IIT directors recommended establishing such an agency through legislation, inspired by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), USA.
  • The government formally announced NTA in 2017, and the Cabinet approved its creation soon after.
• Exams Conducted by NTA
  • NTA conducts India’s major entrance examinations, including:
  • Top Undergraduate Entrance Exams
    • JEE Main – Engineering admissions
    • NEET-UG – Medical admissions
    • CUET-UG – Admissions to undergraduate programmes in central universities
    • Over 50 lakh candidates appear for these three exams annually.
  • Other Major Exams
    • CUET-PG – Postgraduate admissions
    • UGC-NET – Eligibility for assistant professor, JRF, and PhD
    • CSIR UGC-NET – PhD admission in science disciplines
    • CMAT, Hotel Management JEE, GPAT
    • Entrance exams for DU, JNU, IIFT, ICAR, and others

House Panel Flags Serious Concerns Over NTA’s Functioning

• The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education has sharply criticised the National Testing Agency (NTA), stating that it has “not inspired much confidence” and must urgently improve its performance.
• The panel noted chronic delays, errors, and administrative lapses in major national examinations.
• Repeated Delays and Exam Irregularities
  • The committee observed that NTA delayed CUET results for multiple years, disrupting university admissions and academic calendars.
  • Out of 14 exams conducted in 2024, at least five faced major issues:
    • UGC-NET, CSIR-NET, NEET-PG were postponed
    • NEET-UG faced paper leaks
    • CUET results were delayed
    • JEE Main 2025 had 12 incorrect questions withdrawn after answer key errors
  • The panel warned that such incidents erode students’ trust in the testing system.
• NTA’s Financial Surplus Should Be Used for Capacity Building
  • NTA collected ₹3,512.98 crore in six years and spent ₹3,064.77 crore, leaving a surplus of ₹448 crore.
  • The committee recommended that this money be used to:
    • Build in-house capability to conduct exams independently
    • Strengthen regulatory oversight of outsourced vendors
• Preference for Pen-and-Paper Exams
• Citing CBSE and UPSC’s decades-long track record, the panel expressed support for pen-and-paper exams, noting they have been “leak-proof for several years” — implying computer-based testing may be more vulnerable.
• Recommendation to Recognise Sonam Wangchuk’s Institute
  • The committee encouraged the UGC to evaluate Sonam Wangchuk’s Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh, noting its innovative model and potential for replication across India.
• Observation Regarding UGC
  • Draft UGC Regulations 2025
    • Opposition fears they increase the Chancellor/Visitor’s control over Vice-Chancellor appointments.
    • Committee recommended detailed discussions with CABE (Central Advisory Board of Education) before finalising rules.
  • UGC Leadership Vacuum
    • The UGC Chairperson post has remained vacant since April 2025
    • Committee urges urgent appointment
  • UGC Equity Regulations 2025
    • Panel noted delays and recommended:
    • Inclusion of OBC harassment under caste-based discrimination
    • Addition of disability as a discrimination axis
    • Clear categorisation of discriminatory acts to avoid subjective interpretation

Context:

• The 23rd India–Russia Summit in New Delhi highlighted the complex geopolitical landscape India must navigate.
• With the Ukraine war straining relations between India’s key partners—Russia on one side and the US and Europe on the other—New Delhi faces a particularly delicate diplomatic challenge.
• Despite these opposing pressures, India has managed to maintain strategic autonomy, balancing ties with both camps.
• Its calibrated approach has positioned it as a country showing the world how to operate amid deep global polarisation.

