GS Paper III 2024

The 1991 reforms moved the State from producer to enabler, but its spending on social services — education, health, water, sanitation, housing and welfare — has gone through squeeze, expansion and re-targeting.

Pattern and trend

• 1990s: fiscal correction squeezed social budgets; outlays stagnated at low levels, and States, which fund most schooling and health, carried the burden.
• 2000s: a rights-based expansion — SSA, NRHM, MGNREGA (2005), RTE (2009), NFSA (2013) — lifted outlays and widened coverage.
• Post-2014: re-targeting through JAM and direct benefit transfers, with big pushes on housing, toilets, piped water and PM-JAY hospital insurance.
• Level: the Economic Survey 2023-24 records social-services spending rising from 6.7% of GDP in 2017-18 to 7.8% in 2023-24.
• Composition: education dominates; public health spending stays below the National Health Policy 2017 goal of 2.5% of GDP; States now spend the larger share.

Consonance with inclusive growth

• Substantially yes: multidimensional poverty has fallen, enrolment is near-universal, sanitation and financial inclusion have widened, and DBT has improved targeting.
• But only partly: learning outcomes lag enrolment, out-of-pocket health costs stay high, informal workers lack social security, and poorer States spend far less per head — so inclusion is uneven.

Spending has moved the right way but not far enough on health and learning quality; protecting these outlays, tying funds to outcomes and building State capacity would let growth reach the bottom quintile.

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Food and beverages carry a weight of 45.86% in the CPI basket (2012 base), so volatile food prices keep headline inflation high and sticky even when core inflation is subdued.

Causes of persistent food inflation

• Weather shocks: erratic monsoons, heatwaves and floods repeatedly hit perishables — tomato, onion, potato — and pulses.
• Structural: low productivity, fragmented holdings, weak cold chains and high post-harvest losses keep supply inelastic.
• Demand shift: rising incomes move diets towards protein, fruit and vegetables faster than supply can adjust.
• Policy and global factors: MSP hikes, import dependence in edible oils and pulses, global commodity swings and abrupt trade curbs.

Effectiveness of monetary policy

• Limits: monetary policy is a demand-side tool; a rate hike cannot grow onions, and tightening against a supply shock sacrifices growth.
• Value: under flexible inflation targeting (4% with a 2–6% band), a credible RBI anchors expectations and stops food shocks spreading into wages and core prices — the second-round effects.
• Debate: the Economic Survey 2023-24 floated targeting inflation excluding food; the counter-view is that households form expectations on the prices they feel most.
• Verdict: monetary policy is necessary to contain spillovers but insufficient to tame food inflation itself.

Durable relief lies in supply-side action — storage, market reform, crop diversification and calibrated trade and buffer management — with the RBI guarding expectations rather than fighting the weather.

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Zamindari abolition, tenancy reform, ceilings and consolidation were national policy after Independence, yet land actually changed hands mainly in Kerala, West Bengal and Jammu and Kashmir.

Factors behind success

• Political will: committed governments — the Left fronts in Kerala and West Bengal, and the post-1947 regime in Jammu and Kashmir — treated reform as a core agenda, not a token statute.
• Mobilised peasantry: organised tenants and agricultural labourers pressed from below and resisted eviction, so the law was enforced rather than evaded.
• Record of rights: Operation Barga (from 1978) registered sharecroppers in West Bengal, giving them security of tenure and a legal share of the produce.
• Sound legal design: Kerala's amended land reforms law abolished tenancy and vested ownership in tenants; Jammu and Kashmir transferred land to tillers without compensation to owners.
• Administrative drive with local bodies: settlement camps, panchayat participation and field verification cut landlord manipulation of records.

Why reform stalled elsewhere

• Benami and partitioned transfers, poor land records, loopholes on 'personal cultivation' and landlord dominance of legislatures blunted ceiling and tenancy laws in most States.

Where commitment, organised beneficiaries and clean records met, reform delivered; digitised records and modern tenancy law can extend those gains today.

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Millets — jowar, bajra, ragi and the minor millets — are hardy dryland grains that India has recast as 'Shree Anna' and nutri-cereals; on India's proposal the UN declared 2023 the International Year of Millets.

