GS Paper III 2021

In January 2015 the Central Statistics Office moved India's national accounts to a 2011-12 base, changing not only the year of comparison but what is measured and from which data.

Before 2015 (2004-05 series)

• Base year 2004-05 set the prices and weights used for comparison.
• Headline growth was GDP at factor cost, which excludes indirect taxes and subsidies.
• Corporate activity was captured from a smaller set of company results and indirect indicators.

After 2015 (2011-12 series)

• Base year 2011-12 updates prices, weights and the economy's structure.
• Headline growth is GDP at constant market prices, as internationally, a shift the Economic Survey 2014-15 records.
• Sector value added is GVA at basic prices: factor cost plus production taxes less production subsidies; GDP equals GVA plus product taxes less product subsidies.
• Wider data base: MCA21 company filings, financial-sector regulators and institutions, and sales-tax and service-tax data.

Effect of the change

• Growth for 2012-13 and 2013-14 came out higher than in the old series; the two are not directly comparable, so a back series followed.
• Economists have questioned the MCA21 database and the back series, keeping data quality and transparency under debate.

The new method is broader and closer to international practice, but its data sources and comparability remain contested, so transparency matters as much as methodology.

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Article 112 requires the Annual Financial Statement to show revenue expenditure separately from other expenditure, which is why the Union Budget is presented as a Revenue Budget and a Capital Budget.

The distinction

• The Revenue Budget covers recurring receipts and spending that neither create an asset nor reduce a liability; the Capital Budget covers transactions that change the government's assets or liabilities.
• A loan raised is a capital receipt because it adds a liability; a salary paid is revenue expenditure because nothing durable remains.
• Revenue deficit (revenue expenditure minus revenue receipts) shows how far borrowing is funding current consumption.

Revenue Budget: components

• Revenue receipts: tax revenue (income tax, corporation tax, GST, customs, Union excise) and non-tax revenue such as interest, dividends and profits, fees and grants.
• Revenue expenditure: salaries, pensions, interest payments, subsidies and the running of departments; all grants to States count here even when they create assets.

Capital Budget: components

• Capital receipts: market loans, Treasury Bills, external loans and other borrowings (debt receipts), plus recovery of loans and disinvestment (non-debt receipts).
• Capital expenditure: acquisition of land, buildings, machinery and equipment; investment in shares; and loans and advances to States, Union Territories and public enterprises.

A sound budget keeps the revenue account near balance so that borrowing finances capital formation rather than day-to-day spending.

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Land reform sought to give the tiller security, a fair share of the produce and a workable holding; where it was enforced in earnest, it changed both the incomes and the standing of small cultivators.

How each measure helped

• Abolition of intermediaries ended zamindari rent extraction and arbitrary eviction; cultivating tenants became owners dealing directly with the State.
• Tenancy reform gave security of tenure and regulated rent: Operation Barga in West Bengal recorded sharecroppers, and Kerala's tenancy laws made tenants owners.
• Ceiling laws redistributed surplus land and homestead plots to landless and marginal families, notably in Kerala and West Bengal, raising assets, bargaining power and social status.
• Consolidation of holdings, most complete in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, replaced scattered strips with compact plots, making tubewells, mechanisation and cheaper cultivation possible.
• Secure title worked as collateral, opening institutional credit, encouraging investment in wells and inputs and cutting dependence on moneylenders; productivity and incomes rose on reformed holdings.

Why gains stayed regional

• Loopholes, benami transfers, concealed tenancy and poor records blunted reform elsewhere; digitised records, tenant recognition and women's land rights can widen the gains.

Land reform improved the lives of small farmers wherever the State completed it; finishing the records and recognising tenants would carry those gains to the rest of the country.

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Agriculture is the largest user of India's water, mostly through flood irrigation, so farm-level efficiency is central to easing the crisis.

How micro-irrigation helps

• Drip and sprinkler systems deliver water at the root zone, cutting evaporation, runoff and seepage, so each drop and each unit of pumping energy yields more.
• Fertigation delivers nutrients with water, raising yields and cutting fertiliser, weeding and labour costs; it suits undulating, saline and water-scarce land.
• Policy support: Per Drop More Crop under PMKSY (from 2015-16) and the Micro Irrigation Fund with NABARD give subsidy and cheaper finance.