India–Russia Summit: Strategic Optics and Sensitive Timing

• The warm, high-profile welcome extended to President Vladimir Putin carried deliberate diplomatic signalling.
• For India, the message was one of confidence: reaffirming its long-standing partnership with Russia and removing ambiguity about the relationship at a time of global polarisation.
• For Russia, it underscored India’s continued importance in its foreign policy calculus.
• The timing of the summit was equally significant. With Russia holding a strong battlefield position, Ukraine facing potential defeat, and the U.S. largely disengaged, India’s vocal support for broader peace efforts aligns closely with Washington’s backing of the Trump-led initiative.
• India and the U.S. are therefore converging on the peace process, even as Europe remains the main outlier.
• India’s strategic challenge now lies in ensuring that this deepening Russia engagement does not erode the substantial diplomatic and economic gains it has made with European partners.

Key Pillars Strengthening India–Russia Relations

• Programme 2030: Expanding Economic Cooperation
  • India and Russia adopted Programme 2030 to deepen strategic economic ties.
  • Key goals include:
    • Facilitating bilateral trade settlement in national currencies
    • Removing non-tariff barriers
    • Diversifying the trade basket
    • Boosting investments in non-energy sectors
  • Sectors like fertilizers, railways, pharmaceuticals, minerals, and critical raw materials are central to India’s growth, and Russia’s vast resources make it a natural partner.
  • Achieving $100 billion in trade by 2030 is considered feasible if these steps succeed.
• Energy Security: The Core of the Partnership
  • India, as the world’s second-largest fossil fuel importer, sees affordable and reliable energy as a national security priority.
  • Russia’s unmatched energy reserves make it indispensable for India’s long-term energy future.
  • China has already secured dominant access to Russian resources, and U.S. companies are also seeking entry.
  • India risks losing strategic ground unless it strengthens its presence in Russia’s energy sector.
• Emerging Strategic Sectors: Maritime, Arctic & Manpower Mobility
  • Maritime Connectivity - Chennai–Vladivostok Maritime Corridor; Northern Sea Route; Joint development in shipbuilding. These routes expand India’s access to Eurasian markets.
  • Arctic Cooperation - India welcomes Russia’s offer to train Indian seafarers for Arctic operations—an area of rising geopolitical and commercial significance.
  • Export of Indian Skilled Workers - A breakthrough labour mobility agreement will allow Indian skilled workers to fill shortages in Russia, especially in the Far East—driven by:
    • Russia’s demographic crisis
    • Loss of labour due to the Ukraine war
    • Declining Central Asian workforce
    • Russian unease over increased Chinese influence
    • Easier tourist visas complement this growing mobility framework.
• Traditional Strengths: Defence, Space and Nuclear Collaboration
  • India–Russia ties have deep roots in:
    • Defence manufacturing and technology
    • Space cooperation
    • Nuclear energy projects
  • Russia remains a trusted technology supplier with fewer restrictions than Western partners.
  • Example:
    • BrahMos missile — a pillar of India’s strategic capability
    • S-400 system — crucial during Operation Sindoor
    • Increasing levels of localisation, technology transfer, and co-production
  • India will continue to rely on Russia to maintain legacy military platforms while pushing domestic indigenisation.

India–Russia Ties in Perspective: A Relationship Re-Engineered

• The key outcome of the summit lies not in the announcements but in the strategic recalibration of the India–Russia partnership.
• Both nations are consciously reshaping their ties to keep pace with global shifts, especially the evolving power dynamics between the U.S. and China — a factor that increasingly pulls India and Russia closer despite external pressures.
• On Europe, India recognises that lasting peace in Ukraine will require direct engagement between Europe and Russia, not mediation through New Delhi.
• India’s stance is rooted in historical lessons — knowing when to emulate examples of successful diplomacy and when to avoid past mistakes.
• Ultimately, India sees itself as a trusted partner to both sides, capable of maintaining balanced relations even in a deeply polarised world.

Why in the News?

