Context:

• There is the need to examine the proposed change to Section 10A of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, through the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026.
• The amendment replaces the existing prohibition on charges for BHIM-UPI and RuPay with an enabling provision under which the government may notify modes of payment on which charges can be imposed.
• While no charge has been introduced yet, opening this door could undermine the foundational principle of free and universal digital payments.

UPI - From Payment Innovation to Public Digital Infrastructure:

• When Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was introduced (by NPCI), the objective was to reduce dependence on cash by providing a simple, interoperable and low-cost payment system.
• UPI has since become the backbone of India's digital payments ecosystem. For example, it processed over 24,000 crore transactions in 2025-26, roughly 66 crore transactions a day, worth about ₹314 lakh crore.
• It accounted for around 85% of India's digital retail payments and nearly half of the world's real-time payments.
• A large proportion of transactions are small-value payments—around ₹1,300 on average, with 86% of merchant payments below ₹500.
• These include everyday payments to vegetable vendors, autorickshaw drivers, small shops and street businesses.
• Thus, UPI's significance lies not merely in transaction volumes but in its ability to formalise small-value economic activity and make digital payments accessible to ordinary citizens.

Why MDR is the Wrong Pricing Model?

• Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) originated in the card-payment ecosystem, where multiple intermediaries—issuer, acquirer and payment network—share costs and assume risks associated with physical infrastructure and credit.
• UPI operates differently:
  • It is based on interoperability, rather than closed payment networks.
  • Transactions move directly between bank accounts.
  • There is no physical card or terminal.
  • There is no comparable credit-default risk.
  • Settlement is almost instantaneous.
  • UPI is built on an open protocol and common infrastructure.
• Therefore, applying the traditional MDR model to UPI would amount to imposing an inappropriate legacy pricing mechanism on a fundamentally different digital public infrastructure.

The Cost of Zero-MDR UPI:

• Banks and payment providers nevertheless incur real costs in operating UPI. The government has attempted to bridge this gap through incentives.
• However, the projected expenditure on these incentives has increased sharply—from about ₹3,631 crore to nearly ₹4,373 crore.
• The solution should not be to recover these costs directly from merchants and consumers through MDR.

Alternative - Fund UPI Through the Savings it Creates:

• The state and financial system derive substantial savings from digitisation:
  • The RBI spends ₹5,000–6,400 crore annually merely on printing currency.
  • Digital payments reduce the costs of cash printing, storage, transportation and handling.
  • Banks benefit from the lower-cost digital transaction ecosystem and the ability to retain deposits and lend them.
  • Digitalisation reduces transaction costs across the economy.
• Hence, if UPI generates savings for the government and banks, a portion of these savings can finance the infrastructure that generates them.

Why MDR Could Become Self-Defeating?

• India's digital-payment transition remains price-sensitive. Even a small MDR can make digital transactions less attractive than cash.
• For example, a merchant charged 2% may pass the cost to customers as a “digital payment charge” or discourage digital payments altogether.
• Even a 0.3% charge could significantly affect merchants operating on thin margins.
• The result could be a reversal of India's cash-to-digital transition, particularly among small merchants.

Protecting UPI as a Public Good:

• UPI has succeeded because it is free, instant, interoperable, universal, and accessible.
• Its expansion has brought millions of people and small businesses into the formal digital economy.
• Therefore, UPI should not be treated simply as a commercial payment product. It is a form of digital public infrastructure, and its benefits extend beyond individual transactions.

Way Forward:

• Instead of imposing MDR:
  • Fund UPI through savings generated by reduced cash dependence.
  • Develop transparent, formula-based support for payment infrastructure.
  • Ensure that any support is linked to value delivered, rather than transaction pricing.
  • Preserve affordability for small merchants and consumers.
  • Avoid policies that could encourage a return to cash.
• The debate illustrates the broader challenge of balancing financial sustainability with inclusive digital public infrastructure.
• India's UPI model demonstrates how interoperability, network effects and state-supported digital infrastructure can reduce transaction costs while promoting financial inclusion.

Conclusion:

• The central proposition is clear: UPI should remain free at the point of use.
• If digitalisation saves money for the government and banks, those savings should help finance UPI rather than recovering costs through MDR from merchants and consumers.
• Preserving zero-cost UPI is therefore presented not merely as a payment-policy choice, but as a means of protecting India's cash-light, inclusive and digitally enabled economy.

