Context:

• While Artificial Intelligence is widely discussed for its applications across sectors, its environmental impact has received limited attention.
• An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development working paper highlights that developing and deploying AI algorithms entails environmental costs, notably an increased carbon footprint that worsens climate change challenges.
• The report estimates that the global ICT industry contributes about 1.8%–2.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with some estimates placing this figure even higher.
• At the same time, reliable data on AI’s carbon footprint remains contested.
• A 2025 report by Google claims that a single AI text prompt consumes minimal electricity, but this has been criticised for offering incomplete and potentially misleading conclusions about AI’s true environmental impact.
• This article highlights the growing but under-recognised environmental impact of Artificial Intelligence, examining its carbon, energy, and water costs, global regulatory responses, and the urgent need for India to integrate sustainability into AI governance.

Environmental Impact of AI Across Its Life Cycle

• An issue note by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that the full AI life cycle could significantly strain natural resources.
• It estimates that AI servers may consume 4.2–6.6 billion cubic metres of water by 2027, intensifying water scarcity.
• Studies cited by UNEP indicate that training a single large language model can generate nearly 300,000 kg of carbon emissions.
• Similarly, earlier research found that training one large AI model can emit over 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide—comparable to the lifetime emissions of five cars.
• Further, AI usage also raises energy demands: a UNEP study notes that a single ChatGPT query consumes about ten times more energy than a standard Google search, underscoring AI’s growing contribution to climate change.

Global Efforts to Address AI’s Environmental Costs

• In 2021, UNESCO released its Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, urging recognition of AI’s negative impacts on society and the environment.
• Though non-binding, it was adopted by around 190 countries.
• Among major jurisdictions, the United States and the European Union have taken the lead by proposing legislation specifically addressing AI’s environmental footprint, including the Artificial Intelligence Environmental Impacts Act, 2024, and the EU’s harmonised AI rules.

The Indian Gap in AI–Environment Discourse

• While global debates increasingly focus on AI’s carbon costs, discussions in India largely emphasise how AI can help address climate change, overlooking the environmental downsides of developing large AI models.
• There is a growing need for India to formally recognise and address these hidden environmental costs.
• Measuring Environmental Impact of AI
  • A crucial first step is to systematically measure the environmental impact of AI development and deployment.
  • In India, the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, 2006 mandates EIAs for major infrastructure and development projects.
  • Its scope could be expanded to include AI systems and algorithms, given their increasing resource intensity.
• Standards, Stakeholders, and Data Collection
  • The government could also establish common standards to assess AI’s environmental impact by involving technology companies, think tanks, and environmental NGOs.
  • This would help build consensus on definitions, indicators, and reporting requirements.
  • Alongside this, systematic data collection using sustainability metrics—such as greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, water consumption, and land and resource impacts—would enable evidence-based and environmentally informed AI policy-making.

Integrating AI into ESG Disclosure and Sustainability Frameworks

• The government can consider including the environmental impact of developing and deploying AI models within environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure standards overseen by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and the Securities and Exchange Board of India.
• India could draw lessons from the European Union, where the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive mandates disclosure of emissions from data centres and high-compute activities, including the training of large language models.
• At the same time, the emphasis should move toward positioning AI as part of the solution for global sustainability goals.
• This includes adopting sustainable AI practices such as using pre-trained models to reduce compute intensity, powering data centres with renewable energy, and reporting AI-specific environmental impact estimates to minimise AI’s ecological footprint.

Why in the News?

• Recent analysis highlights that India’s urban growth is increasingly driven by small towns rather than large metropolitan cities.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Urbanisation Pattern (Background, Structural Drivers of Small Town Growth, Challenges, Implications for Urban Future, Way Forward)

India’s Urbanisation Pattern Beyond Megacities

• India’s urban discourse has traditionally focused on megacities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai.
• However, a significant but quieter transformation is unfolding across the country’s small towns.
• Of nearly 9,000 census and statutory towns in India, only around 500 qualify as large cities, while the majority have populations below one lakh.
• These small towns are becoming key nodes of economic activity, employment, and migration, marking a structural shift in India’s urbanisation process.
• This shift reflects broader changes in India’s economic geography, where urban growth is no longer confined to large metropolitan centres.

