Context

The death toll in the collapse of a building housing students in Satya Niketan rose to seven on Monday. The Delhi High Court expressed deep concern over the safety of students living in paying guest accommodations across the capital and directed the Municipal Corporation of Delhi to inspect all PG hostels under its jurisdiction within a week. A data analysis in the same edition shows that 7,874 people died in building collapses across India between 2020 and 2024.

Background & Key Facts — The Incident

• Arrests: Police arrested Hariram Gupta, 82, a retired Indian Air Force sergeant; his wife Urmila Gupta, 75; and their son Mahesh Gupta, 52. The property was registered in Ms. Gupta's name, while the men's PG was allegedly run by her husband and son. A search is on for the operators and the labour contractors carrying out repairs in the basement.
• Administrative action: Five MCD officials — the civic body responsible for issuing PG licences and enforcing building norms — were suspended. Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said the government is exploring a policy to govern buildings used for several purposes, including PG accommodations.
• Rescue: The 28-hour operation was declared complete at 5 p.m. on Monday. At least 12 people were brought to the AIIMS Trauma Centre and three to Safdarjung. Six were brought dead at AIIMS and one died later of injuries; at least three remain critical.
• The High Court's direction: A Bench of Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia said the deaths raised serious concerns about student safety and the acute shortage of hostel facilities for outstation students. The deceased hailed from Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. The court directed the MCD to ascertain whether PG buildings had valid permissions, complied with building bye-laws, and whether violations had occurred.
• Beyond the owner: The court held that responsibility could not, prima facie, be confined to the property owner — the role of university authorities and the MCD also required examination. It directed the civic body to inspect at the highest executive level and fix responsibility on public servants if the building was found to be unauthorised.
• Custody: A Delhi court remanded Mr. Gupta and his wife to judicial custody; their son was sent to police custody for two days.
• Political response: Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi said the government followed a "shameful pattern" of no preventive action, then grandstanding and fixing blame on lower-level officials, citing six deaths in a Saidulajab collapse and 22 in a Hauz Rani fire in four months. Congress leader Kanhaiya Kumar called the BJP's "four-engine government" in Delhi a "killing machine". The Congress demanded inspection of all PGs, construction of hostels within Delhi University, a rent control law for hostels and PGs, and compensation of at least ₹1 crore per bereaved family. Party leader Abhishek Dutt alleged that scrapping Section 466(A) of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act through the Jan Vishwas Act had weakened criminal action against builders undertaking illegal or dangerous construction.

The Data Point — Nearly 8,000 Deaths in Five Years

• National total: 7,874 people were killed in building collapses across India between 2020 and 2024, per analysis of the National Crime Records Bureau's Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (ADSI) reports. Delhi recorded 169 deaths in the same period.
• ADSI categories: Five sub-categories fall under collapse of structures — Collapse of Dwelling House/Residential Building, Collapse of Official/Commercial Building, Collapse of Dam, Collapse of Bridge, and Others. The analysis excludes dam and bridge collapses.
• State ranking (2024): Uttar Pradesh 223 deaths (highest), Maharashtra 220, Madhya Pradesh 174, Rajasthan 131, Gujarat 115, Jharkhand 92, Karnataka 69, Keralam 62, Haryana 58, Tamil Nadu 57, Bihar 50, Delhi 42 (12th highest), Chhattisgarh 42, Telangana 36, Andhra Pradesh 32.
• Per capita burden: Despite being geographically smaller, densely populated NCT Delhi has been among the top 15 States every year since 2020, and recorded the second- or third-highest deaths per million population in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
• Recent numbers: With ADSI 2025 not yet released, a media compilation shows at least 70 people died in 20 incidents since January 2025 — at least three deaths a month. Since 2024 there have been at least 34 incidents killing more than 90 people.
• Delhi incident map: Named localities include Kaushik Enclave and Burari (Jan 2025, 5 deaths), Kharkari Nahar and Najafgarh (May 2025, 4 deaths), Shakti Vihar Mustafabad (Apr 2025, 11 deaths), Janta Mazdoor Colony Seelampur (Jul 2025, 6 deaths), Near Saket Metro Station (May 2026, 6 deaths), Hari Nagar Extn Jahtpur (Aug 2025, 8 deaths) and Satya Niketan (Sep 2026, 7 deaths).
• Civic response: Acting "in predictable haste", the MCD said it will seal all illegal five-storey and taller buildings "immediately". The data, the analysis argues, indicates a systemic problem demanding long-term strategies that account for the growing need for affordable housing.

Static Background

Building safety is governed by the National Building Code of India, 2016, the Model Building Bye-Laws, 2016 of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and municipal bye-laws, with structural stability and occupancy certificates as the primary compliance instruments. Under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, structural collapse is treated as a man-made disaster, with response through the NDRF and District Disaster Management Authorities. Municipal functions including regulation of land-use and building construction are listed in the Twelfth Schedule (74th Constitutional Amendment). Affordable rental housing is supported through the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes scheme under PMAY-Urban. The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 decriminalised a large number of minor offences across statutes to ease business compliance — the reform whose application to building offences the Opposition now questions.

Context

Observing that "temple funds are not ordinary funds and that they are trust property, gathered from the faith of devotees and held for the deity", the High Court of Karnataka has issued a series of directions aimed at bringing transparency and preventing financial mismanagement in all temples controlled by the Hindu Religious Institutions and Charitable Endowments Department.

Background & Key Facts

• The case: Justice Suraj Govindaraj issued the directions while upholding an order passed in October 2020 by the executive officer of the Sri Durgaparameshwari temple in Brahmavar taluk, Udupi district, dismissing an employee for misappropriating ₹8,750. The court also found no fault with the 2024 order of the HRI&CE Commissioner affirming the dismissal.
• The systemic finding: Pointing to a large number of litigations related to misappropriation of temple funds, the court said the department has a duty of supervising and safeguarding these funds under the Karnataka Hindu Religious Institutions and Charitable Endowments Act, 1997.
• The direction: The Commissioner and the e-Governance Department must create a unified, centralised electronic financial management system for all temples, designed to ensure that it is "impossible to issue a second receipt bearing the same number".
• The specific failure: The dismissed employee was able to generate a second receipt with the same receipt number — a paper-based control weakness that the technology mandate is designed to close.

Static Background — State Administration of Temples

Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion, subject to public order, morality and health, while Article 25(2)(a) expressly saves State regulation of "economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice". Article 26 gives religious denominations the right to manage their own affairs in matters of religion and to administer property in accordance with law. The Supreme Court's foundational ruling in Shirur Mutt (1954) drew the line between religious practice — which the State cannot regulate — and secular administration of religious property, which it can. Endowments legislation therefore exists in most southern States, and comparable statutes govern Sikh and Wakf institutions. Charitable and religious endowments appear in the Concurrent List (Entry 28), while religious institutions and their administration are also covered by State legislation.

Context

Ahead of the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on 12–13 September, T.S. Tirumurti — former Permanent Representative of India to the UN and former BRICS Sherpa — argues that BRICS has strayed far from where it started, and that the Delhi summit gives India a chance to restore its original purpose as a vehicle for reformed multilateralism rather than allowing it to become an anti-West bloc.

Background & Key Facts — Origins and Drift

• Original purpose: BRICS was formed to give a greater voice to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in global governance and institutions, particularly financial and economic ones, and to aim for a more equitable multilateral order. India was an enthusiastic participant, seeing it as a vehicle for genuine reform.
• India's first summit: The fourth BRICS summit, hosted by India in 2012, was themed "Global Stability, Security and Prosperity". The Indian presidency helped lead to the establishment of the New Development Bank, and other Indian initiatives followed including integration of a counter-terrorism architecture into BRICS work.
• The China challenge: China saw BRICS as a counterpoise to Western domination and needed a group of emerging economies to amplify its global ambitions — BRICS countries accounted for nearly 20% of world GDP in 2010. China wanted to use BRICS-Plus and BRICS Outreach to reach the Global South and consolidate a profile as a second pole in a bipolar world.
• Selective reform: India, Brazil and South Africa found Chinese support for multilateral reform selective — China resisted supporting their bid for permanent UNSC seats. India consequently focused more on BRICS consolidation and intra-BRICS matters.
• India's 2026 chairship theme: Four pillars — Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability — drawing on the vision of "Humanity First" and a "people-centric" approach.
• The consensus principle under threat: The 2019 Brasilia Summit was held without invited guest countries — just the five original members. But in 2020, under the Russian presidency, probably the first non-consensus chair's statement, on COVID-19, was issued. At the BRICS Foreign Ministers' meeting in May 2026 in New Delhi, non-consensus documents again resulted from the inability of new members to agree. If this continues, the author warns, BRICS will cease to be effective — the risk of going the way of the SCO, where the majority can bulldoze views through.