To what extent

• Coverage is still well under a tenth of the net sown area and concentrated in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra; paddy, wheat and sugarcane remain flood-irrigated.
• Savings per hectare may not cut basin-level use if farmers use the saved water to expand area, so groundwater regulation must go with it.
• Constraints: high upfront cost for small holdings, clogging and poor servicing, unreliable power and delayed subsidy.
• The crisis also stems from crop choice, free power and urban and industrial demand, so watershed recharge, canal modernisation, wastewater reuse and pricing reform are needed too.

Micro-irrigation is a strong but partial answer: with crop diversification, groundwater governance and finance for small farmers it can carry much of the load; alone it cannot.

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The S-400 Triumf is Russia's long-range surface-to-air missile system; India contracted five squadrons in October 2018 to shield its western and northern fronts.

What gives it the edge

• Layered reach: one system fires four missile types for different bands, the longest reaching about 400 km, so it covers short, medium and long-range threats together.
• Multi-role: it engages combat aircraft, cruise missiles, drones and tactical ballistic missiles through a single network of radars, command posts and launchers.
• Sensors: long-range surveillance and engagement radars track many targets at once.
• Mobility: road-mobile launchers and radars redeploy quickly, so they are hard to target pre-emptively.
• Against peers: Patriot has shorter reach and THAAD is built mainly for ballistic missiles; the S-400's mix of range and roles in one package is its distinction.

Testing the claim

• "Superior to every other system" is a claim, not a record: performance against stealth aircraft, saturation attacks and electronic warfare is untested in combat.
• No single system can seal the sky; for India the deal also carries CAATSA sanction risk and dependence on Russian supply.
• It works best layered with indigenous air and missile defence and an integrated radar network.

The S-400 is among the most capable long-range air-defence systems, but India's security lies in layering it with indigenous systems and networked sensors, not in any single purchase.

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The sun is always shining somewhere; the Green Grids Initiative-One Sun One World One Grid (GGI-OSOWOG), launched by India and the UK at the COP26 World Leaders Summit in Glasgow in November 2021, aims to build a shared grid on that fact.

Purpose of the initiative

• Interconnect regional grids across borders and time zones so solar power generated where the sun shines serves demand elsewhere, including after sunset.
• Cut cost and fossil back-up: pooled renewable supply and storage across regions need less standby capacity and improve grid stability.
• Widen energy access and speed decarbonisation for all partners.
• Approach: regional interconnections first, then wider links towards a global grid, with the ISA coordinating work among member countries.
• For India it complements the Glasgow pledges of 500 GW non-fossil capacity and 50% of energy needs from renewables by 2030.

When the idea was first floated

• Prime Minister Modi first proposed One Sun One World One Grid at the first Assembly of the International Solar Alliance in October 2018; COP26 gave it institutional form with the UK as partner.

Challenges

• Cross-border power-trade rules, grid standards, financing, political trust, transmission losses and cyber security of interconnected grids.

If trust, standards and finance can be secured, the initiative could make clean power cheaper and more reliable for every partner.

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On 22 September 2021 WHO issued its first revision of the Global Air Quality Guidelines since 2005, as new evidence shows harm at far lower concentrations.

Key points of the 2021 guidelines

• Guideline levels for six pollutants: PM2.5, PM10, ozone, NO2, SO2 and CO.
• Interim targets that let countries far from the guideline levels progress in steps.
• Good-practice statements on black carbon and dust; the levels are advisory, meant to guide national standards.

How they differ from 2005

• Almost all levels were lowered: annual PM2.5 from 10 to 5 µg/m3, 24-hour PM2.5 from 25 to 15, annual NO2 from 40 to 10.
• WHO warns that exceeding the new levels carries significant health risk.

Changes India's NCAP needs

• India's 2009 standards allow 40 µg/m3 annual PM2.5, eight times the new guideline, and NCAP's target of a 20-30% cut by 2024 over 2017 is relative, not health-based.
• Replace relative city targets with health-based, legally enforceable limits, tightening national standards in stages along WHO's interim targets.
• Move to airshed plans covering crop-residue burning and industrial clusters, expand continuous monitoring and source apportionment, and link city grants to measured outcomes.
• Sector action: clean cooking and transport, power-plant norms, dust and waste-burning control, backed by finance and city capacity.

