UPSC Key: Hindi Diwas, Lunar Polar Regions and Decoherence

Govt: No bank charge on UPI payment up to Rs 2,000

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Economic and Social Development

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment.

What’s the ongoing story: The Ministry of Finance on Monday notified that banks and system providers cannot levy charges on UPI transactions of up to Rs 2,000 and RuPay debit card payments.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What is Unified Payments Interface (UPI)?

• Who Operates UPI?

• Control of NPCI and RBI over UPI-know in detail

• What is Merchant Discount Rate?

• What are the key highlights from the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026 – passed by Parliament last month?

• Why Section 10A of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 was amended?

• How is transaction count different from transaction value?

• What is digital public infrastructure?

• How can payment incentives support merchant adoption?

• Why has UPI been so successful?

• Should UPI remain a public utility or move towards greater commercialization?

Key Takeaways:

• “No bank or system provider shall impose, whether directly or indirectly, any charge upon a person making or receiving a payment by using the electronic modes of payment specified in paragraph above,” the government notification said in which it specified RuPay debit cards and UPI transactions of up to Rs 2,000.

• Only 4% of person-to-merchant (P2M) UPI payments in 2025-26 were for more than Rs 2,000. And these 4% of transactions made up around two-thirds of UPI payments by value. In 2025-26, more than 24,000 crore UPI transactions worth Rs 314 lakh crore were made.

• The government has repeatedly said that small value transactions and money paid by one individual to another will not face any charges.

• “The recent amendment to the Payment and Settlement Systems Act (PSS Act) has generated debate, with some misinterpreting it as a move to impose charges on ordinary users. In reality, the amendment is an enabling provision designed to ensure UPI’s long-term sustainability, technological advancement, and resilience against emerging risks,” the finance ministry had said on August 8 amid speculation that charges would apply on all UPI payments.

• The Budget for 2026-27 estimated the subsidy payout under this scheme to be Rs 2,000 crore in the current fiscal. In 2025-26, Rs 2,196.21 crore was paid as subsidy, up from Rs 1,922.77 crore in 2024-25. However, the Ministry of Finance’s Department of Financial Services told the Standing Committee on Finance earlier this year that the payments industry was incurring an annual cost of Rs 20,700 crore for person-to-merchant transactions. According to reports, an MDR of around 0.4% may be levied on high-value person-to-merchant UPI payments.

Do You Know:

• The notification comes after the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026 – passed by Parliament last month – amended Section 10A of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 such that the exemption from any bank charges to electronic payments under section 269SU of the Income-tax Act, 1961 was removed. Section 269SU applied to every person having a business turnover of over Rs 50 crore.

• Section 10A of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 said no bank or system provider can impose any charge on payments made through electronic modes prescribed under Section 269SU. These modes were RuPay debit cards, BHIM-UPI, and UPI-QR code. As such, the amendment had paved the way for a Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) fee to be imposed on UPI and RuPay debit card payments to large merchants such as Amazon and Flipkart.

• Banks and payment service providers have for years been saying that the cost of maintaining digital payments infrastructure is rising, with the Standing Committee on Finance noting in a report in March that the “absence of MDR makes the UPI ecosystem financially unsustainable”.

• Usually in the range of 1-3%, an MDR is levied on merchants by banks that process debit and credit card payments to help meet transaction processing, settlement, and infrastructure costs. Since January 2020, there has been no MDR on RuPay debit cards and UPI transactions to promote the adoption of digital payments across the country.

• In lieu of the lack of MDR, the government has been subsidising payments of up to Rs 2,000 made to small merchants through its ‘Incentive scheme for promotion of RuPay Debit Cards and low-value BHIM-UPI transactions (P2M)’. The incentive offered is capped at 0.15% of the transaction value. Large merchants are not covered under this scheme.

• UPI was developed by RBI-regulated National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA). Work on it started as long back as 2012-13, with the payment systems “vision document” for 2012-15 making several noteworthy points, including how despite attempts to move towards a less-cash society, nearly a third of e-commerce purchases were being paid via cash-on-delivery.

