The Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana (PM-VBRY) is a Central Sector Scheme of the Government of India aimed at promoting new employment, encouraging formalisation of jobs, and strengthening social security for workers. It provides incentives to both first-time employees entering the formal workforce and employers who create and sustain additional employment.
India's ports handle nearly 95 percent of the country's trade by volume and about 65-70 percent by value, positioning the maritime sector as a critical lever for both economic growth and climate action (PIB, 2026, feb26).
Self-Help Groups (SHGs) emerged in India during the early 1980s as a response to the persistent exclusion of rural poor, particularly women, from formal financial systems. Traditional banking institutions required collateral and formal documentation that marginalized communities lacked, forcing them to depend on informal moneylenders who charged exorbitant interest rates. The SHG model drew inspiration from Muhammad Yunus's Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which demonstrated that group-based lending without collateral could achieve high repayment rates through peer monitoring and social pressure. Self-Help Groups have, therefore, emerged as one of India's most transformative instruments for women's financial inclusion and economic empowerment. This represents one of the world's largest community-based financial inclusion initiatives.
In recent years, heatwaves have become a major concern worldwide. The recent incidents of heatwaves have shown the severe effects of climate change and the urgent need to address environmental challenges, especially in India. Between 1992 and 2015, heatwaves took more than 20,000 lives in India, with 2,422 deaths in 2015 alone (NDMA, 2016).
The National Mental Health Policy (NMHP) of India was unveiled on 10 October 2014 by the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare as the country’s first dedicated policy framework for mental health (Press Information Bureau, 2014). It emerged from the recognition that earlier legal instruments, such as the Indian Lunacy Act, 1912, and the Mental Health Act, 1987, focused primarily on custodial arrangements and failed to adequately address human rights, community-based care, or the scale of need.
Wetlands and lakes are important aquatic ecosystems that support biodiversity, regulate water flows, recharge groundwater, store carbon, and provide livelihoods to local communities. However, increasing urbanisation, untreated sewage, industrial effluents, encroachment, solid-waste dumping, excessive nutrient loading and changes in land use have placed considerable pressure on India's wetlands. According to the National Wetland Inventory and Assessment, India had approximately 2 lakh wetlands and water bodies larger than 2.25 hectares, covering around 10 million hectares (PIB, 2022).
Traditional economic growth metrics have long faced criticism for overlooking environmental externalities, resource depletion, and ecological degradation. In India, the conventional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) framework captures financial transactions but treats the consumption of finite natural capital as income rather than capital depreciation. To bridge this gap, the concept of Green GDP has emerged—adjusting traditional national output by subtracting the monetary costs of environmental damage and depletion of natural assets.