Adopting WHO's levels in stages, with enforcement and regional cooperation, turns NCAP from a reduction target into a health-protection programme.

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About 59% of India's land is earthquake-prone: 11% in zone V, 18% in zone IV and 30% in zone III (NIDM), and exposure keeps rising with unplanned urban growth.

Why India is vulnerable

• Tectonics: the Indian plate's push under the Eurasian plate strains the whole Himalayan arc; the Kachchh rift and peninsular faults also produce damaging shocks.
• Zoning: BIS zone V covers parts of the Himalaya, the North-East, Kachchh and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; the peninsula has active pockets.
• Human factors: non-engineered masonry houses, dense unplanned towns, unsafe high-rises, weak code enforcement and low awareness turn tremors into disasters.
• Secondary hazards: landslides in the hills, liquefaction on soft soils and tsunamis from undersea quakes, as the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake (Mw 9.3) showed on India's coast.

Major earthquakes of the last three decades

• Uttarkashi 1991 and Chamoli 1999 (Garhwal Himalaya): mountain villages flattened, landslides blocked roads.
• Latur 1993 (Maharashtra): shallow quake in a region thought safe; village houses collapsed with heavy casualties.
• Bhuj 2001 (Gujarat): over 13,000 dead; liquefaction and collapse of multi-storey buildings as far as Ahmedabad exposed urban vulnerability.
• Kashmir 2005 and Sikkim 2011: landslides cut roads and delayed rescue in remote terrain.

Earthquakes cannot be predicted, so BIS-code construction, retrofitting, land-use planning, trained masons and NDRF-led community drills are the only dependable protection.

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Money laundering turns proceeds of crime into apparently clean assets through placement, layering and integration; technology and open borders speed up every stage and blur the trail.

How technology and globalisation help launderers

• Crypto assets and mixers move value outside banks; wallets, mule accounts and online gaming split sums into fast, small transfers that evade thresholds.
• Shell companies can be formed online across jurisdictions, hiding beneficial owners.
• Open capital flows, offshore centres, correspondent banking and trade misinvoicing move funds across borders faster than agencies can trace; uneven laws create havens.

National measures

• PMLA 2002: section 3 defines the offence broadly, from concealment to projecting proceeds as untainted; it allows attachment of proceeds, binds reporting entities and is enforced by the ED.
• FIU-India (2004) analyses suspicious and cash transaction reports; KYC and beneficial-ownership norms make banks and intermediaries detect and report.
• Supporting laws: Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act 2016, Black Money Act 2015 and Fugitive Economic Offenders Act 2018.
• Regulate virtual assets, deploy analytics and AI for transaction monitoring, and share data across agencies in real time.

International measures

• FATF standards and mutual evaluations, now extended to virtual assets, with grey-listing as pressure; the Egmont Group for FIU-to-FIU intelligence exchange.
• UN conventions, mutual legal assistance treaties and tax-information exchange agreements.

Criminals adapt faster than statutes, so laws, technology and cross-border cooperation must be upgraded together.

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As grids, payments, governance and defence go digital, hostile states and proxies can strike India from abroad with deniability, making cyberspace an internal-security front.

Impact on internal security

• Critical infrastructure: attacks on power, nuclear, ports, banks and telecom can halt services; in 2019 malware was found in the Kudankulam plant's administrative network, isolated from control systems according to NPCIL.
• Espionage: state-linked groups target defence, government and strategic sectors; stolen data erodes military and diplomatic advantage.
• Crime and terror: ransomware, online fraud and crypto channels fund crime and terror networks.
• Information war: disinformation and radicalisation on social media aim to trigger unrest and communal tension.
• Attribution: attacks routed through proxies and foreign servers leave evidence and jurisdiction abroad, weakening deterrence and prosecution.

Defensive measures

• Institutions: CERT-In, the national agency under the IT Act for incident response; NCIIPC (2014) for critical information infrastructure; the Defence Cyber Agency (2018) for military networks; I4C (January 2020) for cybercrime coordination.
• Law: IT Act section 66F on cyber terrorism, mandatory security audits, trusted-source rules for telecom equipment, blocking of hostile apps and a data-protection law.
• Way forward: sectoral CERTs and mandatory incident reporting, a skilled workforce, indigenous hardware and software, regular drills, and partnerships on cyber norms and evidence sharing.

