GS Paper III 2025

UNDP's HDI averages a country's achievement in health, education and income; the Inequality-adjusted HDI discounts each of these for how unequally it is shared, and the gap between the two is the 'loss' due to inequality.

HDI versus IHDI

• Measure: the HDI is a geometric mean of life expectancy, schooling and GNI per capita — an average blind to distribution. The IHDI discounts each dimension by its inequality (Atkinson measure) and equals the HDI only under perfect equality.
• India (HDR 2025): HDI 0.685, rank 130 of 193; inequality lowers it by about 30.7%, among the higher losses in the region.
• Where India loses: concentrated income and wealth, gender gaps such as low female labour-force participation, uneven learning outcomes and regional gaps in health.

Why the IHDI better tracks inclusive growth

• It shows who shares the gains: a rising HDI with a widening loss signals growth that leaves many behind.
• It locates the dimension where exclusion is worst, so policy can target school quality, primary health, jobs for women and lagging districts.
• Limits: it misses group inequality by caste or gender and rests on survey data; read it with the MPI, GDI and GII.

Growth becomes development only when widely shared; tracking the IHDI beside the HDI keeps policy focused on shrinking India's inequality loss, not only raising the average.

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With the WTO's Appellate Body non-functional since December 2019 and major economies raising tariffs, trade is increasingly settled by bargaining power rather than common rules.

Challenges for India

• Export shocks: tariffs on labour-intensive exports — textiles, gems, leather, shrimp — hit MSMEs and jobs, as the steep US tariffs of 2025 showed.
• Weaker rules: without WTO dispute settlement, India must bargain one-to-one with larger economies, losing the leverage rules gave smaller players.
• Value-chain shifts: reshoring, 'friend-shoring', green subsidies and the EU's carbon border tax (CBAM) on steel and aluminium bypass or penalise Indian producers.
• Bilateral pressure: demands on agriculture, dairy, data flows, IPR and government procurement squeeze farmers' livelihoods and policy space.
• Macro risks: slower global demand, volatile capital flows, rupee pressure and curbs on services exports and professional mobility.

Meeting them

• Deals on India's terms: UAE CEPA, Australia ECTA, UK CETA and the EFTA TEPA (in force from 1 October 2025, with a USD 100 billion investment objective), plus diversified markets.
• Keep the rules alive: a WTO-reform coalition with the Global South on dispute settlement and food security.
• Compete at home: PM Gati Shakti logistics, PLI with lower input tariffs, simpler compliance, export credit for MSMEs and a deep domestic market as buffer.

Fragmentation is also an opening: selective deals and domestic competitiveness, with steady advocacy for a rules-based system, can make India a preferred partner.

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High-value crops — fruits, vegetables, spices, flowers, medicinal and aromatic plants — earn several times more per hectare than cereals, and India's horticulture output reached 3707.38 lakh tonnes from 301.36 lakh hectares in 2024-25. Yet the shift is uneven, because a farmer's choice turns on far more than price.

Market and price factors

• Demand pull: rising incomes, urbanisation and diet diversification; nearness to cities, highways, processing units and export channels — Nashik grapes, Jalgaon bananas.
• Price signals: assured MSP and procurement keep farmers in wheat and paddy, while most high-value crops have no price floor and see periodic crashes in onion and tomato.

Resource and risk factors

• Agro-climate and water: apples in the hills, spices in the Western Ghats; assured or micro-irrigation is often the deciding factor.
• Perishability and risk: pests, weather and thin cold chains, with weak insurance cover, make small farmers risk-averse.
• Capital and knowledge: higher input and working-capital needs, access to credit, quality planting material and extension advice.

Institutional and household factors

• FPOs, contract farming, e-NAM, processing and export clusters lower transaction costs; MIDH supports area expansion.
• Farm size and tenure: marginal farmers put household food security first; tenants avoid long-gestation orchards.