Role in health

• Nutrient density: rich in dietary fibre, protein and micronutrients — ragi for calcium, bajra for iron — countering the hidden hunger behind anaemia and stunting.
• Lifestyle disease: a low glycaemic index and no gluten make them useful against diabetes and obesity, which now coexist with undernutrition.

Role in nutritional security

• Climate-resilient supply: they grow on marginal rain-fed land with little water or fertiliser, stabilising output in a warming climate.
• Diversifying the plate: they reduce dependence on rice and wheat; inclusion in the PDS, ICDS and PM POSHAN carries better nutrition to the poorest households.
• Livelihoods: they support small and tribal farmers in dryland regions, linking farm income to household nutrition.
• Constraints: low yields, anti-nutrients and short shelf-life that need processing, weak consumer demand and thin procurement still limit their reach.

Pairing demand creation with assured procurement, processing and research will move millets from symbolic promotion to everyday plates — and to lasting nutritional security.

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Since Diamond v. Chakrabarty (1980) allowed a US patent on a modified bacterium, patents on genes, micro-organisms and plant varieties have spread worldwide — and been contested on ethical, ecological and equity grounds.

World scenario on life materials

• TRIPS Article 27.3(b): members may exclude plants and animals from patents but must protect micro-organisms and plant varieties, by patents or a sui generis system.
• Divergence: the US and Europe patent life materials widely; India's Patents Act Section 3(j) bars plants, animals and seeds, while the PPV&FR Act 2001 protects breeders and farmers and the Biological Diversity Act 2002 regulates access.
• Benefit-sharing: the CBD and Nagoya Protocol, and the 2024 WIPO treaty requiring disclosure of the origin of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, aim to curb biopiracy.

Why few Indian patents are commercialised

• Metric-driven filing: many patents from academia and public institutions are filed for rankings and appraisals, not for a market need.
• Weak lab-to-market bridge: few technology-transfer offices, little proof-of-concept or venture funding, and thin industry–academia links.
• Ecosystem gaps: low private R&D, long examination pendency, weak IP valuation and financing, and litigation risk deter scaling up.

India must move from counting patents to licensing them — translational funds, tech-transfer offices, industry-linked research and faster, predictable IP processes.

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India's electronic toll collection runs on FASTag — a passive RFID sticker linked to a prepaid wallet or bank account and read by antennas at toll plazas under the National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) system.

Advantages

• Shorter queues, fuel and time savings; cashless, traceable collection with less leakage and richer traffic data for planning.

Limitations

• Plazas and barriers remain; reader failures, blacklisted or cloned tags and double deductions cause disputes; a flat charge applies regardless of distance travelled.

Proposed changes

• GNSS-based tolling: on-board units and ANPR cameras allow barrier-less, multi-lane free flow with charges for the distance actually used.
• Rollout: after trials on the Bengaluru–Mysuru (NH-275) and Panipat–Hisar (NH-709) stretches, MoRTH decided in July 2024 to pilot GNSS tolling on selected highway sections alongside FASTag.

Potential hazards

• Privacy: continuous location tracking of every vehicle, with weak data-protection enforcement, invites surveillance and misuse.
• Technical: GNSS signal loss in tunnels and hills, spoofing, and cyber-attacks on the tolling backend.
• Enforcement and equity: evasion without barriers, disputes over deductions, and exclusion of users without devices or bank accounts.

A phased, hybrid rollout — NavIC-backed positioning, strict purpose limitation on data and clear grievance redress — can make tolling seamless without making it unsafe.

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Tanneries, distilleries, pulp and paper, textile dyeing and chemical units discharge effluents that leave many river stretches unfit even for bathing; CPCB's 2022 assessment counted 311 polluted stretches on 279 rivers.

Mitigation measures

• Treatment at source: effluent treatment plants, zero liquid discharge for highly polluting sectors, and cleaner production that cuts water use and toxic inputs.
• Common effluent treatment plants for clusters of small units that cannot afford their own.
• Monitoring and enforcement: online continuous effluent monitoring linked to pollution control boards, stricter consent conditions and closure of repeat defaulters.
• Economic tools: polluter-pays penalties and environmental compensation, with incentives for treated-water reuse and green technology.
• Enablers: better-staffed pollution boards, public disclosure of monitoring data, and citizen and judicial oversight.