Context

• The India-U.S. relationship faces sanctions, visa restrictions, trade disagreements and energy-security concerns, yet strategic cooperation remains essential.
• The West Asian crisis has reinforced the need for resilient global supply chains and secure maritime routes.
• The Indo-Pacific has become the critical intersection of geopolitics, global trade, energy security and maritime security, making stronger Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) an urgent priority.
• India and the United States can strengthen maritime security through the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) and the Quad while expanding cooperation with regional partners.

The Indo-Pacific as the Artery of Global Trade

• The Indo-Pacific is a critical artery of the global economy, carrying nearly $7 trillion in annual trade and connecting energy producers, manufacturing centres and consumer markets.
• Major chokepoints such as the Strait of Malacca, Strait of Hormuz and Bab-al-Mandeb are essential to the movement of energy and goods.
• Disruptions in these waters can cause higher energy prices, shipping delays and supply-chain instability.
• At the same time, state-sponsored coercion, smuggling, illegal fishing, sanctions evasion and grey-zone activities increasingly threaten freedom of navigation.

The Growing Importance of Maritime Domain Awareness

• MDA provides a comprehensive understanding of activities in the maritime environment by integrating information from multiple technological and institutional sources.
• It strengthens maritime security, economic security, environmental protection, safety and law enforcement.
• A major challenge is the increasing number of vessels that disable Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders to conceal movements, cargo or illicit activities.
• Smaller fishing vessels may also remain outside mandatory AIS requirements, enabling illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing that damages marine ecosystems and threatens regional food security.

Grey-Zone Threats and the Surveillance Gap

• State and non-state actors increasingly employ grey-zone operations to intimidate competitors and disrupt regional stability without triggering conventional military responses.
• Such activities are difficult to counter because their origins and intentions may remain ambiguous.
• A continuous maritime picture can help identify suspicious behaviour, establish evidence and enable diplomatic, legal or security responses.
• Transparency therefore becomes an important instrument of deterrence.

IPMDA and the Quad

• The Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) provides a practical framework for improving maritime surveillance through multilateral information-sharing.
• Developed under the Quad, it seeks to provide partners with near-real-time maritime information.
• Its strength lies in integrating commercial satellites, radio-frequency monitoring, radar systems and national sensor networks.
• India's acquisition of SeaVision technology and its maritime information infrastructure create a strong foundation for deeper cooperation.
• India's Information Fusion Centre–Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) can complement IPMDA by connecting maritime information across the Indian Ocean and strengthening regional situational awareness.

India-U.S. Cooperation: Strategic Complementarity

• The United States benefits from India's regional capabilities because Washington cannot independently maintain comprehensive maritime surveillance across the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans.
• Cooperation with India can distribute responsibilities while preserving strategic reach.
• For India, partnership with the United States provides access to advanced maritime technologies, intelligence-sharing and wider surveillance networks while supporting strategic autonomy.
• However, bilateral cooperation alone cannot address threats that routinely cross national boundaries.

Bringing ASEAN, Pacific Island States and Europe into the Framework

• The effectiveness of IPMDA depends on wider participation by ASEAN countries, Pacific Island nations and European partners.
• Smaller states such as Bangladesh, Maldives, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Fiji often possess surveillance capabilities but face financial, technological and jurisdictional limitations.
• Regional information-sharing can strengthen these existing systems without replacing national sovereignty.
• European participation can further reinforce the framework because European economies depend heavily on secure maritime trade and energy supplies.

Transparency as Deterrence

• The strategic environment has weakened the assumption that freedom of navigation and open trade can sustain themselves automatically.
• Unchallenged coercive behaviour can gradually become normalised and establish dangerous precedents.
• An integrated maritime-information system can make illicit activities more difficult by ensuring that suspicious movements are detected, documented and rapidly shared.
• Technology must therefore be combined with common standards, legal cooperation, institutional coordination and capacity-building.

Challenges and the Way Forward

• Key challenges include data sovereignty, intelligence-sharing, technological disparities, legal differences and institutional coordination.
• Addressing them requires:
  • strengthening India-U.S. maritime information-sharing;
  • integrating IPMDA with IFC-IOR and partner systems;
  • expanding participation among ASEAN and Pacific Island states;
  • improving satellite, radar and AIS-based surveillance;
  • providing smaller states with technology and training;
  • developing common protocols for suspicious maritime activity;
  • combating illegal fishing, smuggling and sanctions evasion; and
  • ensuring cooperation remains consistent with sovereignty and international law. 

