GS Paper III 2018

SDG 7 asks for energy that is affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern; without it the goals on health, education, water and jobs cannot be met. India's record is strong on access, weaker on quality and clean supply.

Progress made

• Electricity access: Saubhagya (September 2017) set out to connect about four crore poor households free of cost; every census village was declared electrified in April 2018.
• Clean cooking: Ujjwala (2016) took LPG to poor homes, and Budget 2018-19 raised its target to eight crore connections (since then, LPG coverage reached 99.8 per cent by April 2021).
• Sustainability: a 175 GW renewable target for 2022, solar tariffs falling through auctions, the International Solar Alliance, and the Paris pledge of about 40 per cent non-fossil power capacity by 2030.
• Efficiency: UJALA LED bulbs, the Perform, Achieve and Trade scheme and appliance star labelling trim demand and bills.

Gaps that remain

• Reliability: a connection is not supply; distribution losses and discom debt, which DDUGJY, IPDS and UDAY address, still cause outages.
• Affordability: some Ujjwala households return to firewood because refills cost money.
• Sustainability: coal and imported oil still dominate; variable renewables need storage and grid integration.

Access has largely been won on paper; the next test is reliable, affordable and cleaner supply, through off-grid solar for remote areas and solvent discoms, so that energy drives the other SDGs rather than holding them back.

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Until Budget 2018-19, long-term capital gains on listed equity were exempt from tax, and equity-oriented mutual funds paid no tax on the income they distributed. The Budget ended both exemptions.

Changes introduced

• LTCG: gains above ₹1 lakh a year on listed equity shares and units of equity-oriented funds held for more than a year are taxed at 10 per cent, without indexation; short-term gains stay at 15 per cent.
• Grandfathering: gains accrued up to 31 January 2018 are protected, so only appreciation after that date is taxed.
• DDT: a 10 per cent tax on income distributed by equity-oriented mutual funds, paid at the fund level, so that dividend and growth options are treated alike.

Rationale

• Exempt long-term gains had reached about ₹3.67 lakh crore in assessment year 2017-18; the exemption favoured financial assets over manufacturing and narrowed the tax base while markets were buoyant.
• The Budget expected about ₹20,000 crore of extra revenue in the first year.

Comment

• Merits: fairer treatment across asset classes, a wider base, and grandfathering that spared past gains from retrospective taxation.
• Concerns: markets fell on the announcement, small investors' post-tax returns dipped, the fund-level tax reduces payouts, and frequent changes unsettle long-term saving.

The reform aligned equity with other assets and raised revenue; stable rules and simple compliance will decide whether small investors stay invested.

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Minimum Support Price is the floor price at which the government stands ready to buy specified crops, announced before sowing on the advice of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP).

What MSP means

• Announced for 23 crops; CACP weighs cost of production, demand and supply, market trends and parity between crops.
• Cost basis: Budget 2018-19 promised MSP of at least one and a half times production cost; the Swaminathan Commission had suggested C2 cost plus 50 per cent, while kharif 2018 MSPs used the narrower A2+FL cost.

How it can break the low-income trap

• Price assurance: a guaranteed floor removes the fear of a post-harvest collapse and cuts distress sales.
• Investment: assured returns let farmers spend on quality seed, inputs and technology, raising productivity and income.
• Crop choice: a remunerative price improves creditworthiness and encourages pulses and oilseeds, where MSPs were raised.

Conditions for success

• Procurement reach: over 86 per cent of farmers are small and marginal, and procurement centres on wheat and rice in a few States, so most farmers sell below MSP.
• Deficiency payment: the Budget asked NITI Aayog to design a mechanism for when prices fall below MSP; e-NAM and rural markets must widen.
• Risks: fiscal cost, bias toward water-hungry rice and wheat, stock build-up.

MSP can cushion prices and support income; escaping the trap also needs wider procurement, lower costs, diversification and non-farm jobs.

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Fruits and vegetables in India usually pass through several traders and commission agents between the farm and the consumer, losing value and freshness at each step; supermarkets shorten that chain by managing it end to end.

Role in supply chain management

• Direct sourcing: buying from farmers, farmer producer organisations or through contract farming at collection centres close to the farm.
• Post-harvest functions: grading, sorting, packing, cold storage and refrigerated transport cut wastage and lengthen shelf life.
• Scale and planning: demand forecasting, bulk purchase, private labels and bar-coded traceability give price stability, food safety and assured offtake to suppliers.