Diversification will follow de-risking — cold chains, FPO aggregation, price stabilisation and insurance — rather than price incentives alone.

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Supply chain management links production, aggregation, storage, processing, transport and retail so that produce reaches the consumer with the least loss and the largest share of value for the farmer.

Scope

• Before harvest: input supply, crop planning tied to demand, contract farming and aggregation through FPOs.
• After harvest: grading, packaging, warehousing and warehouse receipts, cold chains and reefer transport, processing, e-NAM trading, retail and export logistics.
• Cross-cutting: quality standards, traceability, market intelligence and digital platforms such as the agri-stack.

Significance

• Farmers: better price realisation and a larger share of the consumer rupee as intermediary layers shrink.
• Loss reduction: the NABCONS study (reference years 2020–22) estimated post-harvest losses of 6.02–15.05% for fruits and 4.87–11.61% for vegetables, mainly from poor handling, storage and transport.
• Food security and prices: buffer-stock and PDS logistics; smoothing tomato, onion and potato price spikes under Operation Greens.
• Value addition and exports: processing linkages, traceability and standards create rural jobs and export earnings.
• Gaps to close: fragmented holdings, cold storage concentrated in a few States and APMC distortions — addressed through PM Kisan SAMPADA, the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund and warehouse-receipt finance.

A farm-to-fork chain built on FPOs, cold chains and digital markets can raise farm incomes while cutting waste and food inflation at the same time.

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Fusion — the reaction that powers the Sun — promises abundant, low-carbon baseload power. India has pursued it through the Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar, from the ADITYA tokamak (1989) to SST-1, a steady-state superconducting tokamak, and as a full ITER member since 2005.

India's contributions to ITER

• Partner: one of seven members (EU, China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, USA), bearing about 9% of the construction cost, mostly in kind.
• Hardware: the cryostat (the machine's outer vacuum chamber), in-wall shield blocks, the cooling-water system, cryolines and cryo-distribution, radio-frequency heating sources, power supplies and diagnostics.
• Industry: Indian firms, including many MSMEs, have gained skills in precision fabrication, cryogenics, superconducting magnets and high-power electronics.

Implications of success for global energy

• Fuel: deuterium from seawater and tritium bred from lithium — near-limitless and widely available, ending dependence on imported fuel.
• Clean and safe: no CO2, no long-lived high-level waste, no runaway chain reaction — firm, round-the-clock power to complement variable renewables.
• Shared knowledge: ITER's intellectual property is shared among members, giving India a route to its own demonstration reactor.
• Caveats: repeated delays and cost overruns, tritium supply and materials under neutron load; commercial fusion is likely decades away.

ITER's success would turn fusion from a physics experiment into an engineering route to clean baseload power — and India, as a co-builder, would be ready to use it.

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India imports most of its crude oil and a large part of its gas; energy independence by 2047 means replacing those imports with domestic clean energy, not merely adding capacity.

Clean-technology pathway to 2047

• Renewables at scale: solar, wind and hybrids with storage, with 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030 as the first milestone.
• Green hydrogen under the National Green Hydrogen Mission to replace grey hydrogen in refineries and fertilisers and to decarbonise steel.
• Electric mobility and railways, battery storage and critical-mineral security; nuclear expansion, including small modular reactors, for firm power.
• Demand side: efficiency standards, smart grids and pumped storage so that variable power becomes reliable power.

Where biotechnology fits

• Fuels: 2G ethanol from crop residue, compressed biogas under SATAT and sustainable aviation fuel, building on 20% ethanol blending.
• Process: engineered microbes and enzymes to cut the cost of cellulosic ethanol; algal biofuels; biological hydrogen production.
• Materials and carbon: bio-manufacturing of chemicals and plastics now made from petroleum, and biological carbon capture, under the BioE3 policy (2024).
• Constraints: the food–fuel trade-off, water use, feedstock logistics, scale-up finance and grid integration.

