UPSC Key: NGT clears Great Nicobar Project, Bodhan AI for education, and Fertiliser industry

Key Points to Ponder:

— What is the Great Nicobar Island Project?

— What are the concerns related to the project?

— What are the main tribes of Great Nicobar Island?

— What are the strategic significance of Andaman and Nicobar?

— What are the steps taken by the government to address these concerns?

— What is the role and function of the NGT?

— What is the process of environment clearance, from Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) to approval of the project?

— What is the Island Coastal Regulation Zone (ICRZ)?

— What is the significance of coral reefs?

— Know about the IUCN status of these species: leatherback sea turtle, the Nicobar megapode, saltwater crocodiles, robber crab, and Nicobar macaque

— Map Work: Great Nicobar Island

Key Takeaways:

— The bench, headed by NGT chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava, also noted the “strategic importance of the project” and the issues that were dealt with by a high-powered committee (HPC) tasked with revisiting the project’s environmental clearance, as per a 2023 order of the NGT.

— The mega project, spread over 166 sq km, entails diversion of 130 sq km of forest land and felling of almost a million trees to facilitate the construction of a transshipment port, an integrated township, a civil and military airport and a 450-MVA gas and solar power-based plant.

— The Centre has pushed ahead with the project amid concerns expressed by the Nicobarese community over dispossession of their ancestral land (which was devastated in the 2004 tsunami), as well as concerns over ecological damage.

— The tribunal acknowledged that neither the project’s strategic importance could be denied, nor conditions of the Island Coastal Regulation Zone (ICRZ) notification be ignored. It framed the issue as one that needed a “balanced approach.”

— In its order, the NGT sought to address three key concerns – protection of corals; whether limited baseline data was relied upon to clear the project; whether parts of the project fell in prohibited and protected coastal areas. It also assessed whether or not conditions imposed in the project’s 2022 environmental clearance – to mitigate its impacts – were met.

— On the issue of whether the project fell within ICRZ areas, the NGT relied upon the report of the high-powered committee headed by former environment secretary Leena Nandan, and concluded that no part of it fell in the prohibited area.

— The green court recorded that there were specific conditions laid down for protection of the leatherback sea turtle, the Nicobar megapode, saltwater crocodiles, robber crab, Nicobar macaque and other endemic bird species of the Great Nicobar island.

— The tribunal took into account past submissions made by the Zoological Survey of India, and concluded that no coral reef exists within the project area and existing scattered coral reef will be translocated as per suggestions of the Zoological Survey of India.

Do You Know:

— The Great Nicobar Island (GNI) infrastructure project was conceived by NITI Aayog and launched in 2021. The project involves construction of an international container transshipment terminal, a township and area development, a 450 MVA gas and solar-based power plant, and a dual use civilian and military airport. The project will be spread over 166 sq km.

— The project is being implemented by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation (ANIIDCO). It aligns with India’s Maritime Vision 2030 and is one of the key projects under the Amrit Kaal Vision 2047.

— Spanning approximately 910 sq km — 850 sq km of which is a tribal reserve — the Great Nicobar island is home to two historically isolated Indigenous communities: the Shompen, a hunter-gatherer people classified as a PVTG, and the Nicobarese, who sustain themselves through horticulture, pig-rearing, hunting, and foraging. The government has maintained that while a couple of villages will be relocated, not a single habitation of the tribes will be touched.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Knowledge Nugget: Nicobar mega project – Why it matters for your UPSC exam

📍How Great Nicobar project reignites the environment vs development debate

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:
(1) Which one of the following pairs of islands is separated from each other by the ‘Ten Degree Channel’? (UPSC CSE 2014)

(a) Andaman and Nicobar

(b) Nicobar and Sumatra

(c) Maldives and Lakshadweep

(d) Sumatra and Java

(2) In which one of the following places is the Shompen tribe found? (UPSC CSE 2009)

(a) Nilgiri Hills

(b) Nicobar Islands

(c) Spiti Valley

(d) Lakshadweep Islands

Social, economic instability if we don’t strengthen education, skills and generate jobs, says Nageswaran

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

Mains Examination: General Studies-III: Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life, Awareness in the fields of IT.