• Merchant Discount Rate (alternatively referred to as the Transaction Discount Rate or TDR) is the sum total of all the charges and taxes that a digital payment entails. For instance, the MDR includes bank charges, which a bank charges customers and merchants for allowing payments to be made digitally. Similarly, MDR also includes the processing charges that a payments aggregator has to pay to online or mobile wallets or indeed to banks for their service.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Explained: What is Merchant Discount Rate and why does it matter?

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:
1) Which of the following is a most likely consequence of implementing the ‘Unified Payments Interface (UPI)’? (UPSC CSE, 2017)
(a) Mobile wallets will not be necessary for online payments.
(b) Digital currency will totally replace the physical currency in about two decades.
(c) FDI inflows will drastically increase.
(d) Direct transfer of subsidies to poor people will become very effective.

2) Consider the following statements: (UPSC CSE, 2017)
1. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) helps in promoting the financial inclusion in the country.
2. NPCI has launched RuPay, a card payment scheme.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2

3) Consider the following countries: (UPSC CSE, 2025)
I. United Arab Emirates
II. France
III. Germany
IV. Singapore
V. Bangladesh
How many countries amongst the above are there other than India where international merchant payments are accepted under UPI?
(a) Only two
(b) Only three
(c) Only four
(d) All the five

4) Which one of the following best describes the term “Merchant Discount Rate” sometimes seen in news? (UPSC CSE, 2018)
1. The incentive given by a bank to a merchant for accepting payments through debit cards pertaining to that bank.
2. The amount paid back by banks to their customers when they use debit cards for financial transactions for purchasing goods or services.
3. The charge to a merchant by a bank for accepting payments from his customers through the bank’s debit cards.
4. The incentive given by the Government to merchants for promoting digital payments by their customers through Point of Sale (PoS) machines and debit cards.

Previous year UPSC main Question Covering similar theme:
📍How can the ‘Digital India’ programme help farmers to improve farm productivity and income? What steps has the Government taken in this regard? (UPSC, GS3, 2015)

Key inflation numbers rise in August, all eyes on RBI’s interest rate decision next month

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment.

What’s the ongoing story: A range of indicators measuring prices rose in August, with the main gauge of household inflation rising to 4.82% from 4.45% in July – the highest in at least eight months – government data showed on Monday, bringing the focus on the October 5-7 meeting of the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), which could see the first interest rate hike in three-and-a-half years.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What is Consumer Price Index (CPI)?

• What is Wholesale Price Index (WPI)?

• Comapare and contrast Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Wholesale Price Index (WPI)

• What is core inflation and headline inflation?

• How food and fuel volatility complicate monetary policy?

• What is the inflation target framework of RBI?

• What is monetary transmission?

• Why can interest rates not directly solve a crop failure or global oil shock?

• Between inflation control and growth-What to be trade-off and why?

Key Takeaways:

• While food inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose to 5.95% in August from 5.52% in July, upward pressure in prices were clearly visible for several items, such as sugar and certain vegetables like onion.

• The price index of sugar in the CPI surged by a massive 19% in August from July, with the price 24% higher compared to August 2025. Prices have jumped due to lower-than-expected sugar production and inventory falling to multi-year lows. In light of the soaring price of sugar – a key ingredient during the festival season for sweets – the government last month allowed duty-free imports of up to 10 lakh tonnes of raw sugar until October 31.

• “The inflation outlook remains vulnerable to both external and weather-related risks,” said Rajani Sinha, Chief Economist at CareEdge Ratings. According to Sinha, while the RBI is likely to remain data-dependent, a sustained uptick in inflation “could strengthen the case for a rate hike in the coming months”. This makes the October meeting of the MPC “crucial to watch, especially as some major central banks have already embarked on a rate-hiking cycle”.

