The Supreme Court invoked its extraordinary constitutional power under Article 142 to quash FIRs against student protesters who participated in the nationwide NEET-UG agitation — spotlighting judicial guardianship of the right to protest and the constitutional bounds of police surveillance.

• NEET-UG paper leak (2025): Nationwide protests erupted over the leakage of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate), leading to the resignation of the Union Education Minister and a government review of examination conduct under the NTA (National Testing Agency).
• Facial recognition at protests: Delhi Police admitted to deploying facial recognition system (FRS) during the NEET protests, citing "legitimate state interest." The SC said it would examine the proportionality of FRS usage — a critical constitutional test.
• Proportionality doctrine: Established in Indian constitutional law through K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) — Privacy judgment — as a four-limb test: legality, legitimate aim, proportionality stricto sensu, and procedural safeguards. Surveillance at public protests must satisfy this test.
• SC's approach: A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant distinguished FIRs against students from those involving persons with "serious criminal antecedents" (history-sheeters). FIRs involving murder, rape, and POCSO offences would be decided separately. The SC also proposed a high-powered panel to examine systemic NEET-UG protest issues.

• Chilling effect on dissent: Blanket FIR registration against student protesters can deter future civic participation — courts have repeatedly flagged the misuse of sedition (now Section 152 BNS) and public mischief provisions against peaceful protesters.
• FRS and privacy: The Puttaswamy judgment (2017) established informational privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21. Deploying FRS at political protests without legislative backing and oversight mechanisms raises concerns about function creep and chilling free speech.
• BNSS provisions: Under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) 2023, which replaced CrPC, the FIR process (Sections 173–176) retains similar powers of police investigation — with additional provisions for e-FIR and zero FIR.

Audited financial statements of the PM-CARES Fund for 2023-24 and 2024-25 — released after a two-year delay — reveal a dramatic collapse in donations, abysmally low fund utilisation, and a growing transparency gap that has kept the fund beyond RTI scrutiny.

Figure 1 — PM-CARES Fund: Contributions Received and Closing Balance (₹ Crore)

Closing balance grew to ₹8,452 crore by 2024-25 despite near-zero disbursements; total payments in 2024-25 were just ₹0.87 crore against receipts of ₹1,280 crore. Source: PM-CARES Fund audited statements; reproduced with credit for educational use.

Figure 2 — PM-CARES Fund: Donations vs. Interest Income (Chart 4) and Corpus Composition (Chart 5)

Donations collapsed from ₹7,914 crore (2020-21) to ₹480 crore (2024-25); interest income now rivals donations as the fund sits idle in fixed deposits. Source: The Hindu; reproduced with credit for educational use.

• RTI exclusion: The fund's trustees have resisted RTI applications. The Supreme Court in Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India (2021) declined to direct CAG audit but noted the fund must maintain transparency; the matter remains contested.
• Opaque refunds: ₹324 crore refunded by implementing agencies in 2024-25 without disclosure of the agencies, the original purpose, or reason for refund — raising accountability concerns under Section 11 of the Income Tax Act (conditions for public charitable trust exemption).
• Accountability gap: The National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) has described PM-CARES as "shrouded in secrecy." Foreign contributions received (₹0.92 crore in 2024-25) technically trigger FCRA scrutiny — but FCRA compliance has not been publicly verified.
• Contrast with global best practice: Major disaster relief funds in the UK, Australia, and the US mandate legislative audits, real-time disclosure of beneficiaries, and mandatory drawdown timelines to prevent prolonged accumulation without deployment.

Corporate investment as a share of India's GDP has declined persistently since demonetisation (2016), falling below even Global Financial Crisis (GFC) levels — a structural puzzle that neither corporate tax cuts nor low interest rates have resolved, pointing toward demand-side rather than supply-side solutions.

Figure 3 — The Investment Slump: Determinants and Corporate Investment as % of GDP (2000-01 to 2024-25)

Corporate investment as % of GDP has stayed below the GFC trough (11.3%) since 2017 — a self-inflicted structural wound far worse than the external shock of 2008. Source: Authors' calculations, Database on Indian Economy, RBI; reproduced with credit for educational use.

• Three determinants of investment:
  1. Expected profitability — the anticipated returns from deploying capital in a factory or plant, which rises with scale (economies of scale) up to a market-size ceiling.
  2. Animal spirits (Keynes): The confidence with which firms hold profit expectations. Demonetisation destroyed animal spirits — it not only reduced immediate profitability but made future policy unpredictable, shifting the profitability curve inward for all firms.
  3. Cost and availability of credit: Michal Kalecki's "Principle of Increasing Risk" — the cost of borrowing rises as the debt-to-own-capital ratio rises, creating a structural disadvantage for small firms. This means the financial system is inherently rigged against small capitalists.
• Firm-size asymmetry: Small firms face credit constraints (cost curve rises steeply early); large firms face market constraints (investment limited by market share, not finance). These require different policy responses.
• Why tax cuts and rate cuts failed: For large firms (market-constrained), lower interest rates are irrelevant — they are not finance-constrained; for small firms (credit-constrained), even cheaper credit may not help if demand has collapsed. The 2018 corporate tax cut (30% → 22%) and RBI's accommodative cycle thus had limited traction.

