UPSC Mains 2025 GS Question Papers with Model Answers

Salient features

• Grid planning: streets ran north–south and east–west, dividing cities into rectangular blocks, as at Mohenjodaro and Kalibangan.
• Two-part layout: a raised citadel on a mud-brick platform held public buildings, while the lower town housed people; Dholavira added a middle town.
• Standardised burnt bricks in the ratio 1:2:4, laid in English bond, gave uniform strength across sites 1,500 km apart.
• Drainage: covered brick drains with inspection holes ran under streets, linked to house drains and soak pits.
• Public works: the Great Bath of Mohenjodaro lined with bitumen, granaries at Harappa, and Dholavira's rock-cut reservoirs for rainwater harvesting.
• Courtyard houses with wells and bathrooms, plain outside, suggesting an egalitarian ethos; Lothal's dockyard shows hydraulic engineering.

Main aspects

• Political accommodation: abolition of the pilgrim tax (1563) and jizya (1564), marriages with Rajput princesses, and high mansabs for Rajputs such as Man Singh.
• Debate: at the Ibadat Khana in Fatehpur Sikri (1575) he heard ulema, Brahmins, Jains, Parsis and Jesuits; the mahzar of 1579 made him arbiter in religious disputes.
• Din-i-Ilahi (1582): a small ethical order drawing on Sufi, Hindu, Zoroastrian and Christian ideas, with sun veneration and vegetarian days, not a new religion.
• Cultural synthesis: the Maktab Khana translated the Mahabharata (Razmnama) and Ramayana into Persian; Fatehpur Sikri fused Persian domes with Rajasthani brackets and chhatris.

Resilient vigour

• Figures carved almost in the round from Vindhyan sandstone, taut and elongated, caught in motion: dancers, warriors and apsaras in tribhanga on the Kandariya Mahadeva temple.
• Bands of sculpture rise with the soaring shikhara, so the stone seems to surge upward.

Breadth of life

• Themes embrace all of life: Shiva, Vishnu and Jain tirthankaras share walls with sura-sundaris writing letters, applying kohl, removing thorns and playing with children.
• Mithuna panels, read as tantric symbolism or as celebration of kama among the purusharthas, show unembarrassed acceptance of the senses.
• Vaishnava, Shaiva and Jain temples stand together.

How they are affected

• Submergence: sea level has risen about 20 cm since 1900; Tuvalu and Kiribati, mostly below 3 metres, and the Maldives, 80 per cent below 1 metre, could become uninhabitable this century.
• Salinisation of freshwater lenses and taro and coconut fields, as in Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands.
• Stronger cyclones such as Winston (Fiji, 2016) and Pam (Vanuatu, 2015) wiped out a large share of GDP.
• Displacement and identity: Kiribati bought land in Fiji; loss of territory raises questions of statehood and maritime zones.

Relation to physiographic features

• Mountains: transhumant pastoralism by Gujjars and Bakarwals of Jammu and Kashmir and Gaddis of Himachal follows alpine pastures; Changpas rear pashmina goats on the Changthang plateau.
• Forested hills and plateaus: tribal communities of Chhattisgarh and Odisha gather tendu leaves, sal seeds and mahua; the Chotanagpur plateau's Gondwana and Dharwar rocks support coal at Jharia and iron ore at Noamundi and Bailadila.
• Coasts: marine fishing off Kerala, Gujarat and Andhra, where a broad shelf and upwelling give rich catches.
• Deserts: Raikas of Rajasthan rear camels and sheep in Thar grasslands.

Ecological benefits

• Zero-emission generation displaces coal: Bhadla (Rajasthan, 2.2 GW) and Pavagada (Karnataka) avoid millions of tonnes of CO2 a year.
• No SO2, NOx or fly ash, and no mining or cooling water.
• Floating solar at Ramagundam and Omkareshwar cuts evaporation; agrivoltaics lets crops and panels share land.
• Rooftop solar reduces transmission losses and diesel pumping.

Economic benefits

• Tariffs near Rs 2.5 per unit, below new coal power, lower costs for discoms and industry.
• Energy security and foreign-exchange savings through less imported coal and oil.
• PM-KUSUM solar pumps and PM Surya Ghar rooftop subsidies raise farm incomes and cut household bills.
• Manufacturing and jobs through the PLI scheme for modules.

Causes and occurrence

• Submarine earthquakes of magnitude 7 or more at subduction zones, when the sea floor is thrust up or down, as in the Sumatra–Andaman quake (2004) and Tohoku (2011).
• Volcanic eruptions and collapses, such as Krakatoa (1883) and Anak Krakatau (2018).
• Most occur around the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Indonesian arc and the Makran coast near India.

Consequences

• The 2004 tsunami killed about 2.3 lakh people in 14 countries, over 10,000 of them in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
• Destruction of coastal settlements, ports and fishing fleets.

How it addresses them

• Area-based development includes affordable housing and in-situ slum upgrading, converging with PMAY-Urban, as in Bhubaneswar's slum land rights.
• Pan-city solutions such as smart water meters, LED lighting and command centres improve basic services the poor depend on most.
• Public bicycles and e-buses (Pune, Surat) help low-income commuters; smart classrooms and health kiosks reach the poor.
• Citizen consultations gave residents some voice.

Limits to distributive justice

• Area-based projects cover barely 5 per cent of a city, often its better-off core, creating 'islands of excellence'.
• Beautification evicted street vendors and slum dwellers in Indore and Vizag.
• Special purpose vehicles bypass elected councils, weakening the 74th Amendment's accountability.

Professionalism

• Merit-based recruitment through UPSC, political neutrality, anonymity and adherence to the Conduct Rules.
• Expertise in administration, finance and law, continuous training at LBSNAA and under Mission Karmayogi, and accountability to Parliament and courts.

Nationalistic consciousness

• Loyalty to the Constitution rather than to any party or region; the All India Services, as Patel argued, bind Union and states together.
• Commitment to national goals: officers who drove the Green Revolution, Pulse Polio, Kudumbashree in Kerala or relief after the 2004 tsunami.

But consumer culture is not its only result

• Economic opportunity: IT and services exports, FDI and global supply chains created a large middle class and lifted millions out of poverty; remittances exceed USD 100 billion a year.
• Ideas and rights: global media spread gender equality, environmental awareness and human rights; MeToo and climate strikes reached Indian cities.
• Two-way culture: yoga, Bollywood, Indian cuisine and Ayurveda went global while Indian music fused with world forms.
• Education and mobility: Indian students and professionals abroad, and global collaboration in science, as in COVID-19 vaccine production.
• Civil society: transnational norms strengthened disability rights and anti-corruption campaigns.

Shudras and peasants

• In Gulamgiri (1873) he compared the condition of the Shudras and Ati-Shudras to American slavery and traced it to Brahmanical religion and the Aryan conquest.
• Shetkaryacha Asud (The Cultivator's Whipcord, 1883) exposed the exploitation of peasants by moneylenders, priests and the colonial revenue system, demanding irrigation, cheap credit and education for farmers.

Dalits

• He opened his own water tank to untouchables in 1868 and started schools for Mahar and Mang children in 1852, decades before Ambedkar, whom he inspired.

Women

• With Savitribai he opened the first school for girls in Pune in 1848, ran a home for widows and orphans (Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha, 1863), campaigned against child marriage and for widow remarriage, and supported the barbers' strike against tonsuring widows.

Religion and education

• Sarvajanik Satya Dharma rejected priestly mediation and idolatry; the Samaj conducted marriages without Brahmins.
• He told the Hunter Commission (1882) that mass primary education, not elite universities, should get public funds.

