After a southwest monsoon that ended 12.6% short — the driest in 11 years — the south now depends on the northeast monsoon (October–December). The editorial’s point: in a strong El Niño year, this smaller monsoon is less predictable, and can swing from drought to deluge.

Figure 1 — Seasonal reversal of winds over the Indian Ocean

Panel A (winter): the ITCZ sits south of the Equator; winds blow from land to sea as the northeast monsoon. Panel B (summer): intense heating creates warm rising air over land, drawing moist southwest winds onto India. Schematic only — not to scale; political boundaries not depicted. Image reproduced with credit for educational use.

• The deficit so far: June–September 2026 rainfall was 759.4 mm against a normal of 868.6 mm — a 12.6% deficit, hurting kharif sowing and feeding into food inflation.
• IMD’s outlook: OND rainfall over south Peninsular India is likely to be “normal” — i.e. 88–112% of the Long Period Average (1971–2020). Most of the rest of India is expected to get below-normal rain.
• The problem of precision: a ±12% band is far wider than the roughly ±5% model error of IMD’s southwest-monsoon forecast, so “normal” can hide large surprises.
• The 2015 warning: on 1 December 2015, during a strong El Niño, Chennai recorded its heaviest 24-hour rainfall in over a century; the floods killed at least 500 people in Tamil Nadu and displaced about 18 lakh.
• The ask: the Centre and southern States should clear stormwater drains, strengthen shelters, provide for infrastructure damage and sharpen warnings.

El Niño is the warm phase of ENSO — abnormal warming of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. It shifts the Walker circulation, weakening convection over the Indian region, which is why it usually suppresses the southwest monsoon.

For the northeast monsoon, the link tends to run the other way: many El Niño years have brought above-normal OND rain to Tamil Nadu. But the relationship is inconsistent, and the mechanism is still not fully understood.

• Agriculture: OND rains drive the samba/thaladi paddy crop in the Cauvery delta and rabi sowing in the south; a second failure after a weak southwest monsoon would deepen farm stress.
• Water security: reservoirs and lakes supplying cities such as Chennai are refilled mainly in OND — the 2019 Chennai water crisis followed a weak 2018 northeast monsoon.
• Disaster risk: intense, short spells over flat, low-lying, built-up coasts cause flash floods, even when seasonal totals look “normal”.
• Inflation: back-to-back weak monsoons can keep food prices elevated, complicating monetary policy.

• Forecast vs warning: seasonal forecasts cannot predict a single extreme day. What saves lives is short-range, impact-based forecasting and nowcasting, which IMD has been expanding.
• Floods are partly man-made: in Chennai, loss of wetlands such as Pallikaranai marsh (now a Ramsar site), encroached drains and lakes, and poor reservoir-release coordination magnified the 2015 disaster. The CAG’s 2017 report criticised the handling of releases from Chembarambakkam.
• Drought–flood whiplash: the same season may need both drought relief (for kharif losses) and flood preparedness — straining State finances.
• A fair counterpoint: IMD’s skill has improved, and Tamil Nadu has built drainage and warning systems since 2015. The risk lies in complacency during a dry year, not in the absence of tools.

• Pre-monsoon audits of stormwater drains, tanks and canals in coastal cities, with ward-level flood maps.
• Restore urban wetlands and lakes as natural sponges; enforce no-construction zones on floodplains.
• Integrated reservoir operation with real-time rainfall data and clear downstream warnings.
• Contingency crop plans and seed reserves for a possible failure or flood in the Cauvery delta.
• Last-mile warnings via the Common Alerting Protocol and local-language SMS.

Protests in Delhi over large-scale deletions in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the use of prohibitory orders, and the de-notification of Jantar Mantar as a protest site have revived a classic constitutional question: where does reasonable regulation of assembly end and denial of the right begin?

The right to protest is not named as such in the Constitution. It is built from Article 19(1)(a) (speech and expression) and Article 19(1)(b) (to assemble peaceably and without arms), and is available only to citizens.