Conclusion

• The future of the Indo-Pacific depends on protecting the maritime foundations of global commerce.
• India-U.S. cooperation must therefore extend beyond trade, energy and diplomatic concerns to include collective maritime security.
• Through IPMDA, the Quad, IFC-IOR and wider regional partnerships, India and the United States can promote a more transparent and resilient maritime order.
• Freedom of navigation requires continuous awareness, information-sharing and collective action.
• In an era of grey-zone competition, transparency can serve as a powerful deterrent and help secure the Indo-Pacific as a foundation of global economic stability.

Context

• India’s school education system has made significant progress in gross enrolment, student retention, dropout reduction, teacher availability and basic infrastructure.
• With 1.47 million schools, 240 million students and 10.2 million teachers, the system has achieved remarkable scale.
• However, progress remains uneven across regions and social groups.
• Differences in Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), dropout rates, pupil-teacher ratios (PTR), infrastructure and accessibility reveal that educational expansion has not yet produced equal opportunities for all.

Regional and Social Imbalances

• Uneven Access and Enrolment
  • Educational access varies considerably across States and Union Territories.
  • Aadhaar seeding ranges from 99.6% in Andhra Pradesh to only 35% in Meghalaya, against a national average of 90.2%.
  • School distribution is also shaped by population density and geography.
  • Uttar Pradesh has the largest share of schools and enrolment, while Chandigarh records an average enrolment of 1,194 students per school and Ladakh only 64.
  • Such differences reflect variations in population density, settlement patterns and geographical accessibility.
• Social Inequality
  • Social composition varies significantly across regions.
  • Several northeastern and Himalayan regions have substantial ST enrolment, Punjab has a high share of SC students, while OBC representation is prominent in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.
  • National GER also varies across social categories, requiring policies that address socioeconomic disadvantage and unequal educational opportunities.
  • Gender participation presents a positive trend, with the Gender Parity Index favouring girls across most States and Union Territories.
  • Sustaining this achievement, particularly through secondary education, remains important.

Regional Variation in GER and Dropout Rates

• GER varies sharply across educational stages. Meghalaya records a Foundational GER of 131, while Bihar records only 24.
• At the Secondary level, Chandigarh records 109 compared with Bihar’s 48. Such variations can reflect differences in enrolment, age-grade patterns, migration, delayed entry and continuation through successive stages.
• Dropout rates reveal another dimension of inequality.
• Bihar records the highest Preparatory dropout rate at 7.9% and Middle-level rate at 9%, while Ladakh records the highest Secondary dropout rate at 14.8%.
• These patterns underline the need to strengthen student retention and transition from primary to secondary education.

Teacher Availability and Quality

• The pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) directly influences classroom interaction and individual attention.
• Densely populated States generally experience greater pressure on teachers. Jharkhand records a Secondary PTR of 43, while Sikkim records only 6.
• Rural and remote schools face additional shortages, with teachers often handling multiple grades, subjects and administrative responsibilities.
• Teacher policy must therefore prioritise equitable deployment, subject-specific availability and retention in disadvantaged areas, rather than focusing solely on aggregate teacher numbers.

Persistent Infrastructure and Inclusion Gaps

• Access to electricity and drinking water has improved, but infrastructure remains uneven.
• Remote, tribal, hilly and border regions continue to face shortages of schools, transportation and quality learning facilities.
• Districts such as Bageshwar, Ganjam, Kandhamal, Kathua and Palghar illustrate the difficulties created by geographical isolation.
• Children belonging to SC, ST, minority and economically vulnerable communities face additional barriers to enrolment, attendance and completion.
• Children with disabilities require accessible classrooms, appropriate learning resources, assistive technologies and trained teachers to ensure genuine inclusion.

Targeted Investment and Policy Reform

• A uniform approach cannot address India’s diverse educational challenges.
• In accordance with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, investment should be targeted towards educationally deprived regions and vulnerable groups.
• Priority areas include school infrastructure, transport facilities, equitable teacher deployment, digital connectivity and learning resources.
• Scholarships, residential facilities and community-based interventions can improve retention among disadvantaged children.
• Digital expansion must also avoid creating a new digital divide by ensuring access to devices, connectivity and local-language content.
• Inclusive education requires accessible buildings, toilets, assistive technologies and trained teachers.
• Better monitoring of district-level outcomes can help direct resources towards areas with the greatest educational deficits.