Polity

• The Constitution (1950) created a federal parliamentary republic with universal adult franchise; the first general election of 1951–52 proved it workable.
• Sardar Patel and V.P. Menon integrated 560 princely states, using accession, police action in Hyderabad (1948) and a plebiscite in Junagadh; Kashmir acceded in 1947.
• The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 redrew states on linguistic lines after the Andhra agitation, defusing a threat to unity; the Nehru-era Congress built a one-party-dominant yet democratic system.

Economy

• The Planning Commission (1950) and the Five-Year Plans combined public-sector heavy industry (Mahalanobis model, 1956) with community development; the Industrial Policy Resolutions of 1948 and 1956 defined a mixed economy.
• Zamindari abolition and tenancy reforms, Bhakra-Nangal and Hirakud dams, and IITs and steel plants at Bhilai, Rourkela and Durgapur laid the industrial base.

Education

• The University Education Commission (Radhakrishnan, 1948) and Secondary Education Commission (Mudaliar, 1952), the UGC (1956), IITs (from 1951), AIIMS and the push for scientific temper under Nehru and Bhabha created modern institutions.

International relations

• Non-alignment, Panchsheel (1954) and leadership at Bandung (1955) gave India an independent voice; it championed decolonisation and nuclear disarmament, while the 1962 war with China exposed the limits of this idealism.

Enduring ideas

• Liberty, equality and fraternity: the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) proclaimed that sovereignty resides in the nation and that men are born free and equal in rights; it is the ancestor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and of bills of rights, including India's Fundamental Rights and Preamble.
• Popular sovereignty and constitutionalism: government by consent, written constitutions and the separation of powers became the norm for modern states.
• Nationalism: the citizen-army of 1792 and the levee en masse created the modern nation-state, later inspiring Italian and German unification and anti-colonial nationalism in Asia and Africa.
• Secularism and civic equality: the end of clerical privilege, civil marriage and equal citizenship for Protestants and Jews fed into the French laicite and secular constitutions elsewhere.
• Legal and administrative modernity: the Napoleonic Code, the metric system, meritocratic careers and uniform departments influenced codes from Latin America to Egypt and Japan.

Contemporary relevance

• Every struggle against authoritarianism, from the Arab Spring to pro-democracy movements, invokes the rights of 1789.
• 'Fraternity' underpins the welfare state and debates on social justice; the revolution's Jacobin phase also warns of how liberty can turn into terror.

Geographical distribution and explanation

• Offshore oil occurs in thick sedimentary basins on continental shelves and slopes where ancient deltas and marine organic matter were buried under sand and shale and sealed by salt or clay.
• The Persian Gulf (Safaniya, the world's largest offshore field), the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea (Brent, Ekofisk), West Africa's Niger delta and Angola, Brazil's pre-salt Campos and Santos basins, the Caspian Sea, the South China Sea and, in India, Mumbai High and the Krishna–Godavari basin are the main areas.
• Passive margins with salt tectonics (Brazil, Gulf of Mexico, Angola) and rift basins (North Sea) trap oil in domes and faults; river deltas supply the organic-rich sediments.

Differences from onshore occurrences

• Onshore reserves lie in interior basins and fold belts, such as the Arabian platform, West Siberia, Texas and Assam; offshore fields are younger Tertiary deposits on submerged margins.
• Exploration and production offshore need seismic surveys, platforms, FPSO vessels and subsea pipelines, making costs several times higher and projects viable only at higher prices.
• Risks differ: offshore spills (Deepwater Horizon, 2010) damage marine ecosystems, and cyclones and corrosion threaten installations; onshore fields face land, pipeline and community conflicts.

Data capture

• Drones give centimetre-level imagery and 3D models of villages, floodplains and mine sites, filling the gap between satellite RS (ISRO's Cartosat, Sentinel) and ground survey; the SVAMITVA scheme has mapped over 3 lakh villages with drones to settle property rights.
• RS supplies land-use, vegetation, soil moisture and night-light data over large areas and time series.

Analysis with AI

• Machine-learning classifiers turn imagery into land-cover maps, detect encroachments, illegal mining and crop types, and count buildings for census and tax rolls.
• AI models trained on GIS layers predict urban sprawl, flood risk and traffic, enabling scenario planning for master plans under the AMRUT GIS-based master-plan scheme.

Applications

• Siting: optimal locations for hospitals, schools, warehouses, solar parks and cell towers using accessibility and suitability analysis; Bhuvan and the Gati Shakti National Master Plan integrate 1,600 layers for infrastructure corridors.
• Areal planning: watershed treatment under MGNREGA using drone-based contour maps; wetland and forest-cover monitoring; coastal-zone and disaster-risk zoning (landslide mapping in Uttarakhand).

Creation of oceans and growth of basins

• Continental rifting: upwelling mantle thins and stretches a continent, forming rift valleys (East African Rift); further spreading lets the sea in, as in the Red Sea, a young ocean.
• Sea-floor spreading at mid-ocean ridges adds new basaltic crust, widening the basin; the Atlantic has grown since Pangaea broke up about 200 million years ago, pushing the Americas away from Africa and Europe.

Shrinking and closing of oceans

• At convergent margins, oceanic crust subducts beneath continental or oceanic plates, so basins shrink; the Pacific is closing as the Americas advance, forming the Andes and the Ring of Fire.
• Complete closure sutures continents: the Tethys closed as India collided with Asia, raising the Himalaya and the Tibetan plateau, and the Mediterranean is the remnant.

Changing shape and size of continents

• Collision welds blocks into larger continents (Gondwana, Laurasia, Pangaea) and crumples margins into fold mountains, thickening and shortening the crust.
• Rifting splits continents into fragments, as Madagascar and India separated from Africa and Australia from Antarctica.

Land

• The vast alluvial plain is flat, easily cultivated and continuously renewed by floods, so almost 70 per cent of the basin is cropped; this supports dense agrarian settlement from Haridwar to the delta.
• Density falls on the Terai and Shivalik margins in the north and the Bundelkhand and Chotanagpur uplands in the south, where terrain is broken and soils thin.

Soil

• The khadar (new alluvium) of the floodplains, rich in silt and moisture, carries the densest villages and double cropping of rice and wheat; the bangar (old alluvium) of the doab is also fertile with irrigation.
• The delta's deltaic alluvium sustains Kolkata's hinterland and the rice–jute economy of Bengal, while saline usar patches in western UP and lateritic soils of the plateau fringe are thinly peopled.

Water

• Perennial Himalayan flow, the Ganga canals (Upper and Lower Ganga, Sarda) and the world's densest tube-well irrigation allow intensive cultivation; groundwater supports the wheat belt of western UP and Haryana.

Why the industry grows despite health concerns

• Urbanisation and work: nuclear families, long commutes and dual-earner households leave little time to cook; fast food offers speed and predictability.
• Youth and aspiration: 65 per cent of Indians are under 35; eating out and branded food signal modernity and status, amplified by advertising and social media.
• Affordability and reach: Rs 50 burgers and pizzas, delivery platforms such as Zomato and Swiggy, and cloud kitchens take fast food to tier-2 and tier-3 towns.
• Taste engineering: high salt, sugar and fat are designed to be habit-forming, and portion deals encourage over-consumption.
• Weak regulation: front-of-pack warning labels are still pending, and advertising to children is largely unrestricted.

Areas of conflict

• Forests and tribals: creation of tiger reserves and eco-sensitive zones has displaced communities (over 1 lakh families from tiger reserves), and Forest Rights Act claims are often rejected; the proposed Hasdeo and Niyamgiri mining shows the reverse pressure.
• Energy: restricting coal to cut emissions affects the 4 million people in mining districts, while cheap electricity for the poor still comes largely from coal.
• Urban environment: closing polluting units in Delhi, demolishing riverbank settlements or banning old vehicles hits informal workers hardest.
• Agriculture: curbs on stubble burning, groundwater use and fertiliser subsidies raise costs for small farmers; the 2016 Western Ghats ESA notification was resisted by hill farmers.