Expansion, Cohesion and Direction

• The expansion: China pushed for expansion of the New Development Bank and then of BRICS itself; India and Brazil resisted but were unsuccessful. BRICS now has 11 members following the addition of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia, plus 10 partner countries.
• Vindication: New members have started fighting among themselves. While the original five have serious differences, they know how to manage them for the greater good; new members are "subverting BRICS through their bilateral conflicts". The warning: BRICS should not go the way of SAARC, paralysed by bilateral disputes.
• Non-West versus anti-West: India has tried to keep BRICS a "non-West" group against pressure to turn it anti-West. This is increasingly difficult with China competing with the U.S. for global leadership, Russia at war with Ukraine, and Iran being bombarded by the U.S. and Israel. It is harder still when Brazil and India have been subjected to punitive tariffs by President Trump and the U.S. Congress is considering legislation empowering the President to levy punitive tariffs on countries importing Russian oil.
• The strategic squeeze: The Quad is described as "being emasculated by the U.S.", India-U.S. relations under great pressure, and Pakistan being courted by the U.S. at India's expense. The more erratic the U.S. is towards BRICS, the greater the chance of BRICS drifting in the wrong direction. Fortunately, many other members share India's effort to prevent an anti-Western drift — they "want change, but not geopolitical realignment with China and Russia".
• Parallel structures: Both the U.S. and China are setting up parallel structures and standards in artificial intelligence, digital and Internet governance, data ownership, state control, 5G/6G and telecom, satellite navigation, and electric vehicles. China has set up a new World AI Cooperation Organisation in Shanghai, in addition to the AIIB, the Belt and Road Initiative and the Digital Silk Road.
• De-dollarisation: The push for a parallel BRICS currency is receiving a lukewarm response, since many members are uncomfortable with a renminbi-dominated currency and would prefer merely interlinking payment systems, central bank digital currencies and national-currency transactions. China is formally launching mBridge, an alternative financial payment system, after a successful pilot. "The last thing India wants is an alternative Bretton Woods system dominated by China."

The Course Correction Proposed

• Reformed multilateralism: Mr. Modi first articulated the vision at the 2018 BRICS Summit in South Africa at the leaders' retreat; by 2019 it had entered the BRICS Summit document in Brasilia, with India, Brazil and South Africa pushing for it. The author argues the time has come to revive this agenda.
• Global South middle powers: In Davos, the Canadian Prime Minister spoke of broadly West-centric middle powers coming together. A Global South middle power is very different — and if there is a credible organisation of Global South middle powers, it is BRICS.
• Acknowledged problems: China is hardly a middle power and has disproportionate influence; India and China need greater synergy on emerging global issues even as bilateral differences are contained; and some middle powers that ought to be represented are not.
• The stake: With many countries wanting to join, India should proactively embrace the BRICS reform agenda to serve its larger interest of multi-alignment — because if India does not, others will take BRICS in a different direction.

Static Background

Context

The Hindu's editorial assesses the visit of Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever to Delhi as part of a larger puzzle of India's ties with European countries, which have gained salience across economic relations, defence relations and strategic ties.

Background & Key Facts

• Trade agenda: At the top of talks between Prime Ministers Bart De Wever and Narendra Modi were bilateral trade opportunities once the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement is signed — expected in December.
• Trade profile: India-Belgium trade is about $13 billion, a third of which comes from over a century of collaboration in the diamond industry. Antwerp is a global hub for diamond trading, while Mumbai and Surat provide the biggest cutting and polishing services.
• New areas: Once the EU FTA is signed, both hope to benefit from collaboration in renewable energy and food processing. The two Prime Ministers agreed to a target of doubling bilateral trade in the next five years.
• Defence: Despite being surrounded by friendly European allies, Belgium has a robust high-tech defence industry — small arms, drone and counter-drone technology, ammunition and naval defence — and is keen to enter the Indian market, with India seeking to diversify procurement beyond global powers. The two sides agreed on an MoU for co-development of military hardware and signed a letter of intent on defence cooperation. India will appoint a resident defence attaché to Brussels, complementing Belgium's move.
• The geopolitical framing: At a business event, Mr. De Wever said Europe is now realising the truth of India's "warnings" on strategic autonomy from global powers and over-dependence in trade and industrial production, referring in particular to China.
• Modi's framing: Democratic values, a market economy and people-to-people ties make India and Belgium "natural partners" — a theme he has promoted this past year as he has stepped up visits to Europe and received European leaders in Delhi, in the run-up to his Brussels visit later this year for the FTA.
• The Russia question: The editorial notes that Mr. De Wever's visit comes in the same week that New Delhi prepares to welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin for the BRICS summit — demonstrating "a new maturity for both European countries and India" and sensitivity to their respective positions on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, indicating that ties outweigh Europe's enmity and India's deep friendship with Moscow.

Static Background — India and the European Union

The EU is among India's largest trading partners and a leading source of FDI. Negotiations for a Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement began in 2007, stalled in 2013, and resumed in 2022 alongside parallel tracks on an Investment Protection Agreement and a Geographical Indications agreement. The India-EU Trade and Technology Council, launched in 2022, is only the EU's second such arrangement after the one with the United States. Friction points include the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, the Deforestation Regulation, supply chain due-diligence rules, agriculture and dairy market access, data adequacy and movement of professionals. Belgium hosts the EU's institutional centre in Brussels, which gives a bilateral relationship there additional multilateral value. India's defence diversification effort operates through the Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020, positive indigenisation lists, and the iDEX and Defence Industrial Corridor frameworks.

Context

The Hindu's editorial notes the irony that on the day ISRO achieved its greatest success of the year — the launch of its first geosynchronous imaging satellite EOS-05 on a temperamental GSLV — its employee organisations demanded clarity on its long-term plans. The editorial argues the underlying question is whether India's space vision remains anchored to social development or has shifted to prestige.

Background & Key Facts

• The long-standing signal: Since the Indian Space Policy of April 2023, the message has been that ISRO would one day, in the unspecified future, stop making commercial satellites and launch rockets. Clearly inspired by NASA, it expects to focus on ambitious exploratory missions and, literally, moonshots.
• The letter: Co-signed by nine employee associations and addressed to the chairman, it seeks clarity on staff strength, recruitment and the outsourcing of core functions.
• The responses: ISRO says it will "not be privatised or reduced"; IN-SPACe, set up to facilitate private participation, says the agency will "not be diminished", only that the industry's role must grow. The editorial's point: both are silent on the core concern — potential job losses.
• The underlying tension: Does ISRO's vision of India's space sector align with its founding principles of not being enamoured of space races and being laser-focused on space technology as a tool for social development? Or is the image of power — India as one of a handful of space-faring countries with a mushrooming of space startups — now the bedrock of that vision?
• The budget comparison: NASA's budget is 16 times the Department of Space's — $24.4 billion against ₹13,705 crore. NASA too has scaled back since the 1960s: from 0.7% of American GDP in 1966 to 0.1% now, and from 36,000 civil servants at Apollo's peak to about 14,000 today.
• The Indian difference: Unlike NASA, which in its early years designed and made every nut and bolt, ISRO has always had a manufacturing relationship with the private sector (Walchandnagar, L&T). What is different now is that the buzz is not about established companies building on experience but new entrants with fleeting foreign capital, most interested in satellite data as a service.
• The strategic gap: There is "yet no serious reckoning with the might of China's space programme".
• The editorial's conclusion: If India's space sector in 2035 is to be a source of export earnings and a nucleus of value-added services bringing jobs and absorbing skilled labour, hard choices today may be worth it. But jumping onto a bandwagon of space "as fuel for the science fiction fantasy of billionaires and colonial notions of conquest, to align with some misplaced notion of an 'exclusive' club — is foolhardy. ISRO must have a transparent policy that spells this out."

Static Background — ISRO's Founding Doctrine

Vikram Sarabhai's formulation remains the reference point: India's justification for a space programme was never to compete in the exploration of the Moon or planets, but to apply advanced technology to the real problems of people and society. That doctrine produced SITE (Satellite Instructional Television Experiment, 1975-76), the INSAT communications series, the IRS remote sensing series for resource mapping, tele-education and telemedicine, cyclone warning, and fisheries advisories.

Context

Arindam Goswami of the Takshashila Institution argues that the widespread worry that high American tariffs will choke research in the affected industries rests on a mistaken assumption — the sectors exposed to tariffs and the sectors that actually invest in research barely overlap. The real problem, he writes, predates the trade fight and will outlast it.

Background & Key Facts

• The truce: After months of escalation, Washington and New Delhi stepped back a few months ago — the penalty tied to India's purchases of Russian oil was removed, the reciprocal tariff was cut, and medicines and most electronics stayed exempt.
• The exposed sectors: The 2019 loss of duty-free access and the 2025 tariff hit affected organic chemicals, plastics, base metals, machinery, auto components and leather.
• Research intensity in those sectors: Indian metals firms spend about 0.4% of sales on R&D against a global average of nearly 1.6%. Auto and parts makers spend a little over 2% versus a global average of 5%. Electrical equipment firms spend less than 2% against the same 5% benchmark. These industries "were research-thin long before any tariff arrived".
• The core claim: India's research effort is concentrated in pharmaceuticals and automobiles, and almost everything else does little. A tariff on chemicals or steel cannot cut research spending that was never there. Patenting and research spending in the exposed sectors show no clear break during the tariff years attributable to the duties.
• The behavioural argument: Research is a fixed and risky investment that pays off only when a product sells at scale. A firm facing a smaller export market can retreat to cheaper, undifferentiated goods, or invest in products a tariff cannot easily replace. Indian industry has chosen the first path for decades.
• Where tariffs do matter: Of the two research-intensive sectors, pharmaceuticals secured an exemption in the February deal, while automobiles did not. The 25% U.S. duty on auto parts remains, and metal tariffs raise input costs for downstream engineering and component firms. So the live risk runs through autos, not the broad manufacturing economy.
• The real problem: India spends a very small percentage of output on research, well below competitor countries, and the private industry share is also well below global leaders. What industry does spend goes towards routine development and testing rather than research creating new products. By one comparison, Nvidia alone spends nearly as much on research as all of Indian industry combined.
• The policy response: The government's ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) scheme, launched late last year, offers long-tenure, low-cost capital to firms in sunrise and strategic areas such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum technology and biotechnology. The author's critique: the money is pointed at the frontier, while the industries most exposed to trade shocks and most in need of moving up the value chain are older sectors the scheme is not designed for. "A chemicals or auto-parts maker that has never run a research programme will not start now because of a loan aimed at deep tech."
• Measurement failure: India's official research figures "arrive years late and undercount private spending". A country that cannot see where its research is going cannot steer it; a faster, firm-level record linking research spending to exports would let policymakers act before damage shows.