• The latest CPI inflation print comes three weeks before the next meeting of the MPC. Minutes of last month’s meeting had shown that Governor Sanjay Malhotra and Deputy Governor Poonam Gupta were both hinting towards an increase in interest rates. The MPC last increased the repo rate in February 2023.

• The RBI is legally mandated to keep CPI inflation at 4% in a band of 2-6%. However, this is the third month in a row that headline retail inflation has come in above 4%. The central bank, which last month left the policy repo rate unchanged at 5.25%, expects CPI inflation to average 4.7% in July-September, 5.9% in October-December, 5.5% in January-March 2027, and 5.3% in April-June 2027.

• With inflation ticking up and the economy far more robust than anyone had expected – GDP growth was a surprisingly strong 7.8% in the first quarter of 2026-27 – more and more economists have been warning that the MPC must soon increase interest rates. Although CPI inflation has and is expected to remain within the 2-6% band of the RBI, there are fears of price pressures spreading from food and fuel to other categories.

Do You Know:

• The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) measures the average change in the prices of goods at the wholesale or producer level, serving as India’s primary indicator for bulk macroeconomic inflation. As of the latest official government release on 14 September 2026, India’s annual WPI-based inflation rate rose marginally to 9.92% for August 2026, up from 9.78% in July 2026.
—This upward trajectory is heavily driven by cost-push pressures stemming from global supply chain challenges, particularly rising crude oil and fertilizer prices caused by geopolitical tensions in the West Asia region affecting major trade routes like the Strait of Hormuz

• The output PPI is a new measure of inflation at the factory-gate level and is not very dissimilar from the WPI.
However, the output PPI excludes indirect taxes and trade and transport margins. It is expected that the WPI will be phased out by 2031, by when the output PPI will become the default measure of inflation for producers. MoSPI is already using the output PPI to ‘deflate’ nominal GDP to arrive at real estimates.

• The WPI basket tracks 697 commodities across three major categories. It is calculated and published monthly by the Office of the Economic Adviser (OEA) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

• The Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures the average change over time in the retail prices paid by consumers for a fixed basket of daily goods and services. As of the latest official release by the National Statistical Office (NSO) on 14 September 2026, India’s annual retail inflation rate rose to 4.82% for August 2026, climbing steadily from 4.45% in July.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Everyday Economics: What are WPI and CPI inflation rates?

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:
5) Consider the following statements: (UPSC, CSE, 2020)
1. The weightage of food in Consumer Price Index (CPI) is higher than that in Wholesale Price Index (WPI).
2. The WPI does not capture changes in the prices of services, which CPI does.
3. Reserve Bank of India has now adopted WPI as its key measure of inflation and to decide on changing the key policy rates.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 2 only
(c) 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3

Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering similar theme:
📍What are the causes of persistent high food inflation in India? Comment on the effectiveness of the monetary policy of the RBI to control this type of inflation. (UPSC, GS3, 2024)

Pressure on food prices: El Nino effect, geopolitical tensions

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Indian and World Geography and Economic and Social Development

Mains Examination: 

• General Studies I: Important Geophysical phenomena such as earthquakes, Tsunami, Volcanic activity, cyclone etc., geographical features and their location-changes in critical geographical features (including water-bodies and ice-caps) and in flora and fauna and the effects of such changes.

• General Studies III: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment.

What’s the ongoing story: This year’s southwest monsoon has been rather erratic.
June, the opening month of the season, witnesses an average of three low-pressure systems (LPS) that cover a 24-hour period of about 11 days.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What is El Nino?

• How El Nino impacts monsoon in India?

• El Niño and La Niña-Compare and Contrast

• What is El Niño-Southern Oscillation?

• Why do rainfall timing and spatial distribution matter more than a single seasonal average?

• How can high temperatures raise both agricultural stress and irrigation demand?

• How can geopolitical tensions affect food prices through energy, fertilizer and shipping costs?

• Why can food inflation persist even after a weather shock has ended?

• How do buffer stocks and procurement moderate food-price volatility?

