India, China, Brazil can be hit by sanctions over Russia trade: NATO chief
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies II: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests.
What’s the ongoing story: At a time when Delhi and Washington are working on a trade deal before the pause on reciprocal tariff ends August 1, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Wednesday that countries like India, China and Brazil could be hit very hard by secondary sanctions if they continued to do business with Russia.
Key Points to Ponder:
• What NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said?
• Why India, China and Brazil could be hit very hard by secondary sanctions?
• What is a secondary sanction?
• How the 50 day deadline proposed by President Trump for peace talks in Ukraine could influence global diplomatic alignments?
• What are the strategic calculus behind urging India, China, and Brazil to pressure Russia?
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• What is the role of US NATO coordination in deploying secondary sanctions as tools of coercive diplomacy?
Key Takeaways:
• Speaking in Washington, Rutte, according to the Reuters news agency, said countries in business with Russia should make a phone call to President Vladimir Putin and “tell him that he has to get serious about peace talks (on ending the Ukraine conflict), because otherwise this will slam back on Brazil, on India and on China in a massive way”.
• “My encouragement to these three countries, particularly, is if you live now in Beijing, or in Delhi, or you are the president of Brazil, you might want to take a look into this, because this might hit you very hard,” Rutte told reporters.
• The NATO chief’s remarks come amid tariff uncertainties and global trade wars with the US, and India’s own trade with Russia, particularly oil imports.
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• Weeks ago, there were concerns in India over a controversial Bill in the US that proposed 500 per cent tariffs on countries that continue to trade with Russia. More recently, US President Donald Trump also threatened “biting” secondary tariffs at the rate of 100 per cent on buyers of Russian exports unless there is a Russia-Ukraine peace deal within 50 days.
• Industry watchers and experts see these as tactics to force Putin’s hand by pressuring countries who import from Russia. India has so far not scaled back on its oil imports from Russia, and has maintained that it is willing to buy oil from whoever offers the best price, as long as the oil is not under sanctions.
• Russian oil itself is not sanctioned, but the US and its allies have imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel, as per which Western shippers and insurers cannot participate in Russian oil trade if the price of Moscow’s crude is above that level.
Do You Know:
• India and China are the top importers of Russian crude, and Delhi is engaging with US lawmakers and the Trump administration to voice concerns regarding India’s energy security. India depends on imports to meet around 88 per cent of its crude oil needs, and Russia has been the mainstay of India’s oil imports for nearly three years now.
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• With much of the West shunning Russian crude following the country’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia began offering discounts on its oil to willing buyers. Indian refiners were quick to avail the opportunity, leading to Russia, earlier a peripheral supplier of oil to India, emerging as India’s biggest source of crude, displacing the traditional West Asian suppliers.
• Indian refiners are adopting a wait-and-watch approach while keeping Russian oil flows robust. In fact, imports of Russian crude may rise further amid the tariff threats as Indian refiners would ideally want to stock up before any tariff action takes effect.
• India’s Russian oil imports rose to an 11-month high in June, further cementing Moscow’s continued dominance in Delhi’s oil import basket. According to tanker data, Russian crude accounted for a massive 43.2 per cent of India’s total oil imports in June, outweighing the next three suppliers — West Asian majors Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — put together.
• In June, India imported 2.08 million barrels per day (bpd) of Russian crude, the highest since July 2024, and higher by 12.2 per cent on a month-on-month basis, according to vessel tracking data from global commodity market analytics firm Kpler.
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• According to India’s official trade data, oil imports from Russia were at 87.4 million tonnes in the financial year 2024-25, accounting for almost 36 per cent of India’s total oil imports of 244 million tonnes. Prior to the war in Ukraine, Russia’s share in India’s oil import basket was less than 2 per cent. In 2024-25, the value of India’s oil imports from Russia was over $50 billion, or 35 per cent of
India’s total oil imports worth $143 billion.
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Scheme to develop 100 agri districts across country gets Cabinet go-ahead
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies II: Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes;
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What’s the ongoing story: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the ‘Prime Minister Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana’ (PMDDKY), which envisages development of 100 agricultural districts through the convergence of existing schemes with an annual outlay of Rs 24,000 crore per year.
Key Points to Ponder:
• What is PM Dhan Dhaanya Krishi Yojana?
• What is the key objective of the prime minister Dhan Dhaanya Krishi Yojana?
• What are the selection parameters (low productivity, low cropping intensity, low credit) for the 100 districts?
