GS Paper III 2026

The Digital Rupee (e₹) is the rupee in electronic form, issued by the RBI as legal tender under Section 26 of the RBI Act, 1934; unlike a bank deposit or a UPI balance, it is a direct liability of the central bank, like a currency note.

Working of India's CBDC

• Two variants: wholesale e₹-W for interbank settlement (pilot from 1 November 2022) and retail e₹-R for the public (pilot from 1 December 2022).
• Two-tier model: the RBI creates e₹ and issues it to banks and non-banks, which distribute it through mobile wallets, mirroring the issue of paper currency.
• Design: token-based, same denominations as notes, no interest; person-to-person and person-to-merchant payments, with e₹ and UPI QR codes interoperable.

Progress of the pilots

• The retail pilot began with four banks in four cities and has widened to more banks, non-bank wallet providers and locations.
• Offline payments and programmability (money earmarked for a purpose, such as targeted transfers) added to test new use-cases.
• Benefits sought: lower cost of cash, settlement finality, inclusion and a sovereign alternative to private crypto-assets.
• Concerns: little added convenience where UPI already works, privacy, possible disintermediation of bank deposits and cyber-security, hence a calibrated, pilot-led rollout.

e₹ gives India's digital economy a public-money anchor; a full launch should follow clear use-cases beyond UPI, firm privacy safeguards and phased scaling.

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Financial inclusion, affordable access to savings, credit, insurance, pensions and payments, lets poor households absorb shocks and invest, which ties it to wider social and economic inclusion.

Finance as social and economic inclusion

• Economic: credit for farmers, MSMEs and self-help groups cuts dependence on moneylenders; savings and insurance protect against illness, drought and job loss.
• Social: over 56.16 crore Jan Dhan accounts, 56% held by women, give agency in household decisions; the JAM trinity delivers welfare through Direct Benefit Transfer without leakages or middlemen.
• Limits: access is not use. Dormant accounts, thin credit uptake, low insurance and pension cover, gender and regional gaps, and digital fraud mean finance enables inclusion but cannot guarantee it.

Usefulness of the FI-Index

• The RBI's annual index (since 2021) scores inclusion from 0 to 100 across banking, investment, insurance, postal and pension services, with 97 indicators weighted Access 35%, Usage 45% and Quality 20%.
• Value: one comparable measure of depth, not just reach; the Quality parameter captures literacy, consumer protection and service gaps; the rise from 64.2 (March 2024) to 67.0 (March 2025) tracks progress.
• Limits: a national aggregate with no state or district breakdown, built on supply-side data and judgement-based weights.

Finance includes only when access becomes meaningful use; sub-national indices and literacy drives would make the FI-Index a sharper guide to that goal.

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A technology mission bundles research, quality seed, inputs, extension and market support into a time-bound push on one crop or sector; the Technology Mission on Oilseeds (1986) set the template.

The missions

• Technology Mission on Oilseeds (1986), later extended to pulses, oil palm and maize: drove the Yellow Revolution and near self-sufficiency in edible oils by the 1990s.
• Technology Mission on Cotton (2000): better varieties, integrated pest management and modernised ginning raised yields and fibre quality.
• Technology Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture in the North East (2001-02), later folded into MIDH: fruits, vegetables and spices for nutrition and income.
• National Food Security Mission (2007): area expansion and productivity gains in rice, wheat, pulses and coarse cereals.
• New generation: NMEO-Oil Palm (2021), NMEO-Oilseeds (2024, ₹10,103 crore over 2024-25 to 2030-31), a pulses self-reliance mission, the Digital Agriculture Mission and a natural farming mission.

Role in food security

• Availability: record foodgrain output and lower import dependence in mission crops; NFSM underpins the grain security on which the PDS rests.
• Nutrition and stability: pulses, oilseeds, horticulture and millets diversify diets and steady prices.
• Gaps: edible oil and pulse imports continue; rain-fed regions lag; seed replacement and market links stay weak; intensive cropping strains water and soil.

Missions deliver when technology meets assured markets; the next phase must target climate-resilient, rain-fed and nutrition-rich crops.

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Farmers often receive a small share of the consumer's rupee because produce passes through many hands and poorly equipped markets before it reaches the buyer.