• How should monetary policy respond to supply-side inflation?

• Know the climate-resilient agriculture as an element of food and price security.

Key Takeaways:

• July, by contrast, saw four LPSs, close to the climatological average for the month. Since each of these systems persisted for relatively longer durations, the total LPS days, at 24, were higher than the average of 13.56 days for the month. These led to good rainfall, which was 1% above the overall LPA for the country in July.

• August was when the effects of El Niño started showing up. Six LPSs were formed during the month, against the climatological average of 5.38. The number of LPS days, at 26, also exceeded the normal of 16.3 days for August. Yet, the month registered an all-India rainfall deficit of 16.3% over the LPA. The formation of LPSs wasn’t enough, because the weakening of the easterly trade winds (blowing from east to west) due to El Niño reduced the transport of moisture-laden air towards the Indian subcontinent.

• In all, then, this hasn’t been a great monsoon. All-India rainfall for the four-month season has cumulatively been 14.7% below the LPA as on September 13. Moreover, as many as 24 out of the country’s 36 meteorological subdivisions have recorded deficiency in excess of 10%. The southern states, together with the adjoining Marathwada and Vidarbha regions of Maharashtra, have been the worst-affected.

• According to the Agriculture Ministry, the total area sown under kharif (monsoon season) crops, at 1,096.5 lakh hectares (lh) as of September 11, is only 1.4% below the 1,112.5 lh for the same period of 2025. But acreage shortfall alone may not give the real picture. A better indicator is fertiliser sales, the latest data for which is available till July.

• El Niño’s impact has not been small. While the headline kharif sowing acreage gap may not seem much, the uneven temporal (extended dry spells interspersed with heavy downpours) and spatial distribution of rainfall (largely confined to Odisha, Chhattisgarh, eastern MP, Gangetic West Bengal, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh) is likely to translate into lower yields and harvested produce.

Do You Know:

• El Niño is now in a “strong” state, with average sea surface temperatures (SST) in the equatorial Pacific Ocean off the coasts of Ecuador and Peru roughly 1.8 degrees Celsius higher than normal.

• The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has projected a 90%-plus chance of a “very strong” (SSTs more than 2ºC above normal) El Niño event developing and lasting from September through January. El Niño will remain “strong” (SSTs more than 1.5ºC above normal) till March and “weak-to-moderate” (0.5ºC to 1.5ºC above normal) till
May.

• El Niño is known to not only suppress rainfall, but also raise temperatures in India. If it were to turn very strong over the next 4-5 months, the result could be a relatively short and warm winter. The crops grown in the upcoming rabi (winter-spring) season — from wheat, rapeseed-mustard, chana (chickpea), masoor (red lentil) and matar (green peas) to potato, onion, garlic, jeera (cumin), saunf (fennel) and dhaniya (coriander) — may the ones that would bear the brunt. Equally important is world prices.

• The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) refers to the periodic warming or cooling of the eastern Pacific Ocean, off the coast of South America, that influences weather worldwide. In India, its most evident impact happens on the monsoon rainfall. A warmer-than-usual eastern Pacific Ocean, the El Nino phase, is usually correlated with suppressed rainfall over the Indian subcontinent.

• El Nino, as is commonly known, refers to an abnormal warming of surface waters in equatorial Pacific Ocean. It is known to suppress monsoon rainfall. The opposite phase, La Nina, which is the abnormal cooling of sea surface waters in the same region, is known to aid rainfall over India. There is a third, neutral phase, as well in which the sea surface temperatures remain roughly in line with long-term averages. Together, these three phases in the Pacific Ocean are referred to as El Nino Southern Oscillation, or ENSO.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍What is El Nino and how it impacts the monsoon

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:
6) La Nina is suspected to have caused recent floods in Australia. How is La Nina different from EI Nino? (UPSC CSE, 2011)
1. La Nina is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperature in equatorial Indian ocean whereas EI Nino is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperature in the equatorial pacific ocean.
2. EI Nino has adverse effect on southwest monsoon of India, but La Nina has no effect on monsoon climate.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Scientists develop new way to tackle key quantum computing challenge

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Main Examination: General Studies III: Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, biotechnology and issues relating to intellectual property rights.