What’s the ongoing story: Sounding a note of caution that India risked higher inequality at the time of greatest technological change, Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said on Monday that while artificial intelligence (AI) is a plus for advanced economies facing demographic decline, it is “a stress test of our state capacity”.

Key Points to Ponder:

— What are the challenges in AI adoption at grassroot level in India?

— What are the inequalities in society that can further create a divide with AI adoption?

— What are the challenges of employment in India?

— What were the challenges faced due to the AI during the General election in India?

— How is AI being integrated to strengthen the democratic process in India?

— What are deepfakes?

— Harness AI’s transformative potential in the election process while guarding against its capacity for manipulation. Elaborate.

— Why India needs to push for indigenisation of AI models?

Key Takeaways:

— Speaking via video on the first day of the AI Impact Summit 2026 being held in New Delhi, the government’s top economist also said that foresight, institutional discipline, and “relentless execution” could help India become the first large society to show that human abundance and machine intelligence can reinforce, and not undermine, each other.

— However, this required an urgency, political will, state capacity, and a “clear national commitment” to align technological adoption with mass employability. And this will not happen “by drift”

— “If we do not move decisively, such as strengthening foundational education, scaling high-quality skilling, expanding labour intensive service sectors, removing the regulatory bottlenecks that hinder the expansion of labour-intensive services, and if we do not ensure calibrated AI deployment, we will not merely miss an opportunity, we will create unavoidable social and economic instability,” Nageswaran said in a panel discussion on the theme ‘Future of Employability in the Age of AI’.

— Monday, Nageswaran referred to the Economic Survey for 2023-24, which said India needs to create at least 8 million jobs every year. Terming this as the scale of “our employment challenge year after year”, the Chief Economic Advisor expressed concern that only a small proportion of India’s workforce has received formal skill training. This, he said, is a “structural vulnerability”.

From the Editorial Page: How Artificial Intelligence can become democracy’s ally, not its adversary

— S Y Quraishi writes: As India prepares for its next general elections, AI has moved from a theoretical concern to an immediate reality. Deepfake videos of political leaders already circulate during state elections, while AI-powered tools enhance voter registration verification.

— With 970 million eligible voters, the world’s largest democracy faces a challenge: Harness AI’s transformative potential while guarding against its capacity for manipulation.

— India’s electoral rolls contain nearly a billion entries, with approximately 80 million additions, deletions, and corrections processed annually. Machine learning could transform this mammoth task.

— Computer vision can detect when identical photographs appear in multiple voter ID applications under different names — a common fraud technique. AI can optimise booth management across the roughly 1,500 polling stations in each parliamentary constituency.

—  Campaign finance transparency offers another frontier. AI can cross-reference declared expenses against market rates, flagging when candidates claim to have spent Rs 50,000 on rallies that clearly cost Rs 5 lakh. Computer vision analysing rally footage can estimate crowd sizes and infrastructure costs independently, catching discrepancies before campaigns end.

— However, there is a flip side. Convincing deepfakes can be produced. Unlike broadcast media manipulation, AI-generated content can be hyper-personalised to inflame tensions.

— Bot networks create artificial consensus, making fringe views appear mainstream. When 500 AI-generated accounts in a WhatsApp group all denounce a candidate, real members assume this reflects genuine community sentiment.

— Effective deepfake detection requires multi-modal analysis. AI-generated videos often show lighting inconsistencies or facial geometry irregularities invisible to human eyes but detectable algorithmically.

— Bot network detection examines social media activity patterns — accounts created in bulk with similar registration times, posting rhythms inconsistent with human behaviour, and suspicious content similarity.

— AI might flag 50,000 accounts revealing that 90 per cent were created within three days, all using AI-generated profile pictures, posting during hours when genuine users sleep.

— Speed compounds the problem. During the critical 48 hours before polling, coordinated AI-driven disinformation can flood swing constituencies faster than fact-checkers can respond. AI systems often carry biases from their training data. Voter verification tools, for instance, might flag minority names as suspicious more frequently.

— Immediate action requires establishing an AI Task Force within the Election Commission combining electoral expertise, data scientists, and cybersecurity specialists to monitor threats in real time and develop detection capabilities.

— Medium-term reforms must update the Representation of the People Act to define AI-generated content, establish disclosure requirements, create liability frameworks for deepfakes, and establish penalties for deploying AI tools for electoral manipulation.