Energy independence will come from a portfolio — renewables and storage for power, hydrogen for industry, and biotechnology to turn biomass and waste into fuels and chemicals.

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CCUS captures carbon dioxide from large point sources such as power, steel and cement plants and either uses it in products or stores it permanently deep underground.

What CCUS is

• Capture: pre-combustion, post-combustion and oxy-fuel routes; direct air capture and bioenergy with CCS can even deliver net-negative emissions.
• Utilisation: urea, methanol, synthetic fuels, polymers, building materials and enhanced oil recovery.
• Storage: saline aquifers, depleted oil and gas fields and basalt formations.

Potential role in tackling climate change

• Hard-to-abate sectors: cuts process emissions in cement, steel, fertilisers and refineries, where renewables alone cannot reach.
• For India: coal will stay in the energy mix for decades; CCUS lets it be used while moving towards net zero by 2070 — NITI Aayog's 2022 study framed CCUS as the route to deep decarbonisation of such sectors.
• Co-benefits: a circular carbon economy, new industries and lower import bills when CO2 becomes feedstock.
• Limits: high cost and energy penalty, leakage risk, no CO2 pipelines, a low carbon price and the danger of prolonging fossil lock-in.
• Enablers: the carbon credit trading scheme, hub-and-cluster projects in industrial belts, mapping of storage sites and public funding for early projects (since then, the Union Budget 2026-27 announced ₹20,000 crore over five years).

CCUS complements, not replaces, renewables and efficiency: it is essential for residual industrial emissions, provided costs fall and storage is proven safe.

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Seawater intrusion is the landward movement of saline water into freshwater aquifers when the natural seaward flow of groundwater weakens, leaving wells brackish and soils salty.

Causes

• Over-pumping for irrigation, industry and cities lowers the water table and reverses the hydraulic gradient — the Saurashtra coast, Minjur near Chennai, Vasai–Virar.
• Reduced recharge: paved urban surfaces, erratic monsoons and dams that cut river flows to deltas.
• Sea-level rise, storm surges and cyclones flood low-lying coasts; tides push saline water up creeks and estuaries.
• Land use: aquaculture ponds, salt pans, sand mining, dredging and the loss of mangroves and dunes; CGWB studies of the Saurashtra coast link salinity to local geology, coastal depressions and tidal flooding.
• Impacts: saline drinking water, soil salinity and falling yields, health stress and out-migration from coastal villages.

Remedial measures

• Engineering: tidal regulators and bandharas, check dams, recharge wells and shafts, subsurface barriers and managed aquifer recharge.
• Demand management: regulate extraction through the CGWA, meter and price bulk use, micro-irrigation and salt-tolerant crops.
• Nature-based: restore mangroves, dunes and coastal wetlands as buffers against surges and tides.
• Monitoring and governance: aquifer mapping, a coastal network of monitoring wells, and coastal-zone rules that curb unsafe land use.

Coastal aquifers must be managed as a shared resource — balancing extraction with recharge and restoring natural buffers — before salinisation becomes irreversible.

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India has faced terrorism in nearly every form — cross-border, separatist, left-wing and urban — making it one of the democracies most affected by terror.

Manifestations in India

• Cross-border, state-sponsored terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir: the Pahalgam attack of 22 April 2025 killed 26 people, mostly tourists.
• Radicalisation and modules: online recruitment, ISIS-inspired cells and IED plots in the hinterland; lone actors are hard to detect.
• Narco-terror and financing: drones dropping arms and drugs across the Punjab border, hawala, fake currency and crypto-assets.
• Insurgency-linked violence in parts of the North-East and Maoist violence in central India, now sharply reduced.

