Editorial

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)’s performance audit of the Green India Mission (GIM), tabled in parliament last week, is a severe indictment of the flagship environmental programme. GIM, launched in 2014 with fanfare, aimed to protect, restore and expand forest cover, and improve vegetation and tree cover across the country. It proposed to mobilise targeted efforts to enhance biodiversity and carbon sequestration, and envisioned an expansion of forest-based livelihoods. The report says the mission, which had a target of improving the quality of forests over 1.4 million hectares, could do so only in 0.11 million hectares. A 98% shortfall was reported in efforts towards increasing the forest cover. The CAG examined results across 16 states and union territories between 2015-16 and 2024-25, and reported abject failure in all aspects. Multiple factors have been cited – from an absence of convergence with relevant programmes to insufficient funding, from weak planning to erratic monitoring systems. The CAG noted that GIM lacked “effective alignment” with CAMPA, MGNREGS, and other programmes tied to afforestation, leaving initiatives such as the Nagar Van Yojana and the School Nursery Yojana to progress in isolation. The mission failed to secure the originally proposed funding support. Financial controls were lax; many states did not maintain annual accounts, while those prepared by the others were often unaudited or contained discrepancies. Annual targets for afforestation were largely non-existent and monitoring remained deficient at all levels. Vulnerability was identified as a key marker for the mission. However, the CAG highlighted poor prioritisation, noting that regions with low- and moderate-level risks were selected over those facing a greater threat from climate change. GIM is an important component in India’s response to climate change and is integral to its national action plan. It was designed to play a crucial role in meeting the country’s commitment to the Paris Agreement on expanding its carbon sink. That a programme of this scope and consequence was handled with such indifference reveals a commitment that does not go far beyond the optics of afforestation drives. There is much talk about the need to plant trees, to improve the state of forests, to revive degraded lands, and to hasten climate action. Millions of saplings are being planted every year. However, official statistics about the extent of forests and tree cover have been consistently questioned. The CAG report encapsulates everything that is wrong with the country’s biggest afforestation programme. Its criticism should form the basis for efforts to repair and rejuvenate the mission. (Source: DH)

With the National Testing Agency (NTA) cancelling the error-ridden English, commerce, and sociology papers of the UGC-NET, the Union government has found itself facing fresh questions on its promised systemic corrections. The agency has announced retests for the examinations held in June. The UGC-NET is an eligibility test for admission to PhD programmes and Junior Research Fellowships, and appointment as assistant professors. When complaints arose about mistakes in the question papers, the NTA appointed a committee to examine them. The committee’s report is revealing. It highlighted multiple factual, typographical, grammatical, and translation errors, misspelt names, and garbled book titles. Many questions were repeated from earlier tests. Last week, the agency released the provisional answer keys for the 84 other subjects; the challenge window closed on Tuesday. The NTA, in its notice announcing the retests on September 9 and 10, said papers carrying such defects “do not meet the standards of fairness and error-free examination, and defects of this extent cannot be cured merely by dropping questions after the challenge process.” It is important that this fiasco comes a few weeks after student protests over the NEET paper leaks ousted education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and forced the Union government into a commitment to strengthening the agency and revamping the examination system with greater vigil and stronger deterrence against potential breaches. Among the promised reforms were the use of the best technology for surveillance, fool-proof security for question papers, and changes designed for greater institutional and personnel efficiency. The government said it would implement the recommendations made by the Radhakrishnan Committee, which was set up after the 2024 NEET paper leak. It also enacted a more stringent legislation to deal with examination fraud and related issues. The tests in June may not offer the right measure of these new interventions, but this failure underlines the arduous task ahead for the agency. Officials at multiple levels contributed to the failure. Will action be taken against them under the new law? Thousands of young people have been inconvenienced by the cancellation of the examinations, triggering uncertainty at a time marked by anxieties over shrinking opportunities. The confidence of the country’s youth in the system has suffered repeated blows. The NTA claims to have removed 600 experts and brought in a new set of specialists, but it remains to be seen if these measures go beyond their ad hoc utility. The larger institutional objective must be an overhaul, ensuring absolute integrity of the system. (Source: DH)  