Why the conflict is not inevitable

• The poor suffer most from environmental decline: floods, heat, polluted water and crop failures; sustainability is in their interest.
• Inclusive models exist: joint forest management and community forest rights in Gadchiroli raised incomes while protecting forests; MGNREGA builds watershed and plantation assets; solar pumps under PM-KUSUM and LPG under Ujjwala replace polluting fuels; the Van Dhan scheme adds value to forest produce.

Why these axes dominate

• Large projects on tribal land: Sardar Sarovar, Hirakud and Polavaram dams, Bailadila and Hasdeo mines and the Rourkela and Bhilai steel plants displaced lakhs of tribals, most of whom were never resettled; the Narmada Bachao Andolan made displacement a national issue.
• Legal framework built around these concerns: the Fifth Schedule, PESA (1996), the Forest Rights Act (2006), the Samatha judgment (1997) and the LARR Act (2013) with its consent and rehabilitation clauses.

But development is broader than this binary

• Human development: tribal literacy (59 per cent), infant mortality, malnutrition and sickle-cell disease lag far behind national averages; Eklavya Model Residential Schools, scholarships and the PM-JANMAN mission for PVTGs address these.
• Livelihoods: minor forest produce MSP, Van Dhan Kendras, Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan (2024) covering 63,000 villages, and land rights under FRA.
• Culture and self-governance: protection of languages, PESA gram sabhas and Sixth Schedule councils.

Corrupt practices

• Bribery: gift, offer or promise of gratification to induce a candidate or voter.
• Undue influence: interference with the free exercise of electoral right, including threats of divine displeasure.
• Appeal on grounds of religion, race, caste, community or language and promoting enmity.
• False statements about a candidate, hiring vehicles for voters, excess expenditure, help of government servants and booth capturing.

Need compared with courts

• Expertise: technical members decide tax, company, electricity, telecom and environmental matters (NGT, NCLT, TDSAT).
• Speed and cost: flexible procedure, no strict Evidence Act, cheaper for litigants; relief to courts facing over five crore pending cases.

Impact

• Rationalisation removed low-volume bodies.
• But the Supreme Court in Madras Bar Association (2021) had already struck down the same tenure and age provisions as threats to independence.
• High Courts received extra workload; vacancies left tribunals such as NCLT and AFT short-handed, defeating the purpose of speed.

India

• Article 72 lets the President grant pardon, commutation, remission, respite or reprieve for offences under Union law, court-martial sentences and death sentences; Governors act under Article 161.
• Exercised on ministerial advice (Maru Ram, 1980) and open to judicial review for mala fides or non-application of mind (Epuru Sudhakar, 2006).

USA

• Article II gives the President an absolute, personal power to pardon federal offences, except in cases of impeachment; it needs no advice and is practically unreviewable.

Nature of the Assembly

• A directly elected House of 90 seats after the 2022 delimitation (43 Kashmir, 47 Jammu), with 24 seats for Pakistan-occupied territory kept vacant; the Lieutenant Governor nominates up to five members.
• Five-year term; elections were held in 2024.
• It is a subordinate legislature: Parliament retains power over all subjects and its laws prevail in case of repugnancy.

Powers and functions

• It may legislate on State List and Concurrent List matters except 'public order' and 'police', which, with All India Services and the Anti-Corruption Bureau, are reserved to the Lieutenant Governor.
• Money bills need the LG's recommendation; bills can be reserved for the President.

Responsibilities

• Advises the Government on legal matters referred by the President and performs assigned legal duties.
• Appears for the Union in the Supreme Court and High Courts, as in the Article 370 and electoral bonds cases.

Rights

• Right of audience in all courts in India (Article 76(3)).
• Right to speak and take part in proceedings of either House, joint sittings and committees, without a vote (Article 88).

Limitations

• Must not advise or hold a brief against the Government, appear for an accused in a criminal case or accept a company directorship without permission.
• Not a Cabinet member or full-time servant; may practise privately; tenure follows the government.

How it advances empowerment and equity

• Economic: over 10 crore women in DAY-NRLM SHGs and Kerala's Kudumbashree (46 lakh members) access credit, run enterprises and became 'lakhpati didis'; SEWA and Lijjat turned informal workers into owners.
• Political: networks of elected women representatives (about 14 lakh) and SHG federations help women contest and function in panchayats, breaking 'sarpanch pati' control.
• Social: collective voice against alcohol in Andhra Pradesh's anti-arrack movement and ASHA networks improving maternal health.

Evidence of the bias

• Projects such as land records (Bhoomi), e-District and GSTN prioritised databases and integration; early GSTN and e-Shram portals crashed or confused users.
• Aadhaar-based biometric authentication, designed for back-end de-duplication, caused ration denial where fingerprints or connectivity failed, as in Jharkhand.
• Forms, OTPs and English interfaces exclude the 45 per cent without internet, the elderly and women with low digital literacy.

Way forward

• Design thinking and user testing before launch, vernacular and voice interfaces, and accessibility under the GIGW guidelines.
• Offline and assisted modes, exception handling for authentication failures, and open APIs so citizens choose the channel.

Why they are seen as anti-State

• Opposition to projects: protests at Kudankulam, Narmada, Niyamgiri and Aarey; a 2014 Intelligence Bureau report accused NGOs of stalling development.
• Regulatory action: FCRA licences of over 20,000 organisations cancelled, and Greenpeace, Amnesty and Oxfam India restricted; the Supreme Court upheld the 2020 FCRA amendments (Noel Harper, 2022).

Why the perception is unfair

• Most CSOs are partners: Pratham in education, Akshaya Patra in mid-day meals, SEWA in livelihoods, Goonj in disaster relief.
• Landmark laws came from civil society: RTI and MGNREGA from MKSS, the Forest Rights Act, the POSH Act after Vishaka.

Mutual respect

• The Pan-African e-Network (2009) and its successors e-VidyaBharti and e-ArogyaBharti deliver tele-education and tele-medicine to African students and hospitals through African institutions.
• Capacity building under ITEC trains thousands of African officials annually in IT, cyber security and e-governance.

Co-development

• India's open-source identity platform MOSIP has been adopted by Morocco, Ethiopia, Togo and Guinea, letting countries own their data, unlike proprietary systems.
• UPI and India Stack are being shared: Namibia licensed UPI technology (2024), with MoUs on digital public infrastructure with Ghana, Sierra Leone and Zambia.

Institutional partnerships

• India championed the African Union's permanent G20 membership (2023) and pushes DPI in the G20 and UN.
• The India–Africa Forum Summit and Smart Africa alliance build long-term links.

Manifestations

• Economic nationalism: US tariffs and 'America First', including the 2025 reciprocal tariffs; China's 'dual circulation'; India's Atmanirbhar Bharat and PLI.
• Border and identity politics: Brexit, immigration curbs in Europe and the US, and populist leaders invoking national sovereignty.
• Withdrawal from multilateralism: exits from the Paris Agreement and WHO, weakened UN Security Council, and the Ukraine war as a war of territorial sovereignty.

Application to judicial independence

• Independence is part of the basic structure (NJAC case, 2015); constitutional morality obliges judges to decide without fear of the executive, as in the electoral bonds judgment (2024), and obliges the executive to respect collegium recommendations and judicial orders.
• It also demands self-restraint: deciding by reasons, not populism.