Static Background — India's R&D Landscape

India's Gross Expenditure on Research and Development (GERD) has hovered well below 1% of GDP for decades, against roughly 2-3% for major economies and higher still for Israel and South Korea. Distinctively, the government accounts for the dominant share of Indian R&D spending, whereas in advanced economies the business sector contributes the majority. Institutional reform has come through the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), established under the ANRF Act, 2023, replacing the Science and Engineering Research Board and designed to catalyse private and philanthropic funding. Sectoral instruments include the Production Linked Incentive schemes, the India Semiconductor Mission, the National Quantum Mission and the National Deep Tech Startup Policy. India's Global Innovation Index rank has improved substantially over the past decade, driven largely by institutions, market sophistication and knowledge outputs rather than by business R&D expenditure.

Context

Nikhila Natarajan, co-founder of the Teens, Family, and Technology Lab at Rutgers University, writes that while Meta's $17.1 billion settlement with U.S. States is being framed as a reckoning over addictive platform design, teen voices remain largely absent from the debate — and that adolescent media use is better understood as a striving for agency than as passive victimhood.

Background & Key Facts

• The settlement: Meta's $17.1 billion settlement with U.S. States is making headlines as a reckoning over addictive platform design.
• The historical frame: Debates about youth and technology have focused on media effects — what teens do with media, or what media does to teens. Nearly 100 years ago, the Payne Fund Studies marked the first systematic exploration of this dynamic, examining the impact of movies on children. With every new wave of technology, youth audiences are cast as passive, trapped or targeted.
• The developmental framework: Teen media use resonates with a metaphor from developmental psychology — a race car that can go very fast, but whose brakes are still being built. Teens are primed to learn more rapidly than at any other stage, yet that power makes them more vulnerable to negative stimuli. Their ability to plan and prioritise develops gradually even as they exhibit heightened sensitivity to rewards.
• Why design matters: When short-form video loops shrink the gap between media experiences to 15 or 30 seconds, the onus of decision-making becomes the young person's problem at a time when the braking system is still being built.
• Boredom as the entry point: Across the 13-to-16 age group, teens say short-form videos are shrinking their attention spans, but their reflections point to a persistent entry point — boredom, a developmental driver. As adolescents orient towards peers and crave independence while living under adult restrictions, they open an app for a quick distraction and stay for hours.
• Peer dynamics and quantified popularity: On platforms where popularity is quantified through public likes and follower counts, every interaction gets a scoreboard — incredibly stressful for an adolescent hyper-sensitive to social inclusion and exclusion.
• Evidence from Australia's ban: Two systematic surveys by Bursztyn and colleagues found Australian teens report needing roughly 70% of their peers to quit social media before they are willing to quit themselves — a collective-action problem.
• Platform inventory: Lab research shows adolescents navigate an average of 7 to 12 different platforms daily — Instagram and Facebook compete with Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest, Discord and Spotify.
• Teen counter-strategies: Some teens craft micro-frictions to push back — Pinterest is popular with girls wanting to escape performative sociality; music streaming competes with short-form video; some delete apps intermittently. These are "behavioural signatures of adolescent metacognition — literally, thinking about thinking".
• The conclusion: AI-fuelled media design continues to operate at the limits of adolescent development. Understanding the contradictions of adolescent development invites us to reconsider teen media use as a striving for agency.

Static Background — Regulating Minors Online

Context

Following a poster that appeared at IIT-Mandi on 4 September assigning occupational and social functions to varna categories, Vasudevan Mukunth argues that while science cannot pronounce on the moral equality of humans, it can and does refute the claim that caste rests on inherited biological differences — showing instead that caste is the cause of biological differences, not their inheritor.

Background & Key Facts

• The trigger: A poster at IIT-Mandi on 4 September said the role of "Brahmanas" is to "spread god's message", that of "kshatriyas" to "protect society and spirituality", of "vaishyas" to "drive economy, support others", and of "shudras" to "serve higher classes".
• The normative contrast: The system laid out in the Manusmriti holds that birth says something essential about who a person is supposed to be, with persons born into specific categories assigned a place in the division of labour and a set of permitted relationships and social rights. Modern constitutional thinking is radically different: per the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights and constitutional democracies today, individuals possess rights that depend on more than their place in a social hierarchy. The fundamental rights of the Indian Constitution are attached to persons and citizens, not to inherited social functions.
• The limits of science: That all humans must be treated equally is a moral and constitutional position, not a scientific one — science does not carry moral or constitutional authority.
• Cause, not consequence: While some defenders of caste claim it is based on inherited biological differences, the system is really the cause of the differences rather than their inheritor. The human organism develops as its genes interact with its environment, and caste-based discrimination affects those environments.
• Evidence cited: Studies on the social determinants of health have revealed caste-related inequities in healthcare and access to healthcare, while social epigenetics has found that social circumstances can induce biological changes via mechanisms affecting the way genes are regulated.
• The 2009 genetics study: In a landmark study, geneticists reported that most present-day Indians descended from two differentiated ancient populations which mixed extensively before endogamy took root; present Indian groups contain mixes of these ancestries. The team also found substantial genetic differences between communities today thanks to a long history of endogamy. Other studies have reported strong founder effects — when a new population emerges from a small group and inherits its lack of genetic diversity. As the article puts it, "the genome does not announce that these people were ordained to marry one another but records the fact that they elected to do so".
• Neuroplasticity: The human nervous system is very plastic and rewires itself in response to every experience in a life-long process. Not everyone is good at everything, but plasticity means the neurological system develops together with each human's environment, interests, temperament and individual choice, giving rise to a variety of abilities.
• The cultural argument: Just as caste constrains the plasticity of the brain, it constrains the human capacity for culture. Homo sapiens can accumulate knowledge and pass it on so others need not learn from scratch; caste-based discrimination restricts the spread of knowledge and narrows the social range over which this defining capacity can operate — "as if a student's ability to solve a differential equation has anything to do with the status of their ancestors".
• What science does say: That all humans are members of one species, that their development is shaped by their experiences, and that social environments can become embodied.

Static Background — Constitutional Provisions

Context

A new world map endorsed at the UN during the India-backed "Correct the Map" resolution of 4 September has projected India's Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin — which India maintains is part of Ladakh — as distinct regions caught between Indian and Chinese "claim lines".

Background & Key Facts

• The map: It came up on 1 July during the months-long discussion for the UNGA resolution.
• Arunachal Pradesh: The map shows the State's southern border with Assam, indicating the "Chinese line", while eliminating the State's border with Nagaland. It shows the northern border indicating the "Indian line".
• Aksai Chin: The map shows its eastern borders indicating the "Indian line" while presenting the western borders in what appears to be the "Chinese line".
• The critical difference from 2011: These claim lines appear to be a continuation of previous similar UN maps, but unlike in the 2011 UN map, these lines are not specified as "claim lines" in the 1 July map.
• Jammu and Kashmir: Depicted with a dotted line indicating the Line of Control, with an explanatory note stating that the dotted line represents approximately the LoC agreed upon by India and Pakistan, and that the final status of J&K has not yet been agreed by the parties. There is no comparable note explaining the Arunachal and Aksai Chin depictions.
• Status of the map: Non-binding, but it will be used by multilateral institutions worldwide.
• The process: Discussions began in March 2026 when the African Union supported the "Equal Earth" cartographic projection to more accurately represent Africa — an approach the AU called "cognitive justice". Togo prompted UNGA consultations in April 2026; informal consultations began in July, when the draft map authored by UN Geospatial was taken up.
• India's position: The MEA reiterated support for the resolution on Sunday but declared that India voted in favour as a vote on the "underlying principle of promoting equal-area cartographic representation", and highlighted that the resolution does not constitute endorsement of any specific map, projection or depiction of national boundaries. Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal: "India's sovereign territory, including Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, must be depicted in accordance with India's official map. Any inaccurate or misleading depiction is unacceptable."
• Voting record: Per the day's quiz page, the resolution for the Equal Earth projection was sponsored by an African country, with 164 supporting and one nation voting against.
• Pending: The Ministry is yet to respond to The Hindu's query on the separate demarcation of Arunachal and Aksai Chin with contesting claim lines.