On August 19, 2003, a truck bomb tore through the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, the UN’s headquarters in Iraq, killing 22 people, including the gifted diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello. Five years later, the UN General Assembly turned that tragedy into an annual reminder: humanitarian work is not safe, comfortable, or thankless in the abstract – it is dangerous, specific, and carried out by people with names and families. That is why World Humanitarian Day matters. In a world numbed by the scale of suffering — Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the slow-moving disasters of climate change — humanitarian workers are the ones who still walk towards the wreckage rather than walk away from it. They are proof that decency has not been argued out of existence. In an age of cynicism about institutions, the aid worker distributing vaccines in a flooded village or negotiating a ceasefire corridor for food trucks offers something rarer than optimism: evidence. This year’s UN campaign, #ActForHumanity, captures that plainly – humanity is not a slogan; it is a practice, renewed daily by people who choose it under fire. Yet the record now being set is not one to celebrate. The UN reported 390 aid workers killed in 2024, the highest toll ever recorded, and humanitarian groups warn 2026 is set to be worse still, with more aid workers coming under attack — killed, injured, kidnapped, or detained. Palestinians account for close to a fifth of all aid workers killed since records began. Impunity compounds the crisis: attacks go uninvestigated, perpetrators unpunished, and humanitarian access is increasingly treated as a bargaining chip rather than a legal obligation under international humanitarian law. Reversing this requires more than tributes. Warring parties and states must be held to the Geneva Conventions’ protections for humanitarian personnel, with credible investigation and prosecution of attacks, not just condemnation. Humanitarian access needs to be negotiated as non-negotiable, insulated from political leverage. Funding – chronically underpaid and precarious — must shift towards predictable, multi-year support so organisations can retain trained staff rather than burn through them. And local responders, who absorb the greatest risk and know their communities best, deserve a far larger share of both resources and decision-making power than the current aid architecture gives them. India’s own experience offers a useful counterpoint to despair. From Operation Dost’s medical teams in earthquake-hit Turkey and Syria in 2023, to Operation Brahma in Myanmar and Operation Sagar Bandhu’s rescue of over 2,500 citizens and treatment of 2,200 patients after Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka in 2025, to Operation Amistad’s earthquake response in Venezuela this year, India has steadily built a reputation as a first responder abroad — backed at home by the NDRF’s disaster machinery. Indeed, humanitarian capacity, built patiently, becomes a form of soft power rooted in something sturdier than diplomacy alone. (Source: The Pioneer)

On August 13, all six stanzas of Vande Mataram were sung inside the Lok Sabha for the first time in parliamentary history, as the Monsoon Session drew to a close. Two days later, from the ramparts of Red Fort, the full song was heard for the first time at an Independence Day ceremony – the 80th since 1947. The timing was crucial: 2025-26 marks 150 years since Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay composed the song, later woven into his novel Anandamath, and it comes days after a new law made insulting or disrupting Vande Mataram a criminal offence, on par with the National Anthem. Few songs carry this kind of weight. It was a rallying cry from Bengal’s 1905 partition through the Quit India movement, sung by revolutionaries who faced lathis and prison for it. Yet its journey was never simple. In 1937, the Congress Working Committee — Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Subhas Bose and Maulana Azad among them — resolved that only the first two stanzas, evoking the motherland’s rivers and orchards, would be sung at national gatherings. The later verses invoke the goddess Durga; Tagore, consulted on the matter, advised that the opening stanzas could stand alone as a national song without carrying that religious charge into a plural nation. It was accommodation, not erasure — a considered decision to hold a diverse freedom movement together. That history is exactly what is being contested now. Inaugurating the anniversary commemorations in November, Prime Minister Modi said the 1937 trimming had “sowed the seeds of Partition” — a charge Congress calls a distortion that insults both the Working Committee and Tagore himself. The row has since curdled: a Kerala Congress MP’s intemperate vow never to sing the full version; a disputed video from a Congress Independence Day event that the BJP seized on as proof Sonia Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge had tried to cut the song short — something Congress disputes; a public demand from Amit Shah for an apology; police complaints in Delhi and Karnataka. Even as MPs from the NCP, Shiv Sena and YSRCP urged that the song not be reduced to a political football, that is precisely what it has become. Would the country not be better served letting this song simply be sung and revered, without a running scorecard? A hymn that moved millions across faiths during the freedom struggle needs no statute to secure its place in the national imagination — it earned that, unaided, over 150 years. Legislating reverence, and mining history for a partisan point, both cheapen a symbol that once asked only for love of country, nothing more. The flag, the anthem, this song – none of them belong in any single party’s custody. The most patriotic thing today’s politicians could do is stop competing over who loves Vande Mataram more, and simply let it keep doing what it has always done best: unite, rather than divide, without anyone needing to be told to sing it. (Source: The Pioneer)    

