Policy UpdateDivya Natarajan Background The City Finance Rankings is a Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) initiative that evaluates, recognises, and rewards India’s Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) on the quality of their financial health and their improvement in financial…
Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major public health challenge in India, with its impact extending beyond infection and treatment to nutrition, household expenditure and overall well-being. Malnutrition is closely associated with TB and can adversely affect treatment and recovery. Recognising the importance of nutritional support during TB treatment, the Government of India introduced the Nikshay Poshan Yojana (NPY) on 1 April 2018 under the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP).
In just one budget cycle India's drone industry went from the fringes of civil aviation policy to an official driver of Aatmanirbhar Bharat. The turning point was the new liberalised Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Rules, 2021, by the Ministry of Civil Aviation notifying on 25 August 2021 which replaced the compliance-heavy Civil Aviation Requirements of 2018 with a lighter framework, where security clearance was not required, type certificates were not required, import clearances were not required, and several other approvals were eliminated, and where close to 90 per cent of Indian airspace was declared as ‘green zones'’ where drone flights up to 400 feet will be allowed without case-by-case permission.
Infrastructure is a crucial foundation for India’s economic growth and social development, supporting industrial activity, employment generation, connectivity, and improved quality of life. Financing is therefore essential for ensuring a steady flow of funds for large infrastructure projects. Over the past decade, the Government has significantly increased public capital expenditure to support infrastructure-led growth and attract private investment. Public capital expenditure rose from ₹2 lakh crore in FY 2014–15 to ₹12.2 lakh crore in the Budget Estimate for FY 2026–27, highlighting the continued emphasis on infrastructure development.
Ladakh is a high-altitude union territory in northern India that was created on 31 October 2019, bifurcated from the former state of Jammu and Kashmir after the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act. Geographically, Ladakh lies between the Karakoram range in the north and the Great Himalaya and Zanskar ranges in the south, with much of the territory sitting above 3,000 meters. It includes the upper Indus River valley, the Nubra, Shyok, Suru, Dras, and Zanskar basins, and features high plains, deep valleys, glaciers, lakes, and passes such as Umling La.
Policy Update Divya Natarajan Background Quality Control Orders (QCOs) are mandatory technical regulations, issued by Central Government Line Ministries after consultation with the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), that require specified products to comply with designated Indian Standards before they…
1. Background: What Is the Digital Development Compass?
Governments across the world routinely describe themselves as pursuing 'digital transformation,' yet few possess a comparative, evidence-based way of establishing where they actually stand. The Digital Development Compass (DDC), developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), was built to close this gap. Rather than functioning as one more competitive ranking, the Compass is designed as a diagnostic: a visualisation of a country's digital indicators, drawn entirely from publicly available datasets, that allows a government to identify its own strengths and weaknesses and locate itself within a five-stage digital maturity scale.