Static Background — Projections and Indian Cartographic Law

A curved surface cannot be flattened without distortion, so every projection is a choice about what to preserve. In India, the Survey of India is the national mapping agency and the authority for official boundary depiction; misrepresentation of India's boundaries attracts action under the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1961, alongside the framework of the Guidelines for Acquiring and Producing Geospatial Data, 2021 and the National Geospatial Policy, 2022. On the disputed areas: Aksai Chin was occupied by China and is claimed by India as part of Ladakh; China claims about 90,000 sq km of Arunachal Pradesh as "South Tibet"; and Pakistan-occupied territory and the Shaksgam Valley ceded by Pakistan to China in 1963 are also Indian claims.

Context

Manipur Home Minister Konthoujam Govindas informed the 60-member Assembly on Monday that the National Register of Citizens in the State would be updated using 1951 as the base year — a demand that has divided communities and for which the Centre recently deferred the Census exercise in the State.

Background & Key Facts

• The divide: Meitei and Naga organisations want the NRC before the Census and delimitation; Kuki organisations have called it "premature and unjustified".
• Government position: Mr. Govindas said the State would pursue implementation of the NRC with the Centre in line with resolutions adopted by the House — citing resolutions of 2022, 2024 and 2 September.
• The figures: He told the House that 14,992 out of 24,475 "illegal immigrants" detected in the State so far have been pushed back into Myanmar. The immigrants entered through three border districts — Chandel, Kamjong and Tengnoupal.
• The context: Manipur has been grappling with the influx of undocumented Myanmar nationals since the military coup of February 2021. The government said the pushback process was carried out through diplomatic channels, and that Deputy Commissioners were instructed to segregate "illegal immigrants" from local Indian communities.
• Kuki-Zo Council position: On Monday it urged the Centre to conduct the Census in the State, insisting that "politically motivated demands" should not obstruct it. In a memorandum to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the KZC said any decision on the NRC remained within the Centre's constitutional and legal authority and was not driven by "unsubstantiated" allegations of demographic changes.

Static Background — The NRC Framework

Manipur has been under acute stress since the ethnic conflict that erupted on 3 May 2023 between Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities, producing large-scale internal displacement. The State shares a long, porous border with Myanmar, where the post-coup civil conflict has driven cross-border movement into Manipur and Mizoram.

Context

The Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, accorded Acceptance of Necessity for a range of acquisition proposals for the armed forces estimated at ₹1.10 lakh crore, with approximately 98% of the procurements planned to be from Indian industry.

Background & Key Facts

Static Background — How Defence Procurement Works

The Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by the Defence Minister, is the apex body for capital acquisition approvals. Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) is the first formal stage — an in-principle approval that a capability is required — after which the Request for Proposal, trials, technical and commercial evaluation, cost negotiation and contract signature follow. The governing framework is the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020, whose categorisation hierarchy prioritises Buy (Indian-IDDM) — Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured — followed by Buy (Indian), Buy and Make (Indian), and only then global options.

Indigenisation instruments include the positive indigenisation lists issued by the Department of Military Affairs and the Department of Defence Production, iDEX for start-up innovation, the Technology Development Fund, the Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu Defence Industrial Corridors, and the corporatisation of the Ordnance Factory Board into seven defence public sector undertakings in 2021. FDI in defence is permitted up to 74% through the automatic route and beyond that through government approval. The Sarvatra bridge system and the Advanced Light Helicopter (Dhruv) are indigenous platforms developed by DRDO and HAL respectively.

Context

The latest Financial Action Task Force report finds that a centuries-old underground banking system is transforming into a tech-enabled network, with virtual assets adding new layers to "digital hawala" — a shift being exploited for purposes ranging from routine money laundering to, in some cases, financing terrorist organisations.

Background & Key Facts

• The report: Titled "Investigating Professional Money Laundering, Underground Banking, and the Use of Hawala and Other Similar Service Providers", it identifies the fusion of virtual assets with the traditional hawala system as one of the most significant developments.
• The scale: Nearly 70% of surveyed jurisdictions reported the integration of new technologies into such networks.

"Digital hawala" is described as a term covering a spectrum of technologies that facilitate the coordination, execution, settlement, or concealment of transactions.

Static Background — Hawala and the AML Framework

Hawala is an informal value transfer system in which money moves without moving — a customer pays an operator in one country, who instructs a counterpart elsewhere to pay the recipient, with balances settled later through trade, cash or offsetting transactions. It is fast, cheap, requires no identity documentation and leaves minimal audit trail, which makes it attractive to migrant remitters and to launderers alike. In India, such transfers are illegal under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, with proceeds attracting the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.

Context

The Union Petroleum Ministry on Monday reduced the interval between bookings of domestic LPG cylinders for rural consumers from 45 days to 25 days, months after it had been increased during the peak of the West Asia conflict. Separately, oil-marketing companies hiked commercial LPG prices by about ₹10 per cylinder on 1 September to offset domestic under-recoveries.

Background & Key Facts — Booking Interval

• The change: The interval for rural consumers is now 25 days, on a par with urban consumers, for whom it remains unchanged at 25 days.
• The reason: In a letter to oil marketing companies, the Ministry cited "considerable reduction" in refill backlogs in the current supply situation.
• What was tightened and when: At the peak of the West Asia conflict in March 2026, the booking interval was expanded from 21 days to 25 days for urban and 45 days for rural consumers.
• Import dependence: Prior to the conflict, India met 60% of its overall LPG requirement through imports, of which 90% were routed via the Strait of Hormuz — which faced a blockade during the conflict.
• The pivot: Indian OMCs began increasingly importing LPG from the United States, which now forms nearly two-thirds of India's LPG import basket.
• Demand shift: The government's push for piped natural gas (PNG), among other factors, led LPG consumption to decline by 17.4% in June and 16.2% in August year-on-year.
• Distributors' view: Chandra Prakash, president of the All-India LPG Distributors Federation, said certain distributors categorised as rural were actually in areas that had developed into full-fledged urban centres, such as Noida in Uttar Pradesh and Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra, and would benefit from the move.

Background & Key Facts — The Price Hike and Under-recoveries

• The hike: After two successive months of decline, OMCs raised prices of the commercial variant by approximately ₹10 per cylinder across the country on 1 September. The 19-kg cylinder in Delhi now costs ₹2,747.5; the price of the 14.2-kg domestic cylinder remains unchanged.
• Under-recovery defined: The losses OMCs incur because of the difference between the price at which they sell to consumers and the price they should receive to cover the cost of production and distribution.
• The trajectory: Under-recoveries on the domestic cylinder were ₹188 per cylinder in early August, down from ₹500 in July and more than ₹700 in June.
• Segment shares: The packaged domestic segment accounted for 90.4% of all LPG consumption during April-June. About 10.6 crore Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana beneficiaries — approximately 33% of the domestic segment — receive an additional subsidy of ₹300 per cylinder.
• Expert view: Prashant Vashisht of ICRA said domestic under-recovery is currently hovering at about ₹200 per cylinder, and the commercial hike "potentially tries to somewhat compensate for that amount, although the proportionate sales of commercial LPG are much smaller. I would not read much into it".
• Supply side: Imports of petroleum, oil and lubricants products declined 45.1% between April and July, per the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC), attributed to reduced imports of LPG, pet coke and fuel oil. OMCs ramped daily domestic production of bottled hydrocarbon gas from 34,000 to 55,000 metric tonnes; following an 13 August directive, upstream and oil-marketing companies have a daily production target of 63,810 metric tonnes.
• Downstream impact: Manpreet Singh of the National Restaurants Association of India said the standalone impact would be "negligible" though it may prompt concerns about future increases. The industrial segment — glass-making and similar furnace users — is increasingly transitioning to piped natural gas; per the PNGRB, industrial sales of piped gas rose 30% between April and June year-on-year.

Static Background

LPG pricing in India follows an import parity/trade parity benchmark linked to the Saudi Contract Price. Domestic cylinder prices are effectively administered, so when international prices rise without a corresponding retail increase, OMCs accumulate under-recoveries, which are periodically compensated through budgetary support. PMUY, launched in 2016, provides deposit-free LPG connections to women from poor households, with an additional per-cylinder subsidy; the persistent challenge has been refill rates rather than connection numbers. The PPAC under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas compiles consumption and import data, while the PNGRB regulates downstream gas distribution and city gas networks.

Context

The Election Commission announced byelections to five Assembly constituencies and one Lok Sabha seat on 6 October. In parallel, The Hindu's analysis of Delhi Chief Electoral Officer data shows that 13.39 lakh names were deleted from the capital's electoral rolls even before the Special Intensive Revision began, raising questions about notice and due process.

The Byelections

• Schedule: Polling on 6 October; nominations open until 16 September; counting on 9 October; process completed by 11 October. The Model Code of Conduct comes into effect immediately in the districts encompassing the poll-bound constituencies.
• Tamil Nadu: Madurantakam (SC) and Dharapuram (SC), following the resignations of Maragatham Kumaravel and P. Sathyabama, both elected on AIADMK tickets in the 2026 Assembly polls, who resigned to join Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam.
• Puducherry: Thattanchavady, after the resignation of N. Rangasamy, who won from both Thattanchavady and Mangalam and gave up the former.
• West Bengal: Rejinagar and the high-profile Nandigram, following the resignations of Humayun Kabir and Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, who retained Bhabanipur where he had defeated then incumbent Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Mr. Kabir has offered the Rejinagar seat to Ms. Banerjee to contest.
• Assam: The Nagaon Lok Sabha seat, following the resignation of Pradyut Bordoloi, who won on a Congress ticket in 2024, subsequently joined the BJP and won from Dispur in the Assembly polls.
• Still vacant: Shillong (Meghalaya) and Basirhat (West Bengal) Lok Sabha seats, where polls have not been scheduled.