• Three conditions for a valid restriction: it must be imposed by law, on a listed ground, and be reasonable — tested today through proportionality (Modern Dental College, 2016; K.S. Puttaswamy, 2017).
• “Peaceably and without arms” are built-in limits: a violent or armed assembly is not protected at all.
• Article 33 lets Parliament restrict these rights for the armed forces and police.
• International law: Article 20, UDHR and Article 21, ICCPR protect peaceful assembly; the UN Human Rights Committee’s General Comment No. 37 (2020) says restrictions must be necessary and proportionate, and that protests should be held within “sight and sound” of their target audience.

• Dissent is part of democracy: protest has deep roots in India — the freedom movement, trade-union, farmer and social movements.
• Suspicion as default: the author argues that demanding to know about protesters’ “permission” or “funding” treats citizens as suspects rather than as autonomous rights-holders.
• Over-use of preventive law: imposing Section 163 BNSS before protests begins — a provision the Court itself said in Babulal Parate is meant for emergencies — gives the executive wide discretion.
• Chilling effect: the author cites alleged excessive force, prolonged detentions without disclosure of whereabouts, denial of access to lawyers, and OCI deportation notices.
• Place matters: drawing on Himmat Lal, the author argues that shifting protests to distant grounds defeats their purpose, and urges the Court to restore Jantar Mantar.

• Public order is a valid ground: large, sustained gatherings in the capital raise genuine concerns about traffic, emergency access and the security of Parliament and other sensitive sites nearby.
• Judicial support for designated sites: in Amit Sahni (2020) the Court held that protests must be held in designated areas and cannot indefinitely block public ways; MKSS (2018) also accepted regulated, not unlimited, use of Jantar Mantar.
• The 9 October order: the de-notification has been presented as following the Court’s direction to identify alternative sites, and the standing order rests on the recommendations of an MHA-constituted committee.
• Counter-point: commentators note the 9 October order did not ask for Jantar Mantar to be closed; the Court’s scrutiny of whether there was application of mind will be decisive.

• Regulation vs prohibition: the constitutional test is not whether a protest site exists somewhere, but whether the alternatives allow protest to be effective — visible to its audience and accessible.
• Proportionality of force: crowd control is legitimate; detention without informing families or allowing lawyer access would breach Article 22 safeguards and D.K. Basu (1997) guidelines.
• Accountability on both sides: protesters must remain peaceful and unarmed; the State must give reasoned, time-bound, published orders that can be reviewed (as required in Anuradha Bhasin).
• Underlying issue: the protests are about the integrity of electoral rolls. Transparent grievance redress for excluded voters (Article 326 — adult suffrage; RP Act, 1950) would address the cause rather than the symptom.

• Published protest guidelines with clear capacity limits, timelines for permission and reasons for refusal, as the Court asked in MKSS.
• Multiple accessible sites in central locations, so that regulation does not become relocation out of sight.
• Prohibitory orders only on specific, recorded threats — limited in area and time, and published.
• Independent review of police conduct during protests, and strict compliance with arrest safeguards.
• Dialogue mechanisms between authorities and protest organisers to reduce confrontation.

The Union Agriculture Ministry’s Khet Bachao Abhiyan (“Save the Farm”) asks farmers to use fertilisers in balanced, recommended doses. The authors argue that appeals cannot work while pricing policy keeps urea artificially cheap — and that the imbalance has worsened since the Nutrient-Based Subsidy (NBS) began in 2010.

• 1977 — Retention Price Scheme (RPS): unit-wise cost-plus pricing and a fixed farm-gate price for urea and other fertilisers.
• 1992 — Decontrol of P & K: phosphatic and potassic fertilisers freed from price control; their prices jumped while urea stayed controlled — the first big push towards nitrogen overuse.
• 2003 — New Pricing Scheme for urea, in stages; 2015 — New Urea Policy and mandatory 100% neem-coated urea (to curb diversion to industry and slow nitrogen release).
• 2010 — Nutrient-Based Subsidy (NBS): a fixed subsidy per kg of nutrient (N, P, K, S) for P&K fertilisers, with prices left to the market. Urea was kept outside NBS at a statutorily fixed price.
• 2015 — Shanta Kumar High-Level Committee: recommended replacing fertiliser subsidy with direct cash transfer per hectare to farmers.
• 2018 — DBT in fertilisers: subsidy paid to companies only after point-of-sale (PoS) sale to an Aadhaar-verified buyer — a transfer to firms, not to farmers.
• 2022 — One Nation One Fertiliser: single “Bharat” brand for subsidised fertilisers; PM Kisan Samriddhi Kendras as one-stop shops.
• 2023 — PM-PRANAM: to reward States that cut chemical fertiliser use (details below).

