GS Paper I 2016

The railings, gateways and drum slabs of Bharhut, Sanchi and Amaravati (c. 2nd century BCE to 2nd century CE) turned relic mounds into a visual sermon. Carved by guilds and paid for by lay donors, the ivory-workers of Vidisha among them, they spoke the visual language of ordinary people.

Folk motifs and narratives

• Popular deities: yakshas, yakshis and nagas, already worshipped as guardians of wealth and water, line the Bharhut railing; several carry their names in inscriptions, such as Kupiro Yakho (Kubera).
• Nature and fertility: salabhanjikas grasping trees, lotus creepers, elephants, lions and makaras came straight from craft traditions of wood, ivory and textile.
• Jataka stories: the Chhaddanta, Vessantara and Mahakapi Jatakas were folk tales retold as the Buddha's past lives; Bharhut labels many scenes so pilgrims could identify them.
• Everyday life: processions, cities, village scenes, music and dance make the reliefs a record of the society that commissioned them.

How the ideals came through

• Old gods made devotees: yakshas and nagas kneel before the bodhi tree or carry the relics, so popular cults are folded into the Dhamma rather than rejected.
• Aniconic symbols: the Buddha appears only as the tree, wheel, footprints, empty throne, umbrella or stupa, marking enlightenment, the first sermon and parinirvana while teaching that the Master transcends form.
• Ethical lessons: Vessantara gives away everything, Chhaddanta pardons his killer; dana, karuna and non-violence reached devotees through stories they already knew.
• Worship in motion: the toranas and the pradakshina path made the carvings a sequence to be read while circumambulating, turning art into practice.

By clothing new ideals in familiar forms, stupa art carried the Dhamma to the unlettered and laid the ground for the later image of the Buddha.

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Krishnadeva Raya (r. 1509-1529), the Tuluva ruler of Vijayanagar, joined conquest to letters; contemporaries called him Andhra Bhoja after the scholar-king Bhoja of Dhar.

A scholar on the throne

• Amuktamalyada: his Telugu kavya on Andal and Vishnuchitta of Srivilliputtur is counted among the great Telugu prabandhas, and its chapter on rajaniti sets out his own thinking on governance.
• Sanskrit works: the drama Jambavati Kalyanam and other texts are attributed to him, showing command of the classical as well as the regional idiom.
• Critic and host: he debated with poets in the Bhuvana Vijayam hall and praised Telugu as the finest of the regional tongues in his own verse.

Patron of learning

• Ashtadiggajas: tradition places eight Telugu poets at his court, among them Allasani Peddana (Manucharitram), styled Andhra Kavita Pitamaha, Nandi Timmana (Parijatapaharanam) and Tenali Ramakrishna.
• Many languages: the Kannada poet Timmanna Kavi completed Kumaravyasa's Karnata Bharata under him, and Tamil and Sanskrit scholars received grants, reflecting a multilingual empire.
• Philosophy and devotion: the Dvaita teacher Vyasatirtha was his rajaguru, and Haridasa singers such as Purandara Dasa flourished in the capital.
• Stone and endowment: the Krishna temple (1513) and additions to the Vitthala temple at Hampi, with his gifts recorded at Tirumala, funded priests, scholars and inscriptions.
• Foreign witness: the Portuguese traveller Domingo Paes described the splendour and learning of his court, confirming the native literary record.

Personal authorship and generous patronage together made his reign the classical age of Telugu and a high point of southern learning.

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The Revolt of 1857 shook Company rule to its foundations. What followed was not merely a change of masters but a new set of priorities: security, legitimacy and the conciliation of those who could keep India quiet.

Shifts in policy

• Crown rule: the Government of India Act 1858 ended the Company's political role and vested power in the Crown, with a Secretary of State answerable to Parliament and a Viceroy in India.
• Princes as pillars: the Queen's Proclamation (1 November 1858) promised to honour treaties and the right of adoption, ending the doctrine of lapse; Canning called the princes breakwaters in the storm.
• Landed allies: the taluqdars of Awadh regained their estates and landlords were cultivated as a loyal buffer, reversing the earlier tilt against intermediaries.
• Army remodelled: on the Peel Commission's advice (1859) the European share was raised, artillery kept in British hands, and recruitment shifted to Punjabis, Gurkhas and frontier groups, with units mixed by caste and region.
• Retreat from reform: the Proclamation pledged non-interference in religion, and the reforming zeal of Bentinck and Dalhousie gave way to caution on social legislation.
• Administration: the Indian Councils Act 1861 admitted nominated Indians to the legislative council, yet racial distance hardened in the services and the cantonments.