• A recent report discusses how neurotechnology, particularly Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs), is emerging as a frontier domain.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Neurotechnology (Concept, Significance for India, Emerging Trends in India, Global Developments, Regulatory & Ethical Challenges)

Understanding Neurotechnology: A New Technological Frontier

• Neurotechnology refers to the use of engineered tools that can record, monitor, or influence neural activity.
• The field sits at the convergence of neuroscience, AI, engineering, and computing, and is rapidly redefining how humans interact with machines.
• At the core is the Brain-Computer Interface, a system that decodes neural signals and translates them into digital actions, enabling users to control prosthetics, wheelchairs, computers or even robotic limbs.
• Neurotechnology is evolving across two broad areas:
  • Diagnostic and Neuroscience Research Tools
    • Devices that map brain activity to study neurological disorders, cognitive function, or behavioural patterns.
  • Therapeutic and Assistive Technologies
    • Systems enabling paralysed patients to move prosthetics, aiding stroke rehabilitation, and stimulating targeted brain circuits for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, depression, or epilepsy.
• Some experimental work globally has gone even further, such as lab experiments connecting the brains of mice to exchange simple information, underlining both the potential and the ethical complexity of the field.

Significance of Neurotechnology for India

• India faces a growing neurological disease burden, with the share of non-communicable and injury-related neurological disorders rising between 1990 and 2019, and stroke emerging as the single largest contributor.
• Key reasons India needs neurotechnology

• High disease burden: Millions live with paralysis, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s disease, or depression, conditions where BCIs and neural stimulation therapies could be transformative.
• Mental health needs: Targeted stimulation could reduce long-term reliance on psychotropic medication.
• Economic & innovation potential: Neurotechnology sits at the intersection of biotech, semiconductors, and AI, three sectors where India is actively expanding capabilities.
• Strategic advantage: Early investments could position India as a global hub similar to how it scaled IT and pharmaceuticals.

India’s Emerging Strengths in Neurotechnology

• Academic Contributions

• IIT Kanpur recently unveiled a BCI-based robotic hand, aiding stroke rehabilitation.
• The National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), Manesar, and the Brain Research Centre at IISc Bengaluru are serving as major neuroscience research nodes.

• Industry and Start-up Landscape

• The start-up Dognosis is using neurotechnology to study brain signals in trained dogs, hoping to apply scent-recognition neural patterns toward early human cancer detection, a novel application highlighted in the report.

• These developments reflect a budding ecosystem that can be strengthened with policy, funding, and industry collaboration.

Global Developments and Their Implications for India

• United States
  • The BRAIN Initiative, launched in 2013, is one of the strongest global programmes.
  • Neuralink, in 2024, received FDA approval for human trials and has demonstrated early restoration of prosthetic-driven motor movement in paralysed individuals.
• China
  • The China Brain Project (2016-2030) focuses on cognition research, brain-inspired AI, and treating neurological disorders.
• Europe & Latin America
  • The EU and Chile are pioneering neuro-rights legislation, recognising the potential risks of brain-data exploitation and autonomy loss.
• For India, these trends underscore the need to develop both technological capacity and an ethical, regulatory architecture suited to its social and economic context.

Regulatory and Ethical Challenges for India

• Without adequate regulation, neurotechnology could bring risks such as:

• Privacy violations (brain data is the most intimate data known)
• Manipulation of neural activity
• Misuse for surveillance or military advantage
• Inequitable access, worsening health disparities

• The study stresses the importance of:

• Public engagement to understand societal concerns
• Tailored regulatory pathways depending on whether BCIs are diagnostic, therapeutic, or enhancement-oriented
• Ethics frameworks ensuring user autonomy and data consent
• A specialised regulatory pathway that evaluates BCIs on both technical safety and ethical dimensions is essential for responsible innovation.

Context:

• A recent government move to re-examine guidelines for doctoral degrees seeks to align PhD research topics with “emerging needs and national priorities.”
• While relevance and accountability of public spending on research are important, overemphasis on immediate applicability risks undermining India’s long-term STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) potential.
• The debate is crucial for India’s ambition of becoming a knowledge economy and innovation hub. 

Core Argument:

• India cannot fulfil its STEM potential by narrowly focusing on short-term, application-oriented research.
• Instead, it must support basic research, ensure humane research conditions, and strengthen the foundations of higher education and research.