The near washout of the monsoon session of Parliament is yet another reminder of the mortal threat to the country’s most important institution of parliamentary democracy. The numbers about its performance are stark. In the 25-day session, the Lok Sabha functioned for barely 19% and the Rajya Sabha for around 39% of their scheduled time. Twelve Bills were passed by both Houses, but only one saw substantive discussion. Nine Bills were passed without any MP, other than the minister concerned, speaking on them. This poor performance is not just a statistical failure. It shows the inability and refusal of both the government and the Opposition to engage each other, marking the breakdown of dialogue and civility in public life. The ruling party has blamed the Opposition, particularly the Congress, for repeated disruption of the House. The Opposition has accused the government of avoiding accountability on issues such as the police action against protesting students in Delhi and the theft of donations at the Ram temple. The result was a paralysis of Parliament. While both sides share responsibility, the government bears the greater burden. It must ensure that the House functions and discussions are held; yet it resisted debates on the important issues that the Opposition wanted to raise. By the time Home Minister Amit Shah offered to debate the students’ protest, it was too late. Even then, conditions were laid down for his statement. Politically, it was a defensive, even evasive, move. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is the Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha, and Amit Shah appeared in the House just for a few minutes in the 25-day session. That absence inevitably signals scant commitment to the House. The confrontation in the House spilled beyond the House, with MPs facing off with placards outside Parliament. Parliament has reached a stage where its basic functionality has come to be questioned. Legislation passed without a debate may be legal, but it will lack legitimacy. All important issues of the nation need to be discussed in Parliament. The nation is yet to receive answers to questions about the use of force against students and the theft of donations at the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Parliament is meant for dialogue, not for a monologue. The government should facilitate discussions and accommodate the Opposition. Otherwise, it cannot expect co-operation.  (Source: DH)

Independence Day is about freedom. August 15 is an emotional and intellectual code, invoked to connote a state of mind and existence that knows no bounds except those defined in a compact given unto us by ourselves. The day is the vantage point, our Red Fort, to look at the road we have traversed and the road ahead, and to reflect on what we have done with the freedom we gained. The nation was founded on the best ideals of democracy, equality, and fraternity among people, irrespective of religion, language or race. These ideals were to be realised within the expanding contours of freedom promised by our tryst with destiny. The question we should pose to ourselves is whether those contours have expanded or shrunk. They have shrunk. Resistance came in an unprecedented mobilisation of youth at Jantar Mantar, turning grievances over a flawed examination system into a collective call for accountability, breaking the BJP government’s facade of invincibility and energising voices of dissent. That resistance matters in a time of shrinking freedoms. The charter of rights at the heart of the Constitution is under pressure. The right to life is not a given when citizens can be easily arrested under draconian laws and kept in jail indefinitely. The right to free speech is not real when criticism attracts repression and vengeance. Religious freedom exists in the book, but majoritarian pressures and targeted legislation have soured the lived experience of minorities. The country ranks low on all the indices of freedom, with an overall score that evaluates it as partly free. India has achieved much since it attained nationhood. We have the world’s sixth-largest economy and have made progress in every field of life. But we have not gone far enough on our goals and promises, and slipped on the most fundamental promise of August 15. That is about a life in democracy, about strengthening its processes and institutions, about the idea of a union of states, about liberty, equality, and fraternity. When parliament is disrespected and weakened, the right to vote is arbitrarily denied, and even citizenship is uncertain, we fail the spirit of August 15. There is stirring rhetoric from the ramparts of the Red Fort about accomplishments, promises, and new ideas and ideals. But beyond the words, the day gives us an opportunity to redeem the pledge taken on freedom’s first dawn. Hope and determination should sustain us to realise a future that will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman. (Source: DH)