Government initiatives

• Legal: the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974, which created CPCB and the State boards; the Environment (Protection) Act 1986; NGT orders against defaulting units.
• Programmes: Namami Gange under the National Mission for Clean Ganga, which pushed grossly polluting industries towards online monitoring and zero liquid discharge, and the National River Conservation Plan for other rivers, both funding CETPs and sewage treatment.

The shift must be from end-of-pipe clean-ups to prevention — enforce standards, fund CETPs and make treated-water reuse the industrial norm.

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EIA under the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 and the EIA Notification 2006 includes public consultation, and it is through this door — and through courts and media — that NGOs and activists shape clearance decisions.

Roles

• Voice affected communities at public hearings, expose flawed or copied EIA reports, use RTI to obtain documents, litigate before the NGT and courts, and build media pressure that forces stricter conditions or outright rejection.

Four examples

• Silent Valley, Kerala: scientists, the KSSP and citizens campaigned (1970s–80s) against a hydel project in a rainforest; the project was dropped in 1983 and the valley became a national park.
• Sardar Sarovar, Narmada: the Narmada Bachao Andolan raised displacement and rehabilitation; the World Bank withdrew in 1993, and the Supreme Court (2000) allowed the dam only with rehabilitation conditions.
• Niyamgiri, Odisha: the Dongria Kondh and activists opposed bauxite mining on a sacred hill; the Supreme Court (2013) left the decision to gram sabhas, all of which rejected it.
• POSCO, Odisha: sustained local resistance in Jagatsinghpur over forest rights and land; the NGT suspended the environmental clearance in 2012 and the steel project was later abandoned.

Critics charge activists with delaying development, but the remedy is credible EIAs and genuine hearings, not less participation — civil society is the EIA's conscience, and independent assessment agencies would cut both conflict and delay.

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Narco-terrorism is the use of drug-trade proceeds to finance terror and insurgency; India's position between the Golden Crescent and the Golden Triangle makes it both a transit corridor and a market.

How the threat has spread

• Punjab and J&K: heroin and arms pushed across the border, increasingly by drones; proceeds and addiction feed militancy and gangs.
• North-East: heroin and synthetic drugs via Myanmar finance insurgent groups and organised crime.
• Maritime routes: large hauls on the western coast, such as the Mundra port heroin seizure (2021), show sea-borne trafficking by transnational cartels.
• New channels: dark-web sales, cryptocurrency payments and hawala obscure money trails; narcotics worth ₹16,914 crore were seized in 2024, the highest ever.

Measures to counter it

• Interdiction: anti-drone systems and fencing on the border, coastal surveillance and port container scanning, with NCORD coordinating central and State agencies.
• Investigation: NIA's powers to probe terror-linked drug cases, dedicated anti-narcotics task forces in States, and forensic tracing of drone drops.
• Follow the money: financial intelligence, attachment of assets under the NDPS Act and PMLA, and cooperation through UNODC, BIMSTEC and bilateral pacts.
• Demand side: Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan, de-addiction and rehabilitation centres, and school and community awareness.

Treating narco-terror as one ecosystem — supply, money and demand — and striking all three through coordinated agencies is the only durable answer.

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The Supreme Court's recognition of privacy as a fundamental right in K.S. Puttaswamy (2017) made a data-protection statute a constitutional necessity; the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 is India's first such law.

Context

• A vast digital economy — Aadhaar, UPI and platforms processing personal data — with recurring breaches; the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee (2018), whose draft became the 2019 Bill, withdrawn in 2022 after a Joint Parliamentary Committee review.

Salient features

• Scope: digital personal data processed in India, and abroad when goods or services are offered to people in India.
• Consent-based processing with clear notice, plus defined 'legitimate uses'; Data Principals get rights of access, correction, erasure, grievance redress and nomination.
• Duties: Data Fiduciaries must secure data and report breaches; Significant Data Fiduciaries need a data protection officer, audits and impact assessments.
• Children: verifiable parental consent, with tracking and targeted advertising barred.
• Cross-border transfer allowed except to countries the Centre notifies.
• Enforcement: a Data Protection Board adjudicates; penalties up to ₹250 crore for failing to prevent breaches.
• Concerns: wide exemptions for the State, an executive-appointed Board, and dilution of the RTI Act's personal-information clause.