• What is the Aspirational District Program?
• How does modelling PMDDKY after the Aspirational District Programme reflect the government’s strategy to address regional development disparities?
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• How PMDDKY aligns with national goals like crop diversification, organic farming, water conservation and self-sufficiency?
Key Takeaways:
• The scheme has an outlay of Rs 24,000 crore per year, and will be implemented for six years beginning with the current financial year, 2025-26.
• “The scheme will be implemented through convergence of 36 existing schemes across 11 departments, other State schemes and local partnerships with the private sector,” said an official statement issued after the Cabinet meeting.
• At a briefing on the Cabinet’s decisions, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the scheme would be implemented
for six years beginning from 2025-26. “A master plan will be prepared for each district. It will include agriculture and other allied activities,” Vaishnaw said. He said the scheme would benefit about 1.7 crore farmers.
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• Saying that the government was “motivated by the success of the aspirational districts programme”, she had said the scheme would cover
“100 districts with low productivity, moderate crop intensity and below-average credit parameters”.
• Cropping intensity is a measure of how efficiently land is used — the number of crops grown in the area in an agricultural year (July-June).
• According to the statement, committees will be formed at the district, state and national levels for effective planning, implementation and monitoring of the scheme. Central nodal officers will be appointed for field visits, review and monitoring.
Do You Know:
• The scheme is designed on the lines of the ‘Aspirational Districts Programme’ that was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2018 in 112 most under-developed districts across the country.
• In PMDDKY too, the Dhan-Dhaanya districts will be ranked based on their performance. A portal/ dashboard will be developed to monitor the progress of the scheme in each district on 117 key performance indicators on a monthly basis, said the statement.
• A master plan for the implementation of PMDDKY, which will include agriculture and allied activities, will be drawn up for every district, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.
• This District Agriculture and Allied Activities Plan will be prepared by the District Dhan Dhaanya Samiti headed by the Collector, and will have progressive farmers as members.
• PMDDKY is designed on the lines of the Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP) that was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2018 in the country’s 112 most underdeveloped districts, with the aim of transforming them quickly and effectively.
• Cropping intensity is a measure of how efficiently land is used. It is defined as the percentage of gross cropped area to the net area sown. Simply put, cropping intensity means the number of crops grown on a piece of land in an agricultural year (July-June). At the all-India level, cropping intensity was recorded at 155 per cent in 2021-22, but there were variations across states.
Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:
📍Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana, the new scheme to develop 100 agri districts across the country
GOVT & POLITICS
Telangana, Andhra agree on key steps to end water dispute
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Indian Polity and Governance-Constitution, Political System, Panchayati Raj, Public Policy, Rights Issues, etc.
Mains 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: The Centre has decided to set up two committees to resolve pending disputes between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana over the sharing of waters from Krishna and Godavari rivers.
Key Points to Ponder:
• What are the Inter-State water disputes in India?
• What are the Constitutional Provisions for interstate water disputes?
• What Article 262 of the Constitution says about interstate water disputes?
• What is the role of the Union Government under the Jal Shakti Ministry in mediating inter-state water conflicts?
• Know the Polavaram–Banakacherla project and its contentious nature.
• Compare the Krishna–Godavari board framework with other river basin institutions (e.g., Cauvery Management Authority).
Key Takeaways:
• The Krishna River Management Board is likely to be set up by July 21 at Amaravati, while the Godavari River Management Board will be headquartered in Hyderabad. Both panels will comprise technical officials, Central officers, besides officials from the two states.
• The decision came as Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu and Telangana CM Revanth Reddy held a meeting with Union Jal Shakti Minister C R Patil in New Delhi.
• The Centre had convened the meeting in the backdrop of Andhra’s efforts to execute the Polavaram-Banakacherla link project, which envisages diverting 200 thousand million cubic (TMC) feet of Godavari floodwaters from the state’s Polavaram reservoir to Banakacherla regulator in Kurnool district. Telangana has opposed this project.
Do You Know:
• The project involves a three-part water transfer system: the Bollapalle reservoir in Palnadu district, lift irrigation systems, and tunnels through the Nallamala hills. Naidu has earlier said the project would support national schemes such as Jal Jeevan, Blue Revolution, and Make in India.
• Telangana, for its part, has sought Centre’s permission to take up pending projects on Krishna river on an urgent basis.