Resilience, not prevention alone, is the goal: assume breaches, detect early, recover fast and build deterrence with partners.

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A V-shaped recovery is a sharp contraction followed by an equally sharp return to the pre-crisis level of output. India's real GDP contracted 7.3% in 2020-21, and the First Advance Estimates of 7 January 2022 project 9.2% growth in 2021-22, so the headline numbers do trace a V, as the Economic Survey 2020-21 claimed. I agree for aggregate output, with qualifications.

Reasons in support

• Quarterly path: the 24.4% contraction of April-June 2020 gave way to positive growth by the third quarter of 2020-21 and 20.1% growth in April-June 2021 (NSO, 31 August 2021).
• Annual level: 9.2% growth on top of a 7.3% fall takes real GDP above its 2019-20 level within two years, the defining test of a V (since then, provisional estimates put 2021-22 growth at 8.7%, still 1.5% above 2019-20).
• High-frequency signals: GST collections, e-way bills, power demand and exports rebounded quickly once restrictions eased and vaccination spread.
• Macro stability: a stable currency, comfortable current account and large forex reserves supported the rebound, as the Survey noted.

Reasons for caution

• Base effect: 20.1% growth on a 24.4% fall still left April-June 2021 output below its 2019 level, so growth rates flatter the recovery.
• Interruptions: the second wave of 2021 and the Omicron variant show that the path depends on the pandemic, not only on policy.
• K-shaped underneath: contact-intensive services, MSMEs and informal workers lagged while large firms and finance recovered; consumption and employment stayed weak.
• Lost trend: returning to the 2019-20 level still leaves output below where the pre-pandemic trend would have taken it.

Verdict

• V-shaped in aggregate output; uneven in incomes, jobs and sectors, so partly V and partly K.

The recovery is V-shaped in headline GDP but not yet in lives and livelihoods; making it durable needs investment revival, job creation and demand support for those at the bottom of the K.

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The statement is drawn from the Economic Survey 2020-21, which grounds it in the strong backward and forward linkages of infrastructure. India's record supports the claim, though with conditions.

Infrastructure and rapid growth

• Productivity: reliable power, roads, ports and rail cut logistics cost and time, raise capacity utilisation and crowd in private investment.
• Linkages: construction pulls demand for steel, cement and labour, while better connectivity lets firms reach national and export markets.
• Experience: the Golden Quadrilateral, telecom expansion, airports, metro networks, dedicated freight corridors and UDAN (2016) widened markets and created jobs.
• Recent push: the National Infrastructure Pipeline (₹111 lakh crore, 2020-25), the National Monetisation Pipeline (August 2021) and PM Gati Shakti (October 2021) aim at coordinated planning and asset recycling.

Infrastructure and inclusive growth

• Rural roads under PMGSY (2000) connect villages to markets, schools and hospitals; electrification under Saubhagya (2017) extends study hours and small enterprise.
• Rural housing, piped water and broadband bring remote and backward regions into the mainstream economy.
• Connectivity shifts labour from farms to non-farm work and widens women's mobility and access to services.

Conditions and constraints

• Delays, cost overruns, land and clearance hurdles, stressed developers and banks, weak PPP risk-sharing and State fiscal limits erode returns.
• Poor maintenance wastes assets; highways that bypass villages, displacement without rehabilitation and environmental damage can make growth exclusionary.
• Inclusion is not automatic: projects must reach lagging regions, protect displaced people and the environment, and be financed sustainably.

Infrastructure is necessary but not sufficient for rapid and inclusive growth: quality, timely delivery, reach into lagging regions and fair treatment of those displaced decide whether new roads and grids carry everyone forward.

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The National Food Security Act, 2013 converted food security from a welfare scheme into a legal entitlement, covering nearly two-thirds of the population on Census 2011 estimates.