Sources of inefficiency

• Market structure: too few regulated mandis, far apart, with fragmented market areas and licensing that limits competition among traders.
• Intermediation: long chains of commission agents, buyer cartels, arbitrary deductions and delayed payments.
• Infrastructure: inadequate storage, cold chains, grading and transport cause post-harvest losses and force distress sales at harvest.
• Information and scale: smallholders with tiny marketable surpluses and no price information have little bargaining power, so price discovery stays opaque.

How e-commerce reduces it

• e-NAM (2016), now covering 1,656 mandis in 23 States and 4 UTs: online bidding widens the buyer base and gives transparent price discovery, direct online payment and scope for inter-mandi and inter-state trade.
• Aggregation and access: FPOs sell on e-NAM and ONDC; B2B agritech platforms link farms to processors and retailers; direct farm-to-consumer sales cut out layers.
• Finance: electronic warehouse receipts let farmers store, borrow and sell later instead of at harvest-time lows.
• Limits: weak assaying, little actual inter-state trade, the digital divide and logistics gaps; online markets work only on physical infrastructure.

Digital markets cut transaction costs only when backed by grading, storage, logistics and farmer aggregation through FPOs.

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Fruits and vegetables lose value within days of harvest: the NABCONS study (2022) for MoFPI put post-harvest losses at 7.36 million tonnes of fruits and 11.97 million tonnes of vegetables. Biotechnology lets farmers turn this perishable surplus into storable, higher-value products.

Example 1: enzymes in fruit processing

• Microbial enzymes such as pectinase and cellulase break down cell walls, raising juice yield and clarity in mango, guava and citrus.
• Farmer groups can convert a glut into pulp and juice that sell through the year instead of dumping fruit at harvest.

Example 2: microbial fermentation

• Controlled starter cultures turn surplus fruit and vegetables into vinegar, wine, pickles and fermented beverages with long shelf life.
• Fermentation needs little capital and suits village-level units, adding value at the farm gate.

Other biotech aids

• Bio-preservation: lactic acid bacteria, bacteriocins and biopolymer coatings such as chitosan slow spoilage without chemical residues; antagonistic microbes and yeasts cut storage rots.
• Planting material: tissue-culture banana and processing-grade potato varieties give the uniform produce that industry accepts.
• Waste to value: peels and pomace become pectin, enzymes, compost and biogas.

Constraints

• Cost, scale, awareness, testing and regulation limit uptake; FPO-level processing units, cold chains and PM Kisan SAMPADA Yojana support are needed.

Taking these tools to farm-gate processing units can cut post-harvest losses and lift farm incomes.

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The 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam attained first criticality on 6 April 2026, opening stage two of Homi Bhabha's three-stage nuclear programme.

FBR versus thermal reactor

• Neutrons: a thermal reactor slows neutrons with a moderator (light or heavy water); an FBR has no moderator and fissions with fast neutrons.
• Fuel: thermal reactors burn natural or enriched uranium; the PFBR uses uranium-plutonium MOX fuel with a uranium-238 blanket and breeds more plutonium-239 than it consumes.
• Coolant: PHWRs use heavy water; FBRs use liquid sodium, allowing a compact, high-power-density core.

Criticality

• A reactor is critical when each fission, on average, triggers exactly one more, so the chain reaction sustains itself. First criticality at Kalpakkam marks the start of a controlled fission chain reaction, the base for all later power operation.

Implications for a clean-energy future

• Fuel security: far better use of scarce uranium, and a closed fuel cycle with less long-lived waste.
• Thorium bridge: fast reactors can breed thorium-232 into uranium-233, opening stage three and India's large thorium reserves.
• Climate goals: low-carbon baseload power towards net zero by 2070 and the 100 GW nuclear target for 2047, on indigenous technology.
• Caveats: sodium safety, delays and cost, reprocessing capacity and public acceptance.

The PFBR proves an indigenous closed-fuel-cycle capability; scaling fast reactors on time will decide whether thorium can power India's clean future.

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Joshimath's land subsidence and the Silkyara tunnel collapse, both in 2023, showed how projects in fragile terrain can create or magnify the very hazards they must withstand.

The contradiction

• The need: roads, tunnels, hydropower and tourism facilities bring connectivity, defence preparedness and livelihoods to remote Himalayan, Western Ghats and coastal regions.
• The risk: slope cutting, blasting, muck dumping and building on floodplains destabilise terrain; Kedarnath (2013), Chamoli (2021) and Wayanad (2024) showed how fragile slopes and rivers punish such intrusions.