Analysing the Argument:

• Applied vs basic research - A false dichotomy:
  • Basic research often precedes applied breakthroughs by decades.
  • Example: Nobel Prize in Physics (2023) recognised work from the 1980s that enabled quantum computing, an application unimaginable at the time.
  • Bell Laboratories’ (American industrial research company) success illustrates how curiosity-driven basic research, backed by institutional freedom, leads to transformative technologies (transistor, laser, optical fibre).
• Limits of targeted and mission-mode research:
  • India already supports applied areas like renewable energy, battery technology, sustainable agriculture, and healthcare through national missions.
  • Over-directing funds only to “currently obvious” areas can be short-sighted and superficial.
  • True innovation requires supporting indirect, interdisciplinary and exploratory research, even without immediate outputs.
  • Hence, measuring relevance only by short-term impact is flawed.
• Structural problems in India’s PhD ecosystem:
  • Irregular and delayed fellowships (by DST, UGC, etc.) — scholars are often unpaid for months.
  • Transfer of fellowship payments directly to bank accounts helped curb corruption but did not solve disbursement delays.
  • Many non-NET PhD scholars receive stipends (~₹8,000/month), below minimum wage, unchanged since 2012.
  • Scholars are forced into excessive teaching or temporary jobs, reducing research productivity.
• Weak industry–academia linkages:
  • Industry-funded PhDs are rare in India, especially outside elite institutions like IITs.
  • Historical disconnect and limited institutional capacity reduce collaborative research and technology transfer.
  • Without improving administrative efficiency and advisory capacity, such collaborations cannot scale.
• Neglect of humanities and social sciences:
  • Policy focus on “emerging needs” risks sidelining philosophy, history, sociology, political science.
  • Unbiased inquiry in humanities is essential for democracy, ethics, and social understanding.
  • Valuing only STEM applications impoverishes the broader knowledge ecosystem.

Major Challenges Identified and Way Forward:

• Over-instrumental view of research relevance: Encourage curiosity-driven research alongside mission-mode projects. Evaluate impact over longer time horizons.
• Chronic delays in scholarships and salaries: Ensure timely and automatic disbursement of fellowships. Update stipends to reflect inflation and minimum wage norms.
• Inadequate PhD stipends and poor working conditions: Treat payment delays as a serious governance failure, not a minor administrative lapse. Build supportive institutional cultures that motivate scholars.
• Weak industry–academia collaboration: Incentivise industry-funded PhDs and joint research. Build administrative and mentoring capacity in universities.
• Marginalisation of non-STEM disciplines: Recognise humanities and social sciences as integral to national development. Avoid political or utilitarian interference in academic inquiry.
• Treat systemic issues (funding, academic freedom, etc) rather than symptoms (new priorities).

Conclusion:

• India’s STEM ambitions cannot be realised through narrowly defined relevance or short-term priorities.
• The real crisis lies not in a lack of “emerging topics” but in the neglect of foundational issues — humane basic research, respect for all domains of knowledge, etc.
• Getting the basics right is the prerequisite for innovation. Without fixing these roots, India risks stunting the very scientific and intellectual capacity it seeks to harness.

Context

• The question of what constitutes proof of citizenship lies at the centre of India’s democratic governance.
• The Indian passport and electoral rolls are often viewed as indicators of belonging, yet neither document conclusively proves citizenship, as both can be forged.
• This tension between evidence of status and the status of evidence frames the current debate around the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
• The controversy raises deeper questions about how states define and verify membership in a political community.

The Legal Dispute: Institutional Authority and Procedural Limits

• Challenges to the ECI’s SIR rest on three key arguments. The ECI has no legal authority to determine citizenship, a power reserved for the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
• No law permits a nationwide, en masse SIR, and voter roll revisions are meant to be selective.
• Finally, decisions on foreigner status belong to bodies constituted under the Foreigners Act, not the ECI.
• The ECI argues that its constitutional duty to prepare accurate electoral rolls requires verifying an applicant’s citizenship, even if this does not amount to a formal citizenship determination.
• The dispute unsettles a long-standing democratic presumption: that all residents are citizens unless proven otherwise.
• With the burden shifting toward individuals, the nature of the state’s relationship to its people becomes central.

