UPSC foundations · 001
The Indus Valley Civilisation: India's first cities
The Indus Valley Civilisation, also called the Harappan Civilisation, was one of the world's earliest urban cultures. Its mature phase lasted from about 2600 to 1900…
400 companion notes · 40 subject themes
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Reference edition 1 November 2026. Current affairs explainers include earlier events and are not a monthly digest.
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UPSC foundations · 002
The Vedic Age: hymns, chiefs, and the making of a social order
The Vedic Age takes its name from the Vedas, the oldest surviving texts of the Indian subcontinent. The Rigveda, the earliest of the four Vedas, was composed in Sanskrit…
UPSC foundations · 003
Mahajanapadas and the rise of Magadha
By the sixth century BCE, northern India was divided into sixteen large states known as mahajanapadas. Some were monarchies ruled by kings, while others, such as the…
UPSC foundations · 004
Buddhism: the Buddha's teaching and its spread
Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha, meaning the awakened one. He taught in the Ganga plain during the mahajanapada period, and…
UPSC foundations · 005
Jainism: Mahavira, non-violence, and the path to liberation
Jainism traces its teaching through twenty-four tirthankaras, teachers who are said to have shown the way across the cycle of rebirth. The last of these, Mahavira, also…
UPSC foundations · 006
The Mauryas and Ashoka: India's first empire
The Mauryan Empire, founded by Chandragupta Maurya in about 321 BCE after he overthrew the Nandas, was the first to bring most of the Indian subcontinent under a single…
UPSC foundations · 007
After the Mauryas: Indo-Greeks, Shakas, and Kushanas
The centuries between the Mauryas and the Guptas are often called the post-Mauryan period, but they were not a dark age. North-western India was ruled in succession by…
UPSC foundations · 008
The Gupta Age: empire, learning, and the classical ideal
The Gupta dynasty rose in the early fourth century CE, when Chandragupta I came to power in about 320 CE and took the title maharajadhiraja, great king of kings. His son…
UPSC foundations · 009
Harsha and the kingdoms after the Guptas
After the Gupta Empire faded, northern India broke into competing kingdoms. The most famous of their rulers was Harsha, also called Harshavardhana, who reigned from 606…
UPSC foundations · 010
Ancient South India: the Sangam Age
The early history of south India is known through Sangam literature, a body of Tamil poems composed over several centuries, conventionally dated from about 300 BCE to…
UPSC foundations · 011
The Delhi Sultanate: foundations under the Slave dynasty
The Delhi Sultanate began in 1206, when Qutb-ud-din Aibak, a former slave commander of Muhammad Ghori, established himself as ruler at Delhi after Ghori's death. His…
UPSC foundations · 012
Khaljis and Tughlaqs: expansion, experiment, and crisis
The Khalji dynasty, which seized power in 1290, took the Sultanate beyond northern India. Alauddin Khalji, who reigned from 1296 to 1316, repelled Mongol invasions and…
UPSC foundations · 013
Vijayanagara: the empire of the southern Deccan
The Vijayanagara Empire was founded in 1336, traditionally by the brothers Harihara and Bukka, on the banks of the Tungabhadra river. Its capital, also called…
UPSC foundations · 014
The Bahmani kingdom and the Deccan sultanates
The Bahmani kingdom was founded in 1347, when Hasan Gangu, who took the title Bahman Shah, broke away from the Delhi Sultanate in the Deccan. Its capital was first at…
UPSC foundations · 015
Bhakti and Sufi movements: devotion beyond the court
Between the eighth and seventeenth centuries, two great devotional movements reshaped the religious life of India. The Bhakti movement taught that devotion to a personal…
UPSC foundations · 016
Babur, Humayun, and Sher Shah: the Mughal foundation
The Mughal Empire began with Babur, a Timurid prince from Central Asia, who defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last Sultan of Delhi, at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526.…
UPSC foundations · 017
Akbar: empire, tolerance, and administration
Akbar, who reigned from 1556 to 1605, transformed the Mughal Empire from a north Indian kingdom into a subcontinental empire. He came to the throne at thirteen under the…
UPSC foundations · 018
The later Mughals: Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb
Akbar's son Jahangir, who reigned from 1605 to 1627, kept his father's empire but changed its court. His wife Nur Jahan became a powerful figure in politics, issuing…
UPSC foundations · 019
Shivaji and the Marathas: a challenge from the Deccan
Shivaji, who lived from 1630 to 1680, founded the Maratha kingdom in the western Deccan at a time when the region was divided between the Bijapur sultanate and the…
UPSC foundations · 020
Medieval India: towns, trade, and crafts
Medieval India was not only a story of kings and battles. Its towns and markets supported a large economy of farming, craft, and trade. Peasants grew food grains,…
UPSC foundations · 021
Europeans arrive: from traders to territorial powers
Europeans first came to India as traders seeking spices, textiles, and a direct sea route that bypassed the overland middlemen of the Middle East. The Portuguese led the…
UPSC foundations · 022
Plassey, Buxar, and the Diwani: the Company becomes a ruler
The East India Company's transformation into a territorial power began in Bengal. In 1757, at the Battle of Plassey, Robert Clive's forces defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah, the…
UPSC foundations · 023
Subsidiary Alliance and Doctrine of Lapse: expansion without war
Not all of British India was conquered in battle. Two policies let the East India Company absorb Indian states without always fighting them. The first was the Subsidiary…
UPSC foundations · 024
Land revenue: Permanent Settlement, Ryotwari, and Mahalwari
Land revenue was the British Empire's main income in India, and the way it was collected shaped rural life for generations. In Bengal, Lord Cornwallis introduced the…
UPSC foundations · 025
Social reform in the nineteenth century
The nineteenth century saw Indian reformers challenge customs such as sati, child marriage, and the ban on widow remarriage, and campaign for women's education. The most…
UPSC foundations · 026
Education, the press, and new ideas before 1857
British rule brought new institutions of learning and communication that changed how Indians thought about their own society. The Calcutta Madrasa was founded in 1781…
UPSC foundations · 027
The economic impact of early British rule
The economic effects of British rule before 1857 are among the most debated questions in Indian history. One widely held view, associated with Dadabhai Naoroji's later…
UPSC foundations · 028
Peasant and tribal revolts before 1857
Long before the revolt of 1857, peasants and tribal peoples rose against British rule, moneylenders, and landlords. These revolts are often overshadowed by 1857, but…
UPSC foundations · 029
British administration takes shape: courts, police, and services
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the East India Company had built an administration that looked like a state. Lord Cornwallis, Governor-General from 1786 to…
UPSC foundations · 030
India on the eve of 1857
By 1856, the map of India looked very different from the map of 1750. The East India Company directly ruled Bengal, Bombay, Madras, the north-western provinces, and the…
UPSC foundations · 031
The Revolt of 1857: mutiny, rebellion, and its aftermath
The Revolt of 1857 began at Meerut on 10 May 1857, when sepoys who had refused the new Enfield cartridges were punished, and their comrades freed them and marched to…
UPSC foundations · 032
The Congress and the Moderates, 1885-1905
The Indian National Congress was founded in December 1885 at Bombay, at a meeting of seventy-two delegates, with the retired British official Allan Octavian Hume playing…
UPSC foundations · 033
Swadeshi, the Extremists, and the Partition of Bengal
In 1905, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, partitioned Bengal, then India's largest province, into a Muslim-majority east and a Hindu-majority west, claiming administrative…
UPSC foundations · 034
Gandhi arrives: Champaran, Rowlatt, and Jallianwala Bagh
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in January 1915, where he had developed satyagraha, the method of non-violent resistance, in campaigns for…
UPSC foundations · 035
Non-Cooperation and Khilafat, 1920-1922
In August 1920, the Congress, under Gandhi's leadership, launched the Non-Cooperation Movement, the first nationwide campaign of mass non-violent resistance. Its…
UPSC foundations · 036
Civil Disobedience and the Salt March, 1930-1934
The late 1920s brought a new generation into politics. The Simon Commission, appointed in 1927 to review constitutional reform, contained no Indian members and was…
UPSC foundations · 037
Between movements: the 1935 Act and provincial governments
The Government of India Act of 1935 was the longest and most detailed constitutional measure the British Parliament ever passed for India. It proposed an all-India…
UPSC foundations · 038
Revolutionaries and the INA: the armed streams
Alongside Gandhi's non-violent campaigns, other Indians chose armed resistance. In the early twentieth century, revolutionary groups in Bengal, Maharashtra, and the…
UPSC foundations · 039
Quit India and the road to transfer of power, 1942-1946
By 1942, the Second World War had brought the question of India's future to a head. In March 1942, the Cripps Mission, led by Sir Stafford Cripps, offered India dominion…
UPSC foundations · 040
Partition, independence, and the making of the Constitution
The final settlement came with the Mountbatten Plan of 3 June 1947. Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, proposed the partition of India into two dominions, India and…
UPSC foundations · 041
India: Size, Location and Neighbours
India lies entirely in the northern hemisphere. Its mainland extends between latitudes 8°4′ N and 37°6′ N and longitudes 68°7′ E and 97°25′ E, while the southernmost…
UPSC foundations · 042
The Himalayas: Formation and Divisions
The Himalayas are young fold mountains, formed when the Indian plate moved northwards and collided with the Eurasian plate. The collision crumpled the sediments of the…
UPSC foundations · 043
The Northern Plains of India
The northern plains are one of the largest alluvial plains in the world, formed by the deposition of silt by the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra rivers and their…
UPSC foundations · 044
The Peninsular Plateau of India
The peninsular plateau is India's oldest landmass, a large tableland of ancient crystalline and metamorphic rocks that has been stable for hundreds of millions of years.…
UPSC foundations · 045
The Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats
The Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats are the two mountain ranges that frame the peninsular plateau. The Western Ghats run almost continuously along India's west…
UPSC foundations · 046
The Coastal Plains of India
India's coastal plains are narrow strips of low land between the sea and the Ghats. On the west, the plain runs from Gujarat to Kerala, bounded by the Arabian Sea and…
UPSC foundations · 047
The Islands of India
India has two major island groups, plus many smaller islands along its coasts. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands lie in the Bay of Bengal, closer to South-East Asia than…
UPSC foundations · 048
The Thar Desert and Arid India
The Thar Desert, also called the Great Indian Desert, lies in north-western India, mainly in Rajasthan, with extensions into Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana, and across the…
UPSC foundations · 049
The Central Highlands and the Chotanagpur Plateau
The Central Highlands lie between the northern plains and the Deccan Plateau, roughly north of the Narmada river and south of the Aravalli Range. They include the Malwa…
UPSC foundations · 050
India's Physiographic Divisions: An Overview
India is conventionally divided into six physiographic regions: the Himalayan mountains, the northern plains, the peninsular plateau, the Indian desert, the coastal…
UPSC foundations · 051