Salient features

• Coverage: 75% of the rural and 50% of the urban population, in two categories: Antyodaya households and priority households.
• Entitlement: 5 kg of foodgrains per person per month at Rs 3 for rice, Rs 2 for wheat and Re 1 for coarse grains; 35 kg per Antyodaya household.
• Nutrition rights: pregnant women and lactating mothers get meals and a maternity benefit of at least Rs 6,000 (section 4); children up to 14 years get age-appropriate meals through anganwadis and schools (section 5).
• Women's empowerment: the eldest woman of the household is its head for issuing ration cards.
• Accountability: District Grievance Redressal Officers, State Food Commissions and transparency in the public distribution system.

Gains against hunger

• A justiciable right replaced discretionary coverage, widening and cheapening access to grain for the poor.
• ePoS authentication and One Nation One Ration Card let migrants draw rations anywhere; free grain under PMGKAY during the pandemic prevented hunger.

Limits on malnutrition

• NFHS-5 (2019-21) shows child stunting down only from 38.4% to 35.5%, little progress on wasting and child anaemia up from 58.6% to 67.1%.
• The Act is cereal-centric: it secures calories, not protein, micronutrients or diet diversity.
• Coverage still rests on Census 2011, so exclusion errors persist; leakages, weak anganwadi delivery and patchy maternity benefits limit results.

The Act has largely secured access to grain as a right; ending malnutrition needs diverse diets, health services, sanitation and women's education beyond the ration shop.

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Diversification away from the rice-wheat cycle is needed to save groundwater, restore soils, improve diets and raise incomes, yet the structure of incentives keeps farmers where they are.

Present challenges

• Policy bias: assured MSP and open-ended procurement for rice and wheat, with free or cheap power and water, especially in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, make alternatives look risky.
• Market risk: pulses, oilseeds, fruit and vegetables face price volatility and thin procurement; poor storage, cold chains and processing force distress sales of perishables.
• Farm-level limits: small holdings, weak credit and information, scarce quality seed and know-how for new crops, and pest and climate risk.
• Demand side: consumption and the public distribution system centre on cereals, so millets and pulses lack pull.
• Cost of the status quo: paddy in water-scarce regions depletes groundwater and monoculture degrades soil, so the change cannot wait.

Opportunities from emerging technologies

• Data and sensing: satellite and drone crop mapping, soil sensors and weather-based advisories guide crop choice, input use and timing, lowering the risk of trying a new crop.
• Digital markets: e-NAM (2016), FPO platforms and price-forecasting apps widen the buyer base; traceability and grading help high-value crops reach organised retail and export.
• Biotechnology: climate-resilient, short-duration and biofortified varieties of pulses, millets and oilseeds fit into existing rotations and raise nutrition.
• Precision irrigation and machinery: drip and sprinklers suit horticulture, and custom-hiring of harvesters and planters cuts the cost of switching.
• Enabling policy: technology pays off only with assured procurement of pulses and millets and crop-neutral incentives.

Technology can shrink the risk of leaving rice and wheat, but the price signals must change first; then data, markets and seeds can make diversification the farmer's own choice.

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Applied biotechnology turns molecular biology into seeds, vaccines, drugs and diagnostics; for the poor its worth depends on whether the products are cheap, safe and within reach.

R&D achievements

• Agriculture: Bt cotton, the only GM crop under commercial cultivation as of 2021; marker-assisted varieties such as Improved Samba Mahsuri rice resistant to bacterial blight; tissue-culture plantlets; biofertilisers and biopesticides.
• Health: indigenous vaccines including Rotavac and recombinant hepatitis B, and against Covid-19, Covaxin, ZyCoV-D and Corbevax; low-cost biosimilars such as insulin; affordable diagnostic kits.
• Genomics: INSACOG (December 2020) tracks coronavirus variants, and GenomeIndia has sequenced over 10,000 genomes for disease surveillance and precision medicine.
• Support system: the Department of Biotechnology and BIRAC fund research and start-ups; Biotech-KISAN links scientists with small and women farmers.

How they uplift the poor

• Health costs: cheaper vaccines and biosimilars cut out-of-pocket spending; low-cost diagnostics bring early detection to primary care and immunisation programmes.
• Farm incomes: resilient, higher-yield and biofortified crops raise small-farm output and nutrition; biofertilisers and biopesticides cut input costs.
• Jobs and enterprise: bio-industries, rural bio-enterprises and Biotech-KISAN hubs create work outside agriculture.
• Public health: genomic surveillance guides pandemic response, on which the poor, with the least buffer, depend most.

