Category Center for Habitat, Urban and Regional Studies

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India’s Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Rules, 2019: Balancing Development, Ecology, and Coastal Community Livelihoods

India's coastline is one of the most consequential stretches of land in the country. The country's coastline was officially reassessed from 7,516.6 kilometres to 11,098.81 kilometres in 2025, following updated measurements using modern GIS software and high-resolution High-Water Line data. The revised figure reflects improved measurement techniques rather than a physical expansion of India's coastline. Around 250 million people depend on India's coastal areas for their homes and livelihoods, particularly through sectors such as fisheries, transport, and tourism. Mangroves, coral reefs, turtle nesting beaches, sand dunes, and estuaries provide important ecological and protective functions, while coastal ecosystems also support livelihoods and economic activity.

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A Grain for Thought: Reflecting on the monitoring system under PM POSHAN

Health has been considered an important parameter of development and the states have
worked relentlessly towards achieving the end of it. One of these policies is the PM
POSHAN or the Poshan Shakti Nirman Scheme, initially known as the National Programme for Mid-Day Meals in Schools.

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NITI Aayog – State Support Mission (2025–26): Strengthening Cooperative Federalism and State-Level Development Planning

India’s development depends not only on policies made at the national level but also on how effectively each State and Union Territory (UT) plans and works towards its own development. Every State has different strengths, challenges and priorities. Keeping this in mind, NITI Aayog introduced the State Support Mission to strengthen coordination between the Centre and States/UTs. The Mission aims to help States identify their strengths, set clear development priorities and prepare practical roadmaps for achieving their socio-economic objectives by 2047, while remaining aligned with national priorities.

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Production-Linked Incentive–Advanced Chemistry Cell (PLI-ACC) Engine: A Friend-Shoring Trade Alliance with the UK-India Free Trade Agreement (2025)

Globalisation for several decades has been treated as a dominant paradigm that elevated efficiency as the ultimate moral principle. Capital would go wherever the cost of labor was lowest; production concentrated where economies of scale existed on a large enough scale to take advantage of them; and national boundaries continued to erode due to frictionless movement in global trade. However, history always seems to find its way back. Recent supply chain disruptions combined with increased geopolitical tension at many of the key trade choke points have exposed a significant weakness: Efficiency without Resilience is a Trap.

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Bihar’s Fertility Rate and the Governance Gap: What Policy Is Missing

Bihar holds a distinction that no state wants. Despite a decline from 3.4 in NFHS-4 (2015-16) to 3.0 in NFHS-5 (2019-21), Bihar still records the highest Total Fertility Rate among all major states in India. The national average has reached 2.0, the replacement level. All other medium and large states in India, those with a population above one crore, now have a TFR below the replacement level of 2.1. Bihar stands alone.

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Andhra Pradesh RTGS: Reinventing Governance Through Data

After the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the state faced major governance challenges in coordinating departments and delivering timely public services to over 49.5 million citizens (CAG, 2017) Isolated departmental systems and periodic reporting created data silos, delaying critical decisions in disaster response, welfare delivery, and grievance redress. Poor inter-departmental coordination hindered accountability, transparency, and performance tracking. Furthermore, the lack of integrated, real-time data severely limited predictive capacity, preventing proactive disaster management and evidence-based policymaking.

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Dedicated Freight Corridor: What a Decade of Rail Investment Achieved

Rail transport has traditionally been a more cost-efficient mode of freight transportation than road. But in India, it has remained a problem due to the coexistence of freight and passenger services on the same rail routes, and this has constrained the efficiency and capacity of freight movement.

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