Why a watershed

• Before 1857 the guiding ideas were annexation, Anglicist reform and confident modernisation; after it, consolidation, divide and rule and a firm racial hierarchy.
• The new order endured, with modifications, till 1947: princes, landed gentry and the reorganised army remained the props of the Raj.

1857 thus turned the Raj from an expanding, reforming state into a cautious garrison empire that chose stability over transformation.

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Women had entered the movement before Gandhi, through Swadeshi, revolutionary circles and Annie Besant's Home Rule League, but it was satyagraha that made them a mass presence.

Why the Gandhian phase opened the door

• Gandhi presented non-violent suffering as a moral strength women possessed in abundance and chose activities open to them: spinning, khadi, picketing and prabhat pheris.
• Mass movements needed numbers, and middle-class families let women march once the leader himself vouched for its respectability.

Forms of participation

• Non-Cooperation (1920-22): Basanti Devi and Urmila Devi courted arrest in Calcutta for selling khadi; Kasturba Gandhi and Sarala Devi Chaudhurani toured for the movement.
• Civil Disobedience (1930-34): women made salt, picketed liquor and foreign-cloth shops and filled the jails; Sarojini Naidu led the Dharasana raid and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay was arrested in Bombay.
• Quit India (1942): Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the flag at Gowalia Tank, Usha Mehta ran the underground Congress Radio, Sucheta Kripalani organised the underground, and Matangini Hazra was shot at Tamluk.
• Leadership: Naidu presided over the Congress in 1925; the All India Women's Conference (1927) tied social reform to freedom; Rajkumari Amrit Kaur served as Gandhi's secretary.
• Beyond Gandhi: Pritilata Waddedar and Kalpana Datta in Chittagong, Rani Gaidinliu in the Naga hills and Lakshmi Sahgal's Rani of Jhansi Regiment in the INA.

Limits

• Participation drew mainly on urban, upper-caste and middle-class families, and many leaders were relatives of male leaders.
• Women were praised as mothers and Sitas rather than as political equals, and personal-law reform was deferred, though the Karachi resolution (1931) promised equality irrespective of sex.

Women gave the movement its mass character and its moral edge and secured equal citizenship in the Constitution, even if social equality lagged behind.

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Gandhi and Bose shared the goal of complete independence and a deep mutual regard, yet they stood for two distinct roads to freedom.

Where they differed

• Means: for Gandhi non-violence was a creed, not a tactic; Bose held that freedom could demand force and led the Indian National Army from 1943 to march on India.
• Timing: Bose wanted an ultimatum to Britain while it was tied down in the Second World War; Gandhi would not exploit the war until 1942 and insisted on a disciplined, prepared mass.
• Alliances: Bose sought help from Germany and Japan on the principle that the enemy's enemy is a friend; Gandhi and the Congress refused any link with fascism.
• Reading of setbacks: Bose criticised the withdrawal after Chauri Chaura (1922) and the Gandhi-Irwin Pact as retreats; Gandhi saw restraint as the source of moral power.
• Organisation: Bose won the Congress presidency in 1939 against Pattabhi Sitaramayya, Gandhi's nominee, resigned after Tripuri and founded the Forward Bloc; Gandhi kept the Congress a broad, consensual body.
• Economy: as president at Haripura (1938) Bose set up the National Planning Committee for state-led industrialisation; Gandhi's constructive programme rested on villages, khadi and trusteeship.
• State: Bose favoured a strong centralised state to force modernisation; Gandhi distrusted concentrated power and prized swaraj built from the village upward.

Common ground

• Both stood for Hindu-Muslim unity, secular nationalism and full freedom; Bose hailed Gandhi as the Father of the Nation in a 1944 broadcast and named an INA brigade after him.

Gandhi's mass non-violence built the nation's will, and Bose's INA and its trials in 1945 shook the loyalty of the army; their different paths together hastened 1947.

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The Dhar Commission (1948) and the JVP Committee (1949) rejected language as the basis of States for fear of Balkanisation; Potti Sriramulu's death (1952), the creation of Andhra (1953) and the States Reorganisation Act 1956 reversed that stand.