— Long-term transformation requires redesigning electoral architecture, assuming that AI permeates all aspects — voter registration with built-in duplicate detection, campaign finance with continuous algorithmic oversight, and result verification incorporating statistical anomaly detection as standard protocol.

— The challenge is developing an electoral ecosystem where AI serves democratic values rather than undermining them. This requires human-centred design where final decisions rest with humans accountable to democratic institutions. It demands transparency so citizens understand how AI shapes electoral processes.

— The alternative — ignoring AI while others deploy it — would leave the Election Commission fighting sophisticated manipulation technology with inadequate tools. With appropriate safeguards, continuous vigilance, and commitment to democratic values, artificial intelligence can become democracy’s ally rather than its adversary in India’s ongoing electoral story.

From the India AI Impact Summit page: Yotta CEO: Digital infra boost key to India’s global data centre aspiration

— India should declare digital infrastructure as the “most essential commodity” to become a leader in AI production and must move from being a massive generator and consumer of data to a sovereign processor of it, at scale, said Sunil Gupta, CEO and co-founder of Yotta Data Services on Monday.

— Rangarajan V stressed the need for indigenisation of AI models to make them relevant to India’s linguistic, cultural and strategic realities. Citing myriad dialects across India and even within states, he argued that localisation is not optional but essential. A model trained elsewhere may achieve partial relevance, he suggested, but the gap in a country of India’s scale translates into hundreds of millions of people.

— Joseph Joshy said India’s new Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules, 2025 could unlock strategic “data corridors” between countries, enabling structured and trusted cross-border data flows. If India wants to lead the Global South, he said, it must re-engineer the corridors’ functioning across multiple jurisdictions.

Do You Know:

— Deepfakes constitute fake content — often in the form of videos but also other media formats such as pictures or audio — created using powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools. It is an amalgamation of the words “deep learning” and “fake” and it means fabricated videos generated from existing face-swapping techniques and technology.

— They are called deepfakes because they use deep learning technology, a branch of machine learning that applies neural net simulation to massive data sets, to create fake content. It employs a branch of artificial intelligence where if a computer is fed enough data, it can generate fakes that behave much like a real person.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍ECI’s letter on deepfakes: What poll panel has said, and what remains unclear

📍UPSC Issue at a Glance | Deepfakes: 5 Key Questions You Must Know for Prelims and Mains

UPSC Prelims Practice Question Covering similar theme:

(3) Consider the following:

1. Eye movement

2. Body movements

3. Audio quality

4. Facial Movement

How many of the above are used to identify deepfakes?

(a) Only one

(b) Only two

(c) Only three

(d) All four

 

EXPLAINED

Bodhan AI: Centre’s new bid to integrate AI tools in schools

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

Mains Examination: General Studies-II, III: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources; Achievements of Indians in science & technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.

What’s the ongoing story: Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan last week said the Centre will integrate AI tools in teaching from the next academic session at all levels, from pre-primary to higher education.

Key Points to Ponder:

— How is AI being used in the education sector in India?

— What are the potential uses of AI in education and concerns regarding this?

— What is Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)?

— What is the purpose of the AI Impact Summit?

— What were the outcomes of the previous AI Impact Summit?

— How significant is this for India?

— What are the major AI initiatives of the Indian government?

Key Takeaways:

— The effort is propelled by the launch of a not-for-profit company, Bodhan AI, at the Centre of Excellence in AI for Education last week. IIT Madras hosts this Centre of Excellence, which was a Budget announcement last year, with an allocation of Rs 500 crore

— The company will develop the Bharat EduAI Stack as Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for education. DPI is a digital system that can provide access to services on a large scale, like UPI (Unified Payments Interface) for payments.

— The company will work on research to build AI capabilities for Indian languages, and develop assets like automatic speech recognition and speech synthesis. Applications will then be built, with the aim of taking them to schools and other institutions through collaborations with state governments.

— “If, at Bodhan AI, I have developed a speech diagnostics model for Hindi, can you just plug that into your existing solution and now start distributing it to Hindi medium schools…We can host it on an AI infrastructure and try to provide it at cost,” Prof Mitesh Khapra from IIT Madras said during a conclave held by the Education Ministry this week.