What’s the ongoing story: Scientists at the Quantum Information and Computing (QuIC) laboratory at Raman Research Institute in Bengaluru have demonstrated a novel way to increase the stability of the quantum states that enable computation in a quantum computer that can potentially improve the reliability and integrity of these calculations.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What is quantum entanglement?

• What is decoherence?

• Why is decoherence a challenge for scalable quantum computing?

• How do quantum gates operate on qubits?

• Why is quantum error correction necessary?

• How can gate timing influence quantum-state evolution?

• What is quantum advantage?

• Why will quantum computers not necessarily replace classical computers for all applications?

• What are the major applications of quantum computing?

• What are the India’s strategic interest in quantum technology?

Key Takeaways:

• Unlike traditional computers that encode electric states into 0s and 1s to store and process information, quantum computers make use of the very unique, but counter-intuitive, properties of the quantum world to carry out calculations.

• One of these happens to be “quantum entanglement,” a remarkable property of the quantum world in which two particles, after undergoing an interaction, get “linked” (or entangled) together in such a way that they begin to behave like one single system. Measuring certain properties of one reveals information about corresponding properties of the other, irrespective of the distance between the two.

• Scientists have used this, along with some other special properties like superposition — the ability of quantum particles to exist in multiple states at the same time — to build powerful quantum computers which can perform certain very complex computations in an efficient manner.

• But the quantum states that give superpowers to these computers are themselves very fragile and ephemeral. The entangled state, for example, disintegrates very quickly on interaction with the external environment, a phenomenon known as decoherence. Sometimes, entanglement vanishes abruptly, too, even before the normal disintegration takes place. Scientists call this condition “entanglement sudden death.”

• Raman Research Institute scientists found that a single, well-timed operation, not repeated fixes, can delay or prevent quantum entanglement from collapsing in this context. Timing itself becomes a new control tool, offering a simpler way to protect fragile quantum states used in computing, alongside existing error- correction methods.

• This weakness creates a problem for quantum computing. The integrity of the calculations becomes doubtful. Scientists have tried to deal with this challenge by carrying out repeated corrective interventions that delay decoherence. But these repetitive interventions have their own side-effects. They are costly, and can introduce errors of their own. This is where the research team of Urbasi Sinha, group leader of the lab at RRI, has achieved a breakthrough. Instead of repetitive operations, her team has developed a new technique that deals with decoherence in this context through a “single-shot operation.”

Do You Know:

• A qubit, short for quantum bit, is the basic unit of information in quantum computing, serving as the quantum mechanical equivalent of a classical binary bit. Unlike a standard bit that must be strictly 0 or 1, a qubit can exist in a linear combination of both states simultaneously until it is measured. Qubits can link together so that the state of one instantly influences the state of another, no matter the distance.

• Quantum decoherence is the loss of quantum coherence. It involves generally a loss of information of a system to its environment. Quantum decoherence has been studied to understand how quantum systems convert to systems that can be explained by classical mechanics.

• Quantum error correction protects fragile quantum information from environmental noise and decoherence by spreading a logical qubit’s state across multiple entangled physical qubits.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Amaravati: India’s first quantum computing testing facility launched

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:
7) Which one of the following is the context in which the term “qubit” is mentioned? (UPSC CSE, 2022)
(a) Cloud Services
(b) Quantum Computing
(c) Visible Light Communication Technologies
(d) Wireless Communication Technologies

Nation

Chandrayaan-1 may have just detected oldest impact basin on Moon: Researchers

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Achievements of Indians in science & technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.

What’s the ongoing story: For the first time, planetary scientists have confirmed the existence of a hidden impact crater on the lunar surface using mineralogical data obtained from Chandrayaan-1 and it could predate the oldest known impact craters on the moon.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What is an impact basin?