Delhi: Deletions Before the SIR

• The case: Pooja Devi, 38, has lived at the same address in Kalkaji for two decades. When the SIR began in June she received no enumeration form; when the draft roll was published, her name appeared neither in the roll nor in the list of those removed as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate. "My husband and children received their forms but I did not. I had also voted in the 2025 polls with them. My name is nowhere."
• The numbers: At the February 2025 Assembly elections, Delhi's electorate stood at 1.56 crore. By 16 June, when the roll was frozen before the SIR, it had dropped to 1.45 crore — a decrease of 11.01 lakh names. After the SIR started, a further 47.56 lakh names were deleted in the draft roll published on 31 August. In total, 37.6% — well over a third — of the voters on the 2025 roll are no longer part of Delhi's electorate. The pre-SIR deletion figure is put at 13.39 lakh.
• The procedural question: Under ECI rules, continuous updation happens through individual applications for enrolment or objections, with BLO field verification required for unregistered deaths and shifting of voters, only after receiving Form-7. In all such cases, a notice must be issued. The Electoral Registration Officer can also delete suo motu based on the BLO's field report. There is no draft roll or claims-and-objections period for such routine updating, unlike for special revisions.
• No response: Delhi CEO Ashok Kumar and his office did not respond to queries, including whether notices were served on those deleted during the pre-SIR mapping exercise.

Mizoram SIR Outcome

• 78,442 names deleted and 39,243 new electors added, taking the final voter count to 8.35 lakh, per State CEO Garima Gupta. Before the SIR the State had 8.75 lakh registered electors.
• The final roll recorded the State's first third-gender elector, alongside 4 lakh men and 4.32 lakh women voters.
• Of the enumeration forms distributed, 8,28,906 were collected while 46,162 were not, and those names were subsequently deleted.

Static Background

Electoral rolls are prepared under the Representation of the People Act, 1950. Section 21(3) permits the ECI to order a special revision for reasons recorded in writing; Section 22 governs correction and deletion of entries, and Section 23 inclusion of names. Form 6 is for new enrolment, Form 7 for objection to inclusion or seeking deletion, and Form 8 for corrections and shifting. The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 require notice and an opportunity of hearing before deletion. Byelections must ordinarily be held within six months of a vacancy arising, under Section 151A of the RP Act, 1951, subject to specified exceptions. Article 324 vests superintendence, direction and control of elections in the ECI.

Context

In what officials describe as a major breakthrough, the United Kingdom has recognised India's Carbon Credit Trading Scheme as a qualifying criterion for pricing relief under its carbon border adjustment mechanism — a move expected to reduce the tax burden on Indian exporters.

Background & Key Facts

• The communication: Addressed to the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Ministry of Power, the U.K.'s His Majesty's Treasury confirmed that the CCTS has been included in the U.K.'s published indicative list of overseas carbon pricing schemes assessed as qualifying criteria under a provision of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (Calculation of CBAM Rate and Determination of Carbon Price Relief) Regulations 2026.
• The effect: "This will reduce the effective CBAM liability on Indian goods, directly benefiting Indian exporters," an official said.

Static Background — Carbon Pricing and Border Adjustment

A Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism imposes a charge on the embedded carbon of imported goods equal to what a domestic producer would have paid under the importing country's carbon price. Its stated purpose is to prevent carbon leakage — the relocation of emission-intensive production to jurisdictions with weaker climate policy. Critically, most CBAM designs allow a deduction for a carbon price already paid in the country of origin. That deduction is the mechanism at work here: recognition of the CCTS means the carbon price Indian producers pay domestically is netted off against the U.K. border charge, so the same tonne of carbon is not priced twice.

Context

Former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg has questioned the credibility of India's latest GDP estimates, arguing that the sharp downward revisions to the size of the economy need a far more transparent explanation than the government's invocation of new methodology. Separately, a CII survey finds that half of Indian businesses say the country's strong macroeconomic performance has either not translated into improved business performance or has done so only partially.

Garg's Critique — Key Points

• The missing bridge: The central concern is the absence of a transparent bridge between the 2011-12 base series and the 2022-23 series. Mr. Garg said MoSPI must publish a back-series from 2011-12 to 2021-22 and set a timetable for doing so; the absence of such a programme suggests the government is "not very serious" about resolving the issue.
• The scale of revision: The revision in Q1 FY26 is part of a much larger change, with GDP for 2024-25 reduced by ₹12.70 lakh crore.
• The logical objection: The standard explanation — that a new series incorporates wider coverage, new data sources and indices — was insufficient in his view: "Any better coverage leads to nominal GDP getting increased, not decreased."
• Two possibilities offered: Either the earlier system overstated GDP through errors such as double counting, or GDP was deliberately overstated to produce stronger growth numbers and later written down under cover of the new series. He gave no evidence of deliberate manipulation but said the scale of revision made a detailed explanation essential.
• The deflator problem: With consumer inflation over 4% and producer-price inflation about 9%, the roughly 2.5% GDP deflator implied by the latest numbers appeared difficult to reconcile — "There is definitely a serious internal inconsistency". He called for the underlying price data to be disclosed and explained.
• Double deflation: He was sceptical of applying double deflation to manufacturing, arguing international best practice cannot be transplanted without sufficiently granular Indian data, and suggested running the older system in parallel until the new methodology stabilises.
• Statistical independence: India's data infrastructure needs "massive modernisation", but the system could still produce reliable numbers if there were no "political interest to produce results in a certain direction". Statisticians need greater freedom from political control.
• Beyond GDP: GDP is not a measure of welfare. India does not adequately publish the "income leg" of national accounts showing how value added is divided between labour, corporations and government. With per-capita GDP still low, he argued India must target 9-10% growth while redistributing income more effectively and reducing unproductive government expenditure. He called the government's explanation "officialese, obfuscatory" and said it "sheds no light".

The CII Business Outlook Survey

• Composite confidence: The index for July-September 2026 rose to 66 in Q2 from 60.8 in Q1 of FY27 — the same as Q2 last year. The improvement was attributed to "easing of disruptions stemming from the West Asia conflict". The survey covered 238 public and private firms across all industry sectors and enterprise sizes.
• The translation gap: 13.4% said on-ground conditions were subdued despite strong macro data; 36.6% said they saw some improvement "but weaker than indicators suggest"; 11.3% said growth "matches or exceeds macro momentum"; and 29.4% saw "clear benefits, though somewhat below headline growth".
• Demand outlook: 29.4% expect no change in local demand in Q2 versus Q1; 3.5% expect demand more than 20% lower; 6.1% expect 5-20% lower. But 61% expect demand to rise against only 9.6% foreseeing moderation. The share expecting demand growth above 20% rises from 12.9% in Q1FY27 to 16% in Q2FY27.

Static Background — India's National Accounts

GDP estimates are compiled by the National Statistical Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, with methodological oversight from the National Statistical Commission (a non-statutory body recommended by the Rangarajan Commission). Base year revisions are periodic; the 2011-12 series introduced the MCA-21 corporate database and shifted headline reporting to Gross Value Added at basic prices alongside GDP at market prices. A back series reconciles old and new bases so that long-run growth comparisons remain valid — and its absence has repeatedly been the focus of controversy. The GDP deflator is the implicit ratio of nominal to real GDP and is the broadest measure of economy-wide price change. Double deflation deflates inputs and outputs by separate price indices and is considered international best practice for measuring real value added in manufacturing; single deflation, long used in India, can distort real growth when input and output prices diverge.

Context

For the first time in India, alternative fuels — CNG, hybrid and electric combined — overtook petrol in the passenger vehicle market, at 41.95% against petrol's 40.85% in August 2026, according to Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations retail data.

Background & Key Facts

• Overall: The industry retailed 24,23,201 units in August 2026, up 17.51% year-on-year, but down 6.48% month-on-month due to the seasonal monsoon lull and a festival calendar that shifted Ganesh Chaturthi and pushed Onam-led buying into September.
• Segment growth (YoY): Wheeled Construction Equipment 31.45%, Two-wheelers 19.69%, Passenger Vehicles 16.14%, Commercial Vehicles 14.45%, Three-wheelers 8.64%, Tractors effectively flat at 0.84%.
• FADA president Sai Giridhar: "Two-wheelers, passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, tractors and three-wheelers each set fresh August records, and overall registrations were the highest ever for the month."
• Two-wheelers: 17,14,610 units, up 19.69% YoY — the best August since 2018 — but down 5.70% MoM. Share of electric two-wheelers crossed 10% (10.68%) in a non-festival month for the first time, against 7.66% a year earlier.
• Commercial vehicles: 90,769 units, up 14.45% YoY (best-ever August), down 8.93% MoM. LCVs grew 15.32%, HCVs 13.98%, MCVs 10.38%, with dealers citing infrastructure execution, mining and e-commerce logistics alongside steady financing. Electric CV share rose to an all-time high of 5.18% from 2.06% a year ago.
• Passenger vehicles: 4,02,398 units, up 16.14% YoY — the first time the segment has crossed four lakh in an August — though MoM sales were 3.40% lower. The fuel mix: CNG 25.28%, Hybrid 9.04%, EV 7.63%, together 41.95%, against petrol's 40.85%. Petrol nonetheless remains the single largest individual fuel.
• The driver: "Dealers attribute the shift to running-cost economics and continuing consumer hesitation around the E20 transition, nudging petrol buyers towards CNG, hybrids and EVs," Mr. Giridhar said.
• Inventory warning: PV inventory rose by a further five days over July-end to about 38-40 days, well above FADA's recommended 21-day benchmark, with 56% of PV dealers reporting higher stock month-on-month.
• Three-wheelers: EV penetration at 65.30% — the segment "is now structurally electric".