How they strengthened unity

• Demands met inside the Union: linguistic States gave regional pride a constitutional home, so agitations ended in negotiation rather than secession; India avoided the fate of Pakistan, where the imposition of Urdu alienated its eastern wing.
• Democracy deepened: administration, courts and schooling in the people's language widened participation and made government intelligible to the villager.
• Union kept the upper hand: Article 3 leaves boundaries to Parliament, while the Eighth Schedule and Articles 350A and 350B protect linguistic minorities, reconciling language with unity.
• Regional parties such as the DMK, the Akali Dal and the Telugu Desam channelled identity into elections and later into coalition governments at the Centre.

Where the strain shows

• Boundary and resource disputes: Belgaum, Chandigarh and the Cauvery and Krishna waters remain unsettled between neighbouring States.
• Sons-of-the-soil movements against migrants and the anti-Hindi agitation of 1965 showed how linguistic identity can turn exclusive.
• Language proved an incomplete principle: Nagaland (1963) answered ethnicity and Telangana (2014) regional grievance, and sub-regional demands like Gorkhaland persist.

Assessment

• Language accommodated diversity without fragmenting the polity; the frictions are problems of federal management, not threats to national unity.

Linguistic States have strengthened rather than weakened Indian unity; keeping that gain needs active use of the Inter-State Council and the zonal councils to settle inter-State quarrels.

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Mission schools and colonial colleges produced a small class of lawyers, doctors, journalists and teachers in West Africa; from the 1920s this class set the terms of the demand for self-rule.

The case for elite leadership

• Early organisation: the National Congress of British West Africa (1920) under J. E. Casely Hayford, a Gold Coast barrister, petitioned London for elected representation.
• Gold Coast: J. B. Danquah's United Gold Coast Convention (1947) and Kwame Nkrumah, educated in the United States and Britain, carried Ghana to independence in 1957, the first in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Nigeria: Nnamdi Azikiwe's West African Pilot and NCNC, Obafemi Awolowo's Action Group and Ahmadu Bello's Northern People's Congress negotiated the path to 1960.
• French West Africa: Leopold Senghor and Felix Houphouet-Boigny, products of French education, used the French Assembly and the RDA (1946) to win self-government.
• Ideas: Pan-Africanism, negritude and the Atlantic Charter's language of self-determination gave this class a common vocabulary.

The limits of the claim

• Mass energy came from below: the Aba Women's War (1929) against taxation, the Gold Coast cocoa hold-ups (1937-38), rail and dock strikes, and the ex-servicemen fired upon in Accra in 1948.
• Nkrumah broke with the elite UGCC to form the Convention People's Party (1949), a mass party of clerks, traders and 'verandah boys', which won through Positive Action strikes.
• Sekou Toure of Guinea, a trade unionist with little formal schooling, led the only 'No' vote in the 1958 French referendum.
• Chiefs, Muslim networks and market women shaped politics in northern Nigeria and the Sahel, and the war-weakened colonial powers set much of the timetable.

Assessment

• The elite supplied leadership, ideology and negotiators; success came only when it fused with popular grievance.

The claim holds for direction and voice but not for the struggle's social base, which was broad and often ahead of its leaders.

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Globalisation, the free flow of goods, media, capital and people since 1991, has touched the surface of Indian culture everywhere; the plural core, however, rests on language, religion, caste, region and family, layers that change slowly.

Homogenising pressures

• Consumer culture: global brands, malls, fast food and Western dress create a similar urban lifestyle from Gurgaon to Bengaluru.
• Language: English has become the language of aspiration; smaller languages and dialects lose speakers as schooling and jobs shift, and folk arts lose patrons to television.
• Crafts and livelihoods: handloom and artisan products compete with cheap mass-produced imports, breaking the link between community, craft and identity.
• Family and values: nuclear households, individual choice in careers and marriage, and consumerism alter customs once regulated by community.

