India's TB incidence fell 21% between 2015 and 2024 against a global decline of 12% (WHO Global TB Report 2025), and a new youth-led JOSH (Joint Squad for Health) campaign now seeks to push community participation — but the gap to the End TB milestones remains wide.

India's TB policy has moved over six decades from controlling the disease to eliminating it — a shift UPSC tests through predecessor–successor pairs.

• 1962 — National TB Control Programme (NTCP): district TB centres, BCG and domiciliary treatment.
• 1993 — Revised NTCP (RNTCP): introduced DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course), the WHO-recommended strategy.
• 2012 — TB made a notifiable disease, requiring private providers to report cases.
• 2018 — Delhi End TB Summit (13 March) and Nikshay Poshan Yojana (April).
• 2020 — RNTCP renamed NTEP, signalling the move from control to elimination.
• 2022 — PM TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan, adding the Ni-kshay Mitra community-support model; 2023 — TB Mukt Panchayat initiative.

Figure 1 — TB control and elimination programmes, 1962–2022

The programme's arc runs from district-level control (1962) to nutrition-linked, community-backed elimination (2018–22). Image courtesy PIB / Ministry of Health & Family Welfare; reproduced with credit for educational use.

• Screening and prevention: over 28.1 crore people screened and 20 lakh given TB Preventive Treatment (TPT) under the intensified campaign (as of June 2026).
• Community layer: 5.7 lakh new Ni-kshay Mitras; 46,118 Gram Panchayats certified TB-free.
• Second phase (from March 2026): over 1.7 lakh Ayushman Arogya Shivirs across 1.2 lakh high-risk villages and wards.
• Treatment outcomes: success rate under the Abhiyaan reported at 90%, against a global average of 88%.
• Nutrition support: ₹4,454.68 crore disbursed to 1.38 crore beneficiaries under Nikshay Poshan since April 2018.

The NSP organises every intervention under Detect – Treat – Prevent – Build. The release's new tools map neatly onto these pillars, which is a useful structure for a Mains answer.

• Detect: over 9,800 rapid molecular testing facilities and 107 culture & drug-susceptibility labs; a 34-fold rise in X-ray screening through 500+ AI-enabled handheld units (another 1,500 being delivered); expanded Truenat (indigenous chip-based PCR) and CBNAAT machines.
• Treat: the BPaLM regimen — Bedaquiline, Pretomanid, Linezolid, Moxifloxacin — cuts drug-resistant TB treatment to 6 months; 15,000+ MDR/RR-TB patients initiated.
• Prevent: TPT for household contacts, people living with HIV and other high-risk groups; airborne infection control.
• Build: Ni-kshay digital platform for DBT; TB Mukt Bharat App with the AI chatbot 'Khushi'; more radiographer posts under NHM; 1,87,250 Ayushman Arogya Mandirs as first contact points.

Figure 3 — The four pillars of the National Strategic Plan

Build is the broadest pillar — financing, workforce, private-sector engagement, digital systems and rights-based care. Image courtesy PIB / Ministry of Health & Family Welfare; reproduced with credit for educational use.

• Format: a nationwide social-media campaign held on 13 October 2026, built around JOSH (Joint Squad for Health) teams, piloted in 55 districts of 11 States.
• Team composition: MY Bharat volunteers, NCC cadets and a designated Class-I officer in each team.
• Aim: awareness on early screening, treatment adherence and stigma reduction, and finding asymptomatic cases through active case-finding.
• MY Bharat (Mera Yuva Bharat, launched 31 Oct 2023) is an autonomous body under the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports for youth aged 15–29; over 2 lakh of its volunteers already serve as Ni-kshay Mitras.

India carries roughly a quarter of the world's TB burden and a large share of drug-resistant TB. TB is a disease of poverty — linked to undernutrition, crowded housing and delayed care — so progress against it is also a measure of social justice.

• Economic cost: TB strikes adults in their most productive years, pushing households into catastrophic health spending.
• Nutrition link: the RATIONS trial (Jharkhand, published 2023) found food support for household contacts cut new TB cases by roughly two-fifths — the evidence base behind Nikshay Poshan and Ni-kshay Mitra food baskets.

The gains are real, but they should be read against the WHO End TB Strategy (adopted 2014), which set milestones against a 2015 baseline: 50% lower incidence and 75% fewer deaths by 2025; 80% and 90% respectively by 2030.

• Missed national deadline: India's own target of ending TB by 2025 has passed; the goal is now framed as before 2030.
• Private-sector gap: a large share of patients first seek care in the private sector, where under-notification and non-standard regimens persist despite mandatory notification (2012).
• Drug resistance: BPaLM is shorter and safer, but scale-up depends on drug-susceptibility testing capacity and stable supply of bedaquiline and pretomanid.
• Nutrition adequacy: ₹1,000 a month is modest against food inflation; DBT delays and bank-account barriers have been reported in field studies.
• Federal capacity: health being a State subject, outcomes vary with State workforce, labs and governance; campaign-mode drives must convert into routine primary-care capacity.
• Metric caution: campaign figures such as screenings and certified Panchayats are output indicators; elimination is judged on incidence and mortality.

The Home Ministers of the seven BIMSTEC states met for the first time in New Delhi on 13 October 2026 and adopted the Delhi Declaration, adding a ministerial tier to the grouping's security architecture.