The Act is a strong start (its Rules were notified on 14 November 2025); its credibility now rests on an independent Board, narrow State exemptions and careful implementation.

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India's labour law was a thicket of 29 central statutes, many of colonial vintage; the Code on Wages (2019) and the Codes on Industrial Relations, Social Security, and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (2020) consolidate them into four.

Merits

• Simplification: single registration, licence and return, uniform definitions and less 'inspector raj' cut compliance cost and encourage formalisation.
• Wages: a universal minimum wage and a national floor wage extend protection beyond scheduled employments to all workers, including the unorganised.
• Social security: first statutory recognition of gig and platform workers, with a fund financed partly by aggregators; wider ESIC and EPF coverage.
• Flexibility: fixed-term employment with equal benefits, and a higher threshold (300 workers) for prior permission on lay-offs and closure, let firms scale up instead of staying small to dodge the law.
• Safety: one OSH code with national standards, mandatory appointment letters and free annual health checks.

Demerits and concerns

• Job security: unions see the 300-worker threshold and the 14-day strike notice for all establishments as weakening bargaining power.
• Gig workers: contribution norms and portability remain undefined, so the promise is unfunded.
• Enforcement: inspector-cum-facilitators and self-certification may soften compliance where inspectorates are already thin.
• Federal unevenness: labour is a Concurrent subject, so State rules and thresholds diverge and States may compete downward.
• Coverage: thresholds still leave most small units — where most workers are — outside standing orders and safety norms.

Progress so far

• Parliament passed the Codes in 2019–20; the Centre and most States pre-published draft rules, but implementation waited for all States to align and for consensus with trade unions.
• Since then, the Centre made all four Codes effective from 21 November 2025, rationalising 29 laws.

The Codes can formalise work and raise productivity if flexibility for employers is matched by portable social security, credible grievance machinery and continuing tripartite dialogue.

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UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik), launched in 2016 under the National Civil Aviation Policy, aims to make flying affordable from unserved and under-served airports — the operational core of regional connectivity.

Why regional connectivity matters

• Geography: hills, the North-East, islands and deserts make surface travel slow; air links tie remote regions to the national economy.
• Economy: tourism, trade, investment and jobs spread to tier-2 and tier-3 towns, and metro airports decongest as traffic disperses.
• Social and strategic: faster access to specialised healthcare, disaster response and border areas; aviation demand beyond the metros is rising with incomes.

UDAN's design

• Viability gap funding shared by the Centre and States and financed by a levy on major routes, with fares capped on a share of seats (about ₹2,500 for an hour's flight).
• Concessions: low or nil airport charges, reduced excise on fuel and three-year route exclusivity to attract small operators.
• Variants: helicopter and seaplane routes, Krishi UDAN for farm produce, tourism routes, and Lifeline UDAN for medical cargo during COVID-19.

Achievements

• Revived dormant airstrips and connected heliports and water aerodromes: by 25 March 2026, 663 routes were operating across 95 airports, heliports and water aerodromes.
• Brought first-time flyers into aviation, spurred airport upgrades and opened a pipeline for new regional airlines.

Shortcomings

• Many routes stopped once VGF ended; small operators struggle with viability, aircraft shortages and thin demand.
• Airport readiness lagged route awards, and some States delayed their concessions.
• Response: the Modified UDAN (2026) focuses on aerodrome development and sustaining operations on remote routes.

UDAN has proved that demand exists beyond the metros; sustaining it needs ready airports, fleet support, demand aggregation and an honest review of routes the market can carry on its own.

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Agriculture uses more than 80% of India's water, yet only about half the net sown area is irrigated — a system that is at once stretched and wasteful.

Major challenges

• Groundwater over-extraction: tubewells dominate irrigation; free or cheap power drives water tables down in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, and salinity spreads in over-drawn aquifers.
• Low efficiency: flood irrigation and unlined canals lose much of the water, and a persistent gap remains between irrigation potential created and utilised.
• Neglected assets: incomplete projects, silted reservoirs and canals, poor maintenance and low water charges that starve systems of funds.
• Crop–water mismatch: paddy and sugarcane in water-scarce regions, encouraged by assured procurement and power subsidies.
• Climate stress: erratic monsoons, heatwaves and glacial change make both rain-fed and canal supply less predictable; inter-State river disputes add uncertainty.
• Weak governance: fragmented departments, little farmer participation and poor data on actual water use.