Conclusion

• India’s education system presents a paradox of progress: access, participation and basic infrastructure have improved, yet substantial regional and social inequalities persist.
• The next phase of reform must shift from access to equity, enrolment to learning, and aggregate improvement to targeted outcomes.
• Bridging these disparities requires coordinated investment in infrastructure, teachers, digital resources, social protection and inclusive education.
• Ensuring that location, social background, economic circumstances or disability do not determine educational opportunity is essential for strengthening human capital, social mobility, economic growth and balanced regional development.

About Online Bond Platform Provider (OBPP):

• An OBPP is a SEBI-registered platform that facilitates the buying and selling of bonds.
• It acts as a digital bridge between bond issuers (like corporations or the government) and retail investors.
• OBPPs leverage technology to simplify the bond investment process, making it more accessible and efficient for non-institutional investors.
• They create an online ecosystem and provide comprehensive information about bonds.
• Investors can browse through a diverse array of bonds, review their features, their credit ratings, interest rates, maturities, and offer documents.
• They can compare different bonds and assess their risk-return profiles, empowering them to make well-informed investment choices.
• Benefits:
  • Ticket Sizes are Low: The minimum investment value is 10,000.
  • Compliance is Built-in: Platforms must be registered stockbrokers and adhere to strict SEBI (Issue and Listing of Non-Convertible Securities) Regulations.
  • Discovery is instant: One can filter bonds by credit rating, yield, and maturity in seconds.
• How Does an OBPP Work?
  • An OBPP simplifies bond investing by bringing discovery, execution, and settlement together in a regulated digital journey.
  • While the interface may feel seamless to the investor, the process follows a structured market mechanism.
  • In practice, an investor first opens a Demat account and completes KYC
  • Once onboarded, they can browse listed bonds, compare key details such as yield, maturity, rating, and issuer profile, and then place an order.
  • For listed debt securities, orders are routed through the Request for Quote (RFQ) platform of a recognised stock exchange.
  • After execution, settlement takes place through the recognised clearing corporation, and the bonds are credited to the investor’s Demat account.
  • This makes the investment process more transparent, trackable, and aligned with the formal securities market ecosystem.

About Polysilicon:

• Polysilicon, also known as polycrystalline silicon or simply poly-Si, is composed of multiple tiny crystals or grains of silicon.
• It is composed of multiple smaller silicon crystals fused together in a haphazard manner.
• Polysilicon is highly pure and generates almost as much energy as pure mono-crystalline silicon.
• Because of this, polysilicon is crucial to the solar industry as it plays a key part when manufacturing solar cells that are used in solar panels.
• To produce solar modules, polysilicon is melted at high temperatures to form ingots, which are then sliced into wafers and processed into solar cells and solar modules.
• It is also used in the semiconductor industry to manufacture integrated circuits and other electronic components.
• It is produced by purifying metallurgical-grade silicon into a high-purity form.
  • There are two main methods to produce high-quality polysilicon that can be used for solar cell manufacturing: the Siemens process and fluidized bed reactor (FBR) technology.  
• Global production is highly concentrated. China accounts for the large majority of solar-grade polysilicon output.

About Lake Erie:

• It is the fourth-largest and the southernmost of the five Great Lakes in North America.
• It is also the warmest, shallowest, and smallest of the Great Lakes by volume.
• However, it is the most productive of the region’s lakes.
• It was named after the Erie Indians, who once lived on its shores.
• It forms the boundary between Canada (Ontario) to the north and the United States to the west, south, and east.
• It is located just below Lake Huron and bordered by Lake Ontario and Lake Michigan.
• Globally, Lake Erie is the 11th largest lake by both surface area and volume.
• The lake’s principal tributary rivers are the Detroit (carrying the discharge of Lake Huron), Huron, and Raisin rivers of Michigan, etc.
• Lake Erie drains into Lake Ontario via the Niagara River.
• Its western end contains several islands. The largest is Pelee Island.
• Lake Erie has four major ports—Detroit, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; Toledo, Ohio; and Buffalo, New York.
• It is an important link in the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The seaway connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean.
• Biodiversity:
  • Lake Erie hosts numerous species, including many Lake Erie water snakes.
  • There are also millions of mayflies and several bird species, including common red-breasted mergansers, grebes, loons, ring-billed gulls, diving ducks, and herring gulls.
  • Lake Erie has the most abundant fish species of all the Great Lakes due to plenty of plankton and mild temperature, accounting for more than half of the Great Lakes’ fish population.