How intermediaries are eliminated

• The mandi's commission agent, wholesaler and sub-wholesaler are bypassed when the retailer buys at the farm gate and delivers to its own stores.
• Own warehouses and logistics replace the transporter and the local trader; the gap between farm-gate and retail price narrows, and the farmer's share can rise.

Limits

• Organised retail covers a small part of an unorganised market; small farmers struggle with quality standards, and bulk buyers can delay payment or squeeze suppliers.
• Public support is needed: FPOs, e-NAM, upgraded rural haats and Operation Greens (Budget 2018-19, ₹500 crore) for tomato, onion and potato, with mandi reform and cold-chain investment.

Supermarkets compress the chain and reduce waste; farmers keep the gain only when aggregation, fair contracts and market reform run alongside.

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In 1924 Satyendra Nath Bose derived Planck's law of black-body radiation by counting light quanta in a new way; Einstein extended the method to atoms, and the result became Bose-Einstein statistics.

Bose's work

• The new counting: Bose treated photons as identical and indistinguishable, with any number allowed in one energy state; counting the arrangements this way gave Planck's law without borrowing from classical physics.
• Einstein's part: he translated the paper into German, had it published in the Zeitschrift für Physik in 1924, and applied the statistics to a gas of atoms, predicting that at very low temperature they would settle into a single quantum state.

How it revolutionised physics

• Two families of particles: bosons (named by Paul Dirac) obey Bose's rule, carry integer spin and can crowd into one state; fermions, with half-integer spin, follow Fermi-Dirac statistics and Pauli's exclusion principle.
• Bose-Einstein condensation: Einstein's prediction was realised in the laboratory in 1995 and opened cold-atom physics.
• Explaining the unexplained: lasers (photons are bosons), superfluid helium-4 and superconductivity (electron pairs act as bosons) rest on bosonic behaviour; the W, Z and Higgs particles are bosons too.
• Recognition: Padma Vibhushan (1954) and National Professor (1958); no Nobel Prize, but 'boson' carries his name.

Bose's counting rule gave physics its second kind of quantum statistics; from lasers to condensates, it remains one of the deepest Indian contributions to modern science.

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Indian cities generate waste faster than they collect, segregate and treat it; open dumps leak leachate and methane, while hazardous, biomedical and electronic waste adds toxins to soil, water and air.

Impediments to disposal

• No segregation at source: mixed waste can be neither composted nor recycled, so it ends up in dumps.
• Weak collection and transport, no land left for sanitary landfills, and residents who resist treatment plants near their homes.
• Institutional gaps: cash-strapped urban local bodies, poor enforcement of the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, and informal waste-pickers left outside the system.
• Legacy dumps hold years of waste; open burning and leachate poison air and groundwater.

Safe removal of toxic waste

• Track and treat: hazardous, biomedical and e-waste move under manifests to authorised facilities under the 2016 rules, through secure landfills, incineration and co-processing; producers take back batteries and electronics.
• Polluter pays: extended producer responsibility for plastics and packaging, user fees and environmental compensation for violators.
• Clean-up and control: remediation of legacy dumps and contaminated sites, monitoring by pollution control boards, and the Basel Convention to curb hazardous-waste imports.
• Decentralised handling: segregation at source, composting and biomethanation, recycling with waste-pickers included, and landfills only for residue (since then, the SWM Rules, 2026 mandate four-stream segregation).

Reduce, segregate and treat waste near its source, and handle hazardous waste under strict control with public participation; the landfill must be the last resort, not the first.

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A wetland is land saturated or covered by water, natural or man-made, permanent or seasonal, fresh, brackish or salt, where water controls the plants and animals it supports; the Ramsar Convention (1971) commits parties to conserve wetlands through wise use.

What a wetland is

• Lakes, marshes, floodplains, mangroves, peatlands and shallow coastal waters, which give flood control, groundwater recharge, water purification, fisheries and carbon storage; India regulates them under the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017.

'Wise use' under Ramsar

• Meaning: maintaining a wetland's ecological character, through ecosystem approaches, within sustainable development; it is a duty for all wetlands, not only listed sites.
• Not a ban on use: fishing, tourism, grazing and water withdrawal continue, but within limits set by a management plan, with restoration, monitoring and community participation.
• Safeguard: the Montreux Record lists sites whose ecological character is threatened, prompting corrective action.