Counter-measures by the State

• Legal: UAPA, amended in 2019 to designate individuals as terrorists; PMLA against terror finance; the NIA Act amendment (2019) widening the agency's reach.
• Institutional: NIA, the Multi-Agency Centre for intelligence sharing, NATGRID, regional NSG hubs and State anti-terror squads.
• Operational: intelligence-led operations, border fencing and surveillance; Operation Sindoor (7 May 2025) struck nine terror sites across the border after Pahalgam.
• Diplomatic and social: FATF pressure on terror financing, UN listings, the 'No Money for Terror' conferences, deradicalisation and community policing.

Zero tolerance must pair hard security with intelligence, financial tracking and social resilience — and the global legal consensus on terrorism that India has long sought.

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Left Wing Extremism is the Maoist armed movement, traced to the 1967 Naxalbari uprising, that seeks to overthrow the State by force while feeding on grievances over land, forests and exclusion.

What LWE is and how it hurts people

• The CPI (Maoist)-led insurgency concentrated in the forested tribal belts of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra and Telangana — the 'Red Corridor'.
• Violence: killings of villagers branded 'informers', IED blasts, extortion and the destruction of schools, roads and mobile towers; violence peaked in 2010 with 1,936 incidents.
• Development deficit: welfare, health and education blocked, displacement, and tribal communities caught between insurgents and security forces.

Measures to eliminate it

• Security: the National Policy and Action Plan (2015), the SAMADHAN doctrine, CAPF and CoBRA deployment, District Reserve Guards, fortified police stations and technology-led operations.
• Development: Special Central Assistance, roads and mobile towers in affected districts, Eklavya schools, bank branches and skill centres.
• Rights and trust: the Forest Rights Act, PESA, surrender-cum-rehabilitation policies and the choking of funding by investigating agencies.
• Outcome: affected districts fell from 126 in 2014 towards the target, set in August 2024, of a Naxal-free India by 31 March 2026 (since then, the government has reported no district as LWE-affected).

The insurgency's retreat must be followed by governance that fills the vacuum — land and forest rights, jobs and dignity for tribal communities.

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NITI Aayog's Fiscal Health Index, first released in January 2025, ranks 18 major States on a composite of five sub-indices, turning scattered fiscal data into one comparable scorecard.

FHI as a tool for assessing State finances

• Design: five sub-indices — quality of expenditure, revenue mobilisation, fiscal prudence, debt index and debt sustainability — capture both annual flows and the stock of accumulated debt.
• Diagnosis, not just a score: each sub-index shows a State's weak spot — high committed spending on salaries, pensions and interest, low own-tax effort, or debt growing faster than revenue — so reform can be targeted.
• Benchmarking: the 2025 edition ranked Odisha first (67.8), followed by Chhattisgarh and Goa; a second edition followed in 2026, allowing States to be tracked over time.
• Comparability: a common yardstick lets the Union, the Finance Commission, lenders and citizens read State finances the same way.

How it encourages prudent, sustainable policy

• Peer pressure: public rankings create competitive federalism and a reputational stake; rating agencies and bond markets read the signal, which can affect borrowing costs.
• Policy leverage: it can inform Finance Commission and Union decisions on performance-linked grants and additional borrowing space tied to reforms.
• Nudges the right choices: capital expenditure over populist transfers, better tax and non-tax collection, and disclosure of off-budget borrowings and contingent liabilities such as guarantees.
• Limits: data lags, uniform weights across very different States, special-category constraints and dependence on Union transfers; it must not become a stick to squeeze welfare or an excuse for pro-cyclical cuts.

Used as a mirror rather than a stick, the FHI can institutionalise fiscal responsibility at the level of government that spends most of India's public money — and make sustainable finances a matter of State pride.

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Launched from 2020 across 14 sectors, the PLI scheme pays incentives on incremental sales of goods made in India for a fixed period — rewarding output rather than inputs.