Government measures

• PMKSY (2015): AIBP to complete pending projects, Har Khet Ko Pani for new potential and groundwater, watershed development, and Per Drop More Crop for drip and sprinkler (about 115 lakh hectares covered by July 2026).
• Micro Irrigation Fund with NABARD to help States expand drip and sprinkler at concessional cost.
• Atal Bhujal Yojana: community-led groundwater management with water budgets in over-exploited blocks.
• PM-KUSUM: solar pumps and feeder solarisation to replace diesel and reduce the incentive for wasteful pumping.
• Jal Shakti Abhiyan — Catch the Rain: rainwater harvesting, renovation of tanks and recharge structures.
• Governance: Command Area Development, participatory irrigation management through water-user associations, and State incentives for shifting out of paddy in Punjab and Haryana.

Efficiency will come when price and power reforms, crop diversification and micro-irrigation at scale work together to deliver 'more crop per drop'.

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Buffer stocks are foodgrains held in the central pool beyond immediate needs, to meet shortfalls and cool prices; the norm for 1 July is 411.2 lakh tonnes of rice and wheat, against which stocks stood at 736.6 lakh tonnes on 1 July 2025.

Importance for price stability

• Floor for farmers: MSP procurement into the central pool absorbs gluts and prevents distress sales, steadying farm incomes and sowing decisions.
• Ceiling for consumers: releases through the Open Market Sale Scheme and the PDS in lean seasons check price spikes; Bharat-branded atta and rice used surplus stocks the same way.
• Food security: NFSA entitlements for about two-thirds of the population, welfare schemes and emergency relief run on the buffer; a strategic reserve insures against drought and global shocks.
• Beyond grain: the Price Stabilisation Fund holds pulses and onion for release when retail prices spike.
• Policy room: comfortable stocks let export curbs and imports be calibrated rather than panicked.

Challenges of storage

• Capacity: shortfalls and reliance on cover-and-plinth storage expose grain to rain and rodents; procurement is concentrated in a few States, far from consuming regions.
• Losses and quality: pests, moisture and ageing grain; perishables such as onion need cold or ventilated storage the PSF lacks at scale.
• Cost and excess: stocks far above norms lock up capital, inflate FCI's carrying cost and the food subsidy, and distort markets; leakages occur in handling and transit.
• Institutional: FCI's borrowing and delayed subsidy reimbursement, and thin scientific storage in decentralised-procurement States; the Shanta Kumar Committee (2015) urged leaner stocks and a smaller FCI footprint.

Steel silos, decentralised procurement, warehouse-receipt finance and cooperative storage can make buffers cheaper, safer and quicker to respond to price shocks.

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Freshwater is a small share of Earth's water and most of it is locked in ice; WHO and UNICEF report that 1 in 4 people still lack safely managed drinking water, as pollution and climate change shrink the usable supply.

Alternative technologies

• Desalination, wastewater recycling, atmospheric water generation, managed aquifer recharge, rainwater harvesting, fog harvesting and solar stills — each suited to particular geographies.

Desalination (reverse osmosis)

• Merits: drought-proof supply for coastal cities, as at Chennai's Minjur and Nemmeli plants (100 MLD each); proven at scale.
• Demerits: energy-intensive and costly per litre; brine and chemicals harm marine life; membranes need imports and skilled upkeep.

Wastewater recycling

• Merits: tertiary treatment turns sewage into water for industry, farms and even drinking (Singapore's NEWater); cuts both demand and river pollution; Bengaluru sends treated water to fill Kolar's tanks.
• Demerits: high capital and energy cost, pathogen and micro-pollutant risks if standards slip, and public reluctance to accept reuse.

Atmospheric water generation

• Merits: draws potable water from humid air, useful for off-grid, coastal and disaster settings without pipelines.
• Demerits: heavy power use, low output and dependence on humidity make it unsuitable for arid regions at scale.

Cross-cutting lessons

• Technology works only with pricing, leak control, renewable power and reuse mandates that keep costs and emissions down.

No single technology suffices; a portfolio anchored in conservation and reuse, with desalination as a coastal backstop, offers the most sustainable way out.