Application to judicial accountability

• The same morality requires judges to accept checks: impeachment under Articles 124(4) and 217 and the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968; the in-house procedure (1999) used in the 2025 cash-recovery inquiry against a High Court judge; the Restatement of Values of Judicial Life (1997); and transparency, as when the Court brought the CJI's office under RTI (Subhash Agarwal, 2019).

Procedural limitations

• A bill can be introduced only in Parliament, not in state legislatures, by a minister or private member.
• It must be passed in each House separately by a special majority: a majority of the total membership and two-thirds of members present and voting; no joint sitting is available.
• Provisions affecting the federal structure, such as the election of the President, the executive power of the Union and states, the Supreme Court and High Courts, the legislative lists, representation of states in Parliament and Article 368 itself, need ratification by half the state legislatures.
• The President must give assent (24th Amendment, 1971).

Substantive limitations

• The basic structure doctrine (Kesavananda Bharati, 1973) forbids amendments that destroy the Constitution's identity: supremacy of the Constitution, secularism, federalism, democracy, judicial review, rule of law and free and fair elections.
• Applied to strike down the 39th Amendment (Indira Gandhi v. Raj Narain, 1975), clauses (4) and (5) of Article 368 inserted by the 42nd Amendment (Minerva Mills, 1980), the 99th Amendment creating the NJAC (2015), and to subject Ninth Schedule laws after 1973 to review (I.R. Coelho, 2007).

Evolution

• First Judges case (S.P. Gupta, 1981): 'consultation' did not mean concurrence; executive primacy.
• Second Judges case (1993): consultation means concurrence; CJI's opinion, formed with the two senior-most judges, binds the executive.
• Third Judges case (1998 advisory opinion): collegium of the CJI and four senior-most judges for the Supreme Court and three for High Courts.
• The 99th Amendment and NJAC Act (2014), giving the executive and eminent persons a role, were struck down in 2015 as violating judicial independence; a revised memorandum of procedure remains unsettled.

India: collegium

• Advantages: insulates appointments from political patronage, preserves independence and judicial knowledge of candidates' competence.
• Disadvantages: opaque with no published criteria, no secretariat or verification, allegations of favouritism and 'uncle judges', poor diversity, delays and friction with the government that sits on recommendations.

USA: nomination and confirmation

• The President nominates and the Senate confirms after public hearings in the Judiciary Committee; judges hold life tenure.
• Advantages: democratic legitimacy, transparency and public scrutiny of records.
• Disadvantages: deep politicisation, as in the Kavanaugh and Barrett hearings; a bench aligned with the nominating party; life tenure entrenches ideology.

Evolving pattern

• 1950–1990: the Planning Commission, an extra-constitutional body, distributed plan grants and loans, later by the Gadgil formula (1969); centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) multiplied; Finance Commission transfers covered mainly non-plan needs. Fiscal power tilted to the Centre.

Recent reforms

• NITI Aayog (2015) replaced the Planning Commission, ending plan grants and the plan/non-plan distinction.
• The 14th Finance Commission raised states' share of the divisible pool from 32 to 42 per cent; the 15th kept 41 per cent and added performance grants.
• CSS were rationalised (2016) with 60:40 sharing; GST (2017) pooled sovereignty in the GST Council (Article 279A) with compensation until 2022.
• Tighter limits on state borrowing, including off-budget loans, under Article 293.

Impact on fiscal federalism

• Positive: larger untied devolution, cooperative institutions and a common market.
• Negative: cesses and surcharges, outside the divisible pool, rose to about 15–20 per cent of gross tax revenue, cutting states' effective share to around 30 per cent; GST reduced states' tax autonomy and the end of compensation strained finances; CSS still impose Union priorities; disputes such as Kerala's 2024 suit on borrowing limits show friction; the vertical gap persists, with states spending about 60 per cent of public expenditure while raising under 40 per cent of revenue.

Raising awareness

• CSE's studies on pesticides in soft drinks (2003) and annual air-quality reports made pollution a public issue; Chipko made forests a national concern.
• Citizen science and campaigns on single-use plastics, wetlands and urban lakes; media and school outreach.

Influencing policy

• The Silent Valley campaign led to the project's cancellation (1983) and contributed to a separate environment ministry; the Narmada movement produced the 2013 land acquisition and rehabilitation law's consent and resettlement norms.
• Over 17 lakh objections to the draft EIA Notification 2020 forced its reconsideration; Niyamgiri's gram sabhas rejected bauxite mining under the Forest Rights Act (2013).
• Inputs into the National Action Plan on Climate Change, plastic bans and CNG for Delhi's buses.

Advocating protection

• Public interest litigation: M.C. Mehta's cases on the Ganga, Taj and vehicular pollution; Goa Foundation against illegal mining; Vanashakti v. Union of India (2025) ending ex post facto clearances; M.K. Ranjitsinh (2024) recognising a right against climate change.
• Representations before the NGT and expert appraisal committees, and monitoring of compliance.

How unequal ownership causes poverty

• Land: the top 10 per cent of rural households own about half the land while over half of rural households are landless or near-landless (SECC 2011); the landless depend on casual wages without collateral or security.
• Natural resources: mining leases, forests and water are controlled by the state and corporations; tribal communities lose land to projects, bearing 40 per cent of displacement, and receive little of the rent.
• Capital and wealth: the richest 1 per cent hold around 40 per cent of national wealth and the bottom half about 3 per cent (Oxfam), so returns on assets accrue to a few.
• Human and digital capital: unequal access to quality education, health and connectivity reproduces poverty across generations, with caste and gender deepening the gap.

How the problem shows

• Centrally sponsored schemes prescribe uniform designs, from PMAY house plans to MGNREGA work norms and wage rates, across diverse regions.
• Only limited funds, functions and functionaries are devolved to panchayats and municipalities despite the 73rd and 74th Amendments; local bodies spend barely 3 per cent of public expenditure; parallel bodies and missions bypass them.
• District collectors and line departments report upward; data flows to capitals while problems stay at the village.
• Results: toilets without water under Swachh Bharat, ghost works, schemes that miss local priorities, and slow disaster response.

Critical evaluation

• Decentralised models work: Kerala's People's Plan Campaign and Kudumbashree, gram sabha decisions under the Forest Rights Act, Aspirational Districts using local data, and Odisha's disaster management.
• Yet centralisation has merits: uniform entitlements, economies of scale, DBT reducing leakage and protection against local elite capture; many local bodies lack capacity and are caste-captured.
• The failure is therefore not centralisation itself but the absence of a functioning multi-level system.

Way forward

• Activate District Planning Committees (Article 243ZD) and participatory Gram Panchayat Development Plans with untied funds.
• Devolve the three Fs with state finance commissions acted on; build capacity and local data systems such as e-Gram Swaraj.
• Design schemes as frameworks with local flexibility, as the 15th Finance Commission's grants attempt.

Existing policies

• POCSO Act, 2012 (sections 11–15) penalises online sexual harassment and child pornography; IT Act section 67B punishes CSAM; the IT Rules 2021 require platforms to remove such content and run grievance mechanisms.
• The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (section 9) mandates verifiable parental consent for under-18 users and bars tracking and targeted advertising at children; the 2025 draft rules operationalise this.
• The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 bans real-money games; the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and Childline 1098 handle complaints.

Measures NCPCR can initiate

• A child online safety code with platforms covering age assurance, default privacy settings, time limits and rapid takedown, audited by the Commission.
• Digital citizenship curriculum with NCERT and CBSE, and training for teachers, police and Child Welfare Committees.
• Integrating 1098 with cyber cells for a single child-friendly reporting channel; suo motu monitoring of CSAM and gaming apps.