The Indian Monsoon: How It Works
The monsoon is a seasonal reversal of winds. In summer, the Indian landmass heats up faster than the surrounding oceans, creating low pressure over the interior,…
UPSC foundations · 052
The Four Seasons of India
The India Meteorological Department divides India's year into four seasons: winter (December to February), summer or the hot weather season (March to May), the…
UPSC foundations · 053
The Himalayan Rivers: Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra
Himalayan rivers rise in or near the Himalayas, flow through deep gorges in the mountains, and then spread across the northern plains. They are perennial, because they…
UPSC foundations · 054
The Peninsular Rivers of India
Peninsular rivers are older than Himalayan rivers and behave differently. They rise in the Western Ghats or the central highlands, flow across hard, ancient rock, and…
UPSC foundations · 055
Lakes and Wetlands of India
India's lakes and wetlands are far more varied than a single definition suggests. They include Himalayan glacial lakes, tectonic lakes such as Wular in Jammu and…
UPSC foundations · 056
Groundwater and Water Resources in India
India's water comes mainly from rain, and the monsoon delivers most of it in about four months. Rivers, lakes and reservoirs hold the visible part, but groundwater,…
UPSC foundations · 057
Forests of India: Types and Distribution
India's forests vary as much as its climate. Tropical evergreen forests grow where rainfall is very heavy and the dry season is short, as in the Western Ghats, the…
UPSC foundations · 058
Mineral Resources of India
India is rich in several minerals but not in all. It has large reserves of iron ore, coal, bauxite, manganese, mica and limestone, and smaller reserves of copper, lead,…
UPSC foundations · 059
Energy Resources of India
India's energy comes from a mix of sources, and the mix is changing. Coal has long been the largest source of commercial energy and electricity, mined mainly in…
UPSC foundations · 060
Soils of India
Soil is the thin, living layer on which almost all farming depends, formed by the weathering of rock, the action of climate, plants and animals, and the passage of time.…
UPSC foundations · 061
Latitude, Longitude and Time
Latitude and longitude are the grid by which every place on Earth is located. Latitude measures distance north or south of the equator, from 0° at the equator to 90° at…
UPSC foundations · 062
The Earth's Movements and the Seasons
The Earth has two main movements: rotation on its axis, which takes about 24 hours, and revolution around the Sun, which takes about 365¼ days. Rotation causes day and…
UPSC foundations · 063
Plate Tectonics, Earthquakes and Volcanoes
The Earth's outer shell is broken into large plates that move slowly over the mantle beneath. This is the theory of plate tectonics, which explains the distribution of…
UPSC foundations · 064
Oceans, Currents and Tides
Oceans cover about 71 per cent of the Earth's surface. The Pacific is the largest and deepest ocean, covering more than 30 per cent of the Earth's surface and containing…
UPSC foundations · 065
World Climate Zones
Climate is the average weather of a place over a long period, usually thirty years, while weather is the condition of the atmosphere at a particular time. Climate zones…
UPSC foundations · 066
The Great Rivers and Lakes of the World
Rivers and lakes shape civilisations. The Nile, at about 6,650 kilometres, is conventionally cited as the world's longest river, flowing north through north-eastern…
UPSC foundations · 067
The Deserts of the World
A desert is defined by low rainfall, usually less than 250 millimetres a year, rather than by heat alone. The largest desert on Earth is the Antarctic desert, a cold…
UPSC foundations · 068
Mountains of the World: Formation and Importance
Mountains cover about a quarter of the Earth's land surface and are home to about a tenth of its people, while providing water, timber, minerals and recreation to many…
UPSC foundations · 069
Population Distribution and Density in the World
The world's population is very unevenly distributed. Dense populations cluster in South Asia, East Asia, western Europe and the north-eastern United States, while vast…
UPSC foundations · 070
Natural Vegetation and Biomes of the World
A biome is a large region defined by its climate, soil and characteristic plants and animals. The main terrestrial biomes are tropical rainforest, savanna, desert,…
UPSC foundations · 071
Indian Society: Diversity and Unity
India is one of the most diverse societies in the world. Its people speak languages from four major families, Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman,…
UPSC foundations · 072
Caste in India: Continuity and Change
Caste is one of the oldest and most debated features of Indian society. Traditionally, it was described as a hierarchy of endogamous groups, or jatis, ranked by notions…
UPSC foundations · 073
Tribal Communities in India
Tribal communities, officially called Scheduled Tribes, are groups listed in the Constitution's schedules for particular states and union territories, entitled to…
UPSC foundations · 074
Family Change in India
The Indian family is often imagined as a large joint family, with several generations living together, sharing property, work and care. Joint families certainly exist…
UPSC foundations · 075
Urbanisation in India
Urbanisation is the growth in the share of people living in towns and cities. India remains less urbanised than many comparable countries, but its urban population is…
UPSC foundations · 076
Women's Status and Change in India
Women's status in India has changed significantly since independence, but unevenly. The Constitution guarantees equality before the law (Article 14), prohibits…
UPSC foundations · 077
Youth and Demographic Change in India
India is a young country by world standards. A large share of its population is under 30, a result of high fertility in the past and a gradual decline since then. This…
UPSC foundations · 078
Migration in India
Migration is the movement of people from one place to another, and it is one of the largest forces reshaping Indian society. According to Census 2011, about 45 crore…
UPSC foundations · 079
Secularism and Communalism in India
Secularism in India does not mean the separation of religion from public life in the strict Western sense, nor does it mean hostility to religion. The Indian…
UPSC foundations · 080
Social Change in India: Sanskritisation, Westernisation and Modernisation
Indian sociologists have developed distinctive concepts to describe social change, because change in India has rarely followed a single Western pattern. M. N. Srinivas,…
UPSC foundations · 081
Reservation in education and public employment: how the Constitution permits it
Reservation is often described as an exception to equality, but the Constitution treats it as part of equality itself. Article 14 guarantees equality before the law,…
UPSC foundations · 082
Women's reservation in legislatures: the 106th Amendment and why it has not yet taken effect
The Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, reserves seats for women in directly elected legislatures. It…
UPSC foundations · 083
The POCSO Act: how India defines and tries offences against children
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, known as the POCSO Act, creates a special law for sexual offences against children. A child is defined as any…
UPSC foundations · 084
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016: from charity to rights
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 replaced the Persons with Disabilities Act of 1995 and gave effect in Indian law to the United Nations Convention on…
UPSC foundations · 085
The SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act: what counts as an atrocity and how it is tried
The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 was enacted because existing criminal law was considered inadequate to deal with…
UPSC foundations · 086
Manual scavenging: prohibition, hazardous cleaning and rehabilitation
Manual scavenging is the manual cleaning, carrying or disposal of human excreta from insanitary latrines, open drains, pits or railway tracks. The Prohibition of…
UPSC foundations · 087
The Transgender Persons Act, 2019: recognition, non-discrimination and its critics
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 followed the Supreme Court's decision in National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India in 2014, which…
UPSC foundations · 088
Senior citizens and the Maintenance Act, 2007: a speedy remedy with limits
The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 provides a simple, speedy and inexpensive remedy for older people who cannot maintain themselves. A…
UPSC foundations · 089
The Right to Education Act, 2009: a fundamental right with school standards
Article 21A, added by the 86th Amendment in 2002, makes free and compulsory education for children aged six to fourteen a fundamental right. The Right of Children to…
UPSC foundations · 090
The Forest Rights Act, 2006: recognising rights that were never recorded
The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, known as the Forest Rights Act, begins from a historical claim:…
UPSC foundations · 091
Emergency provisions: Articles 352, 356 and 360 and the safeguards around them
Part XVIII of the Constitution, Articles 352 to 360, provides for three emergencies. A national emergency under Article 352 may be proclaimed when the security of India…
UPSC foundations · 092
The anti-defection law: the Tenth Schedule, the whip and the merger exception
The Tenth Schedule, added by the 52nd Amendment in 1985, deals with disqualification on the ground of defection. A member of Parliament or a state legislature may be…
UPSC foundations · 093
Money Bills: what counts, who certifies, and what the Rajya Sabha can do
Article 110 defines a Money Bill as a bill containing only provisions dealing with matters such as the imposition, abolition, remission, alteration or regulation of a…
UPSC foundations · 094
The Speaker and Deputy Speaker: election, impartiality and the casting vote
Article 93 requires the Lok Sabha to choose two members as Speaker and Deputy Speaker as soon as may be after its first sitting. The Speaker presides over sittings,…
UPSC foundations · 095
The Inter-State Council: a forum for Centre-State coordination under Article 263
Article 263 allows the President to establish an Inter-State Council if it appears that public interests would be served by it. The Council may inquire into and advise…
UPSC foundations · 096
Electing the President and Vice-President: an indirect election with a special vote value
The President is not directly elected by voters. Under Article 54, the President is elected by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of both Houses of…
UPSC foundations · 097
Delhi under Article 239AA: a capital with an assembly but not full statehood
Delhi is a Union Territory, but it is not governed like other Union Territories. Article 239AA, inserted by the 69th Amendment in 1991 and in force from 1 February 1992,…
UPSC foundations · 098
Official language and the Eighth Schedule: Hindi, English and twenty-two languages
Article 343 provides that the official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script, with the international form of Indian numerals. It also provided that…
UPSC foundations · 099
The Comptroller and Auditor General: auditing public money without controlling it
The Comptroller and Auditor General, or CAG, is established under Article 148. The CAG is appointed by the President, holds office for six years or until the age of…
UPSC foundations · 100
Parliamentary privileges: protecting free speech in the House without placing members above the law
Articles 105 and 194 confer privileges on Parliament and state legislatures. Members have freedom of speech in the legislature, and no member is liable to court…
UPSC foundations · 101
The Right to Information Act, 2005: a citizen's right to ask, and the limits on it
The Right to Information Act, 2005 gives every citizen the right to request information held by a public authority, meaning a body established by the Constitution or by…
UPSC foundations · 102
Lokpal and Lokayuktas: an ombudsman for corruption complaints against public functionaries