— He added: “On top of this, we as well as others can build applications. This is where the tech players come in. You build solutions, integrate our models, our technology with your solutions, enhance them, and distribute…”

— Prof V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said that the focus of the tools will be on personalised learning for the student, assistance for teachers and parents to make interventions, and for the administration to determine how districts or schools might be faring and take policy decisions.

— “What the Bodhan AI company will now do is build the basic blocks. A sovereign model will be built –the digital public infrastructure. If one of these edtech companies wants to deploy a tool, we will have the basic infrastructure for them, and they can build on it. We are to become a basic technology provider, and application aggregator. Then we go to a state government or district, and these models can be deployed in schools. Impact can be studied,” he said.

— “We should be very careful about the data. Anything that the student puts in or writes is their personal data. We need to see that there is absolutely no data storage in a public forum. But it can be stored within a device that the student will use,” Prof Kamakoti said.

From the India AI Impact Summit: Bhabha, Cold War, nuclear technology, 1955: Dos and don’ts for India in AI

— As the AI Summit unfolds in Delhi this week, India must necessarily navigate an unstated but inescapable tension: the aspiration for collective solutions in the development of artificial intelligence on the one hand, and the imperative of protecting national interests in a world of geopolitical rivalry.

— No nation can afford to treat AI as only a public good. The calls for international cooperation at the summit then coexist uneasily with pursuit of national interest. The summit’s soaring rhetoric on global governance cannot mask the strategic calculations of its principal participants—including India, the host.

— India has travelled this road before. In 1955, at the height of the Cold War nuclear contest between Washington and Moscow, an Indian scientist—Dr Homi J Bhabha, head of India’s fledgling atomic energy programme—presided over the first UN Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva.

— The world then, like now, was divided by an intense technological rivalry between the great powers. If the US-China conflict dominates the AI landscape today, it was the US-Soviet contest that defined the nuclear age.

— At Geneva, India positioned itself as a bridge-builder: committed to peaceful uses, supportive of global norms, and eager to cultivate indigenous capability.

— The parallels with today are striking. India is investing in domestic AI capabilities even as it deepens collaboration with the United States and other advanced economies.

— There is also a cautionary tale. India’s early ambition to bridge the atomic divide faltered after the deaths of Nehru and Bhabha in the mid 1960s A misreading of the geopolitics of nuclear technology contributed to India’s atomic isolation by the mid-1970s

— India cannot afford a similar confused drift in AI. Focusing on national interest does not mean abandoning the universalist strand in India’s foreign policy or its commitment to solidarity with the Global South. The real challenge is to connect domestic capability with international responsibility.

— It is important to remember that a large part of the Global South resides within India itself. If Delhi can use AI to accelerate domestic development, it would automatically lift up the Global South and transfer the model to other parts of the world.

— The Delhi Summit thus confronts a threefold imperative. First, accelerate national capability—expand compute capacity, strengthen research ecosystems, train skilled man­power, and provide regulatory clarity.

— Second, deepen international partnerships, especially with the United States and other advanced economies, without foreclosing engagement with others.

— Third, contribute substantially to debates on the global governance of AI, grounded in practical experience rather than mushy rhetoric.

— The geopolitics of AI will reward those who build at home, collaborate abroad, and engage responsibly in shaping the norms of a new technological era. For India, the task is not to choose between universalism and nationalism, but to weave them together — anchoring global ambition in national capability, and national ambition in a broader vision of shared progress.

From the Economy page: ‘AI could be game changer for distributed RE, treat it as development infra’

— Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a game changer for India’s rapidly expanding distributed renewable energy, said JVN Subramanyam, Joint Secretary at Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) at India AI Impact Summit at Bharat Mandapam on Monday.

— Distributed renewable energy (DRE) refers to small-scale, decentralised power generation systems — typically ranging from a few kilowatts to megawatts — that produce electricity from renewable sources directly at or near the point of use, such as rooftop solar, small wind turbines, or biomass.

— He said this scale-up in the past year was enabled by technology solutions that have been incorporated and which benefit consumers, field workers, vendors, banks and DISCOMs alike.

— Looking ahead, Subramanyam said AI will play a transformative role in managing the next stage of distributed renewable energy growth.