Managing it: plan, build, govern, prepare

• Plan on risk: hazard mapping and carrying-capacity studies before projects; cumulative and strategic impact assessment for a whole valley instead of piecemeal clearances.
• Build right: risk-informed design with slope stabilisation, drainage and escape tunnels; avoid fault zones and river channels; bio-engineer slopes.
• Govern: respect eco-sensitive zones and expert advice such as the Gadgil and Kasturirangan reports on the Western Ghats; independent monitoring; participation of local communities.
• Warn and prepare: early warning for landslides and glacial lake outbursts (South Lhonak, 2023); 'build back better' under the Sendai Framework; the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, launched by India in 2019, to mainstream resilience in infrastructure.

In fragile regions development must be risk-informed by design, because resilience costs far less than reconstruction.

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Adopted at CBD COP15 in December 2022, the Kunming-Montreal framework aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, towards a 2050 vision of living in harmony with nature.

Aim and goals

• Four goals for 2050: (A) healthy ecosystems and species, (B) sustainable use, (C) fair benefit-sharing, including from digital sequence information, and (D) adequate finance, capacity and technology.
• Twenty-three targets for 2030, notably conserving 30% of land and sea (30x30), placing 30% of degraded areas under restoration and cutting harmful subsidies.

India's commitments and initiatives

• Commitment: the updated NBSAP released at COP16 (2024) sets 23 national targets aligned to the framework; the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023 revised the domestic law.
• Conservation: Project Tiger and Project Elephant, Project Cheetah, growing Ramsar sites under Amrit Dharohar, community and conservation reserves.
• Restoration: Green India Mission, MISHTI for mangroves, Nagar Van Yojana and the Aravalli Green Wall, towards restoring 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.
• Sustainable use and sharing: People's Biodiversity Registers, access and benefit-sharing with local communities, natural farming and Mission LiFE for sustainable consumption.
• Gaps: finance, data, and pressure from infrastructure and invasive species; India presses developed countries for finance and technology.

India's targets mirror the global framework; delivery depends on finance, local communities and mainstreaming biodiversity in every sector.

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Falsehoods now travel faster than corrections: in India, rumours on messaging apps have triggered lynchings, riots and panic within hours.

Threat to internal security and public order

• Public order: child-lifting rumours have led to mob lynchings; doctored videos incite communal violence; false alerts trigger panic buying and vaccine hesitancy.
• Internal security: hostile states and terror groups run propaganda and radicalisation campaigns, most intensely during conflicts; deepfakes impersonate leaders and officials.
• Institutions: election misinformation and manufactured distrust in agencies, media and courts erode the legitimacy on which order rests.

Amendments to the IT Rules, 2021

• 2022: Grievance Appellate Committees to hear users' appeals against platform decisions, and stronger due-diligence duties on intermediaries.
• 2023: rules for online gaming and a government Fact Check Unit to flag false content about the Union government; the Bombay High Court struck the unit down in 2024.
• 2025: takedown notices under Rule 3(1)(d) only from officers of Joint Secretary or DIG rank, stating the legal basis, with monthly review at Secretary level.
• 2026: 'synthetically generated information' defined; mandatory labels and traceable metadata for AI-generated content; unlawful content to be removed within three hours of a court order or reasoned government intimation.

Countering disinformation needs law, fast fact-checking, platform accountability and media literacy, without chilling the free speech Article 19 protects.

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Wedged between China and Pakistan, Ladakh's security rests as much on a prosperous, trusting population as on troops: border villagers are the Army's eyes and ears.

Border Area Development Programme

• Run by the MHA since 1986-87 for villages near the international border: roads, schools, health, water and livelihoods; 38,715 projects worth ₹7,935 crore completed in 16 States and 2 UTs.
• The Vibrant Villages Programme (2023) adds connectivity, tourism and livelihoods in northern-border blocks, including Ladakh, to check out-migration.

Army's civic action

• Operation Sadbhavana: seven Army Goodwill Schools in Ladakh (2023), medical and veterinary camps, women's vocational centres and educational tours for the young.
• Local recruitment into the Ladakh Scouts, porter and road-building work and disaster relief bring jobs and goodwill.