The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 creates an ombudsman at the Union level, called the Lokpal, and requires states to establish Lokayuktas. The Act came into force in…
UPSC foundations · 103
The National Human Rights Commission: a statutory watchdog with recommendatory powers
The National Human Rights Commission, or NHRC, was established under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. It is a statutory body, not a constitutional body, and its…
UPSC foundations · 104
The Central Vigilance Commission: vigilance over corruption in central administration
The Central Vigilance Commission, or CVC, is the apex vigilance institution for the Central Government. It was set up in 1964 on the recommendation of the Committee on…
UPSC foundations · 105
NITI Aayog: from central planning to cooperative federalism
NITI Aayog, the National Institution for Transforming India, was established by a Union Cabinet resolution on 1 January 2015, replacing the Planning Commission, which…
UPSC foundations · 106
Citizen's Charters and grievance redress: promising a standard of service
A Citizen's Charter is a public commitment by a government department or agency about the services it provides, the standards it promises, the time within which a…
UPSC foundations · 107
E-governance and Digital India: services online, and the access question
E-governance means the use of information technology to deliver government services, to share information and to allow citizens to interact with the state without…
UPSC foundations · 108
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes: a constitutional watchdog
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes, or NCSC, is established under Article 338 of the Constitution. It consists of a Chairperson, a Vice-Chairperson and three…
UPSC foundations · 109
Administrative Tribunals: speedy justice for service disputes, outside the ordinary courts
Article 323A allows Parliament to establish administrative tribunals for adjudication of disputes relating to recruitment and conditions of service of public servants.…
UPSC foundations · 110
Whistle-blower protection: disclosure without retaliation
The Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014 was enacted to provide a mechanism for receiving complaints about corruption, wilful misuse of power or discretion, and criminal…
UPSC foundations · 111
India and UN Security Council reform: the G4 case for a permanent seat
The United Nations Security Council has five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — each with a veto over substantive…
UPSC foundations · 112
India and ASEAN: from Look East to Act East
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, was founded in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, and now has ten members,…
UPSC foundations · 113
India and Africa: the Forum Summit and South-South cooperation
India's engagement with Africa draws on a shared history of decolonisation, the Non-Aligned Movement and support for liberation movements, and on contemporary interests…
UPSC foundations · 114
India and the European Union: a strategic partnership still negotiating trade
The European Union is India's largest trading partner as a bloc, and the relationship covers trade, investment, technology, climate, research and foreign policy…
UPSC foundations · 115
India and West Asia: energy, workers and a changing Gulf
West Asia, often called the Middle East, is central to India's energy security, trade and diaspora. The region supplies a large share of India's crude oil and liquefied…
UPSC foundations · 116
BIMSTEC: India's Bay of Bengal grouping beyond SAARC
The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, or BIMSTEC, brings together Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and…
UPSC foundations · 117
SAARC: why South Asia's regional organisation stalled
The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, or SAARC, was founded in Dhaka in 1985 by Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, with…
UPSC foundations · 118
India and Russia: a longstanding partnership in a changing world
India's relationship with Russia dates to the Soviet period. The Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation between India and the Soviet Union was signed in 1971, and…
UPSC foundations · 119
India and the United States: the civil nuclear deal that changed the relationship
For much of the Cold War, India and the United States were, in the phrase often used by scholars, estranged democracies: they shared democratic systems but differed on…
UPSC foundations · 120
The International Solar Alliance: India as founder of a solar institution
The International Solar Alliance, or ISA, was launched by India and France on 30 November 2015, alongside the Paris climate conference, known as COP21. Its original idea…
UPSC foundations · 121
The structure of the Indian economy: farm, factory and services
India's economy is usually described in three sectors: agriculture and allied activities, industry, and services. The balance between them has changed sharply since…
UPSC foundations · 122
Five-Year Plans: how India planned its economy
From 1951 to 2017 India ran its development effort through Five-Year Plans drawn up by the Planning Commission. The First Plan (1951-56) used a simple Harrod-Domar…
UPSC foundations · 123
From Planning Commission to NITI Aayog
The Planning Commission was set up by a government resolution on 15 March 1950, with the Prime Minister as chair, to formulate Five-Year Plans and allocate central…
UPSC foundations · 124
The public sector and the mixed economy
Independent India chose a mixed economy: private enterprise would continue, but the state would own and run the commanding heights — heavy industry, mining, banking,…
UPSC foundations · 125
1991: the year India opened its economy
By mid-1991 India faced a balance of payments crisis. Foreign exchange reserves had fallen to a level covering only a few weeks of imports, and the country was close to…
UPSC foundations · 126
Growth and GDP: what the headline number hides
Gross domestic product, GDP, is the total market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a year. Real GDP adjusts for inflation, so its growth…
UPSC foundations · 127
Inflation, interest rates and the Reserve Bank
Inflation is a sustained rise in the general price level, which reduces what money can buy. India tracks it mainly through the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures…
UPSC foundations · 128
The Union Budget and fiscal policy
The Union Budget is the government's annual financial statement. Article 112 of the Constitution requires the President to lay an Annual Financial Statement before…
UPSC foundations · 129
Trade, the rupee and the balance of payments
The balance of payments records all transactions between India and the rest of the world. Its current account covers trade in goods and services, income from…
UPSC foundations · 130
Banks, credit and financial inclusion
Banks sit at the centre of India's financial system because they take deposits from households and lend to farms, firms and governments. The Reserve Bank of India…
UPSC foundations · 131
How India counts poverty
Poverty is not a physical fact like height; it is measured against a line, and where the line is drawn changes who counts as poor. India has traditionally measured…
UPSC foundations · 132
Inequality: income, wealth and opportunity
Inequality asks a different question from poverty. Poverty asks whether people have enough; inequality asks how the total is shared. A country can reduce poverty while…
UPSC foundations · 133
Unemployment and the way work is measured
India's official unemployment rate looks low by international standards, and that fact misleads many readers. The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), run by the…
UPSC foundations · 134
The informal economy: where most Indians work
Most Indians do not work in a registered firm with a written contract, paid leave and social security. They work on family farms, in small workshops, as street vendors,…
UPSC foundations · 135
Skills and the demographic dividend
India is a young country. Its median age is under 30, and the share of the population in the working ages — roughly 15 to 64 — is still rising, while the share of…
UPSC foundations · 136
Women and work in India
For decades, one of the most striking facts about India's labour market was how few women were counted as working. That has changed sharply in recent data. The Periodic…
UPSC foundations · 137
Self-employment, microfinance and small enterprise
A large share of Indians are not employees at all: they run a small farm, a shop, a repair unit, a food stall or a tailoring business, or they work as own-account…
UPSC foundations · 138
Social security for unorganised workers
Social security in India was built for the organised minority: employees of government, public enterprises and larger firms are covered by the Employees' Provident Fund…
UPSC foundations · 139
Regional gaps: why some states surge ahead
India's states differ enormously in income, health and schooling. Southern and western states such as Goa, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Gujarat have higher per…
UPSC foundations · 140
Migration, remittances and the moving workforce
Migration is one of the largest forces shaping India, and one of the least counted. The Census of 2011 recorded 45.36 crore internal migrants by place of last residence…
UPSC foundations · 141
India's health system: public, private and in between
India's health system is a mix. The public system is organised in three tiers: sub-centres and primary health centres for villages and small towns, community health…
UPSC foundations · 142
Ayushman Bharat and the push for health cover
Ayushman Bharat, launched in 2018, is India's largest health programme. It has two parts. The first is a network of Health and Wellness Centres, now called Ayushman…
UPSC foundations · 143
School education and the Right to Education
School education in India is vast: hundreds of millions of children, millions of teachers, and schools run by central and state governments, local bodies, aided…
UPSC foundations · 144
Higher education: expansion and quality
India has one of the world's largest higher education systems, with more than a thousand universities and tens of thousands of colleges, enrolling tens of millions of…
UPSC foundations · 145
Nutrition and the first thousand days
Nutrition is where health, education and poverty meet. A child who is undernourished in the first thousand days — from conception to the second birthday — suffers damage…
UPSC foundations · 146
Sanitation, immunisation and disease control
Two of the cheapest ways to save lives are also the oldest public health tools: clean surroundings and vaccines. Sanitation prevents the faecal contamination that…
UPSC foundations · 147
Human development: beyond income
In 1990 the United Nations Development Programme published the first Human Development Report, introducing the Human Development Index (HDI). The idea, developed by…
UPSC foundations · 148
Gender and development: gaps that persist
Development is not gender-neutral. Women and girls in India have gained on many indicators — schooling, life expectancy and political participation — yet gaps remain in…
UPSC foundations · 149
Learning outcomes: what children actually learn
Enrolment is the easiest education statistic to improve, and India has largely achieved it at primary level. Learning is harder, and the Annual Status of Education…
UPSC foundations · 150
Ageing India: population change and care
India is still young, but it is ageing fast. Life expectancy rose from 58.6 years in 1990 to 72 years in 2023, according to the Human Development Report 2025, and…
UPSC foundations · 151
Partition and the making of a new nation
On 14-15 August 1947, British India was divided into two dominions, India and Pakistan, and India became independent. Partition was not a single decision but the outcome…
UPSC foundations · 152
Uniting the princely states
At independence there were about 565 princely states, covering roughly two-fifths of the subcontinent's territory and a quarter of its people. Under British rule they…
UPSC foundations · 153
Redrawing the map: linguistic states