From the India AI Impact Summit page: Using AI to prevent 2-wheeler accidents? Govt looking at safety features

— Acknowledging that the automobile industry was car-centric, a senior official from the road transport ministry on Monday said that the government was mulling charting out a plan with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) to curb the deaths of two-wheeler riders— which account for 45% of total fatalities.

— The ministry, in collaboration with IIT Madras’ Centre of Excellence for Road Safety, is working on applications that support safer mobility, training drivers and building data driven hyperlocal models.

— One of such initiatives is Sadak Suraksha Mitra Programme, which is currently being implemented in high-risk and high-fatality 100 districts of the country.

Do You Know:

— The IndiaAI Mission seeks to create a comprehensive ecosystem that encourages AI innovation by democratising computing access, improving data quality, developing indigenous AI capabilities, attracting top AI talent, facilitating industry collaboration, providing startup risk capital, ensuring socially impactful AI projects, and promoting ethical AI.

— Launched in 2024, the mission has made strong progress in expanding the country’s computing infrastructure. From an initial target of 10,000 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), India has now achieved 38,000 GPUs, providing affordable access to world-class AI resources

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Knowledge Nugget | India AI Impact Summit 2026 begins : What are the must-know AI-related initiatives that you must know?

📍Knowledge Nugget : Why ‘SabhaSaar’, AI tool for Gram Sabha, matters for your UPSC exam

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:

(4) With the present state of development, Artificial Intelligence can effectively do which of the following? (UPSC CSE 2020)

1. Bring down electricity consumption in industrial units

2. Create meaningful short stories and songs

3. Disease diagnosis

4. Text-to-Speech Conversion

5. Wireless transmission of electrical energy

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

(a) 1, 2, 3 and 5 only

(b) 1, 3 and 4 only

(c) 2, 4 and 5 only

(d) 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5

Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering similar theme:

“The emergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Digital Revolution) has initiated e-Governance as an integral part of government”. Discuss. (UPSC CSE 2020)

THE IDEAS PAGE

SC affirms women’s choice, reproductive autonomy

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

Mains Examination: General Studies-II: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources

What’s the ongoing story: Sneha Banerjee writes: This month, the Supreme Court overturned a Bombay High Court judgment, permitting a teenager to terminate her pregnancy at 30 weeks. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, 2021, expanded the permissible gestational limits for women to seek an abortion up to 24 weeks, under certain conditions.

Key Points to Ponder:

— What are the features of the MTP Act?

— What is reproductive autonomy?

— What is the status of women’s health in India?

— What are the steps taken by the government to provide better nutrition to pregnant women?

— What is the Janani Suraksha Yojana?

— What are the laws regarding abortion in India?

Key Takeaways:

— In the present instance, the Court has not only permitted the abortion but also made some important observations regarding women’s reproductive autonomy. It has emphatically stated that “the court cannot compel” completion of a pregnancy if a woman is “not intending to do so”. In this affirmation of reproductive autonomy, a prominent logic that the Court has articulated pertains to issues of health.

— First, the Court acknowledges that a non-permissible, restrictive legal approach towards abortion does not necessarily prevent it. Rather, it compounds the risk of unsafe abortions by “quacks and unauthorised doctors”. Therefore, access to MTP is a crucial cornerstone of reproductive autonomy.

— Second, given that there is no absolute “right” to abortion under the law in India, an important parameter for determining permissibility has been an assessment of “dangers” to health.

— This, in turn, includes two questions: Whose health and how is health understood? Courts often consider dangers to the health of the woman who is pregnant and/or that of the foetus

— The Bombay HC judgment that stands overturned, in fact, claimed that termination of this pregnancy when the foetus is “healthy and viable” cannot be permitted. In its ruling, the SC sets this aside to prioritise women’s unwillingness over other factors.

— In so doing, it seeks to consider “mental trauma”, and therefore, mental health is placed on a par with physical health. These very welcome moves foreground a health approach to reproductive autonomy, and move it away from the polarising pro-life vs pro-choice terms.

— In a world where the abuse that minors face and affronts to their life and dignity seem to have been numbingly normalised, it is commendable that the SC is unequivocal in arguing that minors cannot be compelled to see through a pregnancy. It sets a much-needed precedent.

— The counterfactual question is this: What if the pregnancy wasn’t “illegitimate” and the pregnant woman was not a minor? The petitioner in the 2023 case had, in fact, also submitted that her previous pregnancy had taken a toll on her mental health and that the pregnancy under review was “unwanted”. It is clear that the institution of marriage determines women’s experience of what are otherwise fundamental rights.

