Why in news?

India's net FDI has declined sharply in recent years — from a peak of $44 billion in 2020-21 to less than $1 billion in 2024-25 — even as gross inflows remain strong.

This has triggered a debate between critics who see it as a sign of weakness and the Chief Economic Adviser who points to large gross inflows as evidence of strength. This article argues that both sides are missing the bigger picture.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Understanding the FDI Gap: Gross vs Net
• Three Types of FDI: Not All Investment is Equal
• The Problem with Gross FDI Numbers
• Manufacturing FDI: A Worrying Decline
• Outward FDI: Maturity or Capital Recycling
• The True Cost: For Every Dollar In, $1.50 Goes Out
• Conclusion

Understanding the FDI Gap: Gross vs Net

• Gross FDI refers to total capital coming into India. Net FDI is what remains after subtracting outflows — disinvestment, repatriation of capital, and profits sent abroad.
• India's net FDI recovered partially to $7.6 billion in 2025-26 against gross inflows of $94.6 billion — a massive gap that demands explanation.
• The official narrative blames profit repatriation for weak net FDI. However, analysts point out this is misleading.
• Under Balance of Payments (BoP) conventions, dividend remittances are recorded in the current account, not the financial account.
• They widen the Current Account Deficit (CAD) but do not reduce net FDI figures.
• The actual culprit is disinvestment and capital repatriation, which appear in the financial account.

Three Types of FDI: Not All Investment is Equal

• FDI is commonly seen as a uniform, long-term commitment. In reality, it comprises three very different investor categories:
  • Real FDI (RFDI) consists of traditional multinational enterprises bringing technology, brands, and productive capabilities. These represent genuine long-term commitments to host country development.
    • Between 2022-23 and 2025-26, RFDI accounted for 41.9% of effective inflows.
  • Financial Investors — private equity funds, venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds, and asset managers — contribute 40.5% of effective inflows. Their primary goal is capital growth and planned exits, not long-term industrial development.
    • A stark example: Singapore's Temasek exited Schneider Electric India in 2025, earning $6.4 billion on a $637 million investment made just five years earlier.
    • In CY 2025 alone, 45 major PE/VC exits accounted for $29 billion in outflows out of a total divestment of $52 billion.
  • Diaspora investments and Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) make up the remaining 17.6%. These involve capital raised abroad and channelled through offshore financial centres, and may sometimes include round-tripping of Indian funds.

The Problem with Gross FDI Numbers

• A significant blind spot in gross FDI figures is that they mix fresh capital with mere accounting changes — intra-group ownership reorganisations, mergers, share swaps, and conversion of External Commercial Borrowings (ECBs) into equity.
• No new money actually enters the country in such transactions.
• Of the $560 billion in equity inflows between 2014-15 and 2025-26, approximately $40 billion fall into this non-fresh-capital category.
• Large individual transactions — such as those involving Bosch and Meesho Technologies — can significantly distort annual inflow and sectoral data.

Manufacturing FDI: A Worrying Decline

• Real FDI into India's manufacturing sector has declined across three consecutive four-year periods.
• In the most recent period (2022-23 to 2025-26), RFDI into manufacturing accounted for just 10.6% of total effective inflows.
• This is particularly concerning because manufacturing FDI — not financial investor FDI — is what drives technology transfer, job creation, and industrial development.

Outward FDI: Maturity or Capital Recycling

• India's Outward FDI (OFDI) has also risen sharply.
• Between 2023-24 and 2025-26, India invested $65 billion outward — but 45% of this went into "Financial, Insurance, and Business Services" (FIB) sectors, primarily through holding companies and SPVs in Singapore (27%) and the UAE (11%).
• This pattern raises questions. Much of this OFDI flows to holding entities rather than operational businesses, and may represent capital recycling across jurisdictions rather than genuine corporate expansion.
• The example of TML Commercial Vehicles (a Tata Motors subsidiary) routing a $405 million investment through a Singaporean entity to acquire an Italian company illustrates the complexity.
• GIFT City further adds to this complexity — OFDI through it rose from $246 million in 2023-24 to $1.18 billion in 2025-26, creating significant two-way capital flows that are difficult to track cleanly.

The True Cost: For Every Dollar In, $1.50 Goes Out

• When outflows from disinvestment, dividend remittances ($118.9 billion), and IPR/royalty payments ($46.6 billion) are added up — excluding OFDI and technical service payments — total outflows between 2022-23 and 2025-26 reached $344.4 billion.
• Against fresh inflows (excluding reinvested earnings) of $230.6 billion, this means for every $1 of fresh inflow, approximately $1.50 flowed out.
• This ratio has steadily worsened: outflows per dollar stood at 56 cents (2014-18), rose to 70 cents (2018-22), and have now crossed $1.50 — signalling a serious external sustainability concern.