Cautions

• Biosafety and regulatory trust: GM mustard was cleared for environmental release in 2022, but the Supreme Court split on it in July 2024.
• Seed prices and corporate dependence, IPR barriers and uneven access; public-sector research, affordable pricing and extension are needed.

Biotechnology reaches the poor only when innovation is matched by affordable access, sound regulation and farmer training.

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Red and green LEDs had existed for decades, but only the blue LED of Akasaki, Amano and Nakamura made efficient white light possible, which is why the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics treated it as an invention of greatest benefit to mankind.

Why blue completed the picture

• A blue LED coated with phosphor, or combined with red and green LEDs, produces white light; this is the basis of every LED lamp and backlit screen.

Impact on everyday life

• Energy and cost: LEDs convert far more of their electricity into light than incandescent bulbs and last many times longer, cutting bills, replacements and lighting's share of power demand.
• Ubiquity: home and street lighting, phone, television and computer screens, vehicle headlights, traffic signals and torches all run on LEDs.
• Access: low power needs let solar lamps light homes beyond the grid, replacing kerosene and extending study and work hours; the Nobel committee noted this promise for over 1.5 billion people without grid access.
• Health: blue-light phototherapy treats newborn jaundice.
• Environment: lower electricity demand means lower emissions, and LEDs contain no mercury, unlike CFLs.
• India: the UJALA scheme (January 2015) spread low-cost LED bulbs to households, cutting household bills.

Concerns

• Blue-rich light at night disturbs sleep, brighter cheap lighting adds to light pollution, and discarded LED electronics add to e-waste; standards and disposal norms are needed.

A small semiconductor invention lit homes and streets with a fraction of the energy and carried light to places the grid never reached; its next test is using it wisely.

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COP26 in Glasgow (November 2021) had to keep the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C goal within reach and complete its rulebook; the Glasgow Climate Pact and a set of national pledges were the result.

Major outcomes

• Ambition: Parties are asked to revisit and strengthen their 2030 targets by the end of 2022 to align with the Paris temperature goal.
• Fossil fuels: the first COP decision to name coal and fossil-fuel subsidies, calling for a "phasedown of unabated coal power" and phase-out of inefficient subsidies; "phase-out" of coal was softened to "phase-down" at the last moment.
• Finance: developed countries were urged to deliver the $100 billion a year goal and to at least double adaptation finance by 2025 from 2019 levels.
• Rulebook: Article 6 carbon-market rules and transparency reporting formats were finalised, closing the Paris rulebook.
• Loss and damage: a Glasgow Dialogue was created, but no new fund.

India's commitments: the Panchamrit

• 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030; 50% of energy requirements from renewables by 2030.
• A cut of one billion tonnes in projected emissions by 2030 and a 45% reduction in carbon intensity by 2030.
• Net zero by 2070.
• India also asked developed countries for $1 trillion in climate finance at the earliest, proposed LIFE (Lifestyle for Environment) as a one-word movement, and launched GGI-OSOWOG with the UK.

Assessment

• Pledges still fall short of 1.5°C; India's 2070 date is later than others' but its position rests on equity, common but differentiated responsibilities and finance.

Glasgow kept 1.5°C alive but left delivery, finance and fairness for later; India paired ambition with a demand that support match it.

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A landslide is the downslope movement of rock, debris or earth under gravity; the Geological Survey of India estimates that 12.6% of India's land area, excluding snow-covered area, is landslide-prone, chiefly the Himalaya and the Western Ghats.

Causes

• Natural: steep slopes, weak or fractured rock, heavy and prolonged rainfall, cloudbursts, earthquakes, snowmelt runoff and river undercutting of slope toes, especially in the young fold mountains.
• Human: deforestation, unplanned road-cutting and construction on slopes, mining and quarrying, blocked drainage and shifting cultivation.

Effects

• Loss of lives, homes and farmland; blocked highways and rivers, with flash-flood risk when landslide dams burst.
• Lost livelihoods and tourism, cut-off villages, heavy relief and reconstruction cost, and siltation of rivers and reservoirs downstream.
• Repeated losses in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Kerala, the North-East and the Nilgiris.