— Indian women’s sexual, reproductive, and, in general, “autonomy” is overshadowed by their marital status. In this sense, the “legitimacy” question ties the marital rape exception to the intertwining of marriage and motherhood.

— Therefore, the observation that “the mother’s reproductive autonomy must be given emphasis” should become the guiding light in cases of this nature, without exceptionalism around marriage.

— The Indian state has affirmed its commitment to women’s reproductive autonomy globally as well as in its own laws. This case presents an opportunity to address some inconsistencies. Reproductive health concerns should take mental health seriously.

Do You Know:

— The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 (as amended in 2021), generally permits termination up to 24 weeks for specified categories of women.

— Clause (4) (b) of Section 3 of the MTP Act clearly provides, “… no pregnancy shall be terminated except with the consent of the pregnant woman”. Beyond that, termination is tightly regulated.

— A 2025 report by the Centre for Health Equity, Law and Policy highlights how, despite judicial recognition of mental health as a state of general well-being, multiple courts deny abortion by citing the absence of mental illness.

— It highlighted that a substantial number of the cases filed exclusively on the ground of injury to mental health between 2019 and 2024 were denied. This raises concerns around how mental health is perceived by the courts.

— Anima Anjuri writes: The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act itself requires that a woman’s actual or reasonably foreseeable environment should be accounted for to determine whether continuance of a pregnancy would involve risk of injury to health. However, this consideration is often replaced with the pathologisation of mental health.

— Needing women to become mentally ill to be able to seek abortion violates their constitutional rights to life and liberty, health and dignity. And denying women the opportunity to preserve their mental health violates their right to autonomy and privacy.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍On reproductive rights, India’s MTP and Surrogacy Acts don’t go far enough

📍Connect the dots: Mental health and women’s reproductive rights 

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:

(5) Consider the following statements in relation to Janani Suraksha Yojana: (UPSC CSE 2023)

1. It is a safe motherhood intervention of the State Health Departments.

2. Its objective is to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality among the poor.

3. It aims to promote institutional delivery among poor pregnant women.

4. Its objective includes providing public health facilities to sick infants up to one year of age.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

(a) Only one

(b) Only two

(c) Only three

(d) All four

Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering similar theme:

What are the continued challenges for women in India against time and space? (UPSC CSE 2019)

EXPLAINED

The cost of controls on the fertiliser industry

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies-III: Major crops-cropping patterns in various parts of the country, – different types of irrigation and irrigation systems storage, transport and marketing of agricultural produce and issues and related constraints; e-technology in the aid of farmers.

What’s the ongoing story: There is perhaps no industry in India as controlled as fertilisers. The maximum retail price (MRP) of urea is fixed at Rs 266.5 per 45-kg bag, a rate practically unchanged since November 2012.

Key Points to Ponder:

— How does the fertilizer subsidy work?

— What is the Nutrient-Based Subsidy (NBS) regime?

— What are the issues associated with the fertiliser subsidy?

— What are the issues related to increased use of subsidies on the soil and crops?

— What are the different types of Fertilizers subsidized in India?

— What are the initiatives taken by the government for judicious use of fertilisers?

Key Takeaways:

— Di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) is technically decontrolled. Companies, on paper, can sell this fertiliser to farmers at market-determined prices, with the Centre merely paying a flat subsidy of Rs 1,490 per 50-kg bag. But the subsidy given to the companies is conditional upon their charging an MRP of only Rs 1,350 per bag, also frozen since the Covid-19 pandemic.

— Even on the other “decontrolled” fertilisers — muriate of potash (MOP) and complexes containing nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K) and sulphur (S) in different proportions — the companies have to ensure that the MRPs are “maintained in accordance with the subsidy rates as notified”.

— The MRPs are to further be reported regularly to the Centre, i.e. department of fertilisers (DOF), with any “unreasonable” profit recoverable from the subsidy amounts paid. And it’s not just price controls.

— The movement, distribution and allocation of all subsidised fertilisers — urea, DAP, MOP and NPKS complexes — from the various plants and ports in the country is also controlled by the Centre.