Adaptation and revival

• Glocalisation: global chains serve vegetarian and regional menus, satellite television runs in every major language, and regional cinema and music have grown with the market rather than against it.
• Reverse flow: yoga (the UN's International Day of Yoga since 2015), Ayurveda, Indian cuisine and festivals have gone global, and the diaspora sustains regional identities abroad.
• Protection: Geographical Indications under the 1999 Act cover Darjeeling tea and Kanchipuram silk; UNESCO has inscribed Kutiyattam, Ramlila, Chhau and Manipuri Sankirtana as intangible heritage.
• Reassertion: migration and market anxiety have sharpened regional and religious identity, which preserves diversity but can make it defensive.

To what extent

• The visible layer of dress, food, entertainment and aspiration has changed substantially; the deep structures of language, faith, kinship and caste practice persist and adapt.

Globalisation has reshaped India's culture more than it has homogenised it; whether diversity thrives now depends on support for languages, crafts and local institutions.

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Amartya Sen defined poverty as the deprivation of basic capabilities, not merely low income. Deprivation is a process: landlessness, illiteracy, ill health, debt and social discrimination reinforce one another and pass poverty from parent to child.

Why liberation from deprivation is essential

• A cycle, not a state: a landless labourer without schooling earns little, cannot afford healthcare, borrows on illness and withdraws children from school; a cash transfer alone leaks back into the cycle.
• Discrimination compounds it: Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women are excluded from land, credit and jobs, so the same income buys them less freedom.
• Measurement confirms it: the multidimensional poverty index (OPHI-UNDP) counts health, education and living standards, and the SECC 2011 identified rural households by deprivation criteria such as landlessness and manual labour rather than income (since then, NITI Aayog's national MPI, 2021, follows the same logic).

Examples of liberating interventions

• Rights to work and food: MGNREGA (2005) gives a legal right to 100 days of wage work, and the National Food Security Act 2013 turns subsidised grain into a legal entitlement for roughly two-thirds of the population.
• Capabilities: the Right to Education Act 2009, mid-day meals and the National Health Mission raise the next generation's earning power; Kerala's land reform and universal schooling produced high human development at modest incomes.
• Assets and tenure: land reform, the Forest Rights Act 2006 and rural housing under PMAY-G, targeted through SECC deprivation data, give the poor a base that cannot be taken away.
• Inclusion and voice: Self-Help Groups under NRLM, Jan Dhan accounts (2014) and reservations in panchayats give credit, identity and a say in decisions.

Poverty ends when the poor gain assets, capabilities and voice that the next illness or drought cannot take away; freedom from deprivation is both the route and the destination.

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'Scheduled' is a legal label, not an anthropological one: a community is a Scheduled Tribe only when it is placed on the list, or schedule, notified under Article 342.

Why 'Scheduled Tribes'

• Article 342: the President, after consulting the Governor, notifies the tribes of a State as Scheduled Tribes (first by the 1950 Order); only Parliament, by law, can alter that list.
• Article 366(25) defines Scheduled Tribes as those deemed so under Article 342; the label replaced the 'backward tribes' of the Government of India Act 1935.
• Tests: the Lokur Committee (1965) criteria of primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact and backwardness guide inclusion, so a tribe may be scheduled in one State and not in another.

Constitutional provisions for upliftment

• Special care: Article 46 directs the State to promote their educational and economic interests and protect them from social injustice and exploitation.
• Reservation: Articles 15(4) and 16(4) permit special provisions and reserved posts, and Article 335 requires their claims to be considered in appointments.
• Representation: seats are reserved in the Lok Sabha (Article 330), State Assemblies (Article 332) and Panchayats (Article 243D); Article 164(1) mandates a tribal welfare minister in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.
• Administration: under Article 244, the Fifth Schedule governs Scheduled Areas through Tribes Advisory Councils and the Governor's power to restrict land transfer; the Sixth Schedule creates Autonomous District Councils in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.
• Protection: Article 19(5) allows limits on outsiders' movement and settlement in tribal areas in the tribes' interest.
• Institutions and funds: the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (Article 338A), grants under Article 275(1) and a commission under Article 339; PESA 1996 and the Forest Rights Act 2006 extend these safeguards by statute.

Scheduling turns identity into a bundle of enforceable safeguards; their promise depends on the Fifth and Sixth Schedules working in practice and on secure land and forest rights.

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About 31 per cent of Indians lived in urban areas in 2011, yet the cities that drive growth offer a poor quality of life; the Smart Cities Mission, launched in June 2015, set out to change this.