Two Indian Ramsar sites

• Chilika Lake (Odisha): its ecological character was restored by opening a new mouth to the sea and involving fisher communities, and it left the Montreux Record in 2002.
• Loktak Lake (Manipur): on the Montreux Record since 1993, a reminder that listing alone does not secure wise use.

Wise use lets people and wetlands thrive together; Chilika shows it working when communities and management plans guide the use, and Loktak shows the cost of neglecting it.

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Sikkim began withdrawing chemical fertilisers and pesticides from its farms in 2010 and was declared India's first fully organic State in January 2016; the Economic Survey 2023-24 calls it the first such State in the world.

Ecological benefits

• Soil health: more organic matter, better water retention and microbial life, and less erosion on Himalayan slopes.
• Clean water and biodiversity: no chemical run-off into streams and groundwater, so pollinators, birds and beneficial insects return in a fragile ecosystem.
• Climate: lower energy use and emissions from fertiliser manufacture, and soils more resilient to erratic rain.

Economic benefits

• Premium prices and a State brand for large cardamom, ginger, turmeric and buckwheat, with export potential.
• Lower input costs once compost, bio-fertilisers and local seed replace purchased chemicals.
• Health and jobs: safer food, less chemical exposure for farm workers, and farm tourism and homestays built on the organic identity.
• Model for others: Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana and the North-East organic value-chain mission back cluster-based conversion; Tripura and Uttarakhand have set similar targets.

Limits

• Yield dips during transition, certification and marketing costs, shortage of organic manure, and food-security concerns for larger, food-deficit States.

Sikkim shows that organic conversion can protect a fragile ecosystem and raise incomes; scaling it needs research on yields, certification support and assured markets.

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CPEC, a flagship of China's Belt and Road Initiative, is a package of road, rail, pipeline, power and industrial projects linking Kashgar in Xinjiang to Gwadar port on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast.

Brief description

• About 3,000 km of highways, railways, energy projects and special economic zones along the route.
• Gwadar gives China a direct outlet to the Arabian Sea, and gives Pakistan infrastructure it could not fund alone.

Why India has distanced itself

• Sovereignty: the corridor runs through Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, territory India claims; India holds that no country can accept a project that ignores its core concern on sovereignty and territorial integrity.
• Strategy: Gwadar and other ports raise the prospect of a Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean, and the corridor deepens China-Pakistan military and economic ties.
• Security: a China-backed presence in disputed territory hardens the two-front challenge for India's border and maritime security.
• Economics and norms: doubts over debt sustainability, opaque contracts and social and environmental costs; India insists connectivity must be transparent, financially responsible and respectful of international norms.
• Consistent stance: India skipped the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in May 2017 and builds alternatives: Chabahar port with Iran and Afghanistan, the International North-South Transport Corridor and Act East links.

India objects to a corridor that violates its sovereignty, not to connectivity itself; firm diplomacy must go with credible, transparent regional links of India's own.

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Police and public order are State subjects, so the Centre supplements the affected States through an integrated approach that pairs security with development and good governance, set out in the National Policy and Action Plan of 2015.

Security

• Central Armed Police Forces and India Reserve battalions, reimbursement of States' costs under the Security Related Expenditure scheme, police modernisation, helicopters, intelligence-sharing and inter-State coordination.
• SAMADHAN (2017): a doctrine spanning smart leadership, aggressive strategy, actionable intelligence, technology and choking Maoist finances.

Development

• Roads and telecom towers in affected districts, skill development, and Special Central Assistance for critical infrastructure in the worst-affected districts; the Aspirational Districts programme adds focus.

Rights and entitlements

• Implementing the Forest Rights Act, 2006 and PESA, 1996 in Scheduled Areas, and better delivery of MGNREGA, the public distribution system and schooling, to remove the grievances Maoists exploit.

Outreach

• Surrender and rehabilitation policies, counter-propaganda, and trust-building with alienated tribal communities.

Remaining challenges

• Uneven governance, land alienation and displacement, and weak coordination among States; the Home Ministry itself calls the approach holistic because force alone cannot end extremism.

Security clears the space and development and rights must fill it; the downward trend will hold only if governance reaches the last village.