National Landslide Risk Management Strategy (NDMA, 2019)

• Hazard mapping: landslide inventories and susceptibility maps.
• Monitoring and early warning systems.
• Awareness programmes.
• Capacity building and training of stakeholders.
• Regulation and policy, including mountain-zone regulations.
• Stabilisation and mitigation of landslides.
• A proposed Centre for Landslide Management.

Mitigation on the ground

• Slope stabilisation with retaining walls, drainage and bio-engineering; no-construction zones on unstable slopes; afforestation; regulated road and hydropower works.
• Community readiness: local early-warning systems, trained village task forces and NDRF and SDRF preparedness.

Landslides cannot be eliminated, but hazard maps, regulated slope use and early warning that reaches the last village can cut the losses sharply.

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India's internal security is increasingly shaped from outside: hostile states act through proxies and non-state networks to inflict harm below the threshold of war, across military, economic, cyber, social and coastal dimensions.

Challenges from external state actors

• Proxy war: sponsorship of cross-border terrorism and infiltration, tunnels under the border and drones dropping arms and narcotics.
• Economic subversion: counterfeit currency, narcotics and terror financing through hawala networks.
• Cyber and information: state-linked attacks on infrastructure and disinformation aimed at communal, caste and regional fault lines.
• Military pressure: border face-offs that tie down forces and embolden insurgents with sanctuaries across the frontier.

Challenges from non-state actors

• Terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, and insurgent outfits with camps abroad, mount attacks and recruit locally.
• Drug cartels and arms smugglers fund and equip violence; coastal routes remain vulnerable, as the 2008 Mumbai attack showed.
• Radical online networks spread propaganda and recruit youth, giving external actors a foothold within society.

Enablers

• Porous and difficult borders, coastal gaps, weak local intelligence, social-media narratives and safe havens abroad.

Measures required

• Borders and coast: fencing, surveillance and the Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System; layered coastal security; intelligence sharing between the Centre and States.
• Legal and financial: UAPA and NIA Act amended in 2019, FATF-aligned action on terror financing, curbs on counterfeit currency and cyber monitoring.
• Diplomatic: isolate sponsors at the UN and FATF, partner with friendly states and maintain credible deterrence.
• Social and developmental: develop border and insurgency-affected areas, counter radicalisation online and through community policing.

Secure borders, agile intelligence, firm laws and diplomacy, combined with inclusive development, are the answer; none works alone.

Written by Minimalist IAS from facts checked at source (how we verify). UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.

Terrorism is organised violence against civilians and the State for ideological or political ends; in India it blends external sponsorship, local grievance and organised crime, which makes it complex to read and intense in effect.

Complexity and intensity

• Many faces: religious, ethnic and political ideologies, state sponsorship, lone-wolf actors and online radicalisation, each needing a different response.
• Shifting tactics: from bombings to fidayeen attacks and drones; targets range from civilians to security forces and symbols of the State.
• Intensity: the Parliament attack (2001), Mumbai (2008) and Pulwama (2019) caused heavy casualties, fear, economic loss and India-Pakistan crises.

Causes

• Alienation, poverty and unemployment; regional or communal grievances; ideological indoctrination; weak governance; and external sponsorship that exploits all of these.

Linkages and the nexus

• Finance: drug trafficking, hawala, counterfeit currency and crypto or cyber channels fund and supply terror groups.
• Nexus: terrorists work with criminals, smugglers and corrupt officials, backed by cross-border havens and sponsors, blurring the line between crime and terror.
• Cyber: encrypted communication, propaganda and recruitment give the networks reach.

Measures to eradicate terrorism

• Security: intelligence integration, police reform and modernisation, a strong NIA, border and coastal security and counter-drone capability.
• Legal and financial: effective use of UAPA, controls on terror financing, action against hawala and counterfeit currency, and speedy prosecution.
• Preventive: deradicalisation, community policing, counter-narratives, education, jobs and inclusive development in affected regions.
• Global: isolate sponsors, cooperate on intelligence and extradition, and press for a comprehensive UN convention on terrorism.

Terrorism yields to a firm security response only when paired with justice, inclusion and global action against its sponsors.

Written by Minimalist IAS from facts checked at source (how we verify). UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.