Independent India's internal map did not match its languages. The Constitution's original scheme grouped states into four categories — Part A, B, C and D — inherited…
UPSC foundations · 154
Land reforms: abolishing zamindari
At independence, Indian agriculture was dominated by intermediaries — zamindars, jagirdars and similar tenure-holders — who collected rent from cultivators and paid a…
UPSC foundations · 155
The Green Revolution and food self-sufficiency
In the mid-1960s India faced a food crisis. Two droughts, in 1965 and 1966, cut grain output; the country depended on food aid, notably wheat shipments from the United…
UPSC foundations · 156
The Emergency, 1975–77
On the night of 25 June 1975, President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed proclaimed a national Emergency under Article 352, on the advice of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, on the…
UPSC foundations · 157
Mandal and the politics of reservation
Reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in legislatures, education and public employment date from the Constitution itself, as a remedy for centuries of…
UPSC foundations · 158
Coalition governments, 1989–2014
From 1989 to 2014 India was governed by coalitions. The era began when the Congress lost its majority in the 1989 election and the National Front government of V. P.…
UPSC foundations · 159
Goa, Sikkim and the edges of the Union
Not all of India's territory came with independence or the princely states. Two European colonial enclaves and one Himalayan kingdom joined the Union later, through…
UPSC foundations · 160
Kashmir: accession, Article 370 and after
Jammu and Kashmir's history since 1947 is the most contested chapter of post-independence India, and it must be told with care, separating established facts from…
UPSC foundations · 161
How national income is measured: GDP, GVA and growth
Gross domestic product, or GDP, is the total market value of final goods and services produced within a country in a given period, usually a year or a quarter. It is a…
UPSC foundations · 162
Inflation: how prices are measured and why they matter
Inflation is a sustained rise in the general level of prices, which reduces the purchasing power of money. A single item becoming dearer is not inflation; inflation is…
UPSC foundations · 163
Measuring work: employment, unemployment and the informal workforce
Employment statistics answer a deceptively simple question: who counts as working? In India, the main official source is the Periodic Labour Force Survey, or PLFS,…
UPSC foundations · 164
Poverty measurement: lines, committees and multidimensional poverty
Poverty lines try to turn a lived experience of deprivation into a number that policy can track. In India, the traditional approach estimated the expenditure needed for…
UPSC foundations · 165
From Five Year Plans to NITI Aayog: how India plans development
After independence, India adopted economic planning to direct scarce resources towards industrialisation, agriculture, infrastructure and social development. The…
UPSC foundations · 166
The 1991 reforms: liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation
In 1991 India faced a severe balance of payments crisis, with foreign exchange reserves falling to critically low levels and the country at risk of default on external…
UPSC foundations · 167
The external sector: balance of payments, exchange rates and reserves
The balance of payments records all economic transactions between residents of a country and the rest of the world. Its current account covers trade in goods and…
UPSC foundations · 168
The informal economy: small firms, casual work and missing protections
A large share of India's economic activity takes place outside formal regulation: in unregistered firms, household enterprises, street vending, construction sites, farms…
UPSC foundations · 169
The digital economy: platforms, data and India's public digital infrastructure
The digital economy covers more than e-commerce and apps. It includes digital payments, online services, platform work, data-driven business models and the public…
UPSC foundations · 170
Inclusive growth and regional disparities: who gains from growth
Inclusive growth means growth that raises incomes and opportunities broadly, not only in a few sectors or places. The idea gained prominence because rapid aggregate…
UPSC foundations · 171
The Reserve Bank of India: central bank, regulator and banker to government
The Reserve Bank of India, established on 1 April 1935 under the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, and nationalised on 1 January 1949, is India's central bank. A central…
UPSC foundations · 172
Monetary policy tools: repo, reverse repo, CRR, SLR and transmission
Monetary policy works mainly by changing the cost and availability of money. Its best-known tool in India is the repo rate, the rate at which the Reserve Bank of India…
UPSC foundations · 173
Commercial banks: nationalisation, reform and consolidation
Commercial banks accept deposits from the public and lend to households, firms and governments, earning mainly from the difference between lending and deposit rates. In…
UPSC foundations · 174
Financial inclusion: accounts, payments and the last-mile problem
Financial inclusion means that individuals and small firms can access useful, affordable financial services: payments, savings, credit, insurance and pensions. Exclusion…
UPSC foundations · 175
Bad loans: NPAs, recovery and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code
A non-performing asset, or NPA, is a loan on which interest or principal has remained overdue beyond a specified period, generally 90 days for most bank loans in India.…
UPSC foundations · 176
Payment systems: NEFT, RTGS, IMPS and UPI
A payment system is the infrastructure that moves money between accounts safely and quickly. Before instant mobile payments, most transfers relied on cheques, cash or…
UPSC foundations · 177
NBFCs and development finance: lending beyond banks
Non-banking financial companies, or NBFCs, lend, invest and provide financial services without holding a full banking licence. They cannot generally accept demand…
UPSC foundations · 178
Cooperative banks and rural credit: local institutions, persistent problems
Cooperative banks are member-owned institutions that provide credit and banking services, especially in rural areas. Their structure is three-tiered in many states:…
UPSC foundations · 179
Bank regulation and supervision: capital, risk and depositor protection
Bank regulation exists because banks are special: they hold the public's savings, operate the payment system and lend on a scale that affects the whole economy. When a…
UPSC foundations · 180
Fintech, digital banking and the digital rupee
Financial technology, or fintech, uses software, data and mobile networks to provide payments, lending, investment and insurance more cheaply and quickly than…
UPSC foundations · 181
The Union Budget: how India plans its annual finances
The Union Budget is the central government's annual financial statement, presented to Parliament as required by Article 112 of the Constitution, which calls it the…
UPSC foundations · 182
Fiscal deficit and the FRBM framework: rules for government borrowing
The fiscal deficit is the gap between the government's total expenditure and its total receipts excluding borrowings. It measures how much the government must borrow in…
UPSC foundations · 183
India's tax system: direct taxes, indirect taxes and GST
Taxes are the government's main source of revenue and its main tool for redistribution. Direct taxes, such as income tax and corporation tax, are paid by the person or…
UPSC foundations · 184
Public debt: how much borrowing is sustainable
Public debt is the total stock of borrowings owed by the government, accumulated from past deficits. It differs from the fiscal deficit, which is the flow of new…
UPSC foundations · 185
Public expenditure and subsidies: who benefits and at what cost
Public expenditure is how the state turns revenue into services: salaries for teachers and health workers, interest on past debt, subsidies for food, fuel and…
UPSC foundations · 186
Disinvestment and asset monetisation: selling stakes, leasing assets
Disinvestment means the government sells part or all of its equity in a public sector enterprise, reducing its ownership share. It differs from privatisation in degree:…
UPSC foundations · 187
Financing infrastructure: public investment and public-private partnerships
Infrastructure, including roads, railways, ports, power, water and digital networks, requires large upfront investment and yields returns over decades. Governments…
UPSC foundations · 188
State finances: budgets, borrowing and dependence on transfers
State governments provide most everyday public services in India, including police, health, school education, water supply and agriculture extension, but they raise a…
UPSC foundations · 189
Audit and accountability: the CAG, Public Accounts and budget oversight
Budget approval is only half of financial accountability; the other half is audit after spending. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India, or CAG, is a…
UPSC foundations · 190
Fiscal transparency: off-budget borrowing, guarantees and honest accounts
Fiscal transparency means that citizens, legislatures and markets can see the true size of government borrowing, spending and liabilities. Headline deficit and debt…
UPSC foundations · 191
Land reforms: tenancy, ceilings and the unfinished agenda
Land reforms were among the first major economic policies after independence, aiming to break concentrated land ownership, give security to tenants and create a base for…
UPSC foundations · 192
Irrigation and water: canals, groundwater and the water crisis
Irrigation transforms farming from a gamble on monsoon rain into a more predictable activity, allowing multiple crops, higher-yielding varieties and diversification into…
UPSC foundations · 193
Crop insurance and farm risk: PMFBY and the limits of protection
Farming income is exposed to risks farmers cannot control: drought, flood, hail, pests, disease and price crashes. A single bad season can push a household into debt,…
UPSC foundations · 194
Agricultural credit: Kisan Credit Cards, cooperatives and indebtedness
Credit is essential to farming: seeds, fertiliser, labour and irrigation must be paid for months before harvest income arrives. Without affordable credit, farmers borrow…
UPSC foundations · 195
Food processing and value chains: from farm gate to consumer
A large share of India's farm output is sold raw, soon after harvest, when prices are lowest and losses from spoilage are highest. Food processing, including milling,…
UPSC foundations · 196
Allied sectors: dairy, livestock and fisheries beyond crops
Allied sectors, including animal husbandry, dairying, fisheries and poultry, now provide a large and growing share of agricultural value and a steadier income than…
UPSC foundations · 197
Agricultural marketing: mandis, eNAM and farmer producer organisations
How farmers sell matters as much as what they grow. Traditionally, farmers sold in regulated wholesale markets, or mandis, governed by state Agricultural Produce Market…
UPSC foundations · 198
Seeds, technology and precision farming: the next productivity frontier
Productivity growth in Indian agriculture has historically come from better seeds, irrigation, fertiliser and mechanisation, beginning with the Green Revolution of the…
UPSC foundations · 199
Sustainable agriculture: soil health, climate and farming for the future
Sustainable agriculture aims to produce food and incomes over the long term without degrading the soil, water and ecosystems on which farming depends. Intensive…
UPSC foundations · 200
Agricultural exports, trade and food security: feeding India, selling abroad
India is both a large food producer and a large food consumer, so agricultural trade policy must serve two goals that can conflict: remunerative prices for farmers and…
UPSC foundations · 201
Make in India and the push for manufacturing
The Make in India initiative was launched on 25 September 2014 with the aim of facilitating investment, fostering innovation, building high-quality manufacturing…
UPSC foundations · 202
Micro, small and medium enterprises and industrial clusters
Micro, small and medium enterprises, usually called MSMEs, are the small firms that make components, process food, weave cloth, repair machines, run workshops and supply…