• A Jal Shakti Ministry statement said, “… Both states agreed on the installation of telemetry devices for real time monitoring of water flows in the Krishna Basin. It was also agreed that immediate measures would be taken to address the maintenance issues to safeguard Srisailam dam. Both states also agreed that the office of Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) would be shifted to Vijayawada/ Amravati.” “… it was decided to constitute a committee comprising senior officials and technical experts from both states and the central government. This committee will work collaboratively to study outstanding concerns and suggest viable solutions to ensure equitable and efficient water sharing,” it said.
Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:
📍Over 50 years on, it’s time to find a new way to solve the Cauvery water dispute
Previous year UPSC mains Question Covering similar theme:
📍Constitutional mechanisms to resolve the inter-state water disputes have failed to address and solve the problems. Is the failure due to structural or process inadequacy or both? Discuss. (2013)
THE EDITORIAL PAGE
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination:
• General Studies II: India and its neighbourhood- relations
• General Studies III: Role of external state and non-state actors in creating challenges to internal security
What’s the ongoing story: Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: India is rightly concerned, and is somewhat shocked, that it lost the diplomatic high ground after Operation Sindoor
Key Points to Ponder:
• What does hyper nationalism mean?
• Operation Sindoor-What you know about same?
• What was the aftermath of Operation Sindoor?
• How hyper-nationalism can impact the objectivity and efficacy of India’s foreign policy?
• As per the article, why Operation Sindoor’s reception abroad indicated a decline in India’s moral and diplomatic high ground?
• How does author of the article distinguish between genuine realism in foreign policy and the current narrow interpretation he labels as false realism?
Key Takeaways:
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes:
• Indian foreign policy is in a deep morass that is often difficult to see. Our hyper-nationalism prevents us asking tough questions. The daily news cycle is caught in tactical matters or image management for the government. Behind our failures lies a refusal of true realism, or a genuine confrontation with our predicament.
• This refusal of realism is manifest in our diplomacy. The former foreign secretary, Jagat Mehta, often used to say at the Centre for Policy Research that the first exercise in approaching the world in any given situation should be to abstract out proper names, including that of your country, so that you are more ruthlessly objective about your task. Try and imagine how you appear to your toughest adversaries on the outside.
• India is rightly concerned, and is somewhat shocked, that it lost the diplomatic high ground after Operation Sindoor.
• The current dispensation’s interpretation of realism is not actual realism about the state of the world: It is a simple inversion of some perceived past of Indian foreign policy. This supposed realism, with its fantasies of transcending India’s South Asian context, has led to such a spectacular misreading of the neighbourhood that we have lost much of the neighbourhood.
Do You Know:
Harsh V. Pant And Sameer Patil Writes:
• Operation Sindoor, conducted by India in response to the Pahalgam terrorist attack, has decisively altered the security dynamics between India and Pakistan. This operation was the deepest and most extensive military campaign executed by India since the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Utilising advanced military capabilities, this tri-service operation targeted nine terrorist infrastructure sites in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) and Pakistani Punjab and subsequently several critical facilities of the Pakistani military.
• The importance of Operation Sindoor lies not only in its military dynamics but also in establishing a new normal in India’s counter-terrorism response. While the 2016 surgical strike and the 2019 Balakot air strike demonstrated India’s resolve against grave terrorist attacks, Sindoor showcased that no terrorist facility across the border and the Line of Control is off-limits for its military.
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📍Hyper-nationalism a risk in India: Prof Kaushik Basu
📍On Operation Sindoor, a case of oppositioniitis
ECONOMY
‘Green’ power capacity out paces thermal, but storage woes weigh on grid stability
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies III: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.
What’s the ongoing story: When the Paris Agreement on climate change was signed in 2015, India had committed to reaching 40 per cent non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030. This target was raised to 50 per cent in 2022.
Key Points to Ponder:
• What percentage of India’s installed power capacity comes from non-fossil fuel sources?
• Which form of renewable energy is India now half as expensive compared to new coal power?
• Why it is significant for India to achieve 50% non-fossil installed capacity ahead of its Paris commitment?
• What is the economic, technical, and infrastructural barriers that limit renewable integration into India’s power grid?
• Know the role of declining solar PV costs and supportive policies in driving India’s energy transition.
Key Takeaways:
• India has reached a key climate milestone five years ahead of schedule — as of June 30, non-fossil fuel sources account for 50.1 per cent of the country’s installed electricity capacity. These sources — which include nuclear, large hydro, and renewables — made up just 30 per cent of installed capacity in 2015 and 38 per cent in 2020, before rising sharply over the last five years, on the back of solar and wind power.