• How is it different from a simple crater?

• Why does the Moon preserve ancient impacts?

• How do crater counts help infer relative ages?

• What is remote sensing?

• How can orbital instruments study mineralogy?

• What was Chandrayaan-1’s scientific significance?

• What are lunar maria and highlands?

• Why are lunar polar regions scientifically important?

• How can lunar geology inform our understanding of Earth’s early history?

Key Takeaways:

• A team of researchers from the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, have identified the Australe Basin, which had remained untraced as this ancient basin had suffered erosion along its rims making it extremely difficult even for modern-day imaging techniques to detect.

• Scientists believe that there are approximately 300 impact basins present on the moon. Of these, only 74 have been detected so far. Impact basins are formed over the lunar surface due to various violent space activities, like asteroid or meteorite hits. These are large craters, often several hundreds of kilometres in diameters, and can have distinct outer rims.

• Due to the space hits, these craters are often found with remnants of volcanic activities.
This new study, published in the The Planetary Science Journal, has now shed light on one such impact basin confirmed to be located along the southeastern hemisphere of the moon. It has distinct morphology and gravity signatures and some unique mineralogical compositions.

• PRL scientists are also of the opinion that this basin could well be older than and largest and the oldest known South Pole Aitken Basin (formed over 4 billion years ago) on the Moon.

Do You Know:

• There were 11 scientific payloads onboard the Chandrayaan-1. Of these, six were contributions from international space agencies including National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency. The mineralogy of the Australe Basin was detected using data gathered by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper of NASA. It is an imaging spectrometer that was designed to create the mineralogical map of the lunar surface. It operates between the 405 and 3000 nanometer wavelength range.

• The current study could offer detailed mineralogical insights of the region, particularly given the renewed interests shown by many countries with the proposed Moon Base mission by NASA and India’s Chandrayaan-4, a lunar sample return mission.
“This study provides us with a framework to interpret the data from the landing missions in the broader geological context, by studying the regions that could have contributed material to these landing sites. Such unique sites can be important targets for the future sample return missions,” she said. PRL scientists noted that even the Chandrayaan-3 landing site, now known as the Shiv Shakti point, possessed higher concentrations of magnesium. And that could be linked to some material originally from the South Pole Aitken Basin to have gotten transported to the Shiv Shakti point, located approximately 350 kms apart.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍After Chandrayaan-3’s landing, the experiments: lunar quakes and water-ice on Moon

Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering similar theme:
📍India has achieved remarkable successes in unmanned space missions including the Chandrayaan and Mars Orbiter Mission, but has not ventured into manned space missions, both in terms of technology and logistics? Explain critically (UPSC GS3, 2017)
📍Discuss India’s achievements in the field of Space Science and Technology. How the application of this technology has helped India in its socio-economic development? (UPSC GS3, 2016)

Explained

BJP’s states route for UCC push, over one central law

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Indian Polity and Governance

Main Examination: 

• General Studies II: Indian Constitution—significant provisions etc.

• General Studies II: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

What’s the ongoing story: Union Home Minister Amit Shah said Sunday (September 13) that the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) will be implemented in all 21 BJP-NDA ruled states before the 2029 Lok Sabha elections.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What is Uniform Civil Code (UCC)?

• How do Articles 14, 15, 21 and 25 intersect with the UCC debate?

• Can a State implement a UCC without a central UCC?

• ‘Constitutional reform requires both legal competence as well as social legitimacy’—What is your take?

• Why does Entry 5 of the Concurrent List permit a State route?

• What is the constitutional significance of Article 44?

• Why did the Constituent Assembly place UCC among DPSPs?

• What did the 21st Law Commission say in 2018 about UCC?

• Why did the 22nd Law Commission reopen the issue in 2023?

• Can multiple State having UCC be considered ‘uniform’?

• What are the advantages of State-level implementation of UCC?