Key Facts about the Great Lakes:

• The Great Lakes are five large lakes in eastern North America.
• They are Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Together the Great Lakes the largest connected area of fresh water on Earth.
• Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes that is completely within the United States.
• The other four form a natural border between Canada and the United States.
• Lake Superior is the largest and the deepest of the Great Lakes. Lake Ontario is the smallest.

About Golconda Fort:

• It is a historic fort located towards the western outskirts of Hyderabad, Telangana.
• The name originates from the Telugu words "Golla Konda" meaning "Shepherd's Hill".
• History:
  • It was erected in 1143 under the Kakatiya Dynasty.
  • However, it rose to prominence when it came under the rule of the Qutub Shahi Dynasty during the 16th century, e., when Quli Qutub Shah declared his independence from the Bahmani Sultanate in 1518.
  • The striking fort has since then expanded from a mud fortress to a lofty structure with a 10 km outer wall.
  • From 1518 to 1591, Golconda served as the capital of the Qutb Shahi rulers before they shifted their capital to Hyderabad.
  • After a failed attempt in the year 1686, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was finally able to breach the impregnable fort in 1687 after a long nine-month siege.
  • After this, Golconda became part of the Mughal Empire.
  • Golconda region was world-famous for its diamond mines. Some of the most valuable diamonds in history, including the Koh-i-Noor, Hope Diamond, and Nassak Diamond, were once associated with this region.
• Architecture:
  • It is a grand structure displaying the beautiful fusion of Hindu-Islamic style of architecture.
  • Amongst the eight gates, Fateh Darwaza is the main gate, as the victorious march of King Aurangzeb proceeded through it.
  • At Fateh Darwaza one can witness fantastic acoustical effects, which is one among the many famous engineering marvels at Golconda.
  • There are three powerful consecutive fortification walls, each within the other.
  • The first line of the wall contains a town; the second line is a double wall that runs around the foot of the hill on which the citadel stands.
  • The third line is further up the hill, lying within the second, composed of masonry and natural boulders.
  • The tombs of the Qutub Shahi kings, built with Islamic architecture, lie north of the outer wall of Golconda.
  • Situated within the fortress are the dwellings of the queens and princesses and homesteads of their retainers.
  • It is quite famous for its royal apartments, parade grounds, numerous halls, and mosques.

About INS Mangrol:

• It is an Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft (ASW SWC) of the Indian Navy.
• It is the third of the eight ASW SWC indigenously designed and constructed by Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL).
• It has been designed primarily for anti-submarine warfare operations in shallow coastal waters, where detecting and tracking submarines can be particularly challenging.
• The warship can also undertake underwater surveillance, Search and Rescue operations and Low Intensity Maritime Operations, besides possessing mine-laying capabilities.
• The warship has been named ‘Mangrol’ after the historic and strategically significant coastal township of Mangrol in Gujarat’s Surat district.
• Features:
  • It is powered by a Diesel Engine-Waterjet Propulsion system.
  • It is fitted with advanced systems, including lightweight torpedoes, indigenous ASW rockets, and shallow-water sonars.
  • It has over 80% indigenous content.
  • It has been designed and constructed in accordance with the classification rules of Det Norske Veritas (DNV).
    • DNV is the world's leading classification society and a recognized advisor for the maritime industry.

About National Animal Disease Control Programme:

• It is one of India's largest livestock health initiatives launched in 2019.
• It is a Central Sector Scheme where 100% of funds are provided by the Central Government to the States/UTs.
• It is aimed at controlling and eradicating Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) and Brucellosis through nationwide vaccination and surveillance.
• The programme targets 100 % vaccination of all livestock against FMD twice a year and one time vaccination against Brucellosis in 4-8 months old female bovine calves in their lifetime.
• Nodal Ministry: Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (AH&D), Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying.

What is Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD)?

• It is a highly contagious viral vesicular disease of cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats and pigs etc.
• FMD leads to reduction in milk yield, decreased growth rate, infertility, reduced working capacity in bullocks,

What is Brucellosis?

• It is a reproductive disease of cattle and buffaloes caused by bacterium Brucella abortus.
• It is characterized by fever, induces abortion at the last stage of pregnancy, infertility, delayed heat, interrupted lactation resulting in loss of calves, loss in production of meat and milk. 
• Control of Brucellosis can be achieved by a once-in-a-lifetime vaccination of female bovine calves (4 – 8 months old).