Static Background

FADA reports retail registrations from the VAHAN portal, which measure actual sales to consumers, unlike SIAM's wholesale dispatches from manufacturers to dealers — which is why the inventory-day figure is a leading indicator of dealer stress. The E20 programme mandates 20% ethanol blending in petrol, achieved ahead of the original 2030 target; consumer concerns relate to fuel efficiency and material compatibility in older vehicles. Electric mobility policy runs through the PM E-DRIVE scheme (successor to FAME-II), the PLI schemes for advanced chemistry cell batteries and automobiles, and State-level EV policies. CNG expansion depends on City Gas Distribution networks licensed by the PNGRB. India's transport sector is a major contributor to oil imports and urban air pollution, giving the fuel-mix shift both energy security and public health significance.

Context

A slew of announcements has placed steel sector decarbonisation high on the agenda, including a ₹5,000-crore scheme to accelerate it, set to launch in the coming months. Research suggests India has a narrow window to redirect planned investment away from coal-based steelmaking before new blast furnaces lock in emissions for decades.

Background & Key Facts

• India's position: Steelmaking emissions are among the highest in the world, roughly 32% higher than the global average, and account for nearly 12% of India's total greenhouse gas emissions. Steel production in FY 2025-26 was the second-highest in the world at around 160 million tonnes, behind only China.
• The Mission target: The National Mission on Green Steel aims to lower emissions intensity from the current 2.55-2.65 to 2.2 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent per tonne of crude steel by 2029-30. A certification scheme launched in 2024 defines steel below 2.2 tCO₂e as "green", with the greenest tier still up to 1.6 tCO₂e. Globally, average steelmaking emissions are around 1.85 tCO₂e — so India's greenest steel remains highly carbon-intensive.
• The scrap constraint: Anubha Aggarwal of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air: "India is a developing economy, and we do not have much scrap available. If we have old steel available, we can recycle that scrap to produce new steel, which reduces our costs and emissions associated with reducing iron ore."

The Technology Pathways

• India's mix: Per an India Steel Association report, 43% of crude steel is produced at BF-BOF plants, 22% from EAF units, and 35% from electric induction furnaces. Given growing demand and planned plants, BF-BOF capacity is projected to increase to 56% by 2030.
• The window: Clara Bachorz of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, lead author of a paper in Nature Climate Change, argues India has a large opportunity to become a major green steel and iron producer if it invests in greener pathways rather than coal-based steel. Avoiding new BF-BOFs and not relining young furnaces due for it, while diverting investment to EAFs, "could almost halve global committed steel emissions".
• Just a redirection: "We find that since the majority of these BOF plants in India have not broken ground, you could redirect investments already towards DRI-EAF, and this would not require additional investments. It would just be a redirection."
• The relining deadline: Relining a blast furnace is a capital-intensive maintenance task done roughly every two decades that extends plant life by another 15-20 years — while locking in coal-based production for that period. More than 43 million tonnes per annum of blast furnace capacity is due for relining before 2030, per Reclimatize.
• The two scenarios: Bachorz et al. modelled global transition pathways aligned with 1.5°C with overshoot up to 1.7°C, finding China and India dominate the fast-transition dynamics. In the slow-transition scenario, young furnaces are relined and announced plants proceed, locking in emissions and relying far more on nascent carbon dioxide removal technologies.
• The hydrogen timeline: Per the model, India first operates DRI-EAF plants primarily with natural gas until 2040-2045, then switches to hydrogen as green hydrogen becomes cost-competitive.
• The reframing: Steel is "less a 'hard-to-abate' sector than a sector facing a 'hard-to-abate barrier' that can be overcome at relatively moderate costs through timely investment decisions". Compared with aviation, "it is relatively much easier to abate because the technology is already there, even though it is more expensive".
• The stranded asset argument: Ms. Aggarwal: "If we invest in EAF now, it would be much easier for us to make it cleaner later rather than investing in BF-BOF now and it becoming a stranded property later... We have already seen this with thermal power plants, where it becomes really difficult to close them down."
• Caveat on gas: Natural gas-based EAFs carry risks of fuel shortages, import dependence, geopolitical shocks and stranded gas infrastructure.

Policy and Market Developments

• CBAM pressure: The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism came into effect in January, imposing steep penalties on carbon-intensive imports including Indian steel. India has been seeking alternative markets and boosting domestic consumption, while compliance obligations force rethinking of investment decisions.
• Green hydrogen pilots: In March, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy funded three pilot green hydrogen projects totalling more than ₹400 crore to validate the feasibility of using 100% green hydrogen in furnaces.
• Commercial scale: JSW Energy commissioned India's largest commercial-scale green hydrogen plant at Vijayanagar, Karnataka, supplying 100% green hydrogen to the adjoining JSW Steel DRI unit.
• Certification: ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India became the first integrated steel producer to receive green steel certification in February. Per government data, 89 steel units had received the certification as of 31 March, covering a production volume of 12.34 million tonnes.
• The demand gap: Ms. Aggarwal: "You may have your doubts about whether [India's 'green steel'] is really green, and the brackets for green steel certification are too large not to be very effective, but then at the end of the day, we have taken that initiative of defining what 'green steel' is, unlike anywhere else in the world... What we have not done is create the kind of market where there is also demand for green steel."

Context

Following sustained local protests and pressure from civil society groups, Google has reportedly said its planned 1-GW data centre in Visakhapatnam district will use air-cooling technology to cool its servers. Air-cooling requires less water — but comes with its own trade-offs, and cannot practically handle the heat load of a 1-GW facility on its own.

Why Data Centres Generate Heat

• A large data centre has several million processors, each with billions of transistors. As a transistor manipulates current, the resistance of its material releases heat, as does charging and discharging. Across trillions of transistors, the heat is considerable.
• A 1-GW data centre will in principle produce 1 GW of heat. The planned Google "hyperscaler" near Visakhapatnam and the newly announced Tata Consultancy Services "HyperVault" will each be 1-GW facilities.
• The architecture: Billions of transistors make a processor; processors make a server; servers fill a rack; racks combine into clusters; clusters make a data centre.

Cooling Technologies Compared

The Limits of Air-Cooling

• Cost comparison: Current construction benchmarks suggest liquid-cooled facilities incur a 7-10% premium on total project cost due to complex piping, leak detection and coolant distribution units.
• Where air works: Air-cooling is proven, with a deep pool of technicians and maintenance protocols. Engineers often prefer to air-cool racks producing 20 kW or less. In naturally cool or arid conditions, air-side economisers can reduce energy diverted to mechanical cooling by 70%.
• The thermal wall: As of 2026, using air-cooling alone for a 1-GW data centre is considered impractical, physically and economically. Air-cooling can remove at best around 40 kW per rack. Modern AI chips like the Nvidia Blackwell generate 700-1,000 W per GPU, so a rack could emit 120-150 kW. At that scale, air-cooling would require racks installed inside a wind tunnel, with power consumption skyrocketing.
• Acoustic impact: Air-cooling chillers and air-handling units can produce up to 100 dB; if the resulting low-frequency hum is not dampened it can travel several kilometres under favourable atmospheric conditions, disturbing residents.
• The practical answer — hybrid cooling: Many 1-GW facilities use air-cooling for low-density servers and other areas, rear-door heat exchangers to push air-cooling to 50 kW, and direct-to-chip (DTC) liquid cooling for high-density AI clusters.
• The framing: While liquid-cooling imposes higher costs upfront, air-cooling levies a performance and efficiency tax that can increase the total cost of ownership within a few years of operation.

What the Companies Have Committed To

• Google: Visakhapatnam MP M. Sribharat said Google confirmed it will use air-cooling technology and that "there is no question of impact to water supply". Google has said it will replenish 120% of water consumed for non-cooling needs across its operations by 2030, quantified under the Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting standard. It is also planning integrated watershed-management measures including rainwater catchment on data-centre buildings, groundwater recharge infrastructure, water pumps and water ATMs.
• TCS HyperVault: CEO Deepesh Kiran Nanda: "We are building infrastructure for where AI is going: higher density, liquid cooling, larger power blocks, and faster deployment." The facility will feature DTC cooling and use renewable energy.

Context

A study led by the ICMR-National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research has found that nicotine pouches are reaching Indian cities through online platforms, hookah shops and gig delivery services. The study follows a WHO warning in May 2026 about the dangers these products pose — yet it remains far from settled which Indian law, if any, governs them.

