Policy UpdateSivapriya Background India has the third-largest reserves of rare earth elements, accounting for 6.9 million metric tons or 7.6 percent of global reserves. But it contributes less than 1 percent of the global rare-earth mining, facing infrastructural, environmental, and…
On October 23, 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, decided to bury the hatchet and work expeditiously and sincerely to resolve various bilateral issues, especially the breach of trust stemming from China’s unsuccessful incursion in Galwan in 2020.
SMART-PDS is a centrally sponsored, technology-oriented reform initiative by the Department of Food & Public Distribution (DFPD), Ministry of Consumer Affairs, aimed at enhancing and consolidating the IT infrastructure of India’s Public Distribution System (PDS). With a total budget of ₹349.9 crore, the three-year (April 2023–March 2026) approved program builds on previous computerisation attempts (End-to-End TPDS and the Integrated Management of PDS/IM-PDS) and introduces a modern, standardized national platform that unifies state and central operations throughout the PDS lifecycle.
India–New Zealand Agri-Tech Innovation is emerging as more than a technical exchange; it is a contest over models of innovation and inclusion. At a time when agriculture faces the twin pressures of climate resilience and global market integration. The partnership can be transformational, but only if deliberate adaptation, rights-based data governance, and financing follow the technology. Without these, the result risks being one of two failures: techno-dumping (NZ solutions ill-fitted to India) or stalled scalability (India pilots remaining fragmented).
According to the Sustainable Development Report (SDR) 2025, India has ranked 99th out of 167 countries.
Education has never been a critical step towards ending the chain of inherited social inequality in India. For SCs, formal education has long been precluded by discrimination as well as financial struggles.
In India, where over half the population depends on agriculture for their livelihood, and more than 70% of farmers are small and marginal, they remain extremely vulnerable to climate variability and crop failures (NITI Aayog, 2019). The growing threat of global warming has intensified the frequency and severity of erratic weather patterns, worsened agricultural risks, and deepened the cycle of income insecurity and indebtedness among farmers. Recognizing this urgent challenge, the Government of India launched the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) in 2016. It is a large-scale crop subsidy insurance scheme that aims to safeguard farmers. This scheme is being administered by the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.