• When the Paris Agreement on climate change was signed in 2015, India had committed to reaching 40 per cent non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030. This target was raised to 50 per cent in 2022.
• As of June, India’s total installed capacity stood at 485 gigawatts (GW). Of this, renewables — including solar, wind, small hydro, and biogas — accounted for 185 GW, according to a press release by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
• Large hydro capacities contributed 49 GW, and nuclear energy added 9 GW, taking the total non-fossil fuel capacity just over the halfway mark. Thermal power, mostly coal- and gas-based, made up the remaining 242 GW, or 49.9 per cent. In 2015, thermal’s share was 70 per cent.
• The rise in contribution of renewables to India’s energy mix marks a significant shift, driven by the rapid addition of solar and wind power in recent years. In 2024, India ranked fourth globally in renewable installed capacity, including large hydro, behind only China, the US, and Brazil.
• To be sure, installed thermal capacity falling below the halfway mark doesn’t mean India’s reliance on thermal power has dipped below 50 per cent. On the contrary, since renewable sources such as solar and wind are intermittent and cannot generate power around the clock, thermal plants still produce over 70 per cent of the country’s electricity.
Do You Know:
• Between April 2020 and June 2025, India added 95 GW of solar and wind capacity, which now makes up 35 per cent (168 GW) of the country’s total installed electricity capacity. However, this rapid growth in intermittent sources — without a corresponding thrust on building storage capacity like battery systems and pumped hydro – has strained grid stability, especially during periods of fluctuating demand.
• On May 30, 2024, for instance, when the year’s peak demand hit 250 GW, grid managers struggled to meet it due to low renewable generation and insufficient baseload support from thermal.
• In May this year, erratic rains weakened demand, causing real-time solar prices to crash to zero, especially on Sunday afternoons. These instances underscore the growing risk of grid instability and renewables curtailment in the absence of adequate storage — and dampen investor interest in adding new capacity.
• Storage allows electricity from solar and wind plants to be absorbed when generation is high, and released when it’s low or when demand peaks. As of 2024-end, India’s storage capacity was less than 5 GW — 4.75 GW of pumped storage and 110 megawatts (MW) of battery storage.
• The Ministry of Power has also expanded its viability gap funding (VGF) scheme for battery storage, adding 30 gigawatt-hours (GWh) to the 13 GWh already under implementation, with a total outlay of Rs 5,400 crore. On the pumped hydro front, 51 GW is expected to come online by 2032. The inter-state transmission system (ISTS) waiver for storage projects, to spur their development, has also been extended until June 2028.
• According to a July 15 note by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), battery storage execution has been “slower than expected” due to high upfront costs, import duties, and non-compliance with domestic content requirements – while approvals for pumped hydro remain slow.
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📍How clean energy needs, new tech shape mineral governance in India
EXPLAINED
Why even moderate rainfall leads to flooding in Gurgaon
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Economic and Social Development
Mains Examination: General Studies I: Urbanization, their problems and their remedies.
What’s the ongoing story: The Delhi Master Plan of 1962 saw Gurgaon (Gurugram) as a place of modest urban growth, primarily because the area has no groundwater resources. In 1980, with Maruti setting up its factory in Manesar, Gurgaon emerged as an industrial hub.
Key Points to Ponder:
• What makes Gurgaon, home to nearly 2 million people and boasting the third highest per capita income among cities in India, this
vulnerable to monsoon flooding?
• What is cited as a core issue affecting Gurugram’s urban management?
• What are the issues and challenges posed by rural-urban transition zones in India?
• How Gurgaon’s inadequate stormwater infrastructure, fails to manage even moderate rainfall?
• Know the impact of urban sprawl and concretisation on natural drainage systems.
• Compare flooding solutions in Gurugram with successful models like Kolkata’s wetland restoration.
• How topographical features influence urban flood patterns using Gurgaon’s sloping terrain and low-lying areas?
Key Takeaways:
• A decade later, with liberalisation and the promise of rapid economic growth and infrastructural development, the mythical village mentioned in the Mahabharata became India’s Millennium City, a model for 21st century urbanisation in India — and everything that is wrong with it.
• Every monsoon, Gurgaon witnesses extreme flooding: hours-long traffic jams, cars floating in the deluge, and people being electrocuted are common occurrences. All this happens even though Gurgaon receives only about 600 mm of rain on average every year. In comparison, Kochi receives well over 3,000 mm of rain annually without going under every monsoon.