Rationale

• Scale and cost gaps: Indian manufacturing lacked the scale, logistics and power costs to match East Asian rivals; heavy import dependence in electronics, bulk drugs and solar modules exposed supply chains.
• Timing: the 'China plus one' shift after the pandemic offered a chance to attract global champions and plug into value chains.
• Strategic capacity: batteries, drones, telecom gear and semiconductors matter for security as well as growth.
• Design logic: paying only on realised sales limits the risk of subsidy without output, unlike upfront capital subsidies.

Achievements

• Scale: by 31 December 2025, investment above ₹2.16 lakh crore, production and sales above ₹20.41 lakh crore, 836 approved applications and over 14.39 lakh direct and indirect jobs.
• Mobile phones: India turned from a net importer into a major exporter, with global brands assembling here.
• Pharma and food: bulk-drug and API capacity reduced import dependence; Indian food brands expanded abroad.

Concerns and improvements

• Uneven uptake: slow in textiles, specialty steel and battery cells; assembly-heavy sectors show low domestic value addition; gains concentrated in a few large firms; disbursal delays.
• Link incentives to value addition and local sourcing, extend support to component makers and labour-intensive sectors, and simplify and speed up disbursal.
• Complements: rationalise input tariffs, cut logistics and power costs, implement the labour codes, fund R&D and build skills alongside plants.
• Discipline: independent evaluation, sunset clauses and transparent sector-wise data, so that support stays temporary and performance-based.

PLI has shown that output-linked support can move investment; its next phase must deepen value chains and jobs, not just final assembly.

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India is the world's largest user of groundwater. Nationally, extraction is about 61% of the extractable resource (60.63% in the 2025 assessment), but 730 of 6,762 assessment units are over-exploited — the average hides a crisis in the north-west and the hard-rock peninsula.

Factors behind depletion

• Irrigation dominance: most extraction goes to farms, and water-hungry paddy and sugarcane are grown in semi-arid Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra.
• Perverse incentives: free or flat-rate farm power, MSP procurement tilted to paddy and wheat, and cheap borewells make pumping the rational private choice.
• Urban and industrial demand: paved surfaces cut recharge while cities and industries extract with little regulation.
• Hydrogeology and climate: the peninsula's hard-rock aquifers store little; erratic and intense rainfall reduces recharge.
• Governance gaps: groundwater rights tied to land ownership, negligible metering, weak State regulation and fragmented data.

Government steps

• Community demand management: Atal Bhujal Yojana in water-stressed blocks, with incentives for States and villages that plan and save water.
• Recharge: Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain, Amrit Sarovar ponds, and check dams and recharge structures built with MGNREGS funds in over-exploited blocks.
• Regulation and knowledge: CGWA extraction guidelines (2020) for industry and infrastructure, national aquifer mapping, and a model groundwater bill for States.
• Farm-level: Per Drop More Crop micro-irrigation and State incentives for diversification away from paddy.

Lasting recovery needs a shift from supply to demand management — crop diversification, farm-power pricing reform and community management of aquifers as the unit of planning — before more blocks cross the line.

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Food processing bridges farm and market: it cuts waste, raises farm incomes and is among the largest employers in organised manufacturing, yet India processes only a small share of what it grows.

Scope

• Raw-material base: India is a leading producer of milk, pulses, fruits, vegetables and fish, so the headroom for processing is large.
• Demand: urbanisation, working households and rising incomes drive packaged, ready-to-eat and health foods; exports of processed foods and millet products are growing.
• Segments: dairy, grain milling, fruit and vegetable processing, meat and marine products, edible oils, beverages and, increasingly, plant-based and functional foods.
• Employment character: labour-intensive, rural and MSME-based, with backward links to farming and forward links to packaging, logistics and retail — jobs where farm jobs are.

