Analysis
Briefs
89 briefs · page 7 of 8
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-06
India's water mission: the Jal Jeevan Mission and river management
The Ministry of Jal Shakti runs India's water agenda through two big tracks: the Jal Jeevan Mission, which had reached over 15.72 crore rural households (about 81%) with tap connections by October 2025, and river management — Ganga clean-up under Namami Gange, inter-state dispute adjudication, and the Ken-Betwa interlinking project whose foundation stone was laid in December 2024. In 2025-26 the mission was extended to 2028 and refunded, and in March 2026 the Cabinet restructured it as JJM 2.0, shifting the stated emphasis from building infrastructure to sustaining service. A first comprehensive CAG audit covering 2019-20 to 2023-24 flagged gaps in quality testing, asset maintenance and procurement that the ministry and states are addressing.
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-06
India's women's reservation law and the wait for delimitation
India's women's reservation law — the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023, branded the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam — reserves one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha, the state assemblies and the Delhi assembly for women, including within the SC and ST quotas. Parliament passed it near-unanimously in September 2023 and it was formally brought into force on 16 April 2026, but the reservation itself stays inoperative because the Act ties it to a delimitation exercise following the first census after commencement. A government attempt in April 2026 to short-circuit that wait using 2011 census data failed to clear Parliament. This is the maintained topic brief on where the law stands and on the child-welfare schemes run by the ministry alongside it.
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-05
India's air power: Rafale, the AMCA programme, and the squadron gap
The Indian Air Force fields roughly 29–31 fighter squadrons against a sanctioned strength of 42, a gap that has widened as legacy MiG types retire faster than replacements arrive. Three programmes define the response: an expanding Rafale line (36 in service, 26 Rafale-M for the Navy signed in 2025, and a 114-jet Multi-Role Fighter requirement moved to government-to-government talks with France in 2026); the indigenous fifth-generation AMCA, whose execution model was approved in May 2025; and the delayed Tejas Mk1A and Mk2 lines. This brief tracks what has actually been signed, approved and inducted, and attributes the contested timelines.
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-05
India's digital public infrastructure and data-protection regime: the state of play
India has built population-scale digital public infrastructure — a digital identity, a real-time payments rail and a document layer used by hundreds of millions — and is now, belatedly, building the legal regime meant to govern the data that flows through it. This is the maintained topic brief on where that regime stands: the IT Act and its intermediary rules, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act of 2023, and the DPDP Rules notified in November 2025 that put it into phased force.
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-05
India's farm policy: MSP, procurement, and the post-2021 settlement
India announces a minimum support price (MSP) on 22 mandated crops, but the guarantee is administrative, not statutory, and the state actually buys only a narrow slice of that output — mostly rice and wheat, mostly from a few states. After the 2020 farm laws were repealed in 2021, the central unresolved demand became a law that would make MSP a legal entitlement for all crops. This maintained brief tracks what MSP and procurement actually are, and where the post-2021 standoff stands.
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-05
India's health system: Ayushman Bharat and pandemic preparedness
India runs the world's largest government health-assurance scheme atop one of the world's lowest levels of public health spending. Ayushman Bharat now claims coverage for around 12 crore families, a 70-and-over expansion, and more than 100 crore digital health records — even as public spending sits near 1.8% of GDP, below the government's own 2.5% target, and households still bear close to 40% of health costs out of pocket. This maintained brief tracks where the health system stands and how far its pandemic preparedness has been rebuilt since the 2021 oxygen crisis.
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-05
India's internal-security consolidation: the 'Naxal-Mukt Bharat' deadline and the three-theatres doctrine
The Ministry of Home Affairs has organised its internal-security effort around three long-running theatres — Left-Wing Extremism, Jammu & Kashmir terrorism and Northeast insurgency — and set 31 March 2026 as a deadline to eliminate Naxalism nationwide. By mid-2026 the Home Minister declared the country "by and large" free of all three; the official trend data shows a steep multi-year decline, while critics point to residual Maoist activity in a handful of districts. This is the maintained topic brief on where that consolidation stands and how its success is contested.
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-05
India's NEP 2020 rollout and the fight over who regulates higher education
India's National Education Policy 2020, approved on 29 July 2020, is being rolled out unevenly: school-stage and undergraduate-degree changes have moved fastest, while the promised single higher-education regulator has only reached Parliament as the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025 — introduced in the Lok Sabha on 15 December 2025 and referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee. UGC's 2025 regulations have made the four-year undergraduate degree, multiple entry-exit and the Academic Bank of Credits the standard from the 2025-26 session. Foreign universities have begun opening India campuses under 2023 rules. As of mid-2026 the central contested question is whether to replace the UGC, AICTE and NCTE with a single commission, and how much authority the centre holds over a subject shared with the states.
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-05
India's naval expansion and its Indian Ocean strategy
India is running one of the largest naval build-outs in its history — Navy officials have described commissioning 19 warships in 2026 — while reframing its Indian Ocean doctrine from the 2015 SAGAR vision to MAHASAGAR (2025) and a new maritime strategy, INMSS-2026. The two threads are joined: a larger, increasingly indigenous fleet is the hardware behind a strategy that positions India as the "preferred security partner" and "first responder" of the Indian Ocean Region, against a backdrop of expanding Chinese naval presence. This is the maintained topic brief on where the expansion and the strategy stand.
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-05
Indian Railways' modernisation: Vande Bharat, safety and capital expenditure
Indian Railways is running its largest modernisation drive in decades: record capital outlays of about Rs 2.65 lakh crore for 2025-26, near-total electrification of the broad-gauge network, a growing fleet of Vande Bharat semi-high-speed trainsets, and a phased rollout of the indigenous Kavach train-protection system. The Ministry of Railways reports a sharp fall in consequential accidents; critics and the national auditor question whether headline projects and a flat capital budget match the underlying safety and network needs. This is the maintained topic brief on where that drive stands.
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-05
India's space programme: Gaganyaan, commercial launch, and the space economy
India's space programme is running on two tracks at once: a state-flagship push toward crewed spaceflight and a national space station, and a policy-led opening of the sector to private industry. The Union Cabinet in September 2024 approved an expanded Gaganyaan programme, the first module of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, the Chandrayaan-4 lunar sample-return mission and a Next Generation Launch Vehicle. In parallel, the Indian Space Policy 2023, the regulator IN-SPACe and a 2024 decision to allow up to 100% foreign investment in parts of the sector are meant to grow a private space industry. IN-SPACe has projected the Indian space economy could reach about $44 billion by 2033, from roughly $8 billion, though that figure is a stated target, not an outcome.
- Topic · maintained 2026-07-05
India's trade strategy: FTAs, US tariff pressure, and export targets
India's trade strategy runs on three tracks at once: a sprint of free-trade agreements (UK signed in 2025, EU negotiations concluded in early 2026), a managed response to US tariff pressure that produced an interim framework in February 2026, and a standing Foreign Trade Policy vision of US$2 trillion in exports by 2030. Total exports reached a record of about US$825 billion in FY2024-25. This is the maintained topic brief on where each track stands and where they strain.