• The Aravalli ridge, on the southern edge of Gurgaon, is the natural high ground for the city. From there, the land slopes down towards the north, which is at a lower altitude. Rainwater in Gurgaon thus flows mainly from the south to the north, towards the Najafgarh Jheel in West Delhi.
• Maps from the 1920s show a large number of water channels in Delhi-NCR. The ones in Gurgaon ran along an east-west axis. “Before MG Road and Sector 56 came up, there were water channels that ran parallel to the Aravalli ridge,” architect-urban designer Suptendu Biswas told The Indian Express.
• These were natural drainage channels, which carried runoff towards what is now the western edge of Gurgaon, from where water would travel further north. But these channels have all but disappeared, and subsequent urban expansion has not kept the city’s topographic reality in mind.
Do You Know:
• One reason why urban expansion in Gurgaon has not kept up with topographic realities is the piecemeal nature of city planning. This is borne out of the city’s unique land acquisition model which is central to Gurgaon’s growth story.
• From the 1970s onwards, the Haryana government introduced a series of laws, which enabled private firms to acquire land on a large scale to develop townships. The Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) was created in 1977 to streamline the process.
• Having developed neighbourhoods such as South Extension and Kailash Colony in Delhi, Delhi Land and Finance (DLF) alone acquired 52 villages in the initial years from farmers. As other players came along, land acquisition was not carried out in a uniform manner. This led to irregular plots, and roads that led to nowhere.
• In Gurgaon, mustard fields have long made way for highways and highrises. A region which once had 60 natural canals, critical to absorb its excess rainwater, barely has four today.
• Biswas offered three “common sense” solutions to address flooding in Gurgaon.
—Identifying local green areas where there is waterlogging, which can then become water harvesting sites where runoff can be captured and allowed to seep into the ground through aquifers or filters.
—Creating soft drains beneath pavements and along the road: these will allow for percolation of rainwater into the soil.
—Sloping the roads such that water can drain off. If land is surveyed efficiently, swales can be created such that large drainage channels with gently sloping sides can decrease surface water from collecting.
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Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies II: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.
What’s the ongoing story: China’s GDP grew 5.2% in the second quarter (April-June) of 2025, according to official figures released recently.
Key Points to Ponder:
• China’s ability to sustain 5% growth amid weakening external demand and structural headwinds-Discuss
• What is the role of industrial output and exports in propping up China’s GDP growth?
• How effective are China’s fiscal policy interventions in response to property sector stress?
• What are the implications of a possible return of US tariffs in August on China’s economic trajectory?
• What are the structural challenges posed by China’s demographic transition for its economic growth beyond the mid 2020s?
Key Takeaways:
• the high tariffs imposed by United States President Donald Trump, the value of the economic output (that is, all goods and services) inside China during the second quarter of 2025 was 5.2% more than the economic output during the same quarter of 2024.
• This is the second consecutive quarter in which China’s GDP growth has beaten the expectations of global analysts. In the first quarter (January-March), the Chinese economy grew even faster, at 5.4% on an annualised basis. Market estimates had pegged its second-quarter GDP growth at about 4.5%.
• At this rate, China looks set to achieve its annual growth target of “around 5%”. However, most analysts outside the country still expect China’s growth to slow down in the second half of the year.
• For three decades, China’s economy grew at an explosive pace on the back of a historic manufacturing boom that allowed it to capture an ever increasing share of global exports. Within the country, there was a massive expansion of physical infrastructure. This dependence on exports (on the external front) and real estate (on the domestic front) created structural imbalances.
Do You Know:
• The Chinese economy has also been facing deflationary pressures which refers to prices going down year on year. Deflation, the opposite of inflation, often presents serious problems for an economy. As prices start to fall, consumers hold back purchases in the hope of buying the same good for cheaper later. This behaviour brings down prices further as the gap between supply and demand widens.
• A deflationary spiral means there is no incentive for businesses to invest or produce goods, and this results in the economy stagnating. Resolving deflation can be more difficult than containing high inflation because there is only so much that policymakers can do in terms of cutting interest rates and increasing government spending to boost economic activity.
• China’s national accounts have never enjoyed credibility of the kind that Western economies with a free press and transparent reporting standards have had. Thus, every time China’s data beats expectations, questions are raised on its credibility.
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