GS Paper 2 practice questions for UPSC Mains 2026.

• Definition: organized groups pursuing environmental objectives by influencing policy from outside electoral politics — through advocacy, mobilization, research, litigation and consumer campaigns.
• Awareness role: CSE publications and exposés, KSSP's science movement, media campaigns on air quality and plastic waste.
• Policy influence: Silent Valley cancellation, CNG buses via M.C. Mehta PILs, pushback on draft EIA 2020, BS-VI leapfrog advocacy.
• Judicial route: PILs and NGT petitions; Vanashakti v. Union of India (2025) — Supreme Court barred ex post facto environmental clearances.
• Protection on the ground: Chipko, Appiko, Narmada Bachao Andolan, Save Aarey, Niyamgiri gram sabha (2013), anti-Sterlite mobilization (2018).
• Limitations: FCRA and funding curbs, anti-development labelling, urban bias, episodic engagement, occasional weak scientific grounding.
• Conclusion: they deepen participatory environmental governance under Articles 48A and 51A(g); institutionalized consultation beats adversarial treatment.

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• Define the paradox: poverty coexisting with aggregate plenty — the poor lack claims over resources, not the economy over output; link to the vicious circle of poverty.
• Land concentration: failed ceiling and tenancy reforms; top rural decile owns close to half the land; majority of agricultural households marginal or landless.
• Wealth concentration: richest 1% hold roughly 40% of wealth (Oxfam/World Inequality Lab); assetlessness blocks credit, education investment and shock absorption.
• Resource-curse dimension: mineral-rich districts (Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha) among the poorest on NITI Aayog's MPI — rents exported, displacement retained.
• Decline of commons hurts the landless disproportionately — loss of grazing, water and forest access.
• Remedies: land-record modernization and tenancy security, FRA 2006 community rights, District Mineral Foundations, progressive taxation, financial inclusion and SHG asset-building.
• Conclusion: redistribution of asset ownership, not growth alone, resolves the paradox.

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• Decode the statement: it is a critique of centralization and an argument for subsidiarity — decisions should be taken closest to where information originates and execution happens.
• Structural evidence: incomplete devolution of functions, funds and functionaries despite the 73rd/74th Amendments; panchayat dependence on tied grants.
• Institutional failures: defunct District Planning Committees (Article 243ZD), delayed State Finance Commissions, parallel implementation societies, weak PESA operationalization.
• Scheme design: one-size-fits-all CSS norms ignore local heterogeneity; Second ARC's 'Local Governance' report documents the participation deficit.
• Counter-examples of proximity working: Kerala People's Plan Campaign, MGNREGA gram sabha planning, Gram Panchayat Development Plans.
• Balanced evaluation: certain functions need central handling (externalities, standards, stabilization); technology reduces but cannot replace local deliberation.
• Way forward: activity mapping, untied transfers, predictable SFC awards, capacity building, social audits — decentralization with accountability.

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• NCPCR basics: statutory body under the CPCR Act, 2005; monitors POCSO, RTE and JJ Act implementation — anchor the answer in its mandate.
• Name the digital-era harms: CSAM, grooming, cyberbullying, gaming addiction, behavioural profiling and targeted ads, privacy loss, child influencer exploitation.
• Legal framework: Section 67B IT Act, POCSO Sections 13-15, IT Intermediary Rules 2021 (takedown, grievance), JJ Act 2015.
• DPDP Act, 2023 Section 9 is the newest layer: verifiable parental consent, prohibition on tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising at children.
• Soft-law instruments: PRAGYATA screen-time guidelines, CBSE cyber-safety manuals, NCPCR guidelines for children in the entertainment industry.
• Gaps: age verification, encrypted and offshore platforms, low parental digital literacy, weak inter-agency coordination.
• Suggested NCPCR measures: DPDP compliance audits and a child-online-safety index, CSAM takedown SOPs, POCSO e-Box expansion, age-assurance standards with MeitY, curriculum integration, research on algorithmic harms, child-influencer code.

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• Establish the premise: over 85% crude and about 50% gas import dependence; West Asia supplies roughly half; diaspora of nearly nine million and remittances tie energy to broader foreign policy equities.
• Existing architecture: India-Saudi Strategic Partnership Council, India-UAE CEPA and local-currency oil settlement, Qatar LNG deal extended to 2048.
• Post-2022 diversification: Russian discounted crude, US and African barrels — reduced concentration risk without abandoning the Gulf.
• Sea-lane security as energy policy: Operation Sankalp, anti-drone/anti-piracy deployments during the Red Sea crisis