On August 7, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, declaring that an attack on any one of the three would be treated as an attack on all. Coming after nearly a year of negotiation, and building on the bilateral Saudi-Pakistan defence pact signed in Riyadh last September, the accord instantly drew comparisons to NATO’s Article 5. Predictable label — “Islamic NATO” — followed within hours. The comparison is tempting but loose. Unlike NATO, the Mecca pact creates no integrated command, no standing joint forces, no automatic deployment mechanism. Riyadh itself has publicly denied this is a military alliance or a religious bloc. Pakistan has downplayed any suggestion of extending its nuclear umbrella to its new partners, and tellingly, Islamabad did not act militarily when Iran struck Saudi Arabia even after the bilateral pact was already in place. What exists today is closer to a political signal of intent than a binding war-fighting compact. Yet the signal matters. The pact’s timing — amid a widening US-Israel-Iran war, missile and drone strikes on Saudi oil infrastructure, and Gulf doubts about Washington’s staying power — makes clear this is about hedging, not theology. Each partner brings something real: Saudi capital and geography astride two vital chokepoints, Turkey’s NATO-standard military-industrial base, and Pakistan’s battle-tested, nuclear-backed forces. Turkey has already said the door is open to more members; Egypt was courted but has stayed out, wary of binding commitments. The pact’s chief strength, complementary capability, is also its weakness, since ambiguity over who must do what, and for whom, will only deepen as membership widens. For India, the calculus is more complicated than the headlines suggest. The Ministry of External Affairs has responded with calibrated caution, saying only that it is “examining implications” for national security and regional stability. That restraint is sensible: no clause here extends Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent, and Riyadh has too much invested in its India partnership, from energy to expatriate remittances, to want the pact read as anti-India. Still, two concerns are real. Turkey’s role as a steady supplier of drones and defence hardware to Pakistan gives Islamabad a deeper-pocketed partner in modernising its arsenal. And a closer Ankara-Riyadh axis could complicate the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, a project Turkey was pointedly excluded from and has actively worked to counter with a rival route. Both push New Delhi toward tightening its own hedges — with Israel, the UAE and Qatar, all now watching Riyadh’s new company closely. The Mecca pact is not NATO, and treating it as an existential threat would be an overreaction. But it is a marker of a post-American security order taking shape on India’s western flank, assembled by a nuclear-armed neighbour with newly diversified backers. That deserves sober, sustained attention — not alarm, but not complacency either. (Source: The Pioneer)

The notion that clothes make the man remains debatable; when applied to women in India, it has also enabled a strong form of morality policing. It is this bias that the Delhi High Court recently addressed when it ruled that a woman’s attire cannot be used to judge her character or justify sexual offences against her. The verdict affirms that courts, while hearing cases involving sexual offences, must rely solely on evidence without enforcing interpreted morality. This ruling came on a sexual harassment case involving a minor, where the court rejected the premise that girls wearing jeans could “corrupt” boys. The High Court overturned a trial court’s acquittal of the accused in 2014, affirming that touching of the complainant’s cheeks and inappropriate comments constituted an offence. Charges under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act were dropped because the prosecution failed to conclusively prove the survivor’s age. Judge Chandrasekharan Sudha made it clear that what a woman wears is her choice and no one else has the right to dictate that choice. The argument about clothing shifts responsibility for the offence from the accused to the victim and suggests that women have a price to pay for their choices. This prejudicial line of reasoning has persisted in society and, sometimes, even influenced judicial thinking. The court sent out a message when it told judicial officers that cross-examination should not be used to “insult, shame, intimidate or harass”. Courts in the country have affirmed these principles in the past as well. The Supreme Court held that even a woman of “doubtful reputation” is entitled to privacy, dignity, and protection by the law. Clothes and appearances have been repeatedly used against women as triggers for sexual violence, and have influenced the outcome of some of these cases. The Bombay High Court, in its recent ruling in the Tarun Tejpal case, held that a survivor’s conduct and personality should not be scrutinised as evidence while judging a crime. Courts should look at the facts of the case and adjudicate it based on the evidence, and refrain from moralising. The principle holds outside the courtrooms, too. The “corruption” is not in the clothes women wear; it is in the eyes that see them. The Delhi High Court’s ruling sets an important precedent for sexual offence cases. A victim’s clothing choices cannot be linked to the criminality of the act; they cannot be used to evade accountability or reduce the severity of the crime. (Source: DH)