Quality of urban life

• Basic services lag: intermittent water supply, untreated sewage, unmanaged solid waste, and slums that house a large share of the urban poor.
• Unplanned sprawl, weak public transport, congestion and air pollution raise the cost of daily life, while urban local bodies lack the money and staff to plan or maintain services.

Objectives of the Mission

• Promote cities that give citizens core infrastructure, a decent quality of life and a clean, sustainable environment through 'smart' solutions to civic problems.
• Core elements: assured water and electricity, sanitation and solid waste management, efficient mobility, affordable housing, IT connectivity, e-governance with citizen participation, safety, health and education.
• Build replicable models in 100 cities that act as lighthouses for other aspiring cities.

Strategy

• Area-based development: retrofitting an existing built area, redeveloping a dilapidated one, or greenfield development on vacant land, to create compact model areas.
• Pan-city solutions: technology applied across the whole city, such as intelligent traffic management or smart water metering, so that benefits reach every resident.
• Competitive selection: cities enter a Smart City Challenge and are judged on their Smart City Proposals, prepared after consulting citizens.
• Delivery: a Special Purpose Vehicle in each city implements the plan, converging funds from AMRUT, Swachh Bharat Mission and other schemes with private and PPP investment.

The Mission's promise lies in replicable, inclusive models; keeping it needs stronger municipal capacity and finances so that gains spread beyond the chosen areas to the whole city.

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Regionalism is a sense of belonging to a region and a politics built around its identity and interests, expressed as demands for autonomy, a separate State or a fairer share of resources.

Basis of regionalism

• Identity: a shared language, ethnicity, religion, culture or history that marks a people off from their neighbours, as in the linguistic States created after 1956.
• Geography and isolation: hill and border regions, such as the Northeast, feel distant from the national mainstream.
• Relative deprivation: the belief that the region gets less than its due in jobs, investment, irrigation or representation.
• Political mobilisation: regional leaders and parties turn these feelings into a programme and a vote base.

Unequal development does promote regionalism

• Telangana: decades of grievance over irrigation, jobs and neglect within Andhra Pradesh built a movement that won statehood in 2014.
• Vidarbha and Bundelkhand: agrarian distress and thin investment keep alive demands for separate States or special packages.
• Jharkhand and the Northeast: resources extracted with little local benefit fuelled statehood and autonomy demands.
• Sons-of-the-soil politics: when migrants are seen to take scarce jobs, as in Maharashtra and Assam, economic competition hardens into regional identity.

But it is not the only cause

• Punjab's demand for a Punjabi Suba, and the Akali politics behind the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, arose in one of India's most prosperous States; language and religion drove them.
• Gorkhaland rests mainly on ethnic identity and the wish for recognition, not on backwardness alone.

Uneven development is a powerful trigger, but it works through identity and politics; balanced regional growth, fair devolution through the Finance Commission and forums like the Inter-State Council, and respect for local identity keep regionalism within cooperative federalism.

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An air mass is a large body of air, spread over thousands of square kilometres, in which temperature and humidity are nearly uniform at any given height, having been acquired from the surface over which it formed.

The concept

• Source regions: extensive, flat and uniform surfaces with calm air, usually under high pressure, where air rests long enough to take on surface properties, such as polar snowfields, subtropical oceans and continental interiors.
• Classification: by latitude of origin, arctic, polar, tropical or equatorial; by surface, continental (dry) or maritime (moist), giving types such as continental polar (cP), cold and dry, and maritime tropical (mT), warm and humid.
• Modification: an air mass that moves gains or loses heat and moisture from the surface below; air colder than the surface becomes unstable and showery, air warmer than it becomes stable, with fog or stratus.

Role in macro-climatic changes

• Fronts and temperate cyclones: where cold polar and warm tropical air meet along the polar front, mid-latitude depressions form, bringing much of the rain and the changeable weather of Europe and North America.
• Seasonal reversal: the Indian monsoon is the seasonal advance of maritime tropical air from the Indian Ocean over a heated continent, replaced in winter by dry continental air from the north-west.
• Extremes: outbreaks of continental polar or arctic air produce cold waves, as over north India in winter, while persistent continental tropical air brings heat waves and drought.
• Global patterns: the poleward movement of air masses carries heat from the tropics; shifts in their source regions and tracks, as when warming shrinks snow cover or sea ice, alter rainfall belts and the frequency of extremes.