Current linkage

• Strategic partnerships with Saudi Arabia (Strategic Partnership Council, 2019), the UAE (CEPA, 2022; rupee–dirham trade) and Qatar (20-year LNG deal, 2024).
• Investment flows both ways: ADNOC in the strategic petroleum reserve, Aramco's refinery interest, Indian firms in Gulf energy.
• Connectivity: Chabahar's ten-year contract with Iran (2024) and the India–Middle East–Europe Corridor (2023); I2U2 with the UAE, Israel and the US.
• Naval presence under Operation Sankalp to protect tankers.

Integrating energy security with foreign policy

• Diversify sources: Russian crude, now a third of imports, the US, Guyana and Africa, while keeping Gulf partnerships, so no supplier can coerce.
• Convert buyer–seller ties into 'energy-plus' partnerships: joint refineries, petrochemicals, Gulf sovereign funds in Indian infrastructure, and long-term contracts linked to IMEC and shipping.
• Lead the transition: green hydrogen and solar partnerships with Gulf states, International Solar Alliance, critical-mineral pacts with Australia, Argentina and Africa, civil nuclear cooperation.
• Balance Iran, Israel and the Arab states, using strategic autonomy to keep Hormuz and Chabahar open; expand maritime security cooperation with Oman, the UAE and France.
• Build strategic reserves, rupee settlement and diaspora welfare into the agenda.

East–West confrontations

• Vetoes: Russia blocked resolutions on Ukraine (2022) and Syria; the US vetoed Gaza ceasefire resolutions (2023–24); China shields Pakistan-based terrorists from listing and opposes India's and Japan's permanent membership.
• Positions on expansion: the US supports India, Japan and Germany but opposes veto for new members; Russia backs India and Brazil but not Germany or Japan; China opposes any Western-aligned addition; the UK and France favour G4 expansion.
• Veto reform: the 2022 General Assembly 'veto initiative' requiring explanation is resisted by all P5; Russia and China frame reform as resistance to Western dominance, the West frames it as containing authoritarian blocking.

Critical evaluation

• The East–West axis explains Council paralysis but not reform's failure alone. Regional rivalries, the Uniting for Consensus group (Pakistan, Italy, Argentina) opposing G4 expansion, and Africa's Ezulwini demand for two veto-wielding seats are equally obstructive.
• All five permanent members, East and West, share an interest in preserving the veto, so confrontation and collusion coexist.
• The Global South increasingly rejects the binary, turning to BRICS, the G20 and the African Union's G20 seat for voice.

India

• HDI 2023: 0.685, rank 130, 'medium' category.
• IHDI: about 0.475, a loss of roughly 30 per cent, among the highest in South Asia, driven by inequality in income and education.

Why IHDI indicates inclusive growth better

• The HDI is an average and rises even when gains go to the top; the IHDI falls as the distribution worsens, so it measures who benefits.
• It reveals the 'inequality penalty' for each dimension, guiding policy to lagging groups.

Challenges for India

• Export markets: higher US tariffs on textiles, gems, engineering goods and shrimp; the EU's CBAM on steel and aluminium.
• Loss of rules-based remedies, exposing India to unilateral action and 'friend-shoring' pressures.
• Supply-chain fragmentation raises input costs for electronics and pharma.
• Pressure to open agriculture and dairy in bilateral deals.

Meeting them

• Diversify markets through FTAs with the UK, EU, EFTA, UAE and Australia and through IMEC.
• Raise competitiveness: PLI, logistics (Gati Shakti), lower tariffs on inputs, quality standards.
• Use safeguards and anti-dumping rules; lead WTO reform with the Global South.
• Build domestic demand and services exports.

Factors influencing the decision

• Price and market access: assured demand from nearby cities, supermarkets, processors or exports; absence of MSP makes price risk high.
• Infrastructure: cold storage, refrigerated transport and packhouses decide whether perishables reach markets.
• Irrigation and climate: drip irrigation and suitable agro-climatic zones enable horticulture; rainfed farmers prefer hardy cereals.
• Capital and credit: high input and establishment costs, long gestation of orchards and need for crop insurance.
• Landholding and labour: small plots favour vegetables and floriculture; labour availability matters for harvesting.
• Knowledge and institutions: extension, FPOs, contract farming (PepsiCo potatoes, Safal) and schemes such as MIDH and the National Horticulture Mission.

Scope

• Post-harvest: grading, packhouses, cold chains for 30 per cent of fruit and vegetables otherwise lost.
• Aggregation through FPOs (10,000 target), cooperatives such as Amul and Safal, and contract farming.
• Marketing: e-NAM, warehouse receipts, private mandis and direct retail; export logistics with traceability.

Significance

• Cuts post-harvest losses worth about Rs 1.5 lakh crore a year and raises farmers' share of the consumer rupee.
• Stabilises prices of onion, tomato and pulses, reducing inflation.
• Ensures food safety and quality for exports.
• Creates rural jobs and value addition.
• Strengthens food security by linking surplus and deficit regions and buffer stocks.

Contributions to ITER

• India funds about 9 per cent of the project and supplies in-kind components through ITER-India.
• It built the world's largest stainless-steel vacuum vessel: the 30-metre cryostat.
• Cryo-distribution and cooling water systems, cryolines, ion-cyclotron and electron-cyclotron heating sources, diagnostic neutral beams and power supplies.

Implications of success

• Demonstrating net energy gain (Q=10) would open a nearly limitless, carbon-free source using deuterium from seawater and lithium.
• No long-lived radioactive waste or meltdown risk, unlike fission; baseload power complementing intermittent renewables.
• Commercial reactors such as DEMO could follow by mid-century, reshaping climate pathways.

Pathways through clean technology

• 500 GW non-fossil capacity by 2030 and beyond through solar, wind, hybrid parks and storage; green hydrogen under the National Green Hydrogen Mission (5 million tonnes by 2030) for fertiliser, refining and steel.
• Electrification of transport (FAME, PM E-DRIVE), rail and cooking; small modular and large nuclear reactors under the Nuclear Energy Mission.

Role of biotechnology

• Second-generation ethanol from crop residues using engineered enzymes and microbes supports the E20 and beyond blending programme.
• Compressed biogas from agricultural and municipal waste under SATAT and GOBARdhan.
• Algal biofuels and bio-hydrogen through photosynthetic and fermentative microbes.
• Genetically improved energy crops and oilseeds for biodiesel, and microbial carbon fixation.

How it works

• Capture: post-combustion solvents, pre-combustion gasification, oxy-fuel combustion or direct air capture.
• Utilisation: enhanced oil recovery, methanol and urea synthesis and building materials.
• Storage: injection into depleted oil and gas fields, saline aquifers or basalt, as at Norway's Sleipner.

Potential role in tackling climate change

• Decarbonises hard-to-abate sectors where process emissions cannot be electrified; the IPCC and IEA count on CCUS for roughly a tenth of cumulative reductions to net zero.
• Allows coal-dependent countries like India, with 70 per cent coal power, a transition while renewables scale.

Causes

• Over-extraction of groundwater by farms, industries and cities, lowering the freshwater head, as in Chennai and Gujarat.
• Reduced recharge from paved surfaces, loss of wetlands and lower rainfall infiltration.
• Sand mining and dredging of estuaries, damming rivers that formerly pushed freshwater seaward.
• Sea-level rise and storm surges linked to climate change.

Remedial measures

• Regulate pumping through groundwater authorities, metering and crop shifts to less water-intensive crops.
• Artificial recharge: check dams, percolation tanks, recharge wells and tidal regulators, as Saurashtra's bandharas and Chennai's Minjur recharge scheme.
• Restore mangroves, coastal dunes and wetlands; enforce CRZ norms.
• Monitoring by CGWB and state boards, with desalination and rainwater harvesting to cut dependence.