Figure 5 — BIMSTEC member states around the Bay of Bengal

Two landlocked Himalayan members (Nepal, Bhutan), one island state (Sri Lanka) and a continuous littoral from India to Thailand — the "common security space" the Declaration refers to. Map is illustrative and not to scale. Image as supplied with the release graphics; reproduced with credit for educational use.

The Declaration treats the Bay of Bengal as a common security space facing threats that are transnational by nature. Its provisions fall into four clusters.

• Terrorism: condemns terrorism "in all its forms and manifestations", explicitly including cross-border terrorism; calls for implementing UN Security Council sanctions, including the 1267 Sanctions Committee regime; stresses countering radicalisation, terror financing, recruitment and misuse of emerging technologies.
• Legal architecture: full implementation of the BIMSTEC Convention on Combating International Terrorism, Transnational Organised Crime and Illicit Drug Trafficking (in force March 2021) and the Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters (signed March 2022); early finalisation of conventions on Extradition, Transfer of Sentenced Persons and Trafficking in Persons.
• Scam centres and trafficking: recognises that crime groups traffic people and force them into online fraud — "forced criminality" and debt bondage; seeks cooperation among origin, transit and destination states through a victim-centred approach, plus an SoP for Rescue, Repatriation and Reintegration.
• Mechanisms and partners: a BIMSTEC Drug Offences Monitoring Desk (BDOMD); a proposed regional information-sharing mechanism on trafficking and migrant smuggling; training at members' premier institutions; partnerships with UNODC, INTERPOL, FATF; welcomes the Secretariat's Observer status at the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG).

• Regional platform: with SAARC dormant since the 2016 Islamabad Summit was called off (the last summit was in 2014), BIMSTEC has become India's main sub-regional forum — at the meeting point of Neighbourhood First, Act East and MAHASAGAR.
• North-East security: the region borders the Golden Triangle; UNODC (2023) found Myanmar had overtaken Afghanistan as the world's largest opium producer, with spill-over into Manipur and Mizoram.
• Citizens at risk: Indian nationals have been trafficked into cyber-scam compounds in Myanmar and other Southeast Asian states; over 500 were repatriated from Myawaddy via Thailand in 2025.
• Narrative on terrorism: regional endorsement of the cross-border terrorism formulation and the 1267 regime supports India's long-standing push, including for a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT), proposed by India at the UN in 1996.

• Implementation lag: the counter-terrorism convention took about 12 years to enter into force (signed 2009, effective 2021); extradition and trafficking conventions are still being drafted.
• Myanmar's situation: internal conflict since the 2021 military takeover limits the state's ability to act on scam compounds, drugs and border control — the very issues the Declaration targets.
• Political volatility: changes of government in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and India–Bangladesh frictions can slow consensus-based cooperation.
• Sensitivities: smaller members are wary of anything seen as India-centric; the Declaration's emphasis on non-interference and national legal frameworks reflects this.
• Weak economic base: intra-BIMSTEC trade remains a small share of members' total trade, and the BIMSTEC FTA (framework agreed in 2004) is still not concluded — security cooperation is running ahead of economic integration.
• Federal angle: police is a State subject (Entry 2, List II) while extradition is a Union subject (Entry 18, List I), so Union–State coordination is needed to deliver on commitments.

The Indian Navy will commission Samarthak, the first of four Multi-Purpose Vessels (MPVs) built by Larsen & Toubro (L&T), at Naval Base Karwar on 16 October 2026 — a private-yard, utility warship designed to free frontline combatants from secondary tasks.

Figure 7 — Multi-Purpose Vessel Samarthak at sea

A mid-sized utility hull with a large open aft deck — suited to launching targets, unmanned systems and relief stores. Image courtesy PIB / Ministry of Defence; reproduced with credit for educational use.

• INS Kadamba, the naval base at Karwar in Uttara Kannada district, Karnataka, was commissioned in 2005 under Project Seabird.
• Located on the Arabian Sea coast, Karwar gives the Western Naval Command a deep-water base away from the congested Mumbai harbour; Phase II expansion is under way.
• The aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya is based at Karwar.

• Private-sector shipbuilding: warship building has traditionally been dominated by defence PSU yards (Mazagon Dock, GRSE, Goa Shipyard, Cochin Shipyard); an L&T-built series widens India's industrial base.
• Policy framework: Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020 prioritises the Buy (Indian-IDDM) category; the Department of Military Affairs has notified five Positive Indigenisation Lists covering 509 items that cannot be imported.
• Output trend: India's defence production reached about ₹1.51 lakh crore and defence exports about ₹23,622 crore in 2024–25, both record highs.
• Strategic fit: extra patrol and HADR hulls support India's aim to be a "preferred security partner" and first responder under MAHASAGAR (successor to SAGAR, 2015).

• Jack of all trades: multi-role designs trade depth for flexibility; the MPV is not a frontline combatant and needs escort in contested waters.
• Import content: "indigenous" platforms can still depend on imported engines, propulsion and sub-systems; the share of indigenous content matters more than the label.
• Delivery timelines: Indian shipbuilding has a history of cost and time overruns; timely delivery of the remaining three vessels will test the model.
• Capacity gap: India's share of global shipbuilding is under 1%; the ₹69,725 crore shipbuilding and maritime package approved in September 2025 aims to address this.