The article draws on an ICRIER policy brief that compares actual nutrient use in 20 major States with crop- and irrigation-specific norms, between 2009–10 and 2024–25 — before and after the NBS reform.

Under NBS, DAP and MOP prices moved with world markets, while the price of urea stayed fixed. Farmers respond to relative prices, so nitrogen became cheaper relative to P and K every year.

• Visible vs hidden effects: nitrogen produces a quick, visible green response; potash and micronutrient deficits cut yield and quality later.
• Skewed benefits: Punjab receives about ₹25,700 of nitrogen subsidy per hectare — around 10 times Kerala’s.
• Lock-in: combined with MSP procurement and subsidised power, cheap urea entrenches the water-intensive rice–wheat rotation in the north-west, depleting aquifers.

• Climate: part of unused nitrogen escapes as nitrous oxide (N₂O), a greenhouse gas about 273 times as potent as CO₂ over 100 years (IPCC AR6). The authors note Punjab’s fertiliser-related emissions are nearly double the national average.
• Groundwater: nitrate leaches into aquifers; the authors cite levels above safe limits in parts of 502 districts. The BIS drinking-water limit (IS 10500) is 45 mg/litre; excess nitrate causes methaemoglobinaemia (“blue baby syndrome”) in infants.
• Crop resilience: low potash weakens resistance to drought and disease; low phosphorus delays flowering.
• Nutrition: zinc- and micronutrient-poor soils produce micronutrient-poor grain, feeding “hidden hunger”.

• Budget: the fertiliser subsidy for 2026–27 is budgeted at ₹1.71 lakh crore.
• Import risk: the authors estimate that disruption in the Strait of Hormuz could push the bill to ₹2.5–3 lakh crore, as imported gas, urea, DAP and their raw materials become costlier.
• The paradox: the Government spends more each year on a pattern of use that degrades the soil it is meant to support.

• 1. Per-hectare DBT, neutral across nutrients and crops: farmers pay market prices for each nutrient, ending urea’s artificial edge. AgriStack Farmer IDs and a framework for fertiliser sale linked to identity at the point of sale make this feasible. Transitional option: bring urea under NBS while lowering DAP/MOP prices, keeping the total around ₹2 lakh crore.
• 2. Reward balance at the State level: fix and expedite PM-PRANAM.
• 3. Redirect savings: into drip irrigation and fertigation, customised and coated fertilisers, TSP in place of DAP, biofertilisers, nano fertilisers and gene-edited seeds with better nitrogen-use efficiency.
• 4. Soil-test-based 4R advice: plot-level recommendations; rotating cereals with pulses can cut the next crop’s nitrogen need by 20–30% through biological nitrogen fixation — but only if power pricing and MSP procurement stop locking farmers into rice–wheat.

• Strengths: the argument rests on price incentives, not exhortation — campaigns cannot outweigh a price signal that rewards urea. It also links soil, water, climate and nutrition in one frame.
• Implementation risk of DBT: tenant and sharecropper farmers, who often lack land records, could lose out; farmers would also need to pay higher prices upfront before receiving transfers.
• Political economy: the urea price has been held nearly unchanged for over a decade; any rise is sensitive, which is why the authors offer a gradual path.
• Food-security caution: a sudden price shock could reduce application and yields in the short term; the transition needs extension support and soil-testing capacity.
• Evidence gaps: nano fertilisers and some product innovations still need independent, long-term field validation before large-scale substitution.
• Federal angle: agriculture is a State subject (Entry 14, State List), but fertiliser pricing and subsidy are central — so incentive schemes like PM-PRANAM are the main lever for cooperative federalism.