Sixth Schedule demand

• Since UT status in 2019, the Leh Apex Body and Kargil Democratic Alliance have sought Sixth Schedule protection for land, jobs, culture and a fragile ecology.
• Issues: the Schedule now covers tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram only; extension needs a constitutional amendment; security sensitivities on a two-front border.
• Middle path: the 2025 domicile and reservation regulations, framed through the MHA's High-Powered Committee; stronger Hill Councils, statutory land and job safeguards and sustained dialogue can follow.

Development with dignity, border programmes plus credible safeguards, keeps Ladakh's people at the centre of national security.

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Energy security means uninterrupted supply at an affordable price; for a country that imports most of its crude oil, it is also a question of strategic autonomy.

Key challenges

• Import dependence: nearly nine-tenths of crude and about half of natural gas are imported; about 60% of LPG is imported and some 90% of that passes through the Strait of Hormuz, as the 2026 West Asia crisis exposed.
• Coal lock-in: coal still dominates power generation, with problems of quality, rail logistics, emissions and the risk of stranded assets as the world decarbonises.
• Transition risks: intermittent solar and wind need storage and transmission that lag behind; DISCOM finances are weak; critical minerals for batteries and magnets are concentrated in a few countries.
• Rising demand: industry, urbanisation, cooling, electric mobility and data centres push consumption up faster than clean supply grows.
• Macro exposure: oil price spikes feed inflation, the current account deficit and subsidy bills.

Measures: security with growth and sustainability

• Diversify supply: more crude sources, strategic petroleum reserves, overseas equity assets, long-term LNG contracts and faster domestic exploration.
• Build clean domestic capacity: renewables with storage and green transmission corridors, pumped hydro, green hydrogen for industry, and nuclear expansion towards 100 GW by 2047 with private participation; non-fossil sources already form 50% of installed capacity (2025).
• Manage demand: efficiency standards for appliances, buildings and industry; ethanol blending; electric mobility; gas as a bridge fuel in place of oil and coal.
• Secure minerals: the National Critical Mineral Mission, overseas partnerships and recycling of batteries and e-waste.
• Fix institutions and markets: DISCOM reform and cost-reflective tariffs; regional grids and the International Solar Alliance for cross-border trade in clean power.

A diversified, domestic-heavy mix, with renewables and nuclear at the core, gas as a bridge and efficiency first, is how India can reconcile security, growth and net zero by 2070.

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A decade after Startup India (January 2016), DPIIT had recognised 2,12,283 startups by 31 January 2026, making India one of the world's largest startup ecosystems.

Promoting entrepreneurship, innovation and jobs

• Entrepreneurship: first-generation founders and a spread beyond metros to tier-2 and tier-3 towns; 1,02,054 recognised startups have at least one woman director or partner.
• Innovation: fintech on UPI, edtech, healthtech, agritech, spacetech and deeptech built on India's digital public infrastructure, solving problems for Indian conditions in Indian languages.
• Employment: direct jobs across more than 50 sectors, plus indirect work in logistics, gig platforms and supplier networks; startups also absorb skilled graduates outside the traditional IT-services route.

Challenges

• Global: a funding slowdown under high interest rates, foreign capital that retreats when rates rise, tariff and geopolitical uncertainty, competition from global technology giants, and constrained access to chips and AI compute.
• Domestic: compliance burden and taxation, delayed payments, shallow domestic risk capital concentrated in metros, low R&D spending, regulatory uncertainty in emerging sectors, governance lapses, and layoffs and down-rounds after the funding boom.

Measures

• Finance: expand the Fund of Funds and credit guarantees; dedicated deeptech funding; channel domestic pension and insurance money into venture capital; match the 2024 abolition of the angel tax with stable tax treatment.
• Ecosystem: regulatory sandboxes, public procurement through GeM, patent support and university-industry R&D links.
• Markets and governance: ONDC for open market access; stronger board oversight and disclosure norms; enforcement of timely payments.
• Inclusion: incubators in tier-2 and tier-3 towns and universities, women-founder programmes and mentoring, so that recognition translates into scale.

Patient domestic capital, lighter regulation and a deeptech push can turn India's startup numbers into lasting innovation and quality jobs.

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In the mid-1960s India lived 'ship to mouth' on PL-480 wheat imports; the Third Advance Estimates put 2025-26 foodgrain output at a record 376.563 million tonnes.