Air masses translate surface conditions into weather and climate, so any change in their sources, strength or tracks reshapes regional and global climate.

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The Himalayas are young, steep and seismically active, and heavy monsoon rain on slopes cut by roads and settlements makes them one of the most landslide-prone regions in the world.

Natural causes

• Geology: young fold mountains still rising, with fractured, weathered and weak rock along thrust zones such as the Main Boundary Thrust.
• Seismicity: the range lies in Seismic Zones IV and V, and earthquakes shake loose slopes and debris.
• Slope and drainage: steep gradients, rivers undercutting the toe of slopes, and glacial and moraine deposits that fail when saturated.
• Climate: intense monsoon rain, cloudbursts and glacial-lake outburst floods soak loose material and trigger slides, as in the Kedarnath disaster of June 2013.

Human causes

• Road cutting and blasting on unstable slopes, hydropower tunnelling, quarrying and the dumping of muck on hillsides.
• Deforestation and overgrazing that strip root binding; construction on steep slopes, river terraces and old landslide debris; poor drainage from fast-growing towns and pilgrim traffic beyond their carrying capacity.

Mitigation measures

• Hazard zonation: landslide susceptibility maps by the Geological Survey of India, the nodal agency, built into master plans, with no-construction zones on unstable slopes.
• Regulation: geotechnical and environmental appraisal of roads, dams and buildings, cut-slope standards for highways, and action against encroachment on natural drainage lines.
• Engineering: retaining walls, rock bolting, gabions, surface and subsurface drainage, and bio-engineering with deep-rooted native grasses and trees.
• Preparedness: rainfall-threshold early warning, monitoring of known slides, district plans under the NDMA guidelines on landslides (2009), and trained village volunteers.
• Ecological limits: catchment afforestation, eco-sensitive zone rules such as the Bhagirathi zone, and carrying-capacity studies before hill towns expand.

Landslides cannot be prevented in a rising mountain range, but zoning, careful engineering and community preparedness can keep them from becoming disasters.

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Land and water are the base of food, income, health and safety for most Indians, so their neglect surfaces as hunger, debt, floods, drought and disease, while their careful management removes these at the root.

How mismanagement breeds misery

• Degraded soils, erosion, salinity and waterlogging cut yields and push small farmers into debt and distress migration.
• Over-drawn groundwater, silted tanks and wasteful flood irrigation leave villages without drinking water in summer and crops without protective irrigation.
• Deforested catchments and built-over floodplains turn ordinary rain into floods, and every failed monsoon into famine-like scarcity.
• Polluted or stagnant water spreads diarrhoea, cholera and malaria, and fetching water and fuel consumes women's time and health.

Managing land well

• Soil conservation and restoration: contour bunding, terracing, mulching and balanced fertiliser use guided by Soil Health Cards raise productivity on the same land.
• Land-use planning and secure records: zoning that keeps farms, forests and floodplains in their place, and clear titles that let the poor invest and borrow.
• Common lands: regenerated pastures and village forests supply fodder and fuel and shield the landless from the next drought.

Managing water well

• Store rain where it falls: rainwater harvesting, farm ponds, tank desilting and check dams, as in Ralegan Siddhi and Hiware Bazar, recharge aquifers and end the summer water crisis.
• Use less per unit: micro-irrigation under 'Per Drop More Crop', crops suited to local rainfall, and groundwater regulation slow the fall of water tables.
• Manage floods and droughts: catchment treatment, floodplain zoning and reservoir rules that hold back peaks and release water in lean months.
• Integrate both: watershed development under PMKSY treats a ridge-to-valley unit as one system, raising soil moisture and groundwater together.

Managed together and with local participation, land and water turn from sources of recurring misery into the surest base of secure livelihoods.

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The South China Sea, linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans through the Malacca Strait, is today the most contested maritime space in Asia, where trade, resources, law and great-power rivalry meet.

Why it matters now

• Trade artery: a large share of world seaborne trade, including India's trade with East Asia, passes through it.
• Resources: rich fisheries and believed oil and gas reserves make exclusive economic zone rights worth contesting.
• Overlapping claims: China's 'nine-dash line' cuts across the claims of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, and China has built artificial islands with airstrips and military facilities on disputed reefs.
• Law versus power: in Philippines v. China (12 July 2016) the Arbitral Tribunal under UNCLOS found no legal basis for China's historic rights within the nine-dash line; China rejected the award.
• Great-power rivalry: US freedom-of-navigation operations and alliances with Japan and the Philippines confront China's assertiveness, while ASEAN, divided over China, cannot agree a binding Code of Conduct.