• ‘The real constitutional question is not whether India needs equality, but how equality should be achieved without erasing legitimate diversity’—What is your opinion?

Key Takeaways:

• UCC is a key unfinished item among the BJP’s longstanding ideological objectives, which included the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya and the abrogation of Article 370, both now achieved. The BJP has endorsed UCC for a long time. Shah himself, after Gujarat passed its UCC Bill in March, said having one law for every citizen had been a commitment of the party “since its inception”.

• The UCC is rooted in the RSS thought, although the organisation’s approach has been more cautious on the manner and timing of implementation. In 2023, when the Modi government first made UCC a major political issue, RSS sources told The Indian Express that it required deeper study and wider consultation because it affected every section of society. The Sangh’s preference was for BJP-ruled states to enact their own codes first, with the Centre potentially considering an overarching law later.

• In March 2024, RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale welcomed the Uttarakhand model and said it should be studied and implemented across the country, while stressing wide consultation.

• There is a constitutional as well as political logic. Marriage, divorce, adoption, wills, intestacy, succession and joint family matters fall under Entry 5 of the Concurrent List, giving both Parliament and state legislatures legislative competence.

• Four BJP-ruled states have passed UCC legislation — Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Assam and Madhya Pradesh. Uttarakhand is the only one where the code is currently in force.
Uttarakhand, which implemented its UCC in January 2025, provides common rules on marriage, divorce, inheritance and succession, prohibits polygamy and mandates marriage registration. Its most distinctive feature is the regulation of live-in relationships: couples are required to register the relationship and its termination, while children born from such relationships are recognised as legitimate.

Do You Know:

• Article 44 of the Constitution says: “The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.” But it is part of the Directive Principles of State Policy, not the Fundamental Rights. Under Article 37, the Directive Principles are fundamental to governance but are not enforceable by any court.

• The debate, thus, is about what should be made uniform and how that uniformity should be reconciled with freedom of religion, customary practices and constitutional protections for tribal communities. The Constituent Assembly itself had no consensus on what a UCC would entail, which was among the reasons it was placed among the Directive Principles.

• The 21st Law Commission, in its 2018 Consultation Paper on Reform of Family Law, said a UCC was “neither necessary nor desirable at this stage”. It argued instead for reforming discriminatory provisions across personal laws while preserving India’s diversity.

• Its emphasis was on achieving “equality within communities” between men and women rather than “equality between” communities, and on making piecemeal changes rather than imposing absolute uniformity. It also flagged the constitutional protections enjoyed by tribal and northeastern communities as a complication.

• The 22nd Law Commission reopened the issue in 2023, seeking fresh views from the public and recognised religious organisations. It said more than three years had elapsed since the 2018 consultation and that developments, including court orders, warranted a fresh examination.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍How the Uniform Civil Code came to be included in the Indian Constitution

Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering similar theme:
📍Discuss the possible factors that inhibit India from enacting for its citizen a uniform civil code as provided for in the Directive Principles of State Policy. (UPSC, GS2, 2015)

Hindi Diwas: How the Constituent Assembly resolved India’s language question

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Indian Polity and Governance-Constitution, Political System, Panchayati Raj, Public Policy, Rights Issues, etc.

Main Examination: General Studies II: Functions and responsibilities of the Union and the States, issues and challenges pertaining to the federal structure, devolution of powers and finances up to local levels and challenges therein.

What’s the ongoing story: In one of the earliest sessions of the Constituent Assembly, RV Dhulekar, a Congressman from the United Provinces, made an aggressive plea for Hindustani to be used in constitution-making. When told that not everyone in the Assembly knew the language, he retorted: “People who are present in this House to fashion a constitution for India and do not know Hindustani are not worthy to be members of this Assembly. They better leave.”

Key Points to Ponder:

• What was the Munshi-Ayyangar formula?

• Why is it incorrect to say that Hindi is India’s “national language”?

• What is the significance of Hindi Diwas?

• How widely is Hindi spoken in India?

