Current Affairs – September 28, 2025

{GS2 – Polity – IC – Judiciary} Performance Evaluation Mechanism for Judges

Context (TH): Supreme Court judge Justice Surya Kant highlighted the need for a “performance evaluation” system for judges to assess and guide their workflow.

It is a proposed system to evaluate judges’ efficiency using specific parameters such as case disposal rates, timeliness, and workload management.
Need: This mechanism ensures judicial consistency, addresses judicial pendency of over 88,000 cases, promotes judicial accountability, and enhances public confidence in justice delivery.
Significance: A structured evaluation framework promotes judicial self-introspection, facilitates swift justice, and aids systemic judicial reforms.

{GS2 – Governance – Initiatives} Karnataka’s Caste Survey 2025

Context (TH): Karnataka has launched its second socio-economic survey recently, conducted by the State Commission for Backward Classes.

The earlier survey conducted in 2015 was set aside by the present government, and the new enumeration has triggered political controversy, particularly among dominant landowning communities.

Key Highlights

Scale: Covers around 1,400 castes across Karnataka, including sub-castes.
Controversial Inclusions: Christian sub-castes such as “Vokkaliga-Christian” or “Lingayat-Christian” listed for the first time have sparked objections.
Dominant Community: Veerashaiva-Lingayats, Vokkaligas, and others fear dilution of their population share, which underpins their political bargaining power.

Reservation Implications

Karnataka has a 56% reservation matrix, with 32% earmarked for backward classes.
Survey outcomes are expected to determine which groups qualify as “backward” and influence quota distribution.
While nomadic, semi-nomadic, and micro-communities hope to gain from updated categorisation, their concerns risk being sidelined by dominant caste politics.

Read More > Caste Census in India

Context (TH): Recent statements by Chief Justice of India, B.R.. Gavai, and Justice Surya Kant emphasised the need to transform legal education in India.

Key Takeaways

Purpose of Legal Education: Legal education must go beyond professional training; its role is to nurture citizens who uphold democracy, justice, and constitutional values.
Barriers to Access: Geographical, economic, and linguistic divides keep marginalised groups away from legal institutions.
- Even when remedies exist, economic disadvantage often makes them unaffordable.
Reforms Needed: Use regional languages and digital platforms to broaden reach while establishing legal aid clinics as an essential part of law school curricula.
- Create opportunities for first-generation learners and strengthen legal research in emerging fields.
Ethics and Values: Law schools must instil respect for constitutional ideals.
- Concern raised over legal education increasingly directing graduates towards the corporate sector, sidelining community-oriented lawyering.
Modernisation Agenda: Move beyond outdated academic models and embrace digital-first pedagogy, ensuring that legal education remains rooted in the lived struggles of society.

{GS2 – IR – India-US} US Tariffs Impact on the Indian Pharma Industry

Context (IE | IT): The US announced a 100% tariff on branded and patented pharmaceutical products effective October 1, 2025.

Exemptions: Only for companies building new manufacturing plants in the U.S. (“breaking ground” or “under construction”).

Immediate Impact on India

Generics Safety Net: Nearly 85-90% of India’s pharma exports to the U.S. are generic medicines, which remain outside the tariff’s ambit for now. Hence, immediate disruption is minimal.
Branded Exposure: Companies like Sun Pharma, which also market branded and patented drugs in the U.S. through contract manufacturing, could face some impact.
Market Reaction: Following the announcement, Indian pharma stocks fell sharply.

Broader Trade Context

The US also imposed a 50% tariff on kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, and associated products, signalling a shift from country-specific to product-specific tariffs.
This is part of Trump’s broader strategy of tariff weaponisation, which was earlier seen in furniture, trucks, and auto imports.
For India, this underlines the importance of diversifying export markets and strengthening domestic demand to reduce dependence on US trade policy swings.

India’s Pharmaceutical Sector

India, known as the ‘pharmacy of the world,’ ranks 3^rd globally in production by volume and 14^thby value, with an industry size of around $66 billion in 2025.
The sector is a world leader in generic medicines, supplying about 20% of the world’s generics and over 40% of those consumed in the US.
It also provides 55-60% of UNICEF’s vaccines.
The US is India’s largest pharma export market, accounting for around 35% of its total pharma exports.
Government schemes such as the Promotion of Research and Innovation in Pharma-MedTech (PRIP) Scheme and Production Linked Incentive (PLI) have promoted affordability and innovation.

{GS3 – Agri – Crops} India’s Onion Sector

Context (TH): Farmers in Maharashtra are protesting as onion prices fell below production costs, aggravated by government buffer stock sales and repeated export restrictions.

About Onion

Onion is a temperate bulb crop, primarily cultivated during the rabi season from seeds or bulbs, and is highly adaptable to the various Indian climatic conditions.
It can grow in various soils like clay, silt, and heavy soils, but thrives best in deep, friable, fertile sandy loam or alluvial soils.
Cropping Seasons: India cultivates onions in three cycles – kharif, late kharif, and rabi seasons.
Varieties: Onions in India include red, white, yellow, and shallot types; white onions are often exported but are more expensive to grow.