UPSC foundations · 203
Industrial corridors and special economic zones
An industrial corridor is a planned belt of infrastructure and industry built around a transport spine, such as a highway, railway line or port connection. The idea is…
UPSC foundations · 204
Textiles and apparel: from fibre to fashion
Textiles run from fibre to finished clothing, and India is present at nearly every stage: cotton farming, ginning, spinning, weaving, processing, garment stitching, and…
UPSC foundations · 205
Steel, minerals and mining
Steel is the backbone metal of construction, automobiles, railways, ships and machinery, so steel policy is also infrastructure policy. India has been the world's…
UPSC foundations · 206
Pharmaceuticals: the pharmacy of the world
India is the world's third-largest producer of pharmaceuticals by volume and fourteenth by value, according to the Commerce Secretary's statement reported by the Press…
UPSC foundations · 207
Electronics and semiconductors
Almost every modern machine, from a phone to a car to a power grid controller, depends on semiconductor chips. India designs many chips and assembles many electronic…
UPSC foundations · 208
Defence manufacturing and indigenisation
India is one of the world's largest importers of arms, a position governments have long described as a strategic weakness. Defence manufacturing policy tries to reverse…
UPSC foundations · 209
Food processing: from farm gate to shelf
A large share of India's farm output is sold fresh, with little processing, which means farmers capture a small part of the final retail price and a large part of the…
UPSC foundations · 210
Industrial labour and informal manufacturing work
Much of India's manufacturing happens outside large registered factories: in workshops, home-based units, repair shops and small clusters where workers may have no…
UPSC foundations · 211
Science policy and research funding
India's research system is largely public: universities, Indian Institutes of Technology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research laboratories, and mission…
UPSC foundations · 212
Biotechnology and genetically modified crops
Biotechnology uses living organisms and their processes to make products, from medicines and vaccines to improved crops and industrial enzymes. The Department of…
UPSC foundations · 213
Nanotechnology: working at the scale of atoms
Nanotechnology works with materials at the scale of nanometres, billionths of a metre, where materials can behave differently from their bulk forms: stronger, more…
UPSC foundations · 214
Nuclear energy and the three-stage programme
India's nuclear programme began with the Atomic Energy Commission in 1948 and the Department of Atomic Energy in 1954, under the scientific leadership of Homi Bhabha.…
UPSC foundations · 215
Vaccines and the science of public health
Vaccination is one of the cheapest and most effective public health tools: it trains the immune system to recognise a pathogen without causing the disease, and when…
UPSC foundations · 216
Critical minerals and materials science
Modern technology runs on a short list of minerals that are essential and hard to substitute: lithium and cobalt for batteries, rare earth elements for magnets in motors…
UPSC foundations · 217
Ocean science and the Deep Ocean Mission
Oceans cover most of the earth's surface, regulate climate by absorbing heat and carbon dioxide, and support fisheries, shipping and coastal livelihoods. Yet the deep…
UPSC foundations · 218
Agricultural science: seeds, soil and precision farming
Agricultural science in India is organised largely through the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, founded in 1929, which coordinates research institutes and…
UPSC foundations · 219
Quantum science and the National Quantum Mission
Quantum science studies matter and energy at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles, where the usual rules of everyday physics give way to stranger ones. A quantum…
UPSC foundations · 220
Patents and intellectual property in science
A patent gives an inventor a time-limited exclusive right to an invention, in exchange for disclosing how it works. The bargain is meant to reward innovation while…
UPSC foundations · 221
ISRO and India's launch vehicles
The Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO, was formed in 1969, building on the space research work led by Vikram Sarabhai. Its early purpose was practical: use space…
UPSC foundations · 222
Chandrayaan and lunar exploration
Chandrayaan-1, launched in 2008, was India's first mission to the Moon. It carried instruments from India and abroad, and its Moon Mineralogy Mapper found evidence of…
UPSC foundations · 223
Gaganyaan: India's human spaceflight programme
Gaganyaan is India's programme to send astronauts, called gaganyatris, into low Earth orbit in an Indian spacecraft launched by an Indian rocket, and to bring them…
UPSC foundations · 224
Satellites: navigation, remote sensing and everyday use
Most people never see a satellite, but they use them daily: weather forecasts, television, navigation on a phone, cyclone warnings and crop assessments all depend on…
UPSC foundations · 225
Private space firms and the Indian Space Policy
For most of its history, India's space sector was a government monopoly: ISRO designed, built and launched, and private firms supplied components to its specifications.…
UPSC foundations · 226
Digital public infrastructure: Aadhaar, UPI and open networks
Digital public infrastructure means the shared digital rails that anyone can build on: a way to prove identity, a way to pay, and a way to share data with consent.…
UPSC foundations · 227
Data protection and cybersecurity
Every online service collects personal data: names, locations, purchases, health information and biometric details. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act of 2023 is…
UPSC foundations · 228
Telecom: from 5G rollout to the 6G vision
Telecom networks are the physical base of the digital economy: towers, fibre, spectrum and switching equipment that carry voice and data. India's telecom story moved…
UPSC foundations · 229
E-governance and the digital divide
E-governance means using digital tools to deliver government services: certificates, land records, pensions, tax filing, grievance redress and benefit payments. The…
UPSC foundations · 230
Artificial intelligence: capability, use and governance
Artificial intelligence means computer systems that learn patterns from data and use them to classify, predict, generate or decide: recognising speech, translating…
UPSC foundations · 231
Air pollution and the National Clean Air Programme
Air pollution in India is dominated by fine particles, PM2.5 and PM10, particles small enough to enter the lungs and bloodstream. Their sources vary by place and season:…
UPSC foundations · 232
Water resources and groundwater
India holds a large share of the world's people but a much smaller share of its renewable freshwater, and rainfall is concentrated in a few monsoon months. That…
UPSC foundations · 233
Forests and forest conservation law
Forests provide timber and non-timber products, store carbon, regulate water, harbour wildlife and support the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities. India's…
UPSC foundations · 234
Wildlife protection: Project Tiger and beyond
The Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972 is the central law for wildlife conservation in India. It provides for protected areas, national parks, wildlife sanctuaries,…
UPSC foundations · 235
Climate change and India's climate commitments
Climate change is driven by greenhouse gases, above all carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, which trap heat in the atmosphere and warm the planet. Its effects in…
UPSC foundations · 236
Waste management: solid waste, plastic and e-waste
Waste management is the unglamorous core of urban environmental policy. A city that cannot collect, segregate, treat and dispose of its waste will pollute its land,…
UPSC foundations · 237
Wetlands and Ramsar sites
Wetlands are areas where water covers the soil, or is near the surface, for at least part of the year: lakes, marshes, mangroves, floodplains, estuaries and even some…
UPSC foundations · 238
Coastal regulation and the marine environment
India's coastline, over 7,500 kilometres long including island territories, supports ports, fisheries, tourism, industry and some of the country's largest cities. The…
UPSC foundations · 239
Environmental impact assessment in India
Environmental impact assessment, or EIA, is the process of studying a proposed project's likely effects on air, water, land, biodiversity and people before it is…
UPSC foundations · 240
Renewable energy and the energy transition
Renewable energy means energy from sources that replenish naturally: sunlight, wind, water, biomass and geothermal heat. India's transition towards renewables is driven…
UPSC foundations · 241
What biodiversity means, and why India is called mega-diverse
Biodiversity is the variety of life at three levels: genes within a species, species themselves, and ecosystems such as forests, grasslands, wetlands and coral reefs. A…
UPSC foundations · 242
The Biological Diversity Act, 2002, and its 2023 amendment
India's Biological Diversity Act, 2002, gives domestic legal form to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which India signed at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Act has…
UPSC foundations · 243
Protected areas: national parks, sanctuaries and reserves
India's protected-area network is created mainly under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. The Act provides for national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, conservation…
UPSC foundations · 244
Project Tiger and Project Elephant
Project Tiger was launched on 1 April 1973, following concern about falling tiger numbers. It began with nine reserves, including Jim Corbett in Uttarakhand, where the…
UPSC foundations · 245
Wetlands and Ramsar sites in India
Wetlands — marshes, lakes, floodplains, mangroves, estuaries and even rice paddies in the broad sense — store water, recharge groundwater, buffer floods, filter…
UPSC foundations · 246
Invasive alien species in India
Not every non-native species is a problem. Many crops, from potatoes to tomatoes, came from elsewhere and are now part of Indian farming. A species becomes invasive when…
UPSC foundations · 247
Forest rights, communities and conservation
For much of India's modern forest history, forest law treated forest dwellers as encroachers on state land, even when their families had lived in and used those forests…
UPSC foundations · 248
Marine and coastal biodiversity
India's coastline runs for more than 7,500 kilometres, including the island groups, and its marine zone includes coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds, estuaries and…
UPSC foundations · 249
Crop diversity, seed banks and farmers' varieties
Modern farming depends on a narrow set of high-yielding varieties, which is efficient but risky. When millions of hectares grow genetically similar crops, a single pest,…
UPSC foundations · 250
Biodiversity loss and the global targets to stop it
Biodiversity loss has five main direct drivers, recognised by global assessments: habitat change, overexploitation, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species.…
UPSC foundations · 251
How greenhouse warming works, and what the IPCC says
Sunlight warms the Earth's surface, and the surface gives off heat as infrared radiation. Greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and others — absorb…
UPSC foundations · 252
India's National Action Plan on Climate Change
India released its National Action Plan on Climate Change, the NAPCC, on 30 June 2008. It was designed to pursue development goals while yielding climate co-benefits —…
UPSC foundations · 253
Heatwaves and monsoon change in India
India's summer monsoon, which arrives in June and withdraws by September or October, supplies most of the country's annual rainfall and shapes sowing, groundwater…
UPSC foundations · 254
Himalayan glaciers and glacial lake floods
The Himalayas feed the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra river systems, which support hundreds of millions of people for drinking water, irrigation and hydropower. Much of…