In the agitation by student groups in Ranchi, there are striking parallels with the protests in Delhi’s Janta Mantar – in both form and objectives. The protesters in Jharkhand are demanding accountability for breaches in tests conducted by the state’s public service commission and staff selection commission, and over examination paper leaks. Following talks with the students, the state government cancelled three examinations, and three members of the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) resigned. Protesters, who demand a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into examination malpractices and the functioning of a Lucknow-based testing agency, were lathi-charged and tear-gassed during their march to the state Assembly. The protests are especially significant for the larger message of youth discontent they carry. At the heart of this response is a broken education and examination system that triggers anxieties among large sections of vulnerable youth. The country has often been warned about the cost of failing to meet the aspirations of its young demographics, and the present distress and street expression are responses to this failure. The names of the exams, the erring institutions, and the details may vary from state to state, but the common theme is the failure of the establishment. In Delhi, the focus was on the resignation of a recalcitrant minister. In Ranchi, too, the protesters seek accountability from the system, though their demands have not taken an overwhelmingly political form. The message may be that youth dissent becomes political when it is handled politically or when established democratic means of protest fail. Institutional responses – whether from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre or from the Opposition parties in states – have been largely similar. Though the Jharkhand government claims that 98% of the protesters’ demands have been accepted, the ground situation indicates a prevailing disconnect. Political responses have been predictably opportunistic. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has condemned police action on the students, though his party shares power in the state. He should now offer guidance to the government on managing the situation. The BJP says the state government should have talked to the protesters on the first day; however, its government at the Centre, and its leaders, did not engage with the protesting students in Delhi for days, and consistently vilified them. Governments and political parties must realise that the youth take to the streets when the leadership fails. Their protests are desperate calls for systemic accountability. That desperation should be addressed, and not weaponised for political points. (Source: DH)  

With the amendment to the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, which enables the government to levy charges on banks and service providers for UPI transactions, questions emerge on the central idea of free transactions envisioned under the digital regime. The government has clarified that person-to-person transactions will remain free, and any future Merchant Discount Rate (MDR), enabled by the legislation, will apply only to a specific category of merchant transactions. It is reported that transactions of Rs 2,000 and above may attract costs, which are yet to be determined. According to NPCI data, 86% of UPI transactions involve Rs 500 or less, and those between Rs 501 and Rs 2,000 account for 10%. Only 4% of transactions involve Rs 2,000 and more, though they constitute around two-thirds of UPI payments by value. The argument for imposing an MDR is that banks and payment processors have borne the costs of maintaining and upgrading the UPI infrastructure since the system went free in 2020. While the government’s incentive scheme covers a part of the costs, banks and payment operators have highlighted their burden, which they see as disproportionate. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Sanjay Malhotra recently said, “Someone will have to pay” for these transactions. The demand for an MDR regime has grown with the steady expansion of the UPI footprint. UPI is a major Indian success story that has transformed financial transactions. With 640 million daily transactions, it has emerged as the world’s largest real-time digital payment system and has significantly helped the country move towards its stated objective of a cashless economy. This makes it imperative that the UPI services continue to be free for most of its users. It is stated that the MDR will be limited only to merchants, who may be tempted to recoup this cost under various pretexts. The cost of this change should not be passed on to customers. The government should establish robust, transparent provisions to prevent any such attempt. A failure here can prove costly, pushing people back to cash payments. It is also important to look closely at the claim that transactions for customers are “free”. A part of the subsidy that the government extends to the scheme is met with taxes paid by citizens, through substantial budgetary allocations. Access and affordability have steered the UPI system to the success it has achieved. Policy revisions must stay true to these foundational principles. (Source: DH)