Manifestations in India

• Cross-border jihadist terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir sponsored from Pakistan: the Pulwama attack (2019) and the Pahalgam massacre of tourists (April 2025).
• Urban attacks such as Mumbai 26/11 (2008) and Delhi, and modules inspired by ISIS.
• Left-wing extremism in central India, with ambushes on security forces.
• Insurgencies in the North-East, narco-terror and Khalistani networks using drones and social media.

Counter-measures by the State

• Legal: UAPA, the NIA Act; listing of organisations and individuals.
• Institutional: NIA, NSG hubs, Multi-Agency Centre for intelligence sharing, NATGRID, Financial Intelligence Unit and FATF compliance.
• Operational: border fencing and surveillance, the Balakot air strike (2019) and Operation Sindoor (2025) signalling deterrence; counter-radicalisation and community policing.

How people are affected

• Violence: killings of civilians branded 'informers', landmine attacks, kangaroo courts and forced recruitment of children.
• Denial of development: schools, roads, health centres and mobile towers destroyed; teachers and officials driven out.

Measures taken

• Security: Operation Prahar and the 'Kagar' offensives in Bastar, CRPF CoBRA units, fortified police stations, drones and intelligence; LWE-affected districts fell from over 120 to 38.
• Development: the National Policy and Action Plan (2015), Road Requirement Plan, mobile towers and Eklavya schools.
• Rights and surrender policies: Forest Rights Act titles, Special Central Assistance, rehabilitation packages that drew record surrenders.

Use as an assessment tool

• Quality of expenditure measures the share of capital outlay and spending on health and education, distinguishing productive from populist spending.
• Revenue mobilisation gauges own tax and non-tax effort, exposing dependence on Union transfers.
• Fiscal prudence tracks deficits against FRBM targets; the debt index and sustainability sub-indices compare debt and interest burdens with growth and revenue.
• Combined, it offers a comparable, transparent scorecard that supplements CAG audits and Finance Commission assessments, and allows year-on-year tracking.

How it encourages prudence

• Peer benchmarking and public ranking create reputational pressure on governments and legislatures, much as the Ease of Doing Business rankings did.
• It identifies specific weaknesses, such as rising committed expenditure on salaries, pensions and interest in Punjab or Kerala, enabling targeted correction.
• It can be linked to incentives: the 16th Finance Commission and the Union's capex loans could reward improvement, while markets may price state bonds by fiscal health.
• It highlights hidden liabilities, including guarantees and off-budget borrowings, discouraging opaque financing of freebies.

Rationale

• Overcome India's cost disadvantages, such as logistics, power and credit, and attract global champions shifting from China.
• Build scale in strategic sectors: electronics, pharmaceuticals, solar modules, batteries, drones, telecom and textiles.
• Reduce import dependence, raise manufacturing's share of GDP from 15 per cent and create jobs, with incentives linked to output rather than inputs.

Achievements

• Mobile phones: India became the second largest producer; exports exceeded USD 20 billion in 2024–25, with Apple's suppliers making iPhones here.
• Investment of over Rs 1.6 lakh crore, incremental production above Rs 14 lakh crore and about 12 lakh jobs reported by 2025.
• Pharma reduced dependence on Chinese active ingredients; solar module capacity multiplied.

Shortcomings

• Uneven uptake: textiles, advanced chemistry cells and specialty steel lagged; disbursal reached only a fraction of the outlay.
• Assembly rather than deep value addition, with components still imported.
• Complex compliance and delayed payments; weak links to MSMEs and R&D.

Improvements

• Simplify claims and pay on time; use a digital portal with clear timelines.
• Tie incentives to domestic value addition, component ecosystems and exports; extend to component makers and design.
• Pair PLI with lower input tariffs, skilling, logistics and state-level single windows.
• Sunset clauses and independent evaluation to avoid permanent subsidies.

Factors responsible for depletion

• Agriculture draws nearly 90 per cent of groundwater; paddy–wheat cultivation in the north-west and sugarcane in Maharashtra depend on tube-wells.
• Free or subsidised electricity and procurement at MSP encourage water-intensive crops regardless of agro-climate.
• Inadequate surface irrigation and canal inefficiency push farmers to wells.
• Urbanisation and industry: concretisation blocks recharge; cities such as Bengaluru and Chennai mine aquifers.
• Weak regulation: groundwater is treated as a landowner's right; over 3 crore wells are largely unmetered.
• Climate variability, erratic monsoons and loss of wetlands and tanks reduce recharge.

Steps taken by the government

• Atal Bhujal Yojana (2020) for community-led management in 8,000 gram panchayats across seven states, with incentives for reducing extraction.
• Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain, water-harvesting structures and Amrit Sarovar tanks.
• Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana and 'per drop more crop' micro-irrigation.
• Crop diversification incentives in Punjab and Haryana (Mera Pani Meri Virasat), paddy-sowing delay laws and direct-seeded rice.
• Solar pumps with grid-sale under PM-KUSUM, and the Gujarat Jyotigram model of separated feeders.
• Regulation through CGWA guidelines, state groundwater acts and the Model Groundwater Bill; aquifer mapping by CGWB; the Jal Jeevan Mission's source sustainability.

Scope

• Raw material base: large, diverse output with only about 10 per cent processed, against 60–80 per cent in developed countries.
• Demand: a growing urban middle class, women in the workforce, e-commerce and quick-commerce demanding packaged, ready-to-eat and functional foods.
• Exports: processed foods, marine products, rice and spices worth over USD 50 billion; opportunities in millets, organic and nutraceuticals.
• Rural value addition: reduces post-harvest losses, stabilises prices and raises farmers' incomes.

Government measures for employment

• Pradhan Mantri Kisan SAMPADA Yojana: mega food parks, integrated cold chains, agro-processing clusters and backward-forward linkages, creating lakhs of jobs.
• PM Formalisation of Micro Food Processing Enterprises (PMFME): credit-linked subsidy for two lakh micro units under 'one district one product', with seed capital for SHGs.
• PLI for food processing (Rs 10,900 crore) for ready-to-eat foods, marine products, mozzarella and millet-based goods.
• 100 per cent FDI under the automatic route; Operation Greens for TOP crops; Kisan Rail.
• Skilling through FICSI and the National Institute of Food Technology; FSSAI standards for quality.
• Priority-sector lending and the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund for warehouses and processing.

Advancements in agriculture

• Nano-fertilisers: IFFCO's Nano Urea and Nano DAP, sprayed on leaves, raise nutrient-use efficiency, cut bulk urea use and reduce soil and water pollution.
• Nano-pesticides and controlled-release formulations target pests with smaller doses and less residue.
• Nanosensors for soil moisture, nutrients and plant diseases enable real-time precision farming.
• Nano-coatings on seeds improve germination and drought tolerance; nanoclays and hydrogels retain soil water.
• Nano-packaging with antimicrobial films extends shelf life of fruit and vegetables.

Uplifting farmers' socio-economic status

• Lower input costs: a 500 ml bottle of nano urea replaces a 45 kg bag, saving money and transport.
• Higher yields and quality raise incomes; less post-harvest loss improves prices.
• Reduced chemical exposure improves health; sustainable soils protect long-term productivity.

Challenges

• Capital intensity: a fab costs USD 5–10 billion and needs years to reach yields; returns depend on sustained demand.
• Technology access: cutting-edge nodes are controlled by TSMC, Samsung and Intel; export controls and IP licensing restrict transfer.
• Ecosystem gaps: lack of ultra-pure water, uninterrupted power, specialty gases, chemicals, wafers and equipment suppliers.
• Talent: strong chip design workforce but few fabrication and process engineers.
• Competition from subsidised fabs in the US, Japan, Taiwan and China; earlier Indian attempts since the 1980s failed.
• Logistics, land and policy continuity at state level.