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Asteroids are rocky or metallic remnants of the solar system's formation, most orbiting in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter; those whose orbits bring them close to Earth are tracked as near-Earth objects (NEOs).

What asteroids are

• They range from metres to hundreds of kilometres across and are classed by composition — carbonaceous, silicate or metallic; NEOs that pass within 0.05 AU of Earth's orbit and exceed about 140 m are termed potentially hazardous.

How real is the threat

• Evidence: the Chicxulub impact about 66 million years ago is linked to the dinosaurs' extinction; Tunguska (1908) flattened forest, and Chelyabinsk (2013) injured over a thousand people from a body only about 20 m wide.
• Probability: extinction-level impacts by kilometre-scale bodies are extremely rare, and most such objects are already catalogued with none on a collision course; city-destroying impacts by smaller bodies are more frequent and less completely tracked.
• Assessment: the threat is remote in any human lifetime but non-zero and irreversible, which justifies steady, low-cost preparation.

Strategies for prevention

• Detection: ground surveys and space telescopes, NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, ESA programmes and ISRO's NETRA for tracking space objects.
• Deflection: NASA's DART (2022) struck Dimorphos and shortened its orbit by 32 minutes — the first kinetic-impactor test; ESA's Hera follows up, while gravity tractors and nuclear stand-off options are studied for larger bodies.
• Coordination: the UN-endorsed International Asteroid Warning Network and Space Mission Planning Advisory Group; the 2029 close approach of Apophis is a planned observation opportunity.
• Civil preparedness: impact-effects modelling and evacuation plans for small objects detected late.

The threat is remote but real; early detection, tested deflection and international cooperation turn a natural catastrophe into a manageable risk.

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Disaster resilience is the ability of a community, system or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, adapt to and recover from their effects in a timely way while preserving its essential functions.

How resilience is determined

• Risk factors: hazard exposure, physical and social vulnerability (poor housing, poverty, gender, disability) and coping capacity — income, infrastructure, institutions and social capital.
• System properties: robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness and rapidity; measured through indicators of risk, preparedness, recovery time and losses avoided.

Elements of a resilience framework

• Understanding risk: hazard mapping, vulnerability assessment and open risk data.
• Risk governance: clear laws, institutions and accountability from national to local level, as under India's Disaster Management Act 2005.
• Investing in reduction: resilient infrastructure, land-use zoning, building codes, insurance and ecosystem-based measures such as mangroves.
• Preparedness: early warning, trained community volunteers, drills and stockpiles.
• Recovery: 'build back better' so that reconstruction lowers future risk.
• Cross-cutting: community participation, finance and technology — the thrust of the Prime Minister's Ten-Point Agenda and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (2019).

Sendai global targets (by 2030)

• A: substantially reduce disaster mortality, lowering the 2020–30 average per 100,000 below that of 2005–15.
• B: reduce the number of people affected.
• C: reduce direct economic loss relative to global GDP.
• D: reduce damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services.
• E: increase countries with national and local DRR strategies (by 2020).
• F: enhance international cooperation to developing countries.
• G: increase availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and risk information.

Resilience is built before disasters strike — by governing risk, investing in people and infrastructure, and measuring progress against Sendai's targets.

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Urban floods differ from riverine floods: intense rain on paved, encroached cities overwhelms drains within hours, and climate change is making such cloudbursts more frequent.

Causes

• Climate-induced: more frequent extreme rainfall and cyclonic rain; sea-level rise and tidal backflow that block drainage in coastal cities.
• Urban: lakes, wetlands and natural drains encroached; impervious surfaces raise run-off; undersized, clogged drains built for old rainfall norms; growth on floodplains and low-lying land; solid waste choking outfalls.
• Governance: fragmented agencies, weak enforcement of zoning and building rules, and poor real-time rainfall data.

Two major floods

• Mumbai, 26 July 2005: 944 mm of rain in 24 hours at Santa Cruz; the encroached Mithi river and choked drains, with a high tide, inundated over 60% of the city; heavy loss of life and days of paralysis led NDMA to treat urban flooding as a distinct disaster.
• Chennai, December 2015: very heavy north-east monsoon rain, encroached Pallikaranai marsh and the Adyar–Cooum floodplains, and a large release from Chembarambakkam reservoir flooded vast areas and shut the airport for days.

