On July 24, India and the UK signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), officially referred to as the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), wrapping up over three years of negotiations and fourteen rounds that began at the start of 2022. After several British Prime Ministers and missed deadlines, the agreement, which was concluded in May this year, has finally come to see the light of day.
The Free Coaching for SCs, OBCs, and beneficiaries of the PM CARES Children Scheme is an initiative taken by the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India. The scheme aims to provide high-quality coaching to Scheduled Castes (SCs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and beneficiaries of the PM CARES Children scheme, who were included from 2024-25. These groups often face systemic inequalities and exclusion that hinder their access to educational resources.
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly increasing in the everyday life of humans. As the global demand for AI-related skills is rising, SOAR aims to create a future-ready generation equipped with technical knowledge and ethical and societal understanding required to navigate AI-driven transformation. This programme is part of a larger mission under Skill India, celebrating its 10th anniversary alongside the launch. The world is witnessing the revolution led by technological advancement, machine learning, AI, data analytics and automation. Unfortunately, Access to AI education in India has remained limited to higher education and elite institutions. The SOAR Programme breaks the barrier by introducing these subjects to classes of 6 to 12, including less resourceful schools, and by ensuring teachers are trained to deliver the subject. It aspires to build the largest AI-ready school population in the world, as declared by the Union Minister, Jayant Chaudhary.
According to the ILO (2020), around 90 percent of India’s workforce is engaged in the unorganized sector, which absorbs most of the internal migrants.
The 2011 Census enumerated 450 million internal migrants, and this is estimated to increase to 600 million by 2021. Therefore, creating a comprehensive, accurate, and accessible database was the need of the hour. In May 2021, the Supreme Court directed the Union government to build a national database of unorganized workers.
The EPA signed in 2024 emerged from the context not merely as a recovery mechanism for Sri Lanka, but as a test case for India’s evolving regional economic diplomacy. As someone seeking to understand how bilateral cooperation is shaped by mutual dependency, geopolitical calculations and economic leverage. This agreement offers a timely lens in which to explore the political economy of regional integration. Hence, this article attempts to examine the EPA not just as a policy document, but as a strategic narrative. Critics question whether it reflects a shift toward mutualism or masks deeper asymmetries beneath an ambitious framework.
As part of IMPRI's 6th Annual Series of Thematic Deliberations and Analysis of the Union Budget 2025-26, the IMPRI Center for Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainable Development (CECCSD) organized a thematic discussion on The Environment and the Union Budget 2025-26.
IMPRI Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies, IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi, hosted a panel discussion on ‘Defence, Foreign Policy, and the Union Budget 2025-26’ under its 6th Annual Series of Thematic Deliberations and Analysis of the Interim Union Budget 2025-26.