What it means for India

• Sea-lane security: much of India's trade with ASEAN, Japan and Korea passes through these waters, so instability there raises cost and risk.
• Energy stake: ONGC Videsh explores blocks off Vietnam despite Chinese objections.
• Strategic space: the Act East Policy, defence ties with Vietnam and the Malabar exercise with the United States and Japan give India a role as a net security provider in the Indo-Pacific.
• Principle: India supports freedom of navigation and overflight and settlement of disputes under UNCLOS, and after the 2016 award urged all parties to show utmost respect for the Convention, the rules that also protect its own maritime interests.

India's interest lies in a stable, rules-based order: it should keep supporting ASEAN centrality, peaceful settlement under UNCLOS and maritime partnerships across the region, without being drawn into any bloc.

Written by Minimalist IAS from facts checked at source (how we verify) — a little fuller than exam length, so every part of the question is covered; in the hall, keep the structure and trim the detail. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.

Mumbai (2005), Srinagar (2014) and Chennai (2015) flooded after rainfall that their rivers, lakes and marshes once absorbed; the vulnerability is largely made in the city, not only in the sky.

Why cities flood more

• Lost natural drainage: growth over floodplains, lakes and wetlands, such as Chennai's shrunken Pallikaranai marsh and the encroached Mithi river in Mumbai, with concrete surfaces that raise runoff and stop infiltration.
• Choked drains: old, undersized storm drains clogged by plastic and silt, mixed with sewage and rarely maintained before the monsoon.
• Intense rain: climate change brings short, heavy downpours that overwhelm drains; coastal cities also face high tides and storm surge that block outflow, as Mumbai found on 26 July 2005.
• Reservoir operation: sudden releases from full reservoirs, as from Chembarambakkam during the Chennai floods of December 2015, add to the peak.
• Governance and exposure: many agencies with overlapping roles, weak enforcement of master plans and floodplain zoning, encroachment tolerated for gain, and the poor settled in low-lying areas along drains and rivers.

What can be done

• Water-sensitive planning: floodplain and drainage master plans, protection and restoration of lakes and wetlands, permeable surfaces, rainwater harvesting and green cover, as the NDMA guidelines on urban flooding (2010) advise.
• Drainage: redesign storm drains for present rainfall intensities, separate them from sewage, and desilt before the monsoon with solid waste kept out.
• Preparedness: city-specific rainfall forecasting and early warning, real-time monitoring of drains and reservoirs, evacuation plans, flood insurance and community drills.
• Governance: one accountable urban flood authority per city, strict action against encroachment, and building codes for flood-prone zones.

Flood-resilient cities need water-sensitive planning, restored natural drainage and coordinated governance, not just larger drains.

Written by Minimalist IAS from facts checked at source (how we verify) — a little fuller than exam length, so every part of the question is covered; in the hall, keep the structure and trim the detail. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.

Signed at Karachi on 19 September 1960 with the World Bank as broker, the Indus Waters Treaty has outlasted three wars and is now tested by climate change and a sharp fall in India-Pakistan trust.

The Treaty in brief

• Division: the three eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) to India for unrestricted use; the three western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) to Pakistan, with India retaining run-of-river hydropower, limited storage and specified irrigation on them.
• Machinery: a Permanent Indus Commission that exchanges data; disputes go stepwise to a Neutral Expert (Baglihar, 2007) or a Court of Arbitration (Kishenganga, 2013).

Ecological implications

• Fixed allocations ignore a changing basin: glacier retreat, a shifting monsoon and rising demand alter flows, yet the Treaty provides no environmental flow or joint basin management.
• Dams and diversions change sediment and flow regimes; the Kishenganga award made India maintain a minimum downstream flow, an early recognition of ecology.

Economic implications

• Pakistan's irrigated agriculture depends heavily on the western rivers, so every Indian project on them is read as a threat.
• India uses only part of its entitlement: storage limits and slow project execution keep hydropower and irrigation in Jammu and Kashmir below what the Treaty allows.