— The DOF prepares an “agreed supply plan” for each fertiliser, based on the requirement as assessed by the Union agriculture ministry in consultation with the respective state governments.

— After the fertiliser is sent to a state as per the agreed plan for the particular month, the district-wise allocation, too, is decided by the government.

— In short, fertiliser firms may be private, state-owned or cooperative entities. But the business they do — where, when and how much to sell and at what price — is entirely government-controlled.

— The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government has recently come out with a directive that takes control to a new level.

— The state agriculture directorate at Lucknow, on January 13, issued an order to all manufacturers and suppliers of urea in UP, banning them from selling any “gair-anudaanit (non-subsidised)” fertilisers. The “poornataya pratibandh (complete prohibition)” order, effective from January 1, has been issued to about 15 fertiliser concerns.

— UP’s ban on sale of non-subsidised fertilisers by urea manufacturers and suppliers comes despite these being notified products under the Centre’s Fertiliser Control Order, 1985.

— The UP government’s move follows allegations of companies resorting to “tagging” —forcing farmers to buy non-subsidised fertilisers along with subsidised fertilisers.

— Moreover, the market for non-subsidised fertilisers in UP is reckoned at hardly over Rs 1,300 crore, a tenth of the MRP value of Rs 13,000 crore for subsidised fertilisers.

Do You Know:

— Fertiliser subsidy: It is the second largest subsidy (about Rs 2 trillion) in the Union budget, and bigger than the entire budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (MoAFW) (Rs 1.37 trillion).

— The excessive subsidy for urea amounts to subsidising toxins. Urea is not being used in a balanced manner — the excessive use of phosphatic (P) and potassic (K) fertilisers is contaminating groundwater and increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A sizeable part (20 to 25 per cent) also leaks away.

— The solution is direct cash transfers to farmers and decontrolling fertiliser pricing. If the government can’t do that immediately, it can at least bring urea under the nutrient-based subsidy (NBS) and give the same subsidy as on DAP and MOP. Also, shift the fertiliser subsidy from the Department of Fertilisers to MoAFW, which deals with farmers directly.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Explained: The scramble for fertilisers

📍For government’s reform drive to succeed, rationalise agri subsidies 

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:

(6) With reference to chemical fertilizers in India, consider the following statements: (UPSC CSE 2020)

1. At present, the retail price of chemical fertilizers is market-driven and not administered by the Government.

2. Ammonia, which is an input of urea, is produced from natural gas.

3. Sulphur, which is a raw material for phosphoric acid fertilizer, is a by-product of oil refineries.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 and 3 only

(c) 2 only

(d) 1, 2 and 3

Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering similar theme:

How do subsidies affect the cropping pattern, crop diversity and the economy of farmers? What is the significance of crop insurance, minimum support price and food processing for small and marginal farmers? (UPSC CSE 2017)

ALSO IN NEWS
Reza Pahlavi calls for regime change: How his family ruled, lost Iran	IRAN’S FORMER royal Reza Pahlavi on Saturday again called for Western intervention to bring about regime change in the country. He has been exiled from, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. Pahlavi, 65, is the son of Iran’s last monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah, and has lived in exile in the United States since the 1979 revolution. As unrest has spread across the country, he has publicly urged Iranians to sustain street protests and push for political change.
EC to showcase all-in-one app to state panels, with offer to develop versions	The Election Commission is likely to showcase its all-in-one ECINET app to State Election Commissions (SECs) this month, with the offer of developing versions for them as well, EC sources said. The EC had on February 4 announced that it will host a national conference of State Election Commissioners in the Capital on February 24. The last such conference was held in 1999, it said.
What it will take for tech ambition to lift off the ground	Sushant Kumar writes: India’s trade deal with the United States marks a significant moment in its AI ambitions, expanding access to graphics processing units, deepening technology cooperation and encouraging massive foreign investment in data centres. Alongside this, the Union Budget’s generous tax holidays for foreign hyperscalers signal that India is betting heavily on building its AI economy. The short-term gains are undeniable. India lacks domestic GPU manufacturing capacity and remains heavily dependent on imports dominated by US firms. The trade framework helps ease these constraints by expanding access to high-end chips and helping India escape export-control restrictions that had capped imports of advanced GPUs. This is critical because AI innovation today is shaped largely by computing power.

 

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