Conclusion

Strong gross FDI numbers can mask a fragile reality. When capital exits faster than it enters, and financial investors crowd out industrial investors, the promise of FDI — technology, jobs, and growth — remains only partially fulfilled.

Why in news?

On June 9, 2026 — the death anniversary of Birsa Munda — tribal organisations in Jharkhand took a public pledge to protect his legacy. This came in the backdrop of renewed demands for "delisting" of tribal converts to Christianity or Islam from the Scheduled Tribes (ST) list, most recently raised at a gathering attended by Union Home Minister.

The controversy has reignited a fundamental question: what did Birsa Munda actually stand for?

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Who Was Birsa Munda?
• Early Life and Formative Influences
• The Ulgulan: The Great Tumult
• Religious Identity: The Birsait Faith
• Conclusion

Who Was Birsa Munda

• Birsa Munda was one of the most influential figures from the Chotanagpur plateau — the mineral-rich region spanning present-day Jharkhand and adjoining states.
• Revered as "Dharti Aba" (Father of the Earth), he led the Ulgulan (the "Great Tumult") — a movement against colonial rule and diku (non-tribal outsider) zamindars who were encroaching upon Adivasi land and cultural life in the late 19th century.
• Historians described him as a religious reformer, social mobiliser, and political leader who transformed Munda tribal society.
• They contend that Birsa articulated a broader vision of Adivasi identity, autonomy, and self-rule (Adivasi disum), making him far more than just the leader of an agrarian uprising.

Early Life and Formative Influences

• Birsa was born on November 15, 1875, in Ulihatu village, present-day Khunti district of Jharkhand.
• His father, Sugna Munda, had embraced Christianity and was associated with the Sardari movement — an earlier Adivasi mobilisation against the erosion of traditional land rights and the growing influence of outsider landlords.
• Colonial Disruption of Adivasi Land Systems
  • Adivasi territories had been under pressure even before formal British rule.
  • Colonial land policies, especially the Permanent Settlement of 1773, gave legal backing to revenue intermediaries (dikus) who displaced the traditional Khuntkatti system — the customary Munda practice of collective land ownership by the descendants of original forest-clearing settlers (Khuntkattidars).
  • This led to a cascade of dispossession: growing indebtedness, forced labour, and the collapse of village self-governance.
  • These grievances became the fertile ground for agrarian unrest across Chotanagpur.
• Contact with Christian Education
  • Birsa spent part of his early childhood at his uncle's village before attending missionary schools in Chaibasa, where he was known by the Christian name "Daud" (or David).
  • His association with missionary education later ended after a disagreement with church authorities over his remarks about the Munda community.

The Ulgulan: The Great Tumult

• Ulgulan (meaning "Great Tumult" or "Great Rebellion") was the armed uprising led by Birsa Munda in the late 19th century against British colonial rule and diku (outsider) zamindars who were displacing Adivasi communities from their traditional lands.
• Climax at Dombari Buru
  • The Ulgulan reached its peak at Dombari Buru (a hill in Khunti) in January 1899, where thousands of Birsa's followers gathered to assert land rights and challenge British authority.
  • British forces surrounded the hill and fired on the crowd. Adivasi oral memory recalls this as a massacre that killed hundreds, though official colonial records estimate far fewer casualties.
• Arrest and Death
  • Birsa was arrested on February 3, 1900, in the forests of Porahat after months as a fugitive. He died in Ranchi Jail on June 9, 1900.
  • Colonial records attributed his death to cholera and dysentery complications, but suspicions of poisoning have persisted in popular memory.
• Legislative Outcome: CNT Act, 1908
  • Though the uprising was militarily crushed, it compelled the colonial administration to act.
  • The Chotanagpur Tenancy (CNT) Act, 1908 was enacted to legally recognise traditional land tenure systems like Khuntkatti and Bhuinhari, and to prevent transfer of Adivasi land to non-Adivasis.
  • Missionary ethnographer Father J.B. Hoffmann is credited as one of its principal architects.
  • Despite occasional misuse, the CNT Act remains one of the strongest legal protections against tribal land alienation in Jharkhand even today.

Religious Identity: The Birsait Faith

• After distancing himself from Christianity, Birsa came under the influence of Vaishnavism for a period. He was jailed in 1885 on charges of inciting people against the British, missionaries, and diku zamindars.
• After his release, he began preaching a distinct spiritual worldview centred on life, nature, and community.
• This evolved into the Birsait faith — a distinct religion separate from Sarnaism (traditional tribal faith), Christianity, and Hinduism.
• His followers revere him as a messiah, calling him "Bhagwan" and "Dharti Aba."