UPSC foundations · 255
Sea-level rise and India's coasts
Sea level rises for two main reasons: ocean water expands as it warms, and land ice — glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets — melts into the sea. The rise…
UPSC foundations · 256
Cyclones: forecasting and evacuation in India
Tropical cyclones form over warm oceans, gather energy from heat and moisture, and strike coasts with high winds, heavy rain and storm surge — a rise in sea level pushed…
UPSC foundations · 257
Floods, droughts and river management
Floods and droughts are often treated as opposites, but in India they frequently strike the same district in different seasons, or even the same year. A monsoon flood in…
UPSC foundations · 258
The Disaster Management Act, 2005, and its institutions
Before 2005, Indian disaster response was largely relief-driven: governments acted after a disaster and paid compensation. The Disaster Management Act, 2005, passed…
UPSC foundations · 259
The Sendai Framework and community preparedness
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 was adopted by United Nations member states in March 2015 at the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction…
UPSC foundations · 260
Climate finance and loss and damage
Climate finance is money provided or mobilised to cut emissions and to adapt to climate change. It matters because the countries and communities most exposed to climate…
UPSC foundations · 261
Internal security: threats, actors and institutions
Internal security means protecting a country's people, territory and constitutional order from threats that arise inside it or are directed at it from within, as…
UPSC foundations · 262
Left-wing extremism: history and response
Left-wing extremism in India, often called Naxalism, traces its origins to a peasant uprising at Naxalbari in West Bengal in 1967 and to Maoist ideology, which argued…
UPSC foundations · 263
Insurgency in the north-east and peace accords
The north-eastern states have experienced several distinct insurgencies, not one movement. Their causes differ: demands for separate states or autonomy, fears about…
UPSC foundations · 264
Jammu and Kashmir: security after the 2019 changes
On 5 August 2019, the Union government revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution, through a presidential order and a…
UPSC foundations · 265
Border management and coastal security
India has land borders with Pakistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Afghanistan (through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, in India's official position), and a…
UPSC foundations · 266
Terrorism law: UAPA and the NIA
India's main anti-terrorism law is the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, originally aimed at activities threatening India's sovereignty and integrity.…
UPSC foundations · 267
Cyber security: CERT-In, critical infrastructure and the IT Act
Cyber threats range from phishing and ransomware against individuals and hospitals to attacks on power grids, banks, railways and government networks. An attack on a…
UPSC foundations · 268
Organised crime, drugs and money laundering
Organised crime differs from ordinary crime in its structure: it is planned, continuing and profit-driven, whether it involves drug trafficking, arms smuggling, human…
UPSC foundations · 269
Police reform: Prakash Singh and the central forces
India's police system still rests on the Police Act, 1861, enacted under colonial rule, though many states have since passed their own police acts. The 1861 Act designed…
UPSC foundations · 270
Intelligence, coordination and oversight
Intelligence failures are often failures of coordination rather than collection: one agency holds a piece of information, another holds a second piece, and no one joins…
UPSC foundations · 271
What ethics means for public office
Ethics is the study of what is right and good, and of how people ought to act. It is not the same as the law: an action can be lawful but still unethical, and in rare…
UPSC foundations · 272
Integrity: consistency between principle and practice
Integrity is often described as wholeness: what a person believes, says, and does fit together, in public and in private. In public life it has a more specific meaning.…
UPSC foundations · 273
Honesty, accountability and transparency in administration
Honesty, accountability, and transparency are three distinct values that support each other. Honesty means telling the truth and not misleading, even by selective…
UPSC foundations · 274
Conflict of interest and how it is managed
A conflict of interest arises when a person's private interests — financial, personal, or from a previous role — could interfere, or be seen to interfere, with their…
UPSC foundations · 275
Corruption: causes, costs and controls
Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. It ranges from a small bribe to speed up a service, to large-scale diversion of public funds, to the capture…
UPSC foundations · 276
Codes of conduct and codes of ethics
Public services usually govern behaviour through two different kinds of document, and confusing them causes real problems. A code of conduct sets enforceable rules: what…
UPSC foundations · 277
Whistleblowing and protecting those who speak up
Whistleblowing is the disclosure, by someone inside an organisation, of wrongdoing such as corruption, danger to public safety, or misuse of public funds. It differs…
UPSC foundations · 278
Ethical leadership and moral courage
Leadership in public life is not only about achieving results; it is about setting the standard by which results are achieved. Staff watch what leaders reward, tolerate,…
UPSC foundations · 279
Probity in public procurement and use of public funds
Probity means uprightness and honesty in handling what belongs to others. In government, almost every rupee spent is someone else's money, collected through taxes and…
UPSC foundations · 280
Ethics in a digital age: data, privacy and AI in government
Digital government changes the ethics of public office, not by creating entirely new values, but by changing the scale and speed at which old problems occur. A paper…
UPSC foundations · 281
The scientific method and how science tests claims
Science is not a collection of facts but a method for testing claims about the world. The core idea is simple: a claim about nature should be stated clearly enough that…
UPSC foundations · 282
Motion, force and energy in everyday physics
Everyday movement — walking, driving, throwing a ball — follows laws first stated systematically by Isaac Newton in his Principia of 1687. His first law says that an…
UPSC foundations · 283
Electricity and magnetism: from circuits to the grid
Electricity is the flow of electric charge, usually electrons moving through a conductor such as copper wire. Three quantities describe a circuit: voltage, which is the…
UPSC foundations · 284
Heat, light and sound: waves in daily life
Heat, light, and sound behave very differently, but two of them — light and sound — are waves, and heat moves by three distinct processes. Heat travels by conduction,…
UPSC foundations · 285
Atoms, elements and the periodic table
All matter is made of atoms, tiny units that are themselves made of smaller particles. At the centre of an atom is a nucleus of protons, which carry positive charge, and…
UPSC foundations · 286
Chemical reactions, acids, bases and salts
A chemical reaction rearranges atoms into new substances: bonds break, atoms regroup, and new bonds form. Unlike a physical change such as melting ice, a chemical change…
UPSC foundations · 287
Cells, genes and the basics of life
Every living thing is made of cells, the smallest units capable of carrying out the processes of life. Some organisms, such as bacteria, consist of a single cell;…
UPSC foundations · 288
The human body: digestion, circulation and immunity
The human body runs on three cooperating systems: one to take in fuel, one to distribute it, and one to defend against invaders. Digestion begins in the mouth, where…
UPSC foundations · 289
Evolution and the diversity of life
Evolution is the change in the inherited characteristics of populations over generations. Its central mechanism, natural selection, was set out by Charles Darwin and…
UPSC foundations · 290
The Earth, the solar system and the universe
Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and its story is one of slow change punctuated by dramatic events. The planet formed from dust and gas around the young Sun, heated…
UPSC foundations · 291
Science in the kitchen and the home
Cooking is applied chemistry and physics, and understanding it makes a better cook and a safer household. Heat moves into food by conduction from a pan, convection in…
UPSC foundations · 292
Water, sanitation and public health science
Clean water and sanitation have saved more lives than most medical advances, and the science behind them is straightforward. Disease-causing microbes reach people mainly…
UPSC foundations · 293
Climate science in everyday decisions
Climate science begins with a simple physical fact: certain gases in the atmosphere absorb heat radiated by the Earth and re-emit part of it, warming the planet. This…
UPSC foundations · 294
Transport science: engines, electric vehicles and safety
A vehicle is an energy converter on wheels, and comparing engines means comparing how they convert stored energy into motion. A petrol or diesel engine burns fuel inside…
UPSC foundations · 295
Communication technology: from radio to 5G and satellites
Modern communication rests on one idea: information can be carried by waves. Radio, television, mobile phones, and satellite links all encode sound, pictures, or data…
UPSC foundations · 296
Computers, the internet and how data travels
A computer is a machine that follows instructions to process information, and at its heart it works in binary: everything — numbers, text, images, sound — is represented…
UPSC foundations · 297
Artificial intelligence: how it works and where it helps
Artificial intelligence (AI) means computer systems that perform tasks which, done by people, would require intelligence: recognising speech, translating languages,…
UPSC foundations · 298
Biotechnology: vaccines, diagnostics and GM crops
Biotechnology uses living organisms or their parts to make products and solve problems, and it is far older than its modern reputation suggests. Fermenting bread,…
UPSC foundations · 299
Space technology in daily life: weather, navigation, communication
Space technology affects daily life far more through services beamed down than through rockets watched going up. Weather satellites monitor clouds, storms, and ocean…
UPSC foundations · 300
Emerging technology and the questions it raises for society
Emerging technologies — quantum computing, advanced robotics, nanotechnology, brain-computer interfaces, and next-generation AI — share a pattern: they promise large…
Current affairs explainers · 001
When a Governor sits on a Bill: the Tamil Nadu assent case
Under Article 200 of the Constitution, when a Bill passed by a state legislature is presented to the Governor, the Governor may assent to it, withhold assent, or reserve…
Current affairs explainers · 002
The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, and the Supreme Court's interim order
A waqf is a permanent dedication of property for religious or charitable purposes under Islamic law. In India, waqfs have long been administered under statute, most…
Current affairs explainers · 003
Caste enumeration returns to the Census: the 2025 decision
Since Independence, India's Census has systematically counted Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but it has not counted caste for other communities as part of the…
Current affairs explainers · 004
Demolitions and due process: the Supreme Court's 2024 guidelines
In several states in the early 2020s, houses and shops belonging to people accused of crimes, or to their families, were demolished by municipal or development…
Current affairs explainers · 005
Online money games banned: the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025
Before 2025, online games involving money in India were regulated by a patchwork of state laws and court rulings. Courts had, in several cases, distinguished games of…
Current affairs explainers · 006