From scarcity to surplus

• Green Revolution (mid-1960s onward): high-yielding wheat and rice varieties, fertilisers and assured irrigation in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
• Institutions: MSP and procurement through the Agricultural Prices Commission and the Food Corporation of India (both 1965), a public distribution system that absorbed the surplus, institutional credit, and research through ICAR and state agricultural universities.
• Later drivers: irrigation expansion and rural electrification, the National Food Security Mission (2007), better seeds, and the Yellow (oilseeds), White (Operation Flood) and Blue (fisheries) revolutions that widened the food basket.
• Result: self-reliance in cereals, buffer stocks for the PDS and rice exports, though gains were concentrated in irrigated regions and in rice and wheat.

Policies for diversification

• Crops: the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture; the National Mission on Edible Oils for oilseeds and oil palm; a pulses mission; the millets drive around the International Year of Millets 2023; the Crop Diversification Programme under RKVY in the original Green Revolution states.
• Allied sectors: National Livestock Mission, Rashtriya Gokul Mission for indigenous cattle, PM Matsya Sampada Yojana for fisheries and the National Beekeeping and Honey Mission.
• Enablers: Farmer Producer Organisations for scale, e-NAM for markets, micro-irrigation under Per Drop More Crop, food processing under PM Kisan SAMPADA Yojana, and natural farming.
• Concerns: MSP and procurement still favour rice and wheat, depleting groundwater and soil health and leaving nutrition gaps; incentives must become crop-neutral.

Having secured calories, policy must now secure nutrition, farm incomes and sustainability through diversification that pays the farmer as well as paddy does.

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Indian farm support ranges from cheap inputs to price guarantees and cash transfers, while the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) sorts such support into boxes by how far it distorts trade.

Types of subsidies and support

• Input subsidies: fertiliser (urea and the Nutrient Based Subsidy), electricity and irrigation water, seeds and farm machinery.
• Credit and risk: interest subvention on crop loans, the Kisan Credit Card and PM Fasal Bima Yojana.
• Price support: MSP backed by procurement for rice and wheat; PM-AASHA for pulses and oilseeds; the food subsidy that funds the PDS.
• Income support: PM-KISAN's ₹6,000 a year, a decoupled transfer compatible with the Green Box.
• General services: research, extension and market infrastructure, which the AoA treats as non-distorting.

Issues under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture

• Box logic: Green Box support is unlimited; Amber Box support is capped by the de minimis limit of 10% of the value of production for developing countries; Article 6.2 exempts input and investment subsidies to low-income, resource-poor farmers.
• Reference-price problem: market price support is measured against fixed 1986-88 external reference prices, so inflation alone inflates India's notified support; India invoked the Bali peace clause for rice.
• Public stockholding: the 2013 Bali interim mechanism and the 2014 General Council decision shield procurement for food security until a permanent solution, which remains unresolved.
• Other frictions: no Special Safeguard Mechanism against import surges; questions over India's export restrictions; developed countries' large Green Box and historically entrenched subsidies leave the rules asymmetric.
• Domestic side: open-ended rice-wheat procurement distorts cropping and strains water, so reform is needed on its own merits, not only for WTO compliance.

India must defend its food-security space at the WTO while gradually shifting towards less distorting income- and investment-based support.

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Launched on 3 May 2026, Drishti, built by the Bengaluru startup GalaxEye, is India's largest privately built satellite and the world's first OptoSAR Earth-observation satellite.

Salient features of Mission Drishti

• A privately built Indian Earth-observation satellite, made possible by the space-sector reforms: IN-SPACe as the single-window agency for private players and the Indian Space Policy 2023.
• A small satellite carrying two very different sensors, an optical multispectral camera and a synthetic aperture radar, on one platform.
• Purpose: all-weather, day-and-night imagery for security, agriculture, disasters and infrastructure, with the data sovereignty of an Indian-owned satellite.

Imaging techniques

• Optical (multispectral) imaging: passive sensors record sunlight reflected in several bands; images are detailed and easy to interpret but blind at night and under cloud.
• Synthetic aperture radar: an active sensor transmits microwave pulses and builds a high-resolution image from the echoes as the satellite moves; it sees through cloud, smoke and darkness and captures surface texture, moisture and deformation.
• Fusion: both sensors image the same scene at the same time, and the data are merged into one product, avoiding the time and geometry mismatch of combining images from different satellites.

Why the world's first

• Earlier missions carried either an optical or a radar payload, or flew them on separate satellites; Drishti is the first to combine both in one spacecraft with fusion at source, the 'OptoSAR' design the Prime Minister cited.