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NITI Aayog replaced the Planning Commission on 1 January 2015. The Commission (1950) planned and allocated; NITI advises and coordinates, on principles meant for a federal, market-led economy.

Different principles

• Role: the Planning Commission drew up Five Year Plans and allocated plan funds to ministries and States, in effect steering State plans. NITI Aayog is a think-tank with no power over funds; its influence rests on evidence and persuasion.
• Direction of planning: the Commission planned from the top with one national template; NITI's principle is bottom-up planning, from village to State, with strategies tailored to each State.
• Federalism: States dealt with the Commission largely as claimants and were consulted through the National Development Council. NITI's Governing Council of Chief Ministers and Lieutenant Governors embodies cooperative federalism, its 'Team India' approach treats States as partners, and State rankings add competitive federalism.
• Economic philosophy: the Commission reflected a state-led, public-sector-centred model; NITI is market-friendly, engages the private sector and technology, and promotes innovation through the Atal Innovation Mission.
• Time horizon and monitoring: Five Year Plans (the twelfth ended in March 2017) gave way to a 15-year vision, a seven-year strategy and a three-year action agenda, judged by outcomes rather than outlays.
• Fiscal context: the 14th Finance Commission raised States' share of central taxes to 42 per cent, so untied money grew and a guiding rather than allocating body fitted the new balance.

Assessing the shift

• Gains: flexibility, knowledge inputs and a voice for States suit a mature and diverse economy better than uniform plans.
• Risks: without funds NITI lacks leverage, its advice can be ignored, and regional balance, once protected through allocation, is harder to secure.

The change moved planning from central direction to cooperative, evidence-based advice; it will succeed only if States get a real voice and NITI's counsel carries real weight in policy.

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Tariff walls and competitive devaluations by major economies disturb global demand, prices and capital flows; India, more integrated with world trade and finance than ever, feels the spillovers in its growth, prices and external balance.

Effects of protectionism

• Exports and growth: tariffs in large markets and a trade war between major economies shrink world demand and hit India's exports of steel, textiles, gems, engineering goods and services, slowing growth and jobs.
• Trade diversion: goods shut out of one market may be dumped in India, hurting domestic industry and forcing anti-dumping and safeguard duties; retaliation cycles raise uncertainty.
• Investment: uncertainty delays foreign and domestic investment, though some exporters gain as buyers diversify supply chains.

Effects of currency manipulation

• Competitiveness: when rivals hold their currencies weak, Indian exports lose price advantage and cheaper imports widen the trade deficit.
• Capital flows and the rupee: a stronger dollar and global risk aversion trigger portfolio outflows, a weaker rupee, a higher oil import bill and imported inflation.
• Macro stability: a wider current account deficit, pressure on foreign exchange reserves and interest rates, costlier external borrowing, and volatility in equity and bond markets.

What India should do

• Diversify products and markets, and use trade agreements and WTO dispute settlement against unfair barriers.
• Hold adequate reserves and manage the exchange rate flexibly to smooth volatility, not to fight fundamentals.
• Strengthen domestic demand and competitiveness through logistics, ease of doing business, skills and lower export costs, so that firms leaving tariff-hit countries choose India.
• Keep fiscal discipline and inflation targeting credible, so that shocks do not become crises (the Economic Survey 2023-24 still flags renewed protectionism as a risk to the external sector).

India cannot wall itself off from trade turbulence, but sound fundamentals, diversified trade, adequate reserves and steady reforms turn a global shock into a manageable disturbance.

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The National Horticulture Mission, launched in 2005-06, aimed at holistic growth of horticulture through area expansion, quality planting material and post-harvest infrastructure; since 2014-15 it runs within the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture.

Role in production and productivity

• Inputs: quality planting material and area expansion under fruits, vegetables and other horticulture crops.
• Technology: protected cultivation, micro-irrigation, integrated pest management and organic practices raised yields per hectare.
• Post-harvest: pack-houses, cold storage and market infrastructure reduced losses and lengthened the selling window.
• Outcome: horticulture output overtook foodgrains; official data put horticulture output at about 300 million tonnes in 2016-17 against about 275 million tonnes of foodgrains (since then, 3707 lakh tonnes on 301 lakh hectares in 2024-25, per the Agriculture Ministry).

Role in income

• Horticulture yields more value per hectare than cereals and employs labour through the year; growers with cold chains, markets and processing nearby earn more, and cluster development helps small growers reach scale.