Salient features of the India Semiconductor Mission

• Rs 76,000 crore programme under MeitY with fiscal support of 50 per cent of project cost for fabs, display fabs and compound semiconductor, sensor and packaging (OSAT) units; states add 20–25 per cent.
• Design Linked Incentive scheme for Indian start-ups and the Chips to Startup programme training 85,000 engineers.
• Modernisation of the Semi-Conductor Laboratory, Mohali.
• Approved projects: Tata–PSMC fab at Dholera, Tata OSAT at Jagiroad, Micron's assembly plant at Sanand, CG Power–Renesas and Kaynes units, with the first 'made in India' chips expected in 2025.
• ISM 2.0 under preparation for the full value chain.

Why mining is an environmental hazard

• Land degradation: open-cast mines, overburden dumps and subsidence destroy forests and farmland, as in Jharia's burning coalfields and Goa's iron-ore belt.
• Deforestation and biodiversity loss in mineral-rich forests of Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand, including Hasdeo Arand.
• Water pollution: acid mine drainage, heavy metals and silt in rivers such as the Damodar; lowering of water tables and sand mining eroding riverbeds.
• Air pollution from dust, blasting and spontaneous combustion; noise and vibration.
• Tailings and fly ash disposal risks, as in the Kerala and Goa tailing failures abroad such as Brumadinho.
• Displacement of tribal communities and loss of their livelihoods, adding social harm.

Remedial measures

• Rigorous environmental impact assessment, cumulative assessment and public hearings; the Supreme Court's 2025 bar on ex post facto clearances must be enforced.
• Scientific mining with progressive mine closure plans, backfilling and reclamation; the Star Rating system and Sustainable Development Framework for mines.
• Pollution control: dust suppression, treatment of mine water for reuse, lined tailings ponds and monitoring.
• Afforestation and biodiversity offsets under the Forest Conservation Act; district mineral funds for local restoration.
• Mineral conservation through beneficiation, recycling and reduced waste; coal gasification and underground mining where feasible.
• Community rights under the Forest Rights Act and PESA, and transparent auction and environmental compliance.

Commitments under the Paris Agreement (2015)

• Reduce the emissions intensity of GDP by 33–35 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030.
• Achieve about 40 per cent of installed electricity capacity from non-fossil sources by 2030, with international finance and technology support.
• Create an additional carbon sink of 2.5–3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through forest and tree cover by 2030.

Updated first NDC (August 2022)

• Emissions intensity reduction raised to 45 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030.
• Non-fossil share of installed capacity raised to about 50 per cent by 2030, with support.
• Mission LiFE added as a mass movement for sustainable living; the forest sink target retained.
• A long-term low-emission strategy for 2070 net zero submitted at COP27.

Major challenges

• Ethnic insurgencies and identity conflicts: NSCN factions in Nagaland, ULFA (Independent) in Assam, Meitei–Kuki violence in Manipur since May 2023 with over 250 deaths and armed groups on both sides.
• Porous borders: arms, drugs and refugee flows from Myanmar's civil war; the Golden Triangle narcotics route; illegal migration disputes.
• Insurgent camps across the border and China's influence in Myanmar.
• Inter-state boundary disputes (Assam–Mizoram, Assam–Meghalaya), AFSPA grievances and weak development connectivity.
• Fragmented peace processes with multiple factions and demands such as a separate Naga flag and constitution.

Peace accords and agreements of the past decade

• Naga Framework Agreement with NSCN(IM), 2015, and the Agreed Position with NNPGs, 2017.
• Bodo Peace Accord, January 2020, dissolving NDFB factions and strengthening the Bodoland Territorial Council.
• Bru–Reang settlement, 2020, resettling 37,000 displaced Brus in Tripura.
• Karbi Anglong Agreement, 2021; Assam–Meghalaya boundary agreement, 2022, settling six of twelve sectors.
• Tripura NLFT and ATTF agreement, 2024; Adivasi groups' agreement in Assam, 2022; Dimasa (DNLA) accord, 2023.
• ULFA (pro-talks) tripartite accord, December 2023; NLFT–Tripura 'Tipra Motha' tripartite agreement, 2024.
• Reduction of AFSPA areas in Assam, Manipur and Nagaland from 2022.

Why it is vital

• Trade and energy lifelines: disruptions such as Houthi attacks in the Red Sea (2023–24) raised freight and insurance costs and diverted ships around Africa.
• Protection of the 2.4 million sq km exclusive economic zone, fisheries, offshore oil fields and undersea cables that carry the digital economy.

Maritime and coastal security challenges

• Piracy off Somalia and in the Gulf of Guinea; armed robbery in the Malacca Strait.
• Terrorism from the sea, as in the 26/11 attack through Mumbai's coast; smuggling of arms and narcotics by fishing vessels.
• China's naval presence, research vessels and ports in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Myanmar ('string of pearls'); grey-zone activities.
• Coastal gaps: 1,300 islands, many unmonitored landing points, fragmented agencies and slow coastal police capability.

Way forward

• Strengthen the Navy and Coast Guard with ships, drones, satellites and the Information Fusion Centre–IOR; complete the National Maritime Domain Awareness grid.
• Implement the Maritime Security Coordinator and a single coastal security authority; fast-track coastal police stations, radar chains and biometric fishermen ID.
• Deepen SAGAR and MAHASAGAR cooperation with Indian Ocean states, Quad patrols and anti-piracy deployments.

Key ethical dilemmas

• Free speech versus harm: open platforms enable dissent and citizen journalism, yet spread hate speech, rumours and lynch-mob calls.
• Truth versus virality: algorithms reward sensational content, so misinformation and deepfakes travel faster than corrections, corroding public trust.
• Privacy versus convenience: free services are paid for with personal data, profiling and surveillance (Cambridge Analytica).
• Autonomy versus manipulation: engagement-maximising design fosters addiction, especially among children, and nudges political choices.
• Accountability versus anonymity: anonymity protects whistle-blowers but shields trolls and cyber-bullies.
• Platform power versus state regulation: who decides what is removed, and whether such decisions are transparent and fair.

Significance for public servants

• Civic education and adherence to law: officers internalise it through training, oaths and the Conduct Rules, learning to treat constitutional values, not personal belief or political pressure, as the guide.
• Good governance: it demands impartiality, inclusion and non-discrimination, as when officers enforce the Supreme Court's Sabarimala or Navtej Johar judgments despite popular opposition.
• Accountability: it binds officials to due process, transparency and judicial and legislative oversight, discouraging arbitrary action; Ashok Khemka's cancellation of an irregular land deal illustrates loyalty to law over power.

Relevance in contemporary conflicts

• States still use war for political ends: Russia invaded Ukraine (2022) to block NATO expansion and assert regional dominance; Israel's Gaza campaign seeks security objectives; India's Operation Sindoor (2025) was a calibrated, limited use of force to deter cross-border terrorism.

Limits of the statement today

• Nuclear weapons make total war irrational; escalation can destroy the very political ends sought.
• Modern wars rarely deliver clean political outcomes: Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine became prolonged stalemates with huge civilian costs.
• International law, the UN Charter and humanitarian norms treat aggression as illegal, not merely another policy tool.

Ethical dilemmas

• Security versus sustainability: roads, tunnels, airstrips and hydropower (Char Dham road, Arunachal dams, Great Nicobar project) strengthen defence and connectivity against China, but threaten forests, glaciers, endemic species and tribal lands.
• Urgency versus due process: exemptions from environmental clearance and public hearings for 'strategic' projects speed delivery but weaken transparency.
• Present versus future generations: Joshimath's subsidence and Himalayan flash floods show that short-term gains can impose long-term harm.
• Rights of local communities versus national interest: displacement and loss of livelihood with limited consent.