Measures that create jobs

• PM Kisan SAMPADA Yojana: cold chains, agro-processing clusters, food-testing labs and backward-forward linkages — infrastructure that anchors processing units and jobs near farms.
• PLISFPI: incentives for value-added products and Indian brands abroad; approved firms have invested ₹9,207 crore and created about 3.35 lakh direct and indirect jobs against a target of 2.5 lakh (reported July 2026).
• PMFME: a 35% credit-linked subsidy for micro-enterprises, One District One Product clusters and seed capital for SHG members — formalising the unorganised units that employ most workers.
• Enablers: 100% FDI under the automatic route in food-processing manufacturing, the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, World Food India as a market platform, and skilling programmes.
• Gaps: cold-chain and credit shortfalls, quality standards for exports and low processing levels in fruits and vegetables still limit job creation.

With stronger cold chains, FPO linkages and brand-building, food processing can turn India's farm surplus into rural jobs and export earnings.

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Nanotechnology works at 1–100 nanometres, where materials gain very high surface area and reactivity — letting farm inputs be delivered in smaller, targeted doses and crops be monitored in real time.

Advancements in agriculture

• Nano-fertilisers: nano urea and nano DAP as foliar sprays aim at higher nutrient-use efficiency and lower bulk use; ICAR trials at 20 locations found nano urea usable as a foliar top-dressing in place of conventional urea.
• Crop protection: nano-pesticides and controlled-release formulations cut chemical loads, residues and runoff.
• Precision farming: nano-sensors read soil moisture, nutrients and pest pressure in real time, guiding drone-based spraying and irrigation.
• Seeds, soil and water: nano-coatings for germination and protection, hydrogels that hold soil moisture, and nano-filters for clean irrigation and drinking water.
• Post-harvest: nano-packaging and edible coatings extend shelf life; sensors flag spoilage — fewer losses between farm and market.

Uplifting farmers' socio-economic status

• Lower costs: smaller, lighter inputs cut input, transport and storage costs for the farmer, and the fertiliser subsidy and import burden for the exchequer.
• Higher and better output: precision dosing raises yield and quality, earning premium prices in domestic and export markets.
• Health and environment: fewer residues and less runoff mean safer produce, cleaner water and healthier farm workers.
• New rural livelihoods: drone-spraying and sensor services open jobs for rural youth and women's self-help groups trained as operators.
• Resilience: hydrogels and sensors help smallholders cope with erratic rain; fewer post-harvest losses mean steadier income.
• Caveats: field results are mixed and need independent long-term trials; biosafety and toxicity rules must keep pace; cost and awareness limit uptake among smallholders.

Nanotechnology can make farming input-lean and precise — if its benefits are proven in independent field trials and delivered through extension that reaches smallholders.

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Semiconductors are the base layer of the digital economy and of defence; India is a large chip consumer and a global design hub, but it has only begun to build fabrication and packaging capacity at home.

Challenges

• Capital and time: a modern fab costs billions of dollars, takes years to build and faces fast obsolescence and heavy technology-licensing costs.
• Ecosystem gaps: fabs need ultra-pure water, uninterrupted power, specialty gases and chemicals, and a dense web of equipment and component suppliers that India lacks.
• Skills and IP: strong design talent, but few fab-process engineers and little home-grown process IP; talent drains to established hubs.
• Competition and geopolitics: large subsidies in the US, EU, Japan and Taiwan; export controls on advanced tools; a handful of equipment makers control supply.
• Market: assured domestic offtake for chips made in India is still thin, and early value addition will be in packaging rather than wafer fabrication.

India Semiconductor Mission: salient features

• Set up in December 2021 with a ₹76,000 crore incentive framework to build a complete ecosystem, not just one plant.
• Fiscal support of up to 50% across four verticals: silicon fabs, compound-semiconductor and sensor units, assembly-testing units, and chip design through a design-linked incentive.
• Progress: 10 projects worth ₹1.60 lakh crore in 6 States approved by December 2025, including the Tata–PSMC fab at Dholera and Micron's assembly plant at Sanand; ISM 2.0 was announced in 2026.

Way forward

• Talent: fab-process training with universities and industry; R&D in mature and compound-semiconductor nodes where India can compete first.
• Partnerships and stability: supply-chain cooperation with the US, Japan and the Quad; stable, long-term policy so that investors commit through industry cycles.