Policies and frameworks

• NDMA Guidelines on Management of Urban Flooding (2010): the first to treat it separately, prescribing city drainage plans, dense rain-gauge networks and early warning.
• Disaster Management Act 2005: State and district authorities and plans that now include urban flood protocols.
• Funding: the 15th Finance Commission's ₹2,500 crore under the National Disaster Mitigation Fund for integrated flood management in Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata and flood prevention in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune.
• Programmes: AMRUT storm-water drains, Smart Cities projects, IFLOWS-Mumbai and similar warning systems, Model Building Bye-laws 2016 mandating rainwater harvesting, and restoration of urban lakes and wetlands.

Cities must plan with water, not against it — restore wetlands, enforce floodplain zoning and design drains for tomorrow's rainfall, not yesterday's.

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India's northern and western borders run through high mountains, deserts and marshes, and both carry unresolved disputes: an undemarcated Line of Actual Control with China and a contested Line of Control with Pakistan.

Conflicting issues

• China: an undefined LAC with differing perceptions in the western (Ladakh), middle and eastern (Arunachal) sectors; China's claims on Arunachal Pradesh, its roads and 'model villages' near the line, and the Galwan clash of June 2020, the first fatal one in decades (since then, an October 2024 consensus restored patrolling in Depsang and Demchok).
• Pakistan: the unsettled LoC in Jammu and Kashmir, the Siachen glacier, and the Sir Creek estuary where the boundary and maritime zones remain disputed.

Security challenges

• Traditional: transgressions and face-offs on the LAC; ceasefire violations, infiltration and cross-border terrorism across the LoC.
• Non-traditional: drones dropping arms and narcotics into Punjab and J&K, smuggling, fake currency, tunnels under the fence, and cyber and information operations.
• Terrain and logistics: high-altitude posts, harsh winters and thin road and air links that slow reinforcement, against China's faster infrastructure build-up.

Development under BADP and BIM

• BADP: a centrally supported programme for people living near the international border, funding roads, schools, health centres, drinking water, sports and livelihood projects, with priority to villages closest to the border; 38,715 projects worth ₹7,935 crore had been completed across 16 States and 2 UTs by March 2026.
• BIM: an umbrella scheme (2021–26) for fencing, floodlighting, border roads, border outposts and integrated check posts, plus technology-based surveillance such as the Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System on vulnerable stretches.
• Complementary: the Vibrant Villages Programme (2023) for northern border villages, to check out-migration and keep local communities as the forces' 'eyes and ears'.

Secure borders need hard infrastructure and prosperous border communities in equal measure; sustained investment must go together with steady diplomacy.

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.

Social media and end-to-end encrypted apps have become channels for radicalisation, disinformation and covert coordination that the State cannot easily see — a security challenge that sits uneasily beside the right to privacy.

The security challenge

• Fake news and deepfakes that trigger communal violence; terror recruitment and propaganda; cross-border influence operations; encrypted planning that evades interception; and cyber-frauds run through platforms.

Measures adopted

• Legal: Section 69A of the IT Act 2000 for blocking (upheld in Shreya Singhal, 2015) and Section 69 for lawful interception; the IT Rules 2021 requiring due diligence, grievance officers, timely takedowns and, for large messaging platforms, identification of the first originator for serious offences; the Telecommunications Act 2023 and the DPDP Act 2023.
• Institutional: CERT-In for incident response, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) with the 1930 helpline and reporting portal, State cyber cells, and Grievance Appellate Committees (2023).
• Platform level: content moderation, fact-checking partnerships, in-country compliance officers for significant intermediaries, and transparency reports.
• International: mutual legal assistance treaties and cooperation through Interpol and the UN process on a cybercrime convention.

Further remedies

• Digital and media literacy in schools and communities to blunt disinformation at its source.
• AI tools to detect deepfakes and coordinated inauthentic behaviour, with mandatory labelling of synthetic media.
• Faster, treaty-based access to evidence held by foreign platforms, and a dedicated cyber cadre in State police.
• Narrow, judicially overseen lawful-access rules that keep encryption intact rather than weaken it for everyone.
• Independent oversight of blocking orders and periodic government transparency reports to sustain public trust.

Security in the digital age needs smart regulation, capable agencies and alert citizens — without trading away the privacy and free speech the Constitution protects.

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.