How far incomes have risen

• Uneven: gains concentrate where markets and cold chains exist; small holdings, weak market links and delayed subsidy release limit the spread.
• Price risk: gluts of tomato, onion and potato crash prices, and intermediaries capture margins, so higher output has not meant proportionately higher realised income.
• Evidence gap: data on net farm income from horticulture is thin, and benefits vary across States and crops.

Way forward

• Farmer producer organisations, Operation Greens (2018) for tomato, onion and potato, e-NAM, food processing and cold chains, crop insurance and market intelligence.

NHM has lifted horticulture's output and diversified Indian farming, but incomes rise durably only when cold chains, markets and processing let farmers keep more of the value they create.

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Assured procurement and subsidised inputs tilted India's cropping pattern towards rice, wheat, sugarcane and cotton, while hardy, nutritious millets lost ground; the push for millets seeks to reverse that.

How emphasis changed cropping patterns

• Rice and wheat: MSP with assured procurement, plus subsidised power, water and fertiliser, made the pair dominant in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, displacing coarse cereals, pulses and oilseeds.
• Other shifts: sugarcane spread in Maharashtra and Karnataka on assured cane prices; Bt cotton after 2002 raised cotton's area; soybean grew across central India; pulses and oilseeds lagged, leaving import dependence.
• Consequences: groundwater depletion in the north-west, soil fatigue, monoculture, crop-residue burning, nutrition gaps and regional imbalance; millets' area shrank as cheap PDS rice and wheat replaced them on plates.

Emphasis on millets: production

• Why: jowar, bajra, ragi and minor millets need little water and few inputs, grow in rainfed and dry areas and withstand heat, which makes them climate-resilient crops.
• Policy: millets were notified as nutri-cereals in April 2018; a nutri-cereals sub-mission under the National Food Security Mission began in 2018-19; MSPs for millets were raised in 2018-19.

Emphasis on millets: consumption

• Nutrition: rich in fibre, iron and calcium, millets can close nutrition gaps that a rice-and-wheat diet leaves open.
• Barriers: taste habits, laborious processing, short shelf life and the PDS bias towards rice and wheat.
• Measures: procurement of millets for the PDS, school meals and anganwadis; value-added products, branding and ready-to-eat forms; awareness campaigns.

Way forward

• Crop-neutral incentives, research on millet yields, and matching crops to agro-climatic zones and nutrition needs.

Aligning crop choice with agro-climatic zones and nutrition, through MSP, procurement and PDS reform, can save water and improve diets; millets are the practical starting point.

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India pairs a large scientific workforce and a strong generic-pharma base with big needs in health, food and energy and a supportive policy framework; together these have made biotechnology one of its fastest-growing knowledge sectors.

Why so much activity

• People and cost: a large pool of trained biologists, chemists and engineers, and research at a fraction of Western cost.
• Industry base: an established generic pharmaceutical industry with manufacturing scale and regulatory experience, ready to move into biologics.
• Demand: a large disease burden, the need for affordable vaccines and drugs, food security and biofuels create domestic markets.
• Policy: the Department of Biotechnology (1986), the National Biotechnology Development Strategy 2015-20, BIRAC (2012) funding start-ups and industry-academia projects, biotech parks and incubators, and Make in India.
• Resources and farm use: rich biodiversity; Bt cotton since 2002, biofertilisers, biopesticides and tissue culture, though the debate on GM food crops continues.
• IPR: product patents since 2005 pushed firms from copying towards innovation.

How biopharma has benefited

• Vaccines: India is a leading vaccine maker for the world; indigenous products such as Rotavac show research-to-market capability.
• Biosimilars: guidelines on similar biologics (2012, revised 2016) opened a regulated path; Indian firms make affordable insulin and monoclonal antibodies, cutting prices at home and building exports.
• Diagnostics and enzymes: low-cost diagnostic kits and industrial enzymes widen access and lower healthcare costs.
• Ecosystem: BIRAC grants and incubators have created a pipeline of biopharma start-ups.

Challenges

• Thin early-stage funding, slow approvals, dependence on imported inputs and equipment, weak translational research, and biosafety and clinical-trial ethics.

India's biotech surge rests on skills, policy and demand; sustaining biopharma's gains needs more research funding, faster and predictable regulation, and strong IPR and biosafety frameworks.