Structural Drivers of Small Town Growth

• The expansion of small towns is closely linked to changes in India’s model of capitalist development.
• From the 1970s to the 1990s, large cities acted as centres of industrial production, infrastructure investment, and labour absorption.
• Over time, however, these metros began facing problems of over-accumulation, marked by soaring land prices, infrastructure stress, congestion, and rising living costs.
• As a result, economic activities have increasingly dispersed into smaller urban centres.
• Towns across different States are emerging as logistics hubs, agro-processing centres, warehouse locations, construction markets, and service-sector nodes.
• These towns absorb migrant workers pushed out of metros and rural youth with declining agricultural opportunities, integrating them into the urban economy under new conditions.

Nature of Urbanisation in Small Towns

• The urbanisation of small towns is not a continuation of rural life but a deepening of urban processes.
• These towns function under conditions of cheaper land, flexible labour markets, weaker regulation, and limited political oversight.
• Informal employment dominates, with construction labourers, home-based workers, and platform economy workers forming the backbone of local economies.
• Rather than inclusive growth, this pattern often leads to the urbanisation of rural poverty.
• New local elites, such as real estate intermediaries, contractors, micro-financiers, and political brokers, gain control over land and labour.
• This reinforces socio-economic hierarchies while leaving workers vulnerable to insecurity and poor living conditions.

Policy and Governance Challenges

• A major concern highlighted by the growth of small towns is the mismatch between urban policy design and ground realities.
• India’s flagship urban programmes remain largely metro-centric. Even expanded urban missions tend to prioritise large cities, leaving most small towns dependent on fragmented schemes and short-term infrastructure solutions.
• Basic services such as water supply, sanitation, housing, and public transport remain inadequate. Groundwater over-extraction, tanker-based water supply, and ecological stress are common.
• Local governance structures are weak, with underfunded municipalities, limited technical capacity, and planning processes outsourced to consultants with minimal local engagement.

Implications for India’s Urban Future

• Small towns now represent the primary frontier of India’s urban expansion.
• Their trajectory will significantly influence employment generation, migration patterns, environmental sustainability, and social equity.
• If current trends continue without policy correction, these towns risk replicating the inequalities and ecological stresses seen in larger cities, but without the institutional capacity to manage them.
• At the same time, small towns offer an opportunity to rethink urban development. Integrated town-level planning that links housing, livelihoods, transport, and ecology can help create more balanced urban systems.
• Strengthening municipal finances, participatory governance, and regulatory oversight of platform-based economies will be critical to ensuring fair and sustainable growth.

Way Forward

• India’s urban strategy must move beyond a megacity-centric approach.
• Political recognition of small towns as central to India’s urban future is essential.
• Empowered local governments, context-specific planning, and inclusive economic regulation can help transform small towns into engines of equitable development rather than sites of deepening inequality.

Why in News?

• The Supreme Court of India delivered a split verdict on the constitutional validity of Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (PC Act).
• The provision, introduced through the 2018 Amendment, mandates prior approval/sanction before initiating enquiry or investigation against public servants for decisions taken in the discharge of official duties.
• The challenge was filed by Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), arguing that the provision shields corruption and undermines accountability.
• Given the divergence of views, the matter has been referred to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) for the constitution of a larger Bench.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• What is Section 17A of the PC Act?
• Divergent Judicial Opinions
• Key Constitutional and Governance Issues Involved
• Challenges Highlighted and Way Ahead
• Conclusion

What is Section 17A of the PC Act?

• It requires prior approval from the competent authority before conducting any inquiry or investigation against a public servant for actions taken in official capacity.
• Objective (as per government):
  • Protect honest officers
  • Prevent frivolous, vexatious complaints
  • Avoid policy paralysis

Divergent Judicial Opinions:

• Justice B.V. Nagarathna: (Section 17A is illegal, unequal, arbitrary, and unconstitutional)
  • Violates Article 14 (Right to Equality): Protection effectively extends only to higher civil servants involved in decision-making. Classification based on “nature of duties” has no rational nexus with the object of the Act.
  • Arbitrary and against Rule of Law: Forecloses even a preliminary enquiry without prior approval. Prevents discovery of truth and shields wrongdoing.
  • Contrary to the object of the PC Act: Anti-corruption law aims to detect and punish corruption, not delay or prevent investigation. Provision “protects the corrupt rather than the honest”.
  • Policy paralysis argument rejected: Instead of protecting honest officers, Section 17A may embolden mala fide decision-making. Honest officials do not require such statutory protection.
• Justice K.V. Viswanathan: (Section 17A is constitutionally valid [with safeguards])
  • Possibility of misuse cannot be equated to unconstitutionality: Striking down the provision would be like “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.
  • Need to prevent policy paralysis: Fear of instant FIRs and coercive investigations may lead to “Play-it-safe syndrome”, administrative inertia.
  • Fine balance required: Between protecting officials from mala fide prosecution, and ensuring probity in public life.
  • Danger of immediate investigations: Without prior screening, even frivolous complaints could trigger FIRs and arrests. Such a regime would be regressive.
  • Independent screening mechanism suggested:
    • Approval should depend on recommendations of an independent authority such as Lokpal (at Centre), Lokayukta (in States).
    • Lokpal has authority to inquire even against the Prime Minister.
    • Independent inquiry into facts should precede sanction.

Key Constitutional and Governance Issues Involved:

• Article 14 – Equality Before Law: Whether selective protection to higher officials amounts to hostile discrimination.
• Rule of Law: Does requiring prior approval subordinate investigation to executive discretion?
• Separation of Powers: Extent of executive control over criminal investigation.
• Accountability vs administrative autonomy: Tension between effective governance, and anti-corruption enforcement.

Challenges Highlighted and Way Ahead:

• Shielding corruption: Delay or denial of approval may stall investigations indefinitely. Prevent indefinite delays in granting or refusing sanction.
• Executive interference: Sanctioning authority may be influenced by political or bureaucratic considerations. Statutory role for Lokpal/Lokayukta in sanction decisions. Preliminary scrutiny to assess genuineness of complaint.
• Unequal protection: Lower-level officials face immediate scrutiny, higher officials enjoy insulation. Authoritative ruling to resolve constitutional conflict.
• Erosion of public trust: Perception that anti-corruption law favours the powerful. Parliament may revisit Section 17A to align it with constitutional principles, anti-corruption objectives.

Conclusion:

• The split verdict on Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act reflects a deeper constitutional dilemma—how to protect honest decision-making without weakening the fight against corruption.
• While one view sees the provision as a shield for the corrupt, the other considers it a necessary safeguard against governance paralysis, subject to independent oversight.
• The final word now rests with a larger Bench of the Supreme Court, whose decision will significantly shape the future of anti-corruption jurisprudence, administrative accountability, and rule of law in India.

Context

• The civic unrest that unfolded in Iran in late 2025 has played out amid intense media polarisation and competing geopolitical narratives.
• While the crisis is often filtered through simplified binaries of regime repression versus foreign-instigated dissent, a more granular analysis reveals that the underlying drivers are deeply structural, socio-economic and political.
• Given Iran’s strategic weight in West Asia, its proximity to India’s extended neighbourhood, and the cascading effects on global markets and regional security, the episode warrants careful examination.

Economic Origins of the Unrest

• The immediate catalyst for the protests was the collapse of the Iranian rial and deteriorating economic conditions.
• The unrest began on December 28, 2025, when Tehran’s merchant class, the Bazaaris, launched a shutdown protesting a currency regime that made basic imports unviable.
• Although the official exchange rate stood at 42,000 rials per U.S. dollar, the market rate had plunged to 1.45 million, a 35-fold gap and a staggering 20,000-fold decline since 1979.
• The rial’s 45% depreciation in 2025 alone eroded profit margins on staples such as rice and oil, sparking broader socio-economic anger.
• What began as an economic grievance rapidly escalated into a cross-class protest movement involving unemployed youth and low-wage workers.