Three new criminal codes: BNS, BNSS, and BSA from 1 July 2024
For more than a century and a half, India's criminal justice system ran on three colonial-era statutes: the Indian Penal Code of 1860, the Code of Criminal Procedure of…
Current affairs explainers · 007
India's data protection law moves from statute to rules: the DPDP Act
India had no comprehensive, standalone data protection statute until the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, which received Presidential assent on 11 August…
Current affairs explainers · 008
Stray dogs, public safety, and animal welfare: the Supreme Court's 2025 orders
In July 2025, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of the stray dog problem in Delhi, after reports of children and others being attacked, including a report of a…
Current affairs explainers · 009
President's Rule in Manipur: from February 2025 to an elected government
Manipur has been in crisis since ethnic violence between Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities erupted in May 2023, following a dispute linked to a demand for Scheduled Tribe…
Current affairs explainers · 010
One-third of seats for women: the Women's Reservation Act, 2023
Women have long been under-represented in India's legislatures relative to their share of the population, even though women already hold a large share of seats in…
Current affairs explainers · 011
The 2024 Lok Sabha election: a majority for the alliance, not for one party
India's 2024 general election was held in seven phases between 19 April and 1 June 2024, to elect all 543 members of the 18th Lok Sabha. About 970 million people were…
Current affairs explainers · 012
Haryana 2024: a third term on a narrow vote margin
Haryana voted in a single phase on 5 October 2024 to elect all 90 members of its Legislative Assembly, and counting took place on 8 October 2024. Exit polls had widely…
Current affairs explainers · 013
Jammu and Kashmir votes again: the 2024 Assembly election
Jammu and Kashmir had not held an Assembly election for a decade when it voted in three phases on 18 and 25 September and 1 October 2024. The election was the first…
Current affairs explainers · 014
Maharashtra 2024: a landslide that reversed the Lok Sabha pattern
Maharashtra voted in a single phase on 20 November 2024 for all 288 seats in its Legislative Assembly, and counting took place on 23 November 2024. The election was a…
Current affairs explainers · 015
Jharkhand 2024: an incumbent alliance holds on
Jharkhand voted in two phases on 13 and 20 November 2024 for all 81 seats in its Legislative Assembly, with counting in November 2024 alongside Maharashtra. The contest…
Current affairs explainers · 016
Delhi 2025: the BJP returns to power after 27 years
Delhi voted on 5 February 2025 to elect all 70 members of its Legislative Assembly, and counting took place on 8 February 2025. The election ended a decade of Aam Aadmi…
Current affairs explainers · 017
Who chooses the Chief Election Commissioner? The 2025 appointment
Article 324 of the Constitution vests the superintendence, direction, and control of elections in the Election Commission of India, headed by the Chief Election…
Current affairs explainers · 018
The Vice-Presidential election of 2025: an indirect election in plain view
The Vice President of India is not chosen by direct popular vote. Under Article 66, the Vice President is elected by members of an electoral college consisting of…
Current affairs explainers · 019
Bihar 2025: a landslide for the NDA after a contested roll revision
Bihar voted in two phases in November 2025 for all 243 seats in its Legislative Assembly, and counting took place on 14 November 2025. The election was the first…
Current affairs explainers · 020
Five assemblies in one spring: the 2026 election schedule
Assembly elections are due when a House completes its five-year term, unless it is dissolved earlier. In early 2026, five Houses were approaching the end of their terms…
Current affairs explainers · 021
Budget 2025-26: no income tax up to 12 lakh rupees under the new regime
The Union Budget is the government's annual statement of revenue and expenditure, presented to Parliament under Article 112 of the Constitution. On 1 February 2025,…
Current affairs explainers · 022
GST 2.0: two main rates from 22 September 2025
The Goods and Services Tax, introduced in July 2017, replaced a maze of central and state indirect taxes with a single national tax, administered through the GST…
Current affairs explainers · 023
The RBI cuts the repo rate to 5.5 per cent in 2025
The repo rate is the rate at which the Reserve Bank of India lends money to commercial banks, usually against government securities, under the liquidity adjustment…
Current affairs explainers · 024
Growth of 6.5 per cent in 2024-25: reading the GDP estimates
Gross domestic product is the total value of goods and services produced in an economy in a given period, and its growth rate is the most widely quoted summary of…
Current affairs explainers · 025
The 50 per cent United States tariff on India in 2025
Trade between India and the United States is among India's most important external economic relationships, with the United States as one of India's largest export…
Current affairs explainers · 026
India and the United Kingdom sign a trade agreement in July 2025
India and the United Kingdom began negotiations for a free trade agreement in January 2022, after the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union, building on an…
Current affairs explainers · 027
The rupee's slide to record lows in late 2025
The exchange rate is the price of one currency in terms of another, and for India the most watched rate is rupees per United States dollar. India does not fix the rupee…
Current affairs explainers · 028
UPI crosses 20 billion transactions in a month
The Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, is a real-time payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India, which allows instant transfer of money…
Current affairs explainers · 029
Fourth largest? Why India's ranking claim changed in 2025
In May 2025, NITI Aayog Chief Executive Officer B. V. R. Subrahmanyam told a press briefing, after the 10th Governing Council meeting, that India had become the world's…
Current affairs explainers · 030
Retail inflation falls to 0.25 per cent in October 2025
Retail inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index, tracks how much more, or less, a representative basket of goods and services costs compared with a year earlier.…
Current affairs explainers · 031
The India–United States trade deal of 2026: from 50 per cent tariffs to the edge of agreement
For most of 2025, India faced the steepest American tariffs of any major trading partner. After trade talks collapsed in August 2025, the United States imposed duties of…
Current affairs explainers · 032
The India–European Union free trade agreement: concluded after nearly two decades
On 27 January 2026, at the 16th India–European Union Summit in New Delhi, India and the European Union concluded negotiations on a free trade agreement that had been in…
Current affairs explainers · 033
The India–United Kingdom trade deal enters into force
On 15 July 2026, the India–United Kingdom Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, generally called CETA, entered into force. It had been signed on 24 July 2025 in…
Current affairs explainers · 034
One year of the India–EFTA deal: investment promises meet export reality
The India–European Free Trade Association Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement, known as TEPA, completed its first year in force on 1 October 2026. Signed on 10…
Current affairs explainers · 035
The India–New Zealand free trade agreement: nine months from launch to signature
On 20 October 2026, the India–New Zealand Free Trade Agreement entered into force, completing one of the fastest trade negotiations India has ever concluded.…
Current affairs explainers · 036
India–Australia: the interim deal works, the comprehensive deal waits
India and Australia already trade under a deal, but not yet the deal both governments say they want. The Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, ECTA, signed in April…
Current affairs explainers · 037
The ASEAN trade review: fixing a deficit that widened for fifteen years
India's oldest major regional trade pact is also its most lopsided. The ASEAN–India Trade in Goods Agreement, AITIGA, was signed in 2009 and implemented from 2010, and…
Current affairs explainers · 038
The Gulf corridor: from a 100-billion-dollar milestone to a 200-billion-dollar target
India's fastest-growing major trade corridor runs west, across the Arabian Sea. The India–United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, CEPA, signed…
Current affairs explainers · 039
Indian textiles under American tariffs: a labour-intensive sector takes the hit
Few sectors felt the 2025–26 American tariff shock as directly as textiles and apparel. The United States is the single largest market for India's textile and apparel…
Current affairs explainers · 040
Record exports in a fractured trading system
India closed the financial year 2025–26 with a headline that survived a year of tariff turmoil: total exports of goods and services reached a record 863.11 billion…
Current affairs explainers · 041
The 2026 Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz crisis
On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched an air war against Iran, following the failure of nuclear negotiations in Geneva and a shorter twelve-day air…
Current affairs explainers · 042
Ukraine in 2026: fighting continues while talks resume
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, begun in February 2022, entered its fifth year in 2026 as a grinding war of attrition in which both sides repeatedly struck each…
Current affairs explainers · 043
Gaza one year after the peace plan: ceasefire without reconstruction
The Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, a twenty-point plan brokered by the United States, came into effect on 10 October 2025, bringing a ceasefire, the…
Current affairs explainers · 044
The Trump–Xi summit of 2026: a truce extended, not a trade war ended
On 24 September 2026, Chinese President Xi Jinping made his first state visit to the United States since 2015, meeting President Donald Trump in Washington for a day of…
Current affairs explainers · 045
BRICS in New Delhi: India's chair year and the limits of consensus
India chaired BRICS in 2026 and hosted the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on 12–13 September 2026, under the theme Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and…
Current affairs explainers · 046
COP31 in Antalya: a climate summit with two captains
The 2026 United Nations climate summit, COP31, will be held in Antalya, Türkiye, in late 2026, under an arrangement without precedent in the history of the climate…
Current affairs explainers · 047
The United Nations opens a global dialogue on AI governance
On 6–7 July 2026, the United Nations convened the first annual Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance in Geneva, the first universal forum operating under…
Current affairs explainers · 048
Security Council reform in 2026: the case against 1945
On 22 October 2026, India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Parvathaneni Harish, told the General Assembly that a Security Council which does…
Current affairs explainers · 049
Europe in 2026: the far right inside the tent, and a budget on the brink
Europe's politics in 2026 are defined less by parties trying to leave the European Union than by parties trying to run it from within. Challenger parties, driven mainly…
Current affairs explainers · 050
India and Africa in 2026: trade near 100 billion dollars, partnership beyond trade
India's partnership with Africa in 2026 is best measured in two ways: the trade that already exists, and the cooperation that trade alone does not capture. Bilateral…
Current affairs explainers · 051
One year after Operation Sindoor: a ceasefire that holds, a peace that does not exist
On 22 April 2025, a terrorist attack in Pahalgam killed 26 people. Within two days India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, ended visa-free travel and closed the Attari…
Current affairs explainers · 052
India–China on the LAC in 2026: from disengagement to border management