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Nuclear power supplies round-the-clock electricity without carbon emissions, yet accidents, waste and cost keep it contentious; India's three-stage programme ties expansion to long-term energy security built on its thorium.

The facts

• Firm, low-carbon supply: a growing economy needs reliable power beyond import-dependent, polluting coal and intermittent renewables; nuclear plants run continuously on a small land footprint and support climate goals.
• Indigenous capability: mature pressurised heavy water reactor designs, and fleet-mode construction of 700 MW reactors approved in 2017 to cut cost and time.
• Fuel security: the three-stage programme moves from natural-uranium heavy water reactors to fast breeders using plutonium, and then to thorium-based reactors, making the most of scarce uranium and abundant thorium (since then, the 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam reached first criticality in April 2026).
• Small share today: nuclear supplies only a sliver of India's electricity, so expansion adds diversity rather than dependence.

The fears

• Safety: Chernobyl and Fukushima show the scale of a worst case; radiation risk, natural hazards and terrorism worry citizens.
• Waste and decommissioning: long-lived radioactive waste needs secure storage for generations, and closing plants is costly.
• Economics: high capital cost and long gestation, when solar tariffs keep falling.
• Liability and regulation: the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 shapes how far suppliers will participate, and critics want a regulator more independent of the Department of Atomic Energy.
• Local opposition: land acquisition, lost livelihoods and mistrust at Kudankulam and Jaitapur show that consent cannot be assumed.

Should India expand?

• Yes, in a calibrated way: nuclear complements renewables and storage in a diverse mix and is India's surest route to firm clean power.
• Conditions: an independent regulator, a strong safety culture, indigenous technology and thorium research, sound waste management, open safety information and genuine community consent.

India should keep expanding nuclear power as one pillar of a diverse energy mix, but only at the pace that independent regulation, safety and public trust allow.

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India is a megadiverse country holding about 7-8 per cent of the world's recorded species on about 2.4 per cent of its land; that richness is spread unevenly, following climate, terrain and altitude.

How biodiversity varies

• By region: alpine and temperate forests of the Himalaya, wet evergreen forests of the Western Ghats, the species-rich north-east, the dry Deccan and the Thar, and the wetlands, mangroves, coral reefs and islands of the coast.
• Hotspots: four of the world's biodiversity hotspots touch India, the Himalaya, Indo-Burma, the Western Ghats and Sundaland (the Nicobar Islands).
• Endemism: the Western Ghats hold amphibians, reptiles and plants found nowhere else; India's crop and livestock varieties add agricultural diversity.

How the Act helps conservation

• Aims: to conserve biological diversity, use its components sustainably and share the benefits of biological resources and related knowledge fairly, giving effect to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
• Three tiers: the National Biodiversity Authority, State Biodiversity Boards and local Biodiversity Management Committees, which document local species and knowledge in People's Biodiversity Registers.
• Regulating access: foreign nationals, non-resident Indians and foreign-owned firms need NBA approval to use Indian biological resources, and intellectual property claims built on them are checked; benefit-sharing returns value to local communities.
• Conservation tools: notification of Biodiversity Heritage Sites and threatened species, working alongside the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and community management under the Forest Rights Act, 2006.

Limits

• Local committees lack funds and capacity, registers are slow to complete, benefit-sharing has been thin so far, and researchers and traditional healers complain of compliance burden.

India's varied biodiversity is best protected when the Act's local committees are empowered and benefit-sharing reaches the communities that actually conserve it.

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The 1999 Odisha super cyclone and the 2004 tsunami pushed India from relief after disasters to reducing risk before them; the Sendai Framework (2015-2030) then replaced the Hyogo Framework for Action (2005-2015) as the global blueprint.

Measures before Sendai

• Law and institutions: the Disaster Management Act, 2005 created the National, State and District Disaster Management Authorities; the National Disaster Response Force followed in 2006 and the National Policy on Disaster Management in 2009.
• Hazard-specific action: NDMA guidelines for cyclones, earthquakes and floods, cyclone shelters and improved forecasting, the tsunami early-warning system at INCOIS (2007), building codes and mock drills.

Measures after Sendai

• The National Disaster Management Plan, 2016, India's first, aligned with Sendai's priorities and assigned roles to every ministry.
• The Prime Minister's ten-point agenda (2016) on risk reduction, and India's hosting of the Asian Ministerial Conference on DRR in 2016.
• Gaps that persist: uneven State capacity, weak urban planning and building-code enforcement, thin local funds, and mitigation and insurance lagging behind response.