What They Are, and the Regulatory Gap

• The product: A nicotine pouch is a small, tobacco-free, tea-bag-like sack containing nicotine, flavourings and plant-based fibres. Users place it between the lip and gum for up to an hour, allowing nicotine absorption directly into the bloodstream without smoke, vapour or spitting.
• COTPA does not cover them: The Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 governs marketing, advertising and sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products, but its definition of tobacco products does not extend to all products containing nicotine. Restrictions on freedom of trade and commerce must be strictly construed, and since nicotine pouches are not among the products listed, they fall outside COTPA.
• The Drugs Act is debatable: Nicotine is not listed as a drug in any schedule of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940. However, nicotine patches and gums have been approved as drugs by the Drug Controller General of India for therapeutic use in treating nicotine addiction, and Schedule K of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 lists gums and lozenges, exempting them from licensing and prescription requirements if they contain less than 2 mg of nicotine. The argument runs both ways: if nicotine were not a drug at all, there would be no reason to exempt certain nicotine products in Schedule K — but pouches make no therapeutic claim and do not purport to treat addiction, being a substitute for cigarettes, so on that reading they do not qualify as drugs.
• PECA does not apply: The Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act, 2019 bans the import and sale of vapes. If vapes were drugs, no separate legislation would have been needed — the enactment of PECA suggests the Drugs Act did not give adequate power. Nicotine pouches differ from vapes: they contain no electronic device and produce neither smoke nor vapour, and are consequently not covered by PECA.
• Could they be food? The Prevention of Food Adulteration Act and the Food Safety and Standards Act define food broadly as any processed, partially processed or unprocessed substance intended for human consumption. Court rulings on supari and chewing tobacco establish that the definition has very wide amplitude, encompassing items chewed rather than swallowed — so it is arguable that nicotine pouches fall within it.

Import, Customs and Duty-Free

• Two statutes govern imports: The Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992 empowers the Central government to prohibit, restrict or regulate imports, administered by the DGFT which publishes the ITC-HS classification listing goods as free, restricted or banned. Section 11 of the Customs Act, 1962 allows prohibition of goods wholly or partly by notification, on grounds including protection of human, animal or plant life.
• The new customs codes: After the World Customs Organization updated the Harmonized System, a sub-category was introduced for oral nicotine products not involving combustion — 2404 91 30 covers tobacco-free single-use pouches of the Zyn or Lyft type, and 2404 91 90 covers other oral nicotine products not meant for therapeutic uses. Under the DGFT schedule and CBIC rules, goods under 2404 91 30 are "restricted" — they cannot be cleared merely on payment of duty, and unlike prohibited e-cigarettes they are not banned outright, but require a specific licence or permission, with the DGFT cross-referencing the health and other ministries.
• Duty-free shops: Nicotine pouches are currently available at a few duty-free stores at Indian airports, licensed under Section 58 of the Customs Act. In Flemingo Duty Free Shop Pvt. Ltd. v. Shri Kaushik Bhattacharya (2024), the Calcutta High Court held that a duty-free store did not "import" goods into India, being deemed located outside it for Customs Act purposes, so legal metrology labelling requirements did not apply. The author cautions this should not be read as meaning no Indian law applies — otherwise, could stores stock arms and ammunition, and which court or police station would have jurisdiction over a crime committed there? Permitted duty-free goods include cigarettes, alcohol, jewellery, watches, food and small electronics; nicotine pouches are not among them unless one argues they are food.
• The remedy: "The legal position is intricate, but the remedy is not." A notification under the Customs Act and the Foreign Trade Act banning import and sale on health grounds "would take minutes to issue". If the government moves as slowly as it did with vapes, pouches will become fashionable and demand will settle in — and a ban notified after that point will only produce smuggling on the scale now seen with vapes.

Static Background

India is a party to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which obliges parties to regulate the contents, packaging, advertising and sale of tobacco products and to protect public health policy from tobacco industry interference. Domestic instruments include COTPA 2003 (advertising ban, pictorial warnings, prohibition of sale to minors and near educational institutions), the food safety regulations banning gutka and pan masala containing tobacco or nicotine in most States, and PECA 2019. The public health concern with nicotine pouches is that they deliver a highly addictive substance with youth-friendly flavouring and no smoke, sidestepping the visual and social cues that tobacco control has relied on — a classic case of regulation defined by product category rather than by the harmful agent.

Context

Four significant developments from the Supreme Court and its consequences appear in today's edition — on violence against doctors, the deadline for defining the Aravallis, facilities for senior citizens, and the service allocation limbo affecting 958 recommended Civil Services candidates.

1. Violence Against Doctors

• The observation: A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta said those who assault doctors and hospital staff "do not deserve to roam on the streets even for a minute", prompting a Maharashtra corporator to withdraw his plea after the Bench indicated it could examine cancellation of his bail.
• The case: Shiv Sena corporator Ramesh Sukrya Mhatre challenged the Bombay High Court's 18 July order staying his bail and its 7 August order imposing conditions including remaining outside Maharashtra until trial. The case stems from an alleged assault on 6 July on three doctors at the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation-run Shastri Nagar Hospital, Dombivli, Thane, after they advised that a pregnant woman be shifted because all NICU beds were occupied.
• The pattern: The court referred to an incident in Palghar on 5 September where 17 Shiv Sena workers were booked for allegedly assaulting hospital staff after a dispute over treatment of a 19-year-old injured during a Dahi Handi celebration. "There appeared to be a propensity to do these things."
• Outcome: Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi sought withdrawal; Justice Nath said a larger message was needed. The Bench issued notice on the Maharashtra government's appeal challenging bail, listed for 28 September, and allowed withdrawal of Mr. Mhatre's petition. The High Court had also directed the State to provide adequate protection to the three doctors.

2. The Aravalli Definition Panel

• The refusal: Rejecting a six-month extension sought by the Supreme Court-appointed high-powered committee, CJI Surya Kant asked whether it was "waiting for his retirement" — he demits office on 9 February 2027. "They should have clearly asked for a date after my retirement... We are not going to allow this."
• The deadline: The panel must submit its final report by 30 November. The Bench, also comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, made clear no further extension would be granted and directed the five-member panel, headed by Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education Director General Kanchan Devi, to "work day and night".
• The mandate: Evolving a uniform definition of the ecologically fragile Aravalli hills and range and recommending measures to regulate future mining. The court asked for interim reports on issues requiring immediate consideration and directed the panel to hear all stakeholders, including tribal communities in Rajasthan and Gujarat. Next hearing: 2 December.

3. Facilities for Senior Citizens

• A three-judge Bench headed by CJI Surya Kant directed all States and Union Territories to file fresh status reports detailing the number of old-age homes and facilities available to senior citizens across the country, within four weeks.
• Attorney General R. Venkataramani was asked to communicate the direction to Advocates General and standing counsel.
• The Bench was hearing a 2016 public interest litigation filed by former Union Minister and senior advocate Ashwini Kumar concerning the welfare of senior citizens, particularly those without adequate shelter, food or medical care.

4. Civil Services Candidates in Limbo

• The situation: The 958 candidates recommended by the UPSC in the 2025 Civil Services Examination are in limbo over service allocation and the start of their foundation course, which was expected to begin in August.
• The cause: The Centre applied to the Supreme Court seeking permission for the DoPT to allocate services without implementing the court's 11 March Rohith Nathan judgment. That ruling found the DoPT was incorrectly excluding certain OBC candidates from reservation by concluding they belonged to the creamy layer based only on their parents' salary income, and directed corrective measures within six months. CSE 2025 results were declared on 6 March, days before the judgment.
• The wait: The Supreme Court is set to hear the Centre on 17 September. Candidates report no communication from the DoPT or the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration; a schedule tentatively indicating a 24 August start lapsed once the court became seized of the matter.

Static Background

Violence against healthcare workers: There is no dedicated central law; most States have enacted Medicare Service Persons and Institutions Acts, and the Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Act, 2020 criminalised violence against healthcare personnel specifically during epidemics. Doctors' associations have long demanded a central statute.

The Aravallis: India's oldest fold mountain range, running roughly from Gujarat through Rajasthan and Haryana to Delhi, serving as an ecological barrier against desertification from the Thar. Protection instruments include the Punjab Land Preservation Act, 1900 in Haryana, Supreme Court orders restricting mining, the Aravalli Notification of 1992, and the proposed Aravalli Green Wall project. The definitional dispute — what counts as "Aravalli" for regulatory purposes — has permitted mining and construction in contested areas.

Senior citizens: The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 creates a legal obligation of maintenance, provides for maintenance tribunals, and requires States to establish old-age homes. Schemes include the Atal Vayo Abhyuday Yojana and the National Programme for Health Care of the Elderly. Article 41 is the enabling Directive Principle.

OBC creamy layer: Introduced in Indra Sawhney (1992) and operationalised by a 1993 Office Memorandum, the creamy layer test excludes children of those in higher services and above an income ceiling from non-salary sources. Successive rulings have held that salary income alone cannot be the basis for creamy layer exclusion — the principle the Rohith Nathan judgment applies.

Context

A consolidated round-up of the remaining reports in today's Bengaluru City Edition carrying direct prelims value — West Asia, Europe, representation, science institutions, culture and Karnataka.