The India–China boundary dispute covers an approximately 3,488-kilometre frontier where the two sides hold differing perceptions of the Line of Actual Control. The…
Current affairs explainers · 053
The end of Left-Wing Extremism: how India declared itself Naxal-free
On 31 March 2026, the Union government's self-imposed deadline for eliminating Left-Wing Extremism arrived, and the Ministry of Home Affairs declared the country…
Current affairs explainers · 054
Indian air power in 2026: too few squadrons, too many programmes
Air Chief Marshal Ashutosh Dixit assumed command as the 29th Chief of the Air Staff on 31 October 2026, inheriting what his predecessor had called the Indian Air Force's…
Current affairs explainers · 055
CERT-In's AI-agent warning: when the attacker is software, not a person
On 15 October 2026, India's Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT-In, issued a critical-severity advisory, CIAD-2026-0049, titled AI Agents as Attack Vectors — India's…
Current affairs explainers · 056
India's maritime strategy for 2026: securing the sea lanes in a no-war, no-peace ocean
In May 2026 the Indian Navy released its third public maritime strategy, the Indian Navy Maritime Security Strategy 2026, replacing Ensuring Secure Seas of 2015 and…
Current affairs explainers · 057
Fencing the Myanmar border: security, kinship and an unfinished line
India shares a 1,643-kilometre border with Myanmar across four north-eastern states, running through homelands of Zo, Naga and other communities whose families straddle…
Current affairs explainers · 058
The Global Terrorism Index 2026: fewer deaths, a sharper map
The Institute for Economics and Peace published the 13th edition of its Global Terrorism Index in March 2026, covering 163 countries. Its headline was encouraging: 5,582…
Current affairs explainers · 059
Critical minerals: the quiet contest behind clean energy and modern weapons
Modern security increasingly depends on rocks most people have never heard of. Rare earth elements — seventeen metals used in permanent magnets, electric vehicle motors,…
Current affairs explainers · 060
After New START: the world's nuclear guardrails come down
On 5 February 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty — New START — expired. Signed in April 2010 and in force from February 2011, it was the last treaty limiting…
Current affairs explainers · 061
The 2026 Nobel science prizes: light, neutrinos, and mirror molecules
Between 5 and 7 October 2026, Stockholm announced the three science Nobel Prizes, and each one rewarded a different way of seeing the invisible. The Physiology or…
Current affairs explainers · 062
The India AI Impact Summit and the New Delhi Declaration
From 16 to 20 February 2026, New Delhi hosted the India AI Impact Summit at Bharat Mandapam, the first summit in this series to be hosted by a country of the Global…
Current affairs explainers · 063
Gaganyaan G1 and ISRO's 2026 programme
India's human spaceflight programme spent 2026 preparing for a flight with no humans aboard. The first uncrewed Gaganyaan mission, G1, was targeted for launch within…
Current affairs explainers · 064
Artemis II: humans return to the Moon
On 1 April 2026, at 6:35 p.m. Eastern time, NASA's Artemis II lifted off from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying the first humans to travel to…
Current affairs explainers · 065
India's quantum mission takes shape
Quantum technology sounds abstract, but in 2026 it became concrete in India in three visible ways: machines, networks, and places. The National Quantum Mission, approved…
Current affairs explainers · 066
NISAR: a joint Earth radar goes public
The most useful satellite of 2026 may be one that does not take photographs at all. NISAR, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite, was launched on 30 July…
Current affairs explainers · 067
Semicon India 2026: from promises to packaging
At SEMICON India 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India now has five chip assembly and packaging plants in commercial production, and he launched the…
Current affairs explainers · 068
Samudrayaan: India prepares to dive 6,000 metres
While Gaganyaan aims upward, Samudrayaan aims down. India's first manned deep-ocean mission is scheduled to be launched by the end of 2026, using the indigenously…
Current affairs explainers · 069
The TB elimination drive: a public-health campaign at scale
Tuberculosis is curable, yet it still kills, which is why India's elimination drive is as much a test of administration as of medicine. On World TB Day 2026, 24 March,…
Current affairs explainers · 070
Heat-stress science: when heat becomes uncompensable
India's summer of 2026 was one of the hottest on record, with temperatures crossing 45 degrees Celsius across much of the country, according to a July 2026 heat report.…
Current affairs explainers · 071
The 2026 monsoon: a deficit, unevenly shared
India's southwest monsoon of 2026 ended as a deficient season. According to the India Meteorological Department's season-end report, rainfall over the country as a whole…
Current affairs explainers · 072
Delhi's winter air: emergency curbs become routine
On 21 October 2026, the Commission for Air Quality Management invoked Stage I of the Graded Response Action Plan across Delhi and the National Capital Region, the first…
Current affairs explainers · 073
COP31 in Antalya: a summit with two presidents
The 31st United Nations climate conference, COP31, is scheduled to be held at the Antalya Expo Center in Türkiye from 9 to 20 November 2026, just days after this note's…
Current affairs explainers · 074
Cyclone Arnab and the second storm behind it
Cyclone Arnab was the first named storm of the 2026 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, and it arrived late. It developed over the Bay of Bengal from 25 October 2026,…
Current affairs explainers · 075
India's wetlands reach 103 Ramsar sites
On 15 October 2026, Sukhna Wetland in Chandigarh and Sauj Jheel in Mainpuri district, Uttar Pradesh, were designated as Ramsar sites, taking India's total to 103…
Current affairs explainers · 076
The plastics treaty that still is not a treaty
In March 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly adopted a historic resolution to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution,…
Current affairs explainers · 077
Clean energy: India crosses 300 GW of non-fossil capacity
On 31 July 2026, India's installed non-fossil-fuel electricity generation capacity crossed 300 gigawatts, reaching 300.50 GW, more than 54 per cent of a total installed…
Current affairs explainers · 078
El Niño 2026-27: a forecast, not yet a verdict
El Niño is a warming of the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean that shifts weather patterns worldwide, and in 2026 it returned with force. The World…
Current affairs explainers · 079
AI enters the monsoon forecast
The 2026 monsoon was the first in which the India Meteorological Department launched two AI-enabled monsoon forecast models operationally, using a multi-model ensemble…
Current affairs explainers · 080
Loss and damage: the fund that has not yet paid out
Some climate damage cannot be adapted to: a village swallowed by the sea, a glacier lake that bursts, a harvest lost to a heatwave that no irrigation can fix. For…
Current affairs explainers · 081
Census 2027: India's first digital headcount
India's census was due in 2021 and postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is now Census 2027, the 16th census exercise and the eighth since Independence,…
Current affairs explainers · 082
Learning after the pandemic: recovery, not yet repair
The most encouraging education finding of recent years is also the most limited: learning has recovered from the pandemic, but it has not been repaired. The Annual…
Current affairs explainers · 083
Gig workers enter the safety net, on paper first
A delivery rider has no employer in the traditional sense, and for years that meant no safety net either: no group health insurance, no paid sick leave, no employer…
Current affairs explainers · 084
UPI at ten: 25 billion payments a month
In October 2026, India's Unified Payments Interface processed 25.47 billion transactions worth 31.53 lakh crore rupees, according to National Payments Corporation of…
Current affairs explainers · 085
India's schools in numbers: UDISE+ 2025-26
In July 2026, the Ministry of Education published the UDISE+ report for 2025-26, the Unified District Information System for Education Plus, which counted more than 1.48…
Current affairs explainers · 086
Jobs in 2025: what the PLFS unemployment figure means
In March 2026, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation published the Periodic Labour Force Survey for the calendar year 2025. It found overall…
Current affairs explainers · 087
Fully literate states: six and counting
In 2026, Sikkim and then Uttarakhand joined the list of fully literate states in India, taking the count to six. Sikkim was declared India's fifth fully literate state,…
Current affairs explainers · 088
Cleanest cities: what Indore's eighth title teaches
Swachh Survekshan is the world's largest urban sanitation survey, run annually by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban),…
Current affairs explainers · 089
Community volunteers: the quiet workforce of public health
Health programmes are usually described in budgets and hospital beds, but India's tuberculosis drive in 2026 showed a different workforce: volunteers. More than 7.16…
Current affairs explainers · 090
How to read India's social statistics without being misled
This series has quoted many numbers: 26 crore students, 3.1 per cent unemployment, 25.47 billion UPI transactions, 99.82 per cent literacy in Sikkim. Each is true in its…
Current affairs explainers · 091
India retain the T20 World Cup, by 96 runs
The 2026 ICC Men's T20 World Cup, the tenth edition of the tournament, was co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka from 7 February to 8 March 2026, with 20 teams playing a…
Current affairs explainers · 092
Spain win the first 48-team World Cup
The 2026 FIFA World Cup, the 23rd edition of the men's tournament, ran from 11 June to 19 July 2026 across Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and it was the first…
Current affairs explainers · 093
IPL 2026: RCB defend the crown
The 2026 Indian Premier League, the 19th edition of the tournament, ran from 28 March to 31 May 2026, with ten teams playing 74 matches across 13 venues. On 31 May, at…
Current affairs explainers · 094
WPL 2026: RCB chase 204 to win a second title
The fourth edition of the Women's Premier League ran from 9 January to 5 February 2026, featuring five teams, Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Delhi…
Current affairs explainers · 095
Asian Games 2026: India finish fourth with 85 medals
India closed its campaign at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games 2026, which ended on 4 October, with 85 medals: 21 gold, 27 silver, and 37 bronze, finishing fourth in the…
Current affairs explainers · 096
Milano Cortina 2026: two athletes, one best-ever slalom
The 25th Winter Olympic Games, Milano Cortina 2026, ran from 6 to 22 February 2026 in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, the first time two cities jointly hosted the…
Current affairs explainers · 097
Gukesh defends his crown against Sindarov
The FIDE World Championship Match 2026, scheduled from 22 November to 13 December in Geneva, Switzerland, will be the youngest world championship match in chess history,…
Current affairs explainers · 098
Hockey World Cup 2026: Germany's men, Argentina's women
The FIH Hockey World Cup Belgium and Netherlands 2026, held from 15 to 30 August 2026 in Wavre, Belgium, and Amsterdam, Netherlands, was the first time the men's and…
Current affairs explainers · 099
Glasgow 2026: 39 medals without India's strongest sports
The 2026 Commonwealth Games, held in Glasgow, Scotland, from 23 July to 2 August, were a scaled-down edition, staged after the original host, Victoria in Australia,…
Current affairs explainers · 100
The Sports Governance Act takes effect
On 1 January 2026, Indian sports administration moved from guidelines to law. Select provisions of the National Sports Governance Act, 2025, came into force on that…
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