The Regime’s Four-Stage Playbook

• Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran’s leadership has developed a distinctive playbook for containing mass unrest, honed during crises in 2009, 2019 and 2022. The pattern consists of:
  • Initial repression via stern police action and information control.
  • Dual messaging, combining conspiracy rhetoric with conciliatory gestures.
  • Attrition tactics, including social media shutdowns, pro-government rallies, and organisational fragmentation of protesters.
  • Post-crisis retaliation, including arrests, show trials and executions.
• By early 2026, the unrest appeared to have entered the third stage.
• The government announced token economic relief, a monthly cash transfer of 10 million rials (approximately $7), and deployed symbolism through funerals of security personnel and mass rallies denouncing foreign interference.
• Crucially, the Pasdaran (IRGC) and conventional military remained loyal, the oil sector was uninterrupted, and no coherent alternative leadership emerged among the protesters.

Structural Vulnerabilities Exposed

• Breakdown of the Bazaar-Clergy Nexus
  • Historically, the Bazaaris were a decisive political force, their withdrawal of support contributed directly to the fall of the Shah in 1979.
  • Their erstwhile symbiosis with the clerical elite was built on preferential access to imports and arbitrage between fixed and market exchange rates.
  • However, U.S. sanctions, internal corruption and competition from IRGC-linked businesses have eroded this alliance.
  • Whether the IRGC, now central to regime survival, will cede lucrative economic space to appease merchants remains uncertain.
• Socio-Political Disconnect Between State and Society
  • Two-thirds of Iranians are post-Revolution citizens with aspirations shaped more by the consumerist Gulf than by revolutionary austerity.
  • They witness systemic corruption among elites, lack of economic opportunity, and social restrictions affecting women, minorities and the secular middle class.
  • The election of a technocratic moderate in 2024 briefly raised hopes, yet regional instability and entrenched clerical power blunted reform.
• Foreign Pressures and the Externalisation of Conflict
  • U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly encouraged protesters and threatened punitive action.
  • Yet direct intervention remains fraught. Iran’s political culture valorises resistance and martyrdom, enabling national consolidation against foreign aggression, as seen during Iraq’s 1980 invasion.
  • Moreover, despite losses in the June 2025 clash with Israel and the U.S., Iran retains capacities for asymmetric retaliation, particularly across the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.

Consequences for India

• Gulf Stability
  • Any escalation in Iran could destabilise the Gulf, jeopardising Indian energy security, remittances from its 9-million-strong diaspora, and bilateral trade.
• Strategic Geography
  • Iran provides India with access to Afghanistan and Central Asia via the Chabahar port, an alternative to Pakistan’s geostrategic chokehold.
• Domestic Social Linkages
  • India hosts the world’s second-largest Shia population after Iran; developments in Tehran resonate among Indian Shias and influence regional sectarian dynamics.
• Economic Opportunity
  • Post-sanctions reconstruction of Iran could offer major commercial openings for India in infrastructure, energy, manufacturing and healthcare, particularly given Tehran’s indigenous industrial ambitions.

Conclusion

• The 2025–26 unrest in Iran reflects not merely episodic dissent but accumulated structural contradictions within a sanction-strained petro-religious state facing generational transformation.
• The regime has shown resilience through coercion, elite cohesion and the absence of viable opposition leadership.
• Yet its inability to address underlying economic and socio-political fissures ensures that instability will recur
• For external actors, including India, the crisis underscores the interplay between domestic fragility and regional geopolitics in West Asia.

About National Environmental Standard Laboratory:

• It was established to test and recalibrate instruments used for air pollution monitoring systems and environmental sensors under Indian environmental conditions.
• It provides ensured credible data for the National Clean Air Programme.
• Location: CSIR–National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi
• Features of National Environmental Standard Laboratory:
  • NESL allowed manufacturers, industries, and municipal agencies to validate performance within the country,
  • It provides Industrial emission audits, and smart-city monitoring networks, and provided reference gases, protocols.
• Significance: It is expected to help MSMEs, start-ups, and indigenous manufacturers to demonstrate product quality at lower cost, meet tightening regulatory guidelines on quality and transparency.

Key Facts about Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR):

• CSIR is a cutting edge R&D organisation dealing in diverse fields of science and technology.
• It undertakes research, design & development of scientific & industrial instruments, components and systems.
• It facilitates service, maintenance, testing & calibration of instruments.
• It promotes Human Resource Development in the area of instrumentation.
• It offers technical assistance to industry and provides ecosystem support.
• Headquarter: New Delhi.