• Why the Constituent Assembly of India accepted Hindi, as the official language of India on September 14, 1949?

• Post-1947 debate over Hindi-Know in detail

• What are the concerns around the Hindi language and its impact on identity?

• What does the Constitution of India says about languages?

Key Takeaways:

• Political scientist Hanna Lerner writes in The Oxford Handbook of The Indian Constitution, “The two main factions in the assembly debate over the national language were the representatives of the Hindi-speaking areas, mostly from north-central India, and the representatives of non-Hindi-speaking regions, particularly from the south, as well as the moderate leaders of the Congress Party.”

• The Hindi-speaking representatives demanded that Hindi be declared the national language and replace English immediately. Lerner writes, “They claimed that a multilingual society was incompatible with Indian unity. Seth Govind Das, a Congress representative of the Central Provinces and Berar, stated, ‘We want one language and one script for the whole country. We do not want it to be said that there are two cultures here.’”

• Representatives from non-Hindi-speaking regions rejected the idea that national unity required linguistic uniformity. Shri Shankarrao Deo of Bombay, the Congress General Secretary, stressed “Not uniformity but unity in diversity.”

• The Assembly ultimately approved the Munshi–Ayyangar formula in 1950, later incorporated into Articles 343–351 in Part XVII of the Indian Constitution. It was named after KM Munshi and N Gopalaswamy Ayyangar, who were part of the seven-member Drafting Committee of the Constitution, with BR Ambedkar as its chairman. “Ultimately,” notes Lerner, “it was the pragmatic consensus-seeking approach that triumphed.”

• The arrangement envisaged a 15-year transition, during which Hindi could increasingly be used by the Centre. Lerner adds, “In addition, the Constitution recognised fourteen other languages for official use (listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution). The provincial governments were permitted to choose one of the regional languages or English for the conduct of their internal affairs, while English (unless Parliament would replace it with Hindi) remained the language of inter-provincial communication.”

• But when that period ended in 1965, Hindi was still not widely used by the Union government. Following a series of violent riots in non-Hindi-speaking states in the 1960s, Parliament renounced the ideal of an Indian national language. The Official Languages Act of 1963 later stated that English would continue to be upheld as an official language along with Hindi.

Do You Know:

• The 2011 linguistic census accounts for 121 mother tongues, including 22 languages listed in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution. Hindi is the most widely spoken, with 52.8 crore individuals, or 43.6% of the population, declaring it as their mother tongue. The next highest is Bengali, mother tongue for 9.7 crores (8%) — less than one-fifth of Hindi’s count.

• In terms of the number of people who know Hindi, the count crosses more than half the country. Nearly 13.9 crore (over 11%) reported Hindi as their second language, which makes it either the mother tongue or second language for nearly 55% of the population.
Hindi has been India’s predominant mother tongue over the decades, its share in the population rising in every succeeding census.

• In 1971, 37% Indians had reported Hindi as their mother tongue, a share that has grown over the next four censuses to 38.7%, 39.2%, 41% and 43.6% at last count.
Between 1971 and 2011, the number of individuals who declared their mother tongue as Hindi multiplied 2.6 times, from 20.2 crore to 52.8 crore. The numbers more than doubled for Punjabi, Maithili, Bengali, Gujarati, and Kannada, and almost doubled for Marathi.

• Hindi is the most widely spoken, with 52.8 crore individuals, or 43.6% of the population, declaring it as their mother tongue. The next highest is Bengali, mother tongue for 9.7 crores (8%) — less than one-fifth of Hindi’s count. In terms of the number of people who know Hindi, the count crosses more than half the country. Nearly 13.9 crore (over 11%) reported Hindi as their second language, which makes it either the mother tongue or second language for nearly 55% of the population.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Hindi Diwas, and the history of the debate over Hindi’s status

 

PRELIMS ANSWER KEY

1.(a) 2.(c) 3.(b) 4.(c) 5.(a) 6.(d) 7.(b)

  

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