Applications and significance

• Uses: border and maritime surveillance, flood and disaster mapping, crop and insurance assessment, urban and infrastructure change.
• Significance: data sovereignty, a growing private space economy and export potential; challenges of funding, data policy and dependence on launch slots.

Drishti shows India's private space sector moving from launch services to frontier sensing technology.

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Agentic AI refers to systems that pursue a goal on their own, planning steps, using tools and adapting to results, rather than only answering a single prompt.

How it works

• A large language model serves as the reasoning core: it breaks the goal into sub-tasks, keeps a memory of context, calls tools such as APIs, browsers and code, checks results and iterates until the goal is met.
• Several agents may coordinate, each with a role, such as one that plans, one that executes and one that verifies.

Applications

• Business: customer-service agents that resolve a case end to end, coding agents, research assistants, supply-chain and IT operations.
• Public services: grievance handling that routes and follows up complaints, help with welfare applications, farm advisories in Indian languages, health triage and fraud detection.
• Illustration: an agent asked to arrange a journey checks availability, compares fares, fills the form and, with the user's approval, pays and files the ticket.

Advantages

• Productivity and round-the-clock service; personalised delivery at scale; capacity for complex, multi-step work that plain chatbots cannot complete.
• For India: scarce expertise is scaled, since one agent can serve lakhs of citizens in their own language, narrowing the gap between entitlement and delivery.

Risks

• Errors compound across steps; unintended actions with real-world effects; security threats such as prompt injection and misuse of credentials; privacy breaches through broad data access.

Challenges

• Accountability when an agent, not a person, acts; bias; job displacement; energy and compute needs; concentration in a few firms; regulation across borders.
• Governance response: human oversight for high-stakes actions and audit trails; India's AI Governance Guidelines (2025), which take a risk-based approach and bar unrestricted deployment of high-risk systems; the DPDP Act, 2023 for personal data; an AI Safety Institute.

Agentic AI should be deployed with humans in the loop, so that autonomy adds capacity without diluting accountability.

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Much of urban India's waste still ends in open dumps that burn, leach into groundwater and emit methane, even as cities generate more waste each year.

Challenges

• Generation: growing volumes with more plastics, e-waste and sanitary waste, and mixed waste that can be neither composted nor recycled.
• Systems: poor segregation at source, weak collection in unplanned settlements, legacy dumpsites, low processing capacity, neglect of informal waste pickers, weak municipal finances and lax enforcement.

Policy framework

• The SWM Rules, 2016 have been replaced by the SWM Rules, 2026 (in force from 1 April 2026): mandatory four-stream segregation into wet, dry, sanitary and special care waste, bulk-generator responsibility and environmental compensation for violations.
• Plastic Waste Management Rules with extended producer responsibility; Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 for garbage-free cities and legacy-waste remediation.
• Instruments: Swachh Survekshan rankings, GOBARdhan bio-CNG plants and material recovery facilities.

Indore: what worked

• Door-to-door collection of segregated waste from every household, full processing, the legacy dumpsite cleared, a bio-CNG plant (2022) treating 550 tonnes a day of segregated wet waste, and citizen participation backed by user charges and fines; repeated cleanest-city rankings.

Delhi: what failed

• Mountains of legacy waste at Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla, landfill fires and leachate, weak segregation, several agencies with divided responsibility, and mixed waste burnt in waste-to-energy plants, which pollutes and wastes recyclables.

Lessons

• Political and administrative will, behaviour change, user charges and fines, decentralised composting, integration of waste pickers and data-driven tracking make the difference; technology follows segregation, not the reverse.

Indore shows that segregation at source and accountable municipal leadership, more than technology alone, make a city garbage-free.

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In the first hours of most disasters, rescue and relief come from neighbours, not agencies; communities are the first responders and the last line of recovery.

Why community is the cornerstone

• Local knowledge of terrain, hazards and vulnerable people; the fastest response; ownership of preparedness; trust in warnings; sustainability of mitigation works.
• The statement holds because agencies cannot be everywhere: community capacity decides whether early warnings become evacuations and whether relief reaches the last house.
• Odisha: community-run cyclone shelters and trained village volunteers enabled mass evacuations before Phailin (2013) and Fani (2019), sharply cutting deaths.
• Kerala floods (2018): fishermen rescued thousands with their own boats; Kudumbashree groups supported relief and rebuilding.
• Traditional knowledge: the Onge of the Andamans read the 2004 tsunami's warning signs and moved to safety.
• Programmes: Aapda Mitra, with one lakh volunteers trained in 350 districts, Yuva Aapda Mitra, and 'Tsunami Ready' villages in Odisha.