Why reason and critical thinking

• Diagnosing causes: Swachh Bharat worked when officers analysed why toilets were not used and addressed attitudes through community-led triggering, not merely construction.
• Evidence-based design: Beti Bachao Beti Padhao in districts like Haryana's Mewat used sex-ratio data and school enrolment tracking; Aspirational Districts used indicators to target gaps.

Why an ethical framework

• Reason without ethics can rationalise coercion, as in Emergency-era sterilisation; ethics sets limits of dignity, consent and justice.
• Values of empathy and equity ensure that the poorest, such as PVTGs under PM-JANMAN, are not left out for efficiency's sake.

Major teachings

• Ahimsa: non-violence towards all living beings in thought, word and deed, extending to the smallest creatures.
• Satya (truthfulness), Asteya (non-stealing), Brahmacharya (chastity) and Aparigraha (non-possession, limiting wants).
• Anekantavada: reality is many-sided; no single viewpoint holds the whole truth.
• Triratna: right faith, right knowledge and right conduct lead to liberation through self-effort, without dependence on God or ritual.

Contemporary relevance

• Ahimsa inspired Gandhi's satyagraha and underpins non-violent conflict resolution, animal welfare and ecological ethics.
• Aparigraha offers an antidote to consumerism and climate change, echoing Mission LiFE and sustainable living.
• Anekantavada fosters tolerance, pluralism and dialogue in polarised societies and social media.
• Satya and asteya support integrity in public life and against corruption.

Sense of responsibility

• A civil servant's duty is defined by the Constitution, law and the public interest; devotion means owning outcomes rather than merely following procedure, as officers who ensured vaccine reach in remote villages did.
• Responsibility implies accountability for the use of public power, diligence in detail and courage to act without fear or favour.

Personal fulfilment

• Duty performed sincerely gives intrinsic satisfaction, meaning and self-respect that rewards or recognition cannot; psychologists call this eudaimonic well-being.
• It builds character: excellence becomes a habit, and the officer grows in competence and integrity.

Specific measures

• Shift from permissions to facilitation: single-window clearances, deemed approvals and self-certification, as in Ease of Doing Business reforms.
• Build platforms, not gatekeeping: open data, digital public infrastructure (UPI, ONDC) and common service centres that let citizens and entrepreneurs act.
• Convergence and partnership: bring departments, SHGs, FPOs, NGOs and industry together, as Kudumbashree and Aspirational Districts do, rather than working in silos.
• Participatory planning: gram sabha-led development plans, social audits and citizen feedback to set local priorities.
• Capacity building: train local bodies, skill youth and mentor start-ups and MSMEs.

Measures for a value-based culture

• Co-create a short, clear code with employees, stating core values such as integrity, service, respect and accountability.
• Lead by example: senior officers declare assets, refuse gifts and take fair decisions visibly; 'tone at the top' shapes behaviour.
• Induction and periodic training through case discussions.

Measures for a compliance-based culture

• Clear conduct rules on conflicts of interest, gifts, procurement and data; written SOPs and delegation of powers.
• Safe whistle-blower channels, an ethics officer or committee, and protection against retaliation.
• Internal audit, e-procurement, digital file tracking and random checks to reduce discretion.
• Swift, proportionate and consistent action on violations, with due process.

Measures for accountability

• Outcome budgeting: link allocations to measurable outputs and outcomes, with quarterly public dashboards, so under-utilisation is visible early.
• Timely release and absorption: just-in-time fund flow through the Single Nodal Agency and PFMS, with capacity support to states and districts that cannot spend.
• End-to-end digital tracking: DBT, Aadhaar-linked payments, geo-tagged assets and e-procurement (GeM) to stop ghost beneficiaries and inflated contracts.
• Social audit and transparency: mandatory social audits as in MGNREGA, proactive disclosure under RTI, and citizen grievance portals with time-bound redress.
• Stronger oversight: prompt action on CAG findings, empowered Public Accounts Committees, internal audit units in every ministry and performance appraisal of officers on fund utilisation.

(b) Ethical dilemmas

• Duty to the public versus duty to family: 200 dead, thousands injured and renewed rains need his leadership, while a son's filial duty to a mother is sacred.
• Professional responsibility versus personal grief and emotional well-being.
• Trust of subordinates and citizens in continuity of leadership versus his own right to mourn.

(c) Evaluation

• Option 1 upholds public duty and leadership continuity but ignores a genuine personal obligation.
• Option 2 balances both through a brief, planned absence with clear delegation; the risk is deterioration while away.
• Option 3 abandons the district at its worst moment and is ethically unacceptable.

(b) Challenges in balancing conservation and development

• Socio-economic: competing claims of the homeless and tribal forest dwellers; land scarcity and high urban land prices.
• Administrative: fragmented authority between forest, revenue and housing departments; weak environmental impact assessment.
• Ethical: intergenerational justice; intrinsic value of biodiversity versus anthropocentric needs; consent of affected communities; honesty about trade-offs.

(c) Alternatives and policy interventions

• Identify degraded, barren or government land, urban land banks and unused institutional land for housing; build vertically under PMAY-Urban with in-situ slum redevelopment.
• Where a small, less sensitive fringe must be used, require consent of gram sabhas, compensatory afforestation and net-positive biodiversity plans.
• Treat wildlife conflict and crime as management and policing issues.
• Involve tribal communities as forest guardians with livelihood schemes.

(a) Ethical issues

• Conflict of interest: Subash's son seeks privileged information for personal gain, and the minister wants favours for his nephew's company.
• Confidentiality and insider information: disclosing the project location before public announcement breaches conduct rules and enables insider speculation.
• Integrity and probity versus family loyalty and emotional pressure.
• Abuse of ministerial authority and misuse of a public project for private enrichment; fairness in tendering.

(b) Ethical issues

• Integrity versus self-interest: temptation to bend rules to please the reporting officer who controls his ACR and promotion.
• Rule of law and financial propriety: splitting expenditure is a known malpractice.
• Conflict between loyalty to the boss and accountability to the organisation and public money.
• Transparency and fairness in procurement: a vendor chosen on the boss's wish without competition suggests possible collusion.

(b) Actions on specific issues

• Money not disbursed to actual job-seekers and payments to fictitious persons: Aadhaar-based payment bridge and bank account verification; physical verification of workers on muster rolls; recovery and FIRs against those involved.
• Muster rolls not maintained: mandatory use of the National Mobile Monitoring System for geo-tagged, time-stamped attendance.
• Mismatch between work and payment and non-existent works: joint technical inspection with measurement books, geo-tagged photographs of assets and blacklisting of agencies.
• Job cards issued without need: re-survey through gram sabha, cancel bogus cards and issue cards to all willing households.
• Siphoning of funds: refer to the state vigilance or police economic offences wing and disciplinary proceedings against my predecessor.

(b) Ethical and legal dilemmas

• Humanitarian duty and the right to life (Article 21, applicable to all persons) versus national security and border discipline.
• India is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and has no refugee law, yet customary non-refoulement and the Foreigners Act procedures must be reconciled.
• Armed foreign soldiers raise questions of sovereignty, infiltration and international law on internment.
• Acting without orders versus the cost of inaction when the injured may die.

(d) Precautions for the Border Guarding Police with soldiers in uniform

• Approach with adequate strength, cover and distance; demand surrender of weapons.
• Treat them with dignity under the Geneva Conventions but keep them under armed guard, separated from civilians.
• Search for explosives, communication devices and documents; record ranks and units and preserve weapons as evidence.