The Quest for a ‘Master Document’ and the Burden of Proof

• India lacks a single document with the legal status of definitive proof of citizenship.
• The Citizenship Act, 1955 and the Citizenship Rules, 2003 provide for a National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Identity Cards, but these frameworks remain incomplete.
• The National Population Register (NPR), which lists all residents, is intended to feed into the NRC, which includes only those who have proven their citizenship.
• A critical principle governs this regime: when citizenship is questioned, the burden of proof rests on the individual, not the state.
• Past exercises, such as the 2010 NPR and the 2008 Multipurpose National Identity Card pilot, reflect efforts to build comprehensive identification systems.
• Political hesitation remains evident, particularly as the NRC disappeared from the 2024 election manifesto.
• The interplay between policy ambition and political caution continues to shape India’s approach to documenting citizenship.

Evolving Conceptions of Indian Citizenship

• India’s early citizenship framework leaned toward jus soli or birth-based citizenship.
• Over time, elements of descent-based citizenship (jus sanguinis) grew stronger, introducing multiple caveats to citizenship by birth.
  • Those born before July 1, 1987 are citizens by birth without condition.
  • Between 1987 and 2004, one parent must be a citizen.
  • After December 3, 2004, one parent must be a citizen and the other must not be an illegal migrant.
• The 2003 amendments introduced the category of illegal immigrant, excluding such persons and their children from birth-based citizenship.
• The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 further altered the landscape by introducing a religion-based path to citizenship, marking a significant shift in the principles governing membership in the national community.

Who Determines Citizenship? The Administrative Paradox

• A fundamental paradox sits at the heart of citizenship governance: while a democracy derives legitimacy from the people, the state controls the mechanisms that define who the people are.
• In practice, citizenship determinations are made by frontline officials, clerks, constables, border agents, and local administrators, whose decisions shape political inclusion and exclusion.
• Whether conducted under the ECI or the MHA, exercises such as SIR, NPR, or NRC rely on the same local bureaucracy.
• Institutional location does not resolve the deeper contradiction, for the state retains authority to determine membership in the very polity that legitimises it.

Assam: A Case Study in Bureaucratised Citizenship

• Assam offers the only example of a completed draft NRC, created under Section 6A following the Assam Accord.
• The 2019 draft identified 19 lakh individuals as D-voters or doubtful citizens, based on their inability to establish lineage or residency beyond reasonable doubt.
• Reliance on decades-old legacy documents placed immense burdens on individuals, and political reactions intensified when large numbers of excluded individuals were found to be Hindus.
• Being marked a D-voter can result in loss of voting rights, proceedings before Foreigners Tribunals, and potential deportation.
• Assam demonstrates the human and administrative complexity inherent in large-scale citizenship verification.

The Democratic Dilemma

• Efforts to verify citizenship reveal a core democratic tension: a democracy presupposes that people create the state, yet the state decides who counts as the people.
• With individuals bearing the burden of proof and the state exercising decisive authority, the balance between administrative control and democratic inclusion remains fragile.
• Without resolving this paradox, initiatives such as SIR, NPR, or NRC will continue to shape anxieties over identity, belonging, and the meaning of citizenship in India.

Conclusion

• India’s ongoing contestation over citizenship verification sits at the intersection of law, politics, and philosophy.
• While administrative accuracy in electoral rolls is essential, the mechanisms used to determine citizenship must balance state interests with constitutional guarantees of fairness, transparency, and democratic inclusion.
• The unresolved question remains: how can a democratic state verify its citizenry without undermining the very principle that the people precede and authorise the state?