Challenges to participation

• Low risk perception in normal times; exclusion of women, the disabled and the elderly; weak panchayat capacity and funds; top-down planning by agencies; volunteer attrition without incentives or insurance.

Measures to strengthen it

• Village and ward disaster plans made by local bodies and linked to district plans; training, equipment and insurance for volunteers; school safety programmes and regular mock drills.
• Inclusive planning that maps vulnerable households and gives women's groups a role; dedicated funds for local bodies; the Sendai Framework's whole-of-society approach as the guiding principle.
• Institutional link: state and district plans should fund community-based disaster risk reduction as a core function, not treat it as voluntary charity.

A whole-of-society approach, with trained and resourced communities at its base, turns disaster response into resilience.

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.

Separatist politics, backed from across the border, fuelled militancy in J&K from 1989; on 5 August 2019 Parliament ended the special status under Article 370, a move the Supreme Court upheld in December 2023.

Separatism and government action

• Separatism: Hurriyat politics, cross-border terror and radicalisation, and cycles of stone-pelting and shutdowns kept the region unstable and its economy stalled.
• Action: sustained counter-terror operations; NIA cases against terror funding; bans on separatist outfits; the PM's Development Package; 'Back to Village' outreach; skilling and youth engagement.
• Governance outreach: panchayat and District Development Council elections took decision-making to villages and gave the young an alternative to separatist politics.

Articles 370 and 35A: before and after

• Before: Article 370 limited Parliament's laws to agreed subjects and required the state's concurrence for others; J&K had its own constitution and flag; Article 35A let the state define 'permanent residents' and reserve land, jobs and settlement for them.
• After: the whole Constitution applies; the J&K Reorganisation Act, 2019 created the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh; Article 35A ceased; new domicile rules opened residence-based rights; the Supreme Court upheld the change in December 2023.

Positive impacts of abrogation

• Legal integration: central laws such as the RTE Act, SC/ST protections and anti-corruption laws now apply; reservations extended to more groups; women's property rights protected.
• Democratic deepening: panchayat, District Development Council and assembly elections held, giving grassroots institutions a mandate.
• Economy: rising investment and tourism, infrastructure and connectivity projects, and central schemes on the same terms as other states.
• Caveats: statehood is yet to be restored; terror attacks persist, as at Pahalgam in 2025; political dialogue and trust-building must continue.

Legal integration is complete; emotional integration needs restored statehood, jobs, security and continued democratic engagement.

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.

Terror groups need money for recruitment, weapons and propaganda; choking that money is as important as neutralising cadres.

Counterfeit currency and money laundering

• Counterfeit currency: high-quality fake Indian currency notes printed abroad and pushed through porous borders finance terror while eroding trust in the currency.
• Money laundering: hawala transfers, cash smuggling, misuse of charities and NGOs, shell companies, trade-based laundering, narco-terror networks and, increasingly, crypto-assets.
• India's response: UAPA and PMLA, NIA's terror-funding cell, the FICN coordination group, FIU-India's financial intelligence and cooperation with neighbours.

International action

• The UN Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (1999); UNSC Resolutions 1373 (2001) and 2462 (2019), which oblige states to criminalise and prevent terror finance; the Egmont Group of financial intelligence units; the 'No Money for Terror' ministerial conference hosted in Delhi in 2022.

FATF's role

• Set up in 1989, FATF sets the global standard through its 40 Recommendations, assesses countries through peer mutual evaluations, and uses its grey and black lists to press non-compliant states, Pakistan being the prominent example.

Methods of compliance by member states

• Prevention: national risk assessments; criminalising terror financing as a standalone offence; beneficial-ownership transparency; KYC, record-keeping and suspicious transaction reports by banks and other reporting entities; regulation of virtual asset service providers.
• Enforcement: targeted financial sanctions that freeze designated persons' assets without delay; supervision of non-profits vulnerable to abuse; cross-border cooperation and extradition.
• India: the 2024 mutual evaluation placed it in 'regular follow-up', a category shared with only four other G20 countries; faster prosecutions and oversight of non-profits remain priorities.

Financial intelligence, international cooperation and swift prosecution together can cut the money lifelines of terror.

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.