• Kaleckian demand stimulus: Only autonomous government expenditure can push the profitability curve outward — creating demand that restores profit expectations across firm sizes and triggers private investment crowding-in, not crowding-out.
• Fiscal conservatism trade-off: The prescription requires abandoning fiscal consolidation targets (FRBM Act mandates 3% GDP fiscal deficit ceiling for the Centre); the authors argue for deficit-financed demand stimulus — echoing MMT-adjacent heterodox positions.
• Employment linkage: MSMEs — the worst-hit by demonetisation — account for ~45% of India's exports and employ ~110 million workers. MSME investment collapse has direct consequences for formal and informal employment generation.
• PLI Scheme context: India's Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme (₹1.97 lakh crore outlay across 14 sectors) attempts to revive investment via output-linked subsidies — a supply-side tool that the Kaleckian framework would predict will work only where demand already exists (e.g., electronics, pharma) but fail where demand gaps remain unfilled.

NITI Aayog released its third report in the Services Thematic Series, benchmarking India's regulatory regime for professional services against global peers and outlining a four-pronged strategy to position India as a globally competitive, future-ready exporter of high-value knowledge services.

Figure 4 — NITI Aayog's Four-Pronged Strategy for Professional Services

NITI Aayog's four pillars for transforming professional services: emerging-trend adoption, value-chain elevation, best-practice adoption, and continuous professional development. Source: NITI Aayog Services Thematic Series Report (August 2026); reproduced with credit for educational use.

• Nationality/residency barriers: Many regulated professions impose citizenship or residency requirements on practice — restricting Mode 4 mobility and mutual recognition under FTAs. India's FTAs (with UAE, Australia, UK under negotiation) increasingly include MRA (Mutual Recognition Agreement) provisions for professionals.
• Foreign qualification recognition: Foreign-trained professionals face bridge courses, qualifying exams, and re-registration — adding cost and time barriers. By contrast, the EU's Professional Qualifications Directive provides an automatic recognition pathway across member states.
• Legal forms of establishment: Indian law imposes restrictions on Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) for certain professions (e.g., law firms cannot be LLPs in most States); advertising and fee restrictions reduce competitive market-making in professional services.
• Lightly regulated sectors: Engineering, urban planning and landscape architecture lack formal licensure — creating quality uncertainty for clients and inhibiting export of these services under GATS Mode 1.

• 1. Harnessing emerging trends: AI, legal tech, health tech, and fintech are disrupting traditional professional services; regulatory sandboxes and RegTech frameworks are needed to facilitate adoption without compromising professional standards.
• 2. Elevating within the services value chain: India currently occupies the lower-value segments of global professional services (back-office, process delivery); moving into high-value advisory, strategy, and domain-specialist roles requires branding, IP creation, and global certification recognition.
• 3. Adopting global best practices: Benchmarking against the UK (Solicitors Regulation Authority), Singapore (Law Society), and Australia (APRA for financial professionals) to reduce entry barriers while maintaining quality standards.
• 4. Continuous Professional Development (CPD): Mandatory CPD requirements (as in the UK's CPD hours system) ensure professionals remain current — critical for AI-augmented service delivery and cross-border practice.

The 12th BRICS Environment Ministers' Meeting in New Delhi condemned the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) as unilateral and protectionist, while calling for developed nations to triple adaptation finance — crystallising a North-South fault line in global climate diplomacy that directly impacts India's steel exports.

• Steel dominance: Iron & steel account for ~90% of India's exports to the EU that fall within the CBAM framework — making India's steel industry the most exposed domestic sector.
• Trade impact (Nature Climate Change, June 2026): High-emission Indian steel firms reduced export quantities and revenues to the EU during the CBAM reporting phase; lower-emission firms maintained export levels — creating competitive divergence within the Indian steel sector.
• EU-India FTA context: India and the EU are implementing a Free Trade Agreement negotiated in 2026 — giving India both market access gains and additional compliance obligations under CBAM simultaneously, creating a complex trade policy calculus.
• Domestic decarbonisation push: India's Steel Scrap Recycling Policy (2019), Green Steel Mission, and BEE's PAT (Perform, Achieve and Trade) scheme are steps toward lower-emission production, but large-scale transition requires time and finance.

• BRICS position: Finance must be "new, additional, predictable, adequate and accessible" — delivered as grants and concessional loans, not re-labelled ODA or private investment counted as climate finance.
• 2025 UN climate conference commitment: Developed nations committed to tripling adaptation finance to developing countries by 2035; BRICS urged compliance with this commitment — though no legally binding mechanism exists.
• Adaptation vs. mitigation gap: Globally, 90% of international climate finance flows to mitigation (emission reduction); only ~10% goes to adaptation (coping with impacts already locked in). This asymmetry particularly harms vulnerable nations where mitigation is less urgent than adaptation.
• India's adaptation needs: India's National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change (NAFCC) and the broader National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) identify water security, agriculture, coastal resilience, and health as priority adaptation sectors — all requiring scaled finance.