Conclusion

Historians note that the aspiration for Adivasi self-governance articulated during the Ulgulan was later channelled into the movement for a separate Jharkhand under Jaipal Singh Munda in the mid-20th century — a lineage that culminated in the creation of Jharkhand in 2000.

Birsa Munda was not merely a rebel — he was a civilisational voice. His struggle reminds us that Adivasi identity is rooted in land, ancestry, and self-governance — not in religious labels imposed from outside.

Context:

• As India marches toward Viksit Bharat 2047, the health sector faces a fundamental question: how to build a system that is not merely reactive, but anticipatory, equitable, and innovation-driven.
• The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) — India's apex biomedical research body — has responded with a series of structural and strategic reforms, drawing lessons from COVID-19 and aligning science with national public health priorities.
• This article highlights how the ICMR is transforming India's health ecosystem through institutional reforms, technology-driven innovation, interdisciplinary research, and stronger integration with public health systems.
• It examines how ICMR is shifting from a reactive research body to a proactive health intelligence and innovation platform aligned with the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047.

Strategic Reorientation: From Silos to Systems

• Institutional Restructuring
  • ICMR has expanded the mandates of several of its institutes, repositioning them as interdisciplinary hubs rather than narrowly focused entities.
  • Key domains now include digital health and data science, child health, and women's health — areas that reflect India's evolving disease burden and technological capabilities.
• Regional Research Network
  • A network of National Institutes of Health Research (NIHRs) is being created across the country — from Dibrugarh in the Northeast to Jodhpur in the West.
  • These institutes will embed themselves within state and district health systems to conduct operational research that is both locally relevant and practically actionable.
• From Projects to Solutions
  • The funding ecosystem is being redesigned to move beyond piecemeal project support toward an integrated research continuum — one that funds solutions, not just studies.
  • The National Health Research Programme (NHRP) anchors this shift by identifying 13 priority areas including antimicrobial resistance (AMR), tuberculosis, mental health, nutrition, and emergency care.

Technology as a Transformative Force

• AI in Diagnostics and Surveillance
  • AI-enabled tools are already supporting frontline health workers — notably in tuberculosis screening, diabetic retinopathy detection, and nutritional monitoring.
  • This is helping bridge the longstanding urban-rural healthcare divide.
• Innovation at the Frontier
  • The i-Drone initiative — initially used for vaccine delivery — has expanded to transport critical medical supplies, demonstrating how technology can overcome geographic barriers.
  • Advances across medtech, from medical devices to next-generation vaccines and therapeutics, are enabling more targeted, patient-centric interventions.
• From Lab to Market
  • Platforms like MedTechMitra and the Medical Innovations-Patent Mitra initiative are accelerating the journey from publicly funded research to affordable, accessible commercial products.
  • The integration of traditional knowledge systems with evidence-based models is also gaining international recognition.

Impact on Ground: Towards Universal Access

• Reforms are showing measurable public health outcomes.
• The India Hypertension Control Initiative has demonstrated how evidence-based strategies can transform chronic disease management at scale.
• Mission-mode programmes in emergency care — including mobile stroke units and rapid cardiac response systems — are redefining survival outcomes.
• Expanded diagnostic networks and indigenous technologies are strengthening early detection across diseases from cancer to infectious outbreaks.
• All of this aligns closely with the National Health Policy 2017, which emphasises preventive care, universal access, and quality of care.

The Road to 2047

• ICMR's vision is to serve as a catalyst — connecting researchers, clinicians, policymakers, and industry.
• The roadmap to 2047 will be defined by advances in digital health, biomanufacturing, and sustainable development, with strong emphasis on capacity building and global collaboration.

Conclusion

• ICMR's reimagination — from a research body to a national health intelligence system — reflects a mature understanding that science must serve society.
• When data meets decisions and innovation meets equity, the aspiration of a healthy, developed India becomes genuinely achievable.

About Pseudocapritermes novus:

• It is a new species of soil-dwelling termite.
• It was discovered during an exploration of the Chapramari Wildlife Sanctuary, West Bengal.
• It is different from the usual termites that are destructive in nature.
• These soil-feeding termites play a crucial role in enriching the earth by feeding on soil and humus, making them vital indicators of an ecosystem's soil health and fertility.
• This discovery brings the total number of Pseudocapritermes species found in India to five.
• Features:
  • The new termite stands out from its closest relatives in the unique shapes of its mouthparts and body armour.
  • Like others in its group, this insect belongs to a special club of termites known for their asymmetrical, snapping jaws, which they use to defend themselves or raise an alarm by producing a loud clicking sound.
  • However, compared to its closest known cousin, P. bhutanensis, the newly discovered species boasts a strongly bent left jaw with a slightly incurved tip, a more rounded swollen section below its beak, and a longer, wider postmentum (the lower part of its mouth).