World

• Iran warns U.S. energy facilities in the Gulf: Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said "Strike our assets and you get struck", warning that the region's energy production chain is "sprawling, accessible and exposed" and that U.S. oil and gas companies share that exposure. Senior security official Mohsen Rezaei said Iran would announce a new restricted zone in the Gulf and approve new maps of a shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz; ships entering the new zone would be added to an Iranian sanctions list. The zone would begin where the U.S. naval blockade starts. Iran will commit to keeping Hormuz open only when the U.S. stops "sabotage, threats and attacks". Oil prices rose to six-week highs. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei warned South Korea against military deployment or involvement in U.S. operations in the Strait, after Seoul said it was considering "contributions" to U.S. security efforts.
• German far-right AfD wins Saxony-Anhalt: The Alternative for Germany won 43.8% of the vote and 39 of 83 seats — first place, but short of a majority — and appealed to CDU lawmakers to help it form the country's first far-right State government since the Second World War. AfD leader Tino Chrupalla invoked a "centre-right conservative majority", testing the mainstream parties' "firewall" against cooperation with the AfD. Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was "deeply shocked" at the CDU's 17.2% — "the heaviest electoral defeat the party has suffered in years, in decades".
• Israel-Lebanon: Israeli airstrikes killed 12 people in south Lebanon including women and children, per the Lebanese Health Ministry — 11 in Kfar Rumman including two children and four women, and a rescuer in a second strike. Israel said it struck Hezbollah infrastructure after two explosive drones were launched at its troops, and would continue while "remaining committed to the ceasefire agreement". Hezbollah has not claimed any attack since 20 June. Israeli operations have killed more than 4,300 people since March, per Beirut. Separately, Defence Minister Israel Katz threatened "full-scale war" against the Palestinian Authority in case of an October 7-style attack.
• Nepal mourning: Nepal held a national day of mourning with candlelight vigils for victims of the glacial floods, as families of missing hydropower workers prayed rescuers might find them alive. The 26 August floods killed at least 1,399 people, with more than 5,500 missing.
• Mladic funeral: Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic was buried in Belgrade in a service attended by thousands, drawing EU accusations of the "glorification" of a man who died while serving a life sentence for genocide.
• EU and Greenland: European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a 200-million-euro ($232 million) investment package for Greenland, which President Trump has insisted should belong to the U.S. "The EU stands in full solidarity with the Kingdom of Denmark and the people of Greenland."
• U.K. anti-migrant protests: The government condemned protests by hundreds in Portsmouth against the arrival of migrants by dinghy from France; some 140 migrants arrived in one boat. Protesters also gathered in Dover. Police and Crime Commissioner Donna Jones said the U.K. had "lost control" of its coastline.

National & Institutional

• Women's political leadership: Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, inaugurating a two-day all-India capacity building workshop on gender-responsive governance organised by the National Commission for Women in Faridabad, said the proposed 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies would open new avenues for women's political leadership, and that the focus must shift from providing support to enabling women to determine policies, programmes and legislation. He said the day was not far when women would account for more than 50% of those in public services.
• Congress SC/ST MPs petition the President: Thirty-two Congress MPs from SC and ST communities decided to petition President Droupadi Murmu over an alleged "purification yajna" held in Uttarakhand's Haldwani on 11 August following a rally addressed by party president Mallikarjun Kharge, describing it as an assault on dignity and an affront to the constitutional values of equality and abolition of untouchability. They will constitute a parliamentary forum on SC and ST issues; Rahul Gandhi had demanded an FIR under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
• Manipur musician killed in Delhi: Chongtham Vikram Singh, a guitarist and musician from Imphal living in Delhi's Ashram area, died of injuries from an alleged assault. Delhi Police registered an FIR under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for mob lynching — Sections 103(2) (murder on grounds of race, caste or community by a group of five or more) and 3(5) (crimes by a group with common intent) — arresting seven men and detaining a 15-year-old. The accused, aged 15 to 36, worked in food packaging and delivery from nearby dhabas; the complaint alleges prior threats after Singh complained of excessive noise. Former Manipur CM N. Biren Singh urged swift action.
• 'Hindutva influencer' remanded: A Delhi court remanded Swatantra Bhardwaj to 14 days' judicial custody in connection with the alleged assault on the father of a student during a July protest at Jantar Mantar organised by the Cockroach Janta Party. He will be produced again on 21 September.
• SC on journalist's digital data: The Supreme Court asked the Uttar Pradesh Police why they needed the digital footprint of Abhishek Upadhyay, an independent journalist who flagged alleged misappropriation of donations to the Ayodhya Ram temple, to investigate a road-rage case against him. The Bench headed by CJI Surya Kant directed the Ghaziabad Police Commissioner to file an affidavit detailing information sought from platform X.
• IISc's FSID: The Foundation for Science, Innovation and Development, a single-window interface to IISc's deep science and deep-tech capabilities, said it would undertake 1,000 industry projects and build a portfolio of 300 deep-tech start-ups by 2030, unveiling a new governance model with its first industry-leader CEO, Omprakash Subbarao, on the path to a self-sustaining Section 8 company. Vision: "Built on Science, Scaled for the World", with two pillars — Innovation and Incubation.
• Inflation and festive prices: Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said wholesale onion prices had doubled in three weeks and sugar had risen 25%, with arhar, urad, mustard, refined oil and dry fruits also costlier ahead of Deepavali, accusing the government of "statistical jugglery".
• National Film Awards move to Gujarat: The 72nd National Film Awards will be presented by President Droupadi Murmu on 22 September at Ekta Nagar, Gujarat — the first time outside the traditional Delhi venue since the first ceremony in 1954, apart from the 17th and 18th editions held in Madras in 1970 and 1971. Winners announced in July include Article 370 as best feature film, Yami Gautam as best actress, Mammootty and Kartik Aaryan sharing best actor for Bramayugam and Chandu Champion, and Randeep Hooda as best debut director for Swatantrya Veer Savarkar.
• Kashmir's first international film festival: Kashmir, where all 15 cinema halls closed during three decades of militancy, hosted its first four-day international film festival, opening with the Lebanese film Dead Dog at the Inox in Srinagar — the first functional cinema hall to reopen in the valley after 23 years, in 2022. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah called it "a new chapter in the long-standing relationship between J&K and cinema" and "a declaration of intent" about Kashmir's potential as a global filmmaking destination. Around 1,100 entries were received and 135 films from 41 countries shortlisted, including more than 60 foreign films, with venues at SKICC and Inox in Srinagar, Gulmarg and Jammu.

Business, Karnataka & Archives

• JLR job cuts: Jaguar Land Rover, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles Limited, will reduce its global workforce by about 4,000 roles over two years under a "strategic transformation programme", not expected to impact direct manufacturing jobs and to be achieved through voluntary means where possible. Under its "Growth Reimagined" strategy announced on 19 June 2026, JLR targets approximately £1.7 billion of savings over two years to reduce break-evens towards 3,00,000 units, while committing to invest £15-18 billion in electrification, digital technologies and advanced manufacturing over five years. CEO P.B. Balaji cited technological change, intense competition and geopolitical uncertainty.
• RBI liquidity operations: The RBI mopped up over ₹6 lakh crore in two auctions with an underwhelming response. Against a notified ₹7 lakh crore for the 30-day VRRR, bids of just over ₹2.59 lakh crore were received, accepted at a cut-off and weighted average rate of 5.24%. An overnight VRRR of ₹5 lakh crore notified amount drew ₹3,53,390 crore — over 70% of the notified amount — accepted in full at 5.24%, indicating lenders prefer parking funds for shorter tenures.
• Coal rake loading: Loading of coal rakes for the power sector grew about 20% between 3 and 6 September, per the Coal Ministry, which is monitoring thermal plants with stocks below 25% of normal requirements. Per Central Electricity Authority data, 53 domestic coal-fired plants were at the critical normative level as on 5 September.
• Copper and RBL: Copper headed towards a record high, with LME benchmark copper up 0.1% at $14,430 a tonne, on prospects of shortages outside the U.S. and a softer dollar. RBL Bank approved mobilisation of up to $1 billion from overseas investors through a Euro Medium Term Note Programme under Regulation S of the U.S. Securities Act, 1933.
• Karnataka: The State Cabinet expansion is likely to be delayed by celebrations marking 100 days of the D.K. Shivakumar-led Congress government and a three-day special session of the legislature, postponing the filling of two vacant Cabinet posts. Separately, seven persons were killed in two road accidents in Kolar and Chickballapur districts, four of them from one family.
• News in numbers: Over 1,000 teachers who lost jobs following court rulings launched a sit-in outside West Bengal's education department headquarters, 'Bikash Bhavan'. Uttar Pradesh recorded a 6.97% decline in road accidents, an 8.03% fall in fatalities and a 6.11% reduction in injuries at locations covered under the Zero Fatality District scheme between January and August. Kerala police booked 2,799 people for drunk driving in a week-long special drive.
• From the archives: Fifty years ago (8 September 1976), Pakistan's Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto wrote to British Prime Minister James Callaghan asking Britain to return the Kohinoor diamond, in British possession since 1849 and part of the crown jewels after the annexation of Punjab. A hundred years ago (8 September 1926), General Hertzog foreshadowed a compromise on South Africa's Flag Bill and said he would urge international recognition of South Africa's national status as equal to Britain's.
• Faith column — Attaining liberation: R. Narayanan's discourse holds that human birth carries advantages that aid liberation, and that faculties should be used for devotion. Repeated births arise from ignorance, which can be banished by worship; Tirukkural verse 358 speaks of ridding oneself of ignorance, while Thiruvachagam holds that an atma can have 84,000 possible births. Manickavachagar describes having taken birth as grass, worm, animals, birds, snakes, stones, humans, ghosts, sages and devas; Avvaiyar says human birth is rare good fortune and advises time spent in the company of the virtuous.