India should build from its strengths — design, packaging and mature nodes — and climb steadily towards advanced fabrication, treating chips as strategic infrastructure rather than a one-off subsidy.

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Minerals underpin energy, infrastructure and manufacturing, but mining strips land cover, rock and water from ecosystems — leaving a large and long-lasting footprint that outlives the mine itself.

Why mining is an environmental hazard

• Land and forests: deforestation, topsoil loss, overburden dumps, subsidence and fragmented wildlife corridors in central India's coal and iron-ore belts.
• Water: acid mine drainage and heavy-metal leaching poison streams; dewatering lowers water tables; silt chokes rivers.
• Air and health: dust and particulates, underground coal fires as at Jharia, and silicosis and pneumoconiosis among workers.
• Biodiversity: loss of habitat in forested landscapes; noise and blasting drive wildlife out.
• People: displacement of tribal communities and loss of forest-based livelihoods, often with poor rehabilitation.
• Illegal and unscientific mining: riverbed sand mining erodes banks and aquifers; abandoned mines are left unreclaimed.

Remedial measures

• Before mining: rigorous EIA with genuine public hearings, forest and wildlife clearances, cumulative impact assessment for mining clusters, and no-go zones in dense forests.
• During mining: dust suppression, treatment and reuse of mine water, progressive backfilling, blasting controls and worker health surveillance; star rating of mines and satellite monitoring of leases.
• After mining: mine closure plans backed by financial guarantees, reclamation and afforestation of dumps, and conversion of pits into water bodies or eco-parks.
• People: District Mineral Foundation funds — over ₹1.02 lakh crore collected by November 2024 — spent on affected communities under PMKKKY; fair rehabilitation and consent under the Forest Rights Act and PESA.
• Demand side: recycling and a circular economy for metals, and mineral efficiency to cut the need for fresh extraction.

Mining can be compatible with sustainability when extraction is paired with restoration and with benefit-sharing for those who bear its costs.

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The Paris Agreement lets each country set its own Nationally Determined Contribution; India submitted its first on 2 October 2015, balancing climate action with development needs and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

Paris commitments (2015): a review

• Eight goals, three of them quantitative for 2030: emissions intensity of GDP down 33–35% from 2005; 40% of installed power capacity from non-fossil sources; an additional carbon sink of 2.5–3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through forest and tree cover.
• The other goals were qualitative: sustainable lifestyles, climate-resilient development, adaptation, and mobilising finance and technology.
• Progress: the non-fossil capacity and emissions-intensity goals were met well ahead of 2030, driven by solar and wind additions; the forest-sink goal has progressed more slowly.

Strengthened at COP26 (2021): Panchamrit

• 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030; half of energy requirements from renewables by 2030; one billion tonnes less emissions by 2030; emissions intensity down 45% by 2030; net zero by 2070.
• Also launched: LiFE — Lifestyle for Environment — and the Green Grids Initiative, One Sun One World One Grid.

The 2022 updated NDC

• Approved by the Cabinet in August 2022, it raised two targets for 2030: emissions intensity down 45% from 2005 (from 33–35%) and about 50% of installed power capacity non-fossil (from 40%).
• LiFE was written in as a mass movement for mindful consumption, and the update was framed as a step towards net zero by 2070.
• Follow-through: a long-term low-emission development strategy at COP27, the National Green Hydrogen Mission, the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme and ethanol blending; gaps remain in climate finance and technology transfer from developed countries, coal dependence and adaptation.

India has turned pledges into over-achieved targets and, since then, set a tougher 2035 path (a 47% intensity cut and 60% non-fossil capacity) — while insisting that developed countries deliver finance and equity.

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.

The North-East's insurgencies grew from identity, land and autonomy claims, porous borders and a long development deficit; violence has fallen sharply over the decade, but Manipur shows how fragile peace remains.

Challenges to security and peace

• Ethnic insurgency and inter-ethnic conflict — Naga, Kuki and Meitei claims over land and identity — with the Manipur violence since May 2023 the starkest case.
• Porous Myanmar border and the Free Movement Regime: rebel camps across the border, arms and drug trafficking from the Golden Triangle, and illegal migration that feeds identity anxieties.
• Trust deficit: AFSPA and human-rights concerns, extortion economies, unemployment that feeds recruitment, and inter-State boundary disputes that flare into violence.
• Peace-process hurdles: factional splits among armed groups, rival demands such as a separate Naga flag and constitution, and slow implementation of accord promises.

Accords and agreements, 2015–2025

• Naga: the Framework Agreement with NSCN (I-M) in 2015; the final settlement is still pending over the flag and constitution demands.
• Tripura and Mizoram: the NLFT agreement (2019), the Bru–Reang resettlement agreement (2020) that settled a long-standing displacement, and the NLFT–ATTF settlement (2024).
• Assam: the Bodo Accord (2020), the Karbi Anglong agreement (2021), the agreement with Adivasi groups (2022), the DNLA settlement (2023) and the Memorandum of Settlement with the pro-talks ULFA faction (December 2023), under which ULFA agreed to give up violence, surrender arms and disband.
• Boundaries and AFSPA: the Assam–Meghalaya (2022) and Assam–Arunachal (2023) boundary agreements; 'disturbed areas' under AFSPA cut back since 2022 in Assam, Manipur and Nagaland.

What remains unfinished

• The final Naga settlement, restoring peace and trust in Manipur, time-bound delivery of accord promises — councils, funds and rehabilitation of cadres — and border management with Myanmar, including fencing and a review of the Free Movement Regime.

Accords have shrunk violence; lasting peace now depends on implementing them faithfully and reconciling communities, not only armed groups.

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.

Nearly 95% of India's trade by volume and about 70% by value moves by sea — the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean are the arteries of the economy, and their security is a national interest, not only a naval task.

Why maritime security is vital

• Energy and trade lifelines: crude, LNG and container traffic pass chokepoints — Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, Malacca — where disruption raises freight and insurance costs, as the Red Sea crisis showed.
• Ports and the blue economy: shipping, shipbuilding, fisheries and offshore energy depend on secure waters along a long coastline and island chains.
• Strategic weight: a secure Indian Ocean underpins India's role as a net security provider and its Indo-Pacific partnerships.

Maritime and coastal challenges

• Non-traditional: piracy off Somalia, attacks on merchant ships, illegal and unreported fishing, and drug and arms smuggling by sea.
• Strategic: growing extra-regional naval presence, dual-use ports and research vessels in the Indian Ocean, and grey-zone tactics.
• Coastal: seaborne infiltration as in 26/11, lakhs of small fishing boats to track, and coordination among the Navy, Coast Guard, marine police and customs.
• Climate and disaster: cyclones, sea-level rise and oil spills threaten ports and coastal communities.
• Cyber and infrastructure: port systems and undersea cables are new targets.

Way forward

• Institutions: the coastal radar chain, transponders on fishing boats, the Information Fusion Centre–Indian Ocean Region at Gurugram, the National Maritime Security Coordinator and stronger marine police with joint exercises.
• Capacity: a blue-water navy with indigenous shipbuilding, deep-water ports, the Andaman and Nicobar Command as a forward post, and maritime domain awareness through satellites and drones.
• Partnerships: SAGAR and MAHASAGAR, IORA, the Quad's maritime initiatives, the Colombo Security Conclave and coordinated patrols with neighbours.
• Resilience: climate-proof ports, oil-spill response and community-based coastal watch through fishing communities.

A secure Indian Ocean is the precondition for India's growth; integrated maritime governance and partnerships can make India the region's preferred security partner.

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.