Political implications

• The Treaty survived 1965, 1971 and Kargil, a rare example of cooperation, yet each Indian project (Baglihar, Kishenganga) has been contested at length.
• After the Uri attack (September 2016) India reviewed the Treaty's working, with calls to use its full entitlement and speed up projects (since then, in April 2025, after the Pahalgam attack, India placed the Treaty in abeyance until Pakistan credibly ends support for cross-border terrorism).

India's best course is to use its full entitlements, keep the Commission and the dispute mechanism working, and press for basin-wide data sharing, so that the Treaty adapts rather than breaks.

Written by Minimalist IAS from facts checked at source (how we verify) — a little fuller than exam length, so every part of the question is covered; in the hall, keep the structure and trim the detail. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.

India's rivers, canals and backwaters form a vast navigable network, yet inland waterways carry only about 2 per cent of freight, far below their potential as the cheapest and cleanest mode for bulk cargo.

Problems

• Physical: shallow, seasonal and meandering rivers with heavy silt, which need constant dredging to hold navigable depth; the Ganga and Brahmaputra shift course and fall to low draught in summer.
• Infrastructure: too few terminals, jetties and night-navigation aids, low bridges and barrages that block passage, and weak last-mile road and rail links from the waterfront.
• Fleet and finance: a small, ageing vessel fleet, few shipyards and repair facilities, and high initial costs with long payback that deter private operators.
• Institutional: water is a State subject, so irrigation, drinking water and navigation compete for the same flow, and coordination between the Inland Waterways Authority of India and the States is weak.
• Environmental and social: dredging and traffic threaten river ecology, such as the Gangetic dolphin, and disturb fishing communities.

Prospects

• Economics: water transport is cheaper and more fuel-efficient than road or rail per tonne-km, with lower emissions, and it eases congestion on trunk routes.
• Cargo base: coal, fertiliser, foodgrain, cement, over-dimensional cargo and containers along the Ganga and Brahmaputra and the Goa and Kerala waterways.
• Policy push: the National Waterways Act 2016 declared 111 national waterways, and the Jal Marg Vikas Project, with World Bank support, is building terminals and assured depth on the Haldia-Varanasi stretch of NW-1.
• Linkages: Sagarmala's port-led development, multimodal terminals, cargo to the Northeast through Bangladesh under the inland water protocol, and river cruise tourism widen demand.

With sustained dredging, terminals, a modern fleet and integration with rail and road, inland waterways can become a real third leg of India's logistics network.

Written by Minimalist IAS from facts checked at source (how we verify) — a little fuller than exam length, so every part of the question is covered; in the hall, keep the structure and trim the detail. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.

In drought-prone and semi-arid regions rain falls in a few intense spells and runs off, so a micro-watershed project treats a small drainage unit from ridge to valley to catch rain where it falls and store it in soil and aquifers.

How it conserves water

• Ridge treatment: contour trenches, bunds and plantations on upper slopes slow runoff and let water sink in before it gathers speed.
• Slope and field treatment: field bunds, terraces, vegetative barriers and mulching hold soil moisture and stop topsoil loss on farmland.
• Drainage-line treatment: gully plugs, loose boulder structures, check dams, percolation tanks and farm ponds trap the flow that reaches streams and recharge groundwater.
• Vegetation: regenerated pastures and tree cover reduce evaporation, bind soil and keep moisture in the profile for a longer season.

The gains

• Water: higher water tables revive dry wells, provide drinking water through summer and support protective irrigation at the critical stage of the kharif crop.
• Land and livelihoods: more cropped area, a second crop, horticulture, fodder and livestock raise incomes and cut distress migration, as Ralegan Siddhi and Hiware Bazar in drought-prone Ahmednagar show.
• Resilience: stored water and improved soil buffer the failure of a monsoon, making drought less of a disaster.

Conditions for success

• Community institutions: watershed committees and user groups that plan, share costs and maintain structures, with equity for the landless and women.
• Limits: recharge must be matched by crop-water budgeting and controls on borewells, or the gains are pumped away; schemes now under the watershed component of PMKSY should fund maintenance, not only construction.

Micro-watershed projects work best as community-led, ridge-to-valley programmes tied to disciplined groundwater use.

Written by Minimalist IAS from facts checked at source (how we verify) — a little fuller than exam length, so every part of the question is covered; in the hall, keep the structure and trim the detail. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.