Draft rules under the SHANTI Act — India's new nuclear energy statute — mandate that foreign reactor technology must already be operationally certified in its country of origin, a clause that effectively advantages Russia's Rosatom (with two operational SMRs globally) while creating entry barriers for US and European SMR developers still in design certification.

• Definition: SMRs are advanced nuclear reactors with generating capacity up to ~300 MWe (megawatt electric) — roughly one-third of a conventional large reactor (~1,000 MWe). They are factory-built, modular, and deployable in remote or distributed settings.
• Globally operational SMRs (as of 2026):
  • Akademik Lomonosov (Russia): Floating nuclear power unit (two modules of 35 MWe each); commercial operation since May 2020; docked at Pevek harbour, Arctic Russia — the world's northernmost nuclear power plant.
  • HTR-PM (China): High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor demonstration; grid-connected December 2021; commercial operations from December 2023.
• SMRs in design certification phase (not yet operational): Holtec International (NJ, USA), Rolls-Royce SMR (UK), GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 — all pending domestic regulatory certification.
• SHANTI Act clause impact: The requirement that foreign technology must be certified and operational in its country of origin rules out most Western SMR vendors; only Russia (Akademik Lomonosov) and China (HTR-PM) currently qualify — with China unlikely to be India's partner for geopolitical reasons.

• Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP): Located in Tamil Nadu; largest nuclear power station in India; flagship India-Russia nuclear cooperation project. Units 1 & 2 deploy VVER-1000 light water reactors (LWRs); further units under construction.
• Next generation: Russia proposes deploying VVER-1200 (new generation LWR) at future sites in India — offering higher efficiency and improved passive safety systems.
• SMR proposal: In April 2024, Rosatom presented floating nuclear power solutions to Indian partners; discussions on SMR deployment continued at a November 2024 meeting in Mumbai between DAE Chairman Ajit Kumar Mohanty and Rosatom DG Alexey Likhachev.
• Cost comparison: Indigenous PHWR: ~₹18 crore per MWe; Russian reactors: ~₹34 crore per MWe; French/US LWRs: significantly more expensive. Russia offers a cost-competitive option despite not matching indigenous reactor economics.
• Strategic context: India's nuclear energy target: 100 GW by 2047 (current capacity ~8 GW from 22 operating reactors). Meeting this target requires both indigenous scale-up and foreign technology imports — making the SHANTI Act's technology certification clause a strategic as much as technical decision.

A Nature Communications study has revealed the mechanism by which cells control the timing of DNA replication — spotlighting the enzyme helicase and the molecular safety catch that prevents premature copying, with broad implications for understanding cancer and genetic disorders.

• Key finding (Nature Communications, 2026): Scientists from the UK identified a molecular safety catch that keeps the DNA replication machinery inactive until a specific chemical signal releases it — ensuring DNA copying begins only at the correct time in the cell cycle (S-phase).
• Significance: Uncontrolled or premature DNA replication is a hallmark of cancer. Understanding the safety catch mechanism opens pathways to new anticancer drug targets — drugs that lock the safety catch permanently in cancer cells, preventing their uncontrolled division.
• Cell cycle context: Eukaryotic cell division proceeds through G1 → S → G2 → M phases. Helicase activation and DNA replication occur specifically in S-phase; checkpoints (mediated by CDKs — cyclin-dependent kinases) regulate the transition.

The Department of Defence Production (DDP) has notified the Sixth Positive Indigenisation List (PIL) comprising 405 defence items with a business potential of ₹3,070 crore, advancing India's Aatmanirbhar Bharat mission in defence and reducing import dependence.

• Defence FDI: Raised to 74% under automatic route and 100% via government approval under DPIIT — attracting global OEMs to form JVs with Indian partners.
• Defence exports: India's defence exports crossed ₹21,083 crore (~$2.5 billion) in 2023-24 — up from ₹1,521 crore in 2016-17; target is $5 billion by 2025.
• Two Defence Industrial Corridors: Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow–Kanpur–Agra–Aligarh–Chitrakoot corridor) and Tamil Nadu (Chennai–Hosur–Coimbatore–Salem–Tiruchirappalli) — aimed at clustering defence manufacturing.
• iDEX (Innovations for Defence Excellence): Funds defence startups and innovators through the Defence Innovation Organisation; ~300+ challenges issued; ~₹250 crore committed.
• Import dependence: Despite progress, India remains the world's largest arms importer (SIPRI 2024). Russia (~36%), France (~33%), and the US (~14%) are top suppliers. PILs aim to structurally reduce this dependence.