About Onion Production in India

India ranks as the second-largest onion producer in the world after China.
Top Producers: Maharashtra is the largest producer, followed by Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.
Exports: India is among the top exporters, exporting mainly to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and UAE.
Key Challenges: Unpredictable rains, storage losses, and sudden export bans caused a 32% fall in onion exports, declining from 17.17 lakh tonnes in 2023–24 to 11.65 lakh tonnes in 2024–25.

Read More About Onions

{GS3 – Envi – Conservation} National Initiative on Water Security

Context (PIB): The Government launched the National Initiative on Water Security in New Delhi to promote sustainable water management across rural India.

The initiative involves the Ministries of Rural Development, Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, and Jal Shakti, making water conservation mandatory in all rural blocks.
The MGNREGA, 2005, has been amended under the initiative to allocate 65% of funds in over-exploited blocks, 40% in semi-critical blocks, and 30% in water-sufficient blocks for water conservation projects.
Significance: With nearly 600 million Indians experiencing high to extreme water stress (NITI, CWMI), this initiative is crucial to alleviating India’s water crisis.

Key Achievements under MGNREGA

The programme has generated over 3,000 crore person-days of employment since 2014, with women’s participation increasing from 48% to 58% by 2025.
Over 1.25 crore water conservation assets, including farm ponds, tanks, and check dams, have been constructed to aid groundwater recharge.
Built or rejuvenated over 68,000 reservoirs under Mission Amrit Sarovar to enhance rural water storage.

{GS3 – Envi – Degradation} Uranium Mining Exemption in Meghalaya

Context (TH): The Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has issued an office memorandum exempting uranium mining from mandatory public consultations.

About Uranium

A naturally occurring radioactive metal, primarily used as fuel in nuclear reactors.
It exists mainly as Uranium-238 (99.3%) and Uranium-235 (0.7%), the latter being fissile.
Meghalaya holds about 16% of India’s uranium reserves, making it the third-largest source after Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand.

Concerns of Local Communities

Health & Environment Risks: Fear of radiation exposure, drawing lessons from Jaduguda (Jharkhand), where uranium mining has been linked to health hazards and ecological damage.
Distrust: Perception that the exemption is a strategy to bypass local consent after repeated failed attempts at negotiation.

Constitutional & Legal Dimensions

Sixth Schedule of the Constitution gives Autonomous District Councils control over land and resources in tribal areas.
Exempting uranium mining from public consultation raises questions of federalism, environmental justice, and indigenous rights.
It undermines the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Strategic Dimensions

Energy Security: Uranium is critical for India’s nuclear power programme and strategic deterrence.
Global Standing: Reducing dependence on imported uranium strengthens India’s self-reliance in atomic energy.
Centre-State Tensions: Highlights conflict between national priorities and regional autonomy under the Constitution.

{GS3 – S&T – Nuclear Power} India’s Roadmap for Fusion Power

Context (TH): Researchers have proposed a plan to build India’s first fusion electricity generator, Steady-state Superconducting Tokamak-Bharat (SST-Bharat).

Understanding Fusion vs Fission

Fusion: Combining two light atoms to form a heavier atom, releasing enormous energy (same process that powers stars).
Fission: Splitting of heavy nuclei (current nuclear power method).
Advantage of Fusion: Produces far less radioactive waste and is considered safer & more sustainable.

Roadmap for Fusion Power

SST-Bharat Project: It is a fusion-fission hybrid reactor with a planned output-to-input power ratio Q value of 5, producing 130 MW.
Long-Term Target: The goal is to demonstrate a full-scale fusion reactor by 2060, with a Q of 20 and a power output of 250 MW, making fusion competitive for commercial use.
International Collaboration: India is a major partner in the ITER project (France), focusing on magnetic confinement fusion.
Domestic Progress: Projects like Aditya-U and SST-1 have advanced plasma research, with SST-1 sustaining plasma for up to 650 milliseconds.

Aditya-U (Aditya Upgrade) is India’s medium-sized tokamak fusion reactor, commissioned in 2016 as an upgrade of the earlier ADITYA tokamak.

Challenges and Strategy

Technological Barriers: Fusion requires controlling ultra-hot plasma at 100 million °C; the global record for plasma sustainment is just over 20 minutes, while India’s current best is 650 milliseconds.
Funding and Policy: Fusion R&D in India is largely public-sector driven, with modest budgets compared to Europe and the US.
Hybrid Approach: By developing fusion-fission hybrids, India seeks a practical, incremental path, generating power and breeding new nuclear fuel (like U-233 from thorium).
Strategic Value: Even before commercialisation, advances in fusion research will strengthen India’s technological capabilities.