About American Foulbrood (AFB):

• It is a fatal infectious disease of honey bee larvae, caused by a spore-forming bacterium called Paenibacillus larvae.
• While it only attacks larvae, AFB weakens the colony and can quickly lead to its death in only three weeks.
• Cause:
  • Paenibacillus larvae produce spores when subjected to stress such as lack of nutrients.
  • It's these spores that actually cause and are the source of the disease.
  • Spores enter the larva through feeding of contaminated food.
  • The bacteria kill the bee larva by completely consuming the body tissues.
  • The spores are highly resistant to extremes of temperature, chemical attack, and other adverse conditions and can remain viable for over 50 years
  • Once hardship has passed, for example, when nutrients become available again, the bacterium will germinate and reproduce.
  • The cycle will repeat if hardship occurs again. This means that it is difficult to eliminate the spores from colonies.
• Transmission:
  • Although AFB is not highly contagious, bacterial spores can easily be spread between hives and apiaries through beekeeping practices such as the exchange of equipment and movement of infected combs.
  • Though adult bees are not affected by AFB, they can spread spores within and between infected and clean hives through robbing and drifting.
• Treatment: The disease is not able to be cured, meaning that destruction of infected colonies and hives or irradiation of infected material is the only way to manage AFB.

About Dark Patterns:

• Dark patterns, also known as deceptive patterns, are deliberate design tactics that trick online users into making choices that aren’t always in their best interest.
• They are designed to mislead users to do something they originally did not intend or want to do.
• At their core, dark patterns exploit cognitive biases. They leverage the way our brains process information to nudge us toward specific decisions, often against our best interests.
• Dark patterns take many forms, and different sources may categorize them in various ways.
• Each is designed to manipulate users into making choices that benefit the company rather than the user.
• These deceptive design tactics can pop up across websites, forms, emails, and apps.
• The Central Consumer Protection Authority notified the Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns in 2023 and specified 13 dark patterns, namely:
  • False urgency, Basket Sneaking, Confirm shaming, forced action, Subscription trap, Interface Interference, Bait and switch, Drip Pricing, Disguised Advertisements and Nagging, Trick Wording, Saas Billing and Rogue Malwares.
• For example, drip pricing is when extra costs appear after the user has started the purchase process.
• False urgency: Dark patterns sometimes invent deadlines or stock shortages, sometimes known as scarcity cues, to exploit a fear of missing out, pressuring users into quick decisions without taking the time to think through the purchase.
• Basket Sneaking: This is when extra products or services are added to a user’s shopping cart without their explicit consent.
• Subscription Trap: This dark pattern is the common case of making it substantially harder to cancel a subscription than it was to start the subscription in the first place.

About Zojila Tunnel:

• It is a major under-construction road tunnel that will connect Sonamarg in Jammu & Kashmir to Dras in Ladakh.
• It is situated under the Zoji La pass on the Srinagar-Leh Highway (NH-1).
• Upon completion, the tunnel will join the Ganderbal district of Jammu & Kashmir and the Kargil district of Ladakh, providing all-weather connectivity between the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh.
• It is being constructed on the complex, rocky terrain at an elevation of 11,578 feet above sea level.
• It is the world’s longest single‑tube bi‑directional road tunnel at the highest altitude.
• Once completed, it will reduce travel time across the Zojila stretch from around 90 minutes to just 15 minutes.
• It is being constructed using the New Austrian Tunnelling Method (NATM), a method particularly suited to fragile Himalayan geology and variable rock conditions.

About Eechathalakenda incognita:

• It is a new species of fish belonging to the cyprinid subfamily Torinae.
• It was discovered from various streams inside the Periyar Tiger Reserve, Kerala.
• The genus Eechathalakenda was originally established in 1999 for a solitary, enigmatic fish species first described in 1941 from the Pamba River in Kerala.
• This newly described species had been confused with Eechathalakenda ophicephala for the last 70 years.
  • However, it is visually and genetically distinct from Eechathalakenda ophicephala.
  • While ophicephala sports rhomboid-shaped scales, the new species features circular scales near its upper body, alongside a unique dark lateral stripe, a different count of fin rays, and a substantial 4.9%-5.3% genetic variation.
  • Their geographic distributions are exceptionally narrow; E. ophicephala is strictly confined to Pamba river headwaters, while E. incognita is isolated to specific fast-flowing, rocky streams inside the Periyar Tiger Reserve.
• incognita is the ninth point-endemic fish species (restricted to a single location in the world) to be identified within the Periyar Tiger Reserve.