Sendai versus Hyogo

• Targets: Hyogo set five priorities but no measurable goals; Sendai, adopted on 18 March 2015, has four priorities and seven global targets with indicators.
• Focus: Hyogo centred on building resilience to natural hazards; Sendai aims to prevent new risk and reduce existing risk, and covers natural and man-made hazards, including biological ones.
• Governance: Sendai stresses risk governance, accountability and an all-of-society partnership, and adds 'build back better' to preparedness and recovery.
• Priorities: understanding risk, strengthening risk governance, investing in resilience, and better preparedness for effective response and recovery.

India has strong institutions for response and is moving towards risk reduction; Sendai's targets and risk-governance ideas call for stronger local action and resilient infrastructure.

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.

Set up in July 2017 and reporting in July 2018 with a draft Personal Data Protection Bill, the Srikrishna Committee followed the Supreme Court's 2017 ruling that privacy is a fundamental right, and aimed at a 'free and fair digital economy'.

Strengths

• Coverage: one law binds government and private data fiduciaries alike, built on consent, purpose and collection limitation, data minimisation and transparency, and reaching processing linked to business in India.
• Rights: individuals get access, correction, portability and a limited right to be forgotten; fiduciaries owe a duty of fair and reasonable processing, with privacy by design.
• Enforcement: an independent Data Protection Authority, breach reporting, impact assessments for significant fiduciaries, and penalties of up to ₹15 crore or 4 per cent of global turnover give the law teeth.
• Constitutional footing: it answers the Court's call, repeated in the Aadhaar judgment of September 2018, for a robust data protection regime that balances individual interests with legitimate State concerns.

Weaknesses

• State exemptions: wide grounds such as security of the State and public order, without prior judicial approval, leave the largest data holder least constrained.
• Localisation: a mandatory local copy of all personal data and local-only storage of 'critical' data raise costs for firms without clearly improving security, and the Centre alone defines what is critical.
• Oversight and transparency: the regulator's independence from the executive was questioned, and the proposed change to the RTI Act's personal-information exemption could weaken transparency.
• Process: the draft was framed without wide public consultation on its final text.

My view

• The report is a sound, rights-based foundation, but its credibility rests on tighter checks on State access (necessity, proportionality, oversight), a truly independent regulator, workable localisation rules and open consultation before enactment.

A data protection law is only as strong as its limits on the State; with those limits fixed, the Committee's framework can turn the privacy right into everyday protection.

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 lies between the Golden Crescent (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran) and the Golden Triangle (Myanmar, Laos, Thailand), the world's two main opium-producing regions, which makes it both a transit route and a destination for narcotics.

The linkages

• Narco-terrorism: drug money funds insurgent and terrorist groups, and drugs are at times bartered for weapons, as reported along the western border and in the north-east.
• Gunrunning: the same routes, carriers and handlers that bring heroin across the western and eastern borders move arms, ammunition and explosives, so a drug network is a weapons network.
• Money laundering: proceeds are washed through hawala, front companies, real estate and trade-based laundering, and the cleaned money finances further crime and terror.
• Human trafficking: organised networks exploit porous, unfenced borders to traffic women and children, and use victims as drug couriers; corruption in enforcement keeps the chain intact.
• Enablers: difficult terrain on the Punjab-Pakistan and Myanmar borders, the free movement regime with Myanmar, weak coastal surveillance, corruption and rising domestic demand.

Counter-measures

• Law and agencies: enforce the NDPS Act, 1985 and PIT-NDPS Act, 1988 through the Narcotics Control Bureau, with joint operations by BSF, customs, the Coast Guard and State police.
• Follow the money: the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 and FIU-India to trace hawala and trade-based flows, and confiscate assets.
• Borders: fencing, surveillance technology and coastal security, and a review of the free movement regime.
• Regional cooperation: intelligence-sharing with neighbours and under the UN drug conventions, since supply lies across the border.
• Demand side: treatment and de-addiction, awareness, and alternative livelihoods in poppy-growing areas.

Drugs, arms, money and trafficked people move through one criminal system, so the response must be equally joined up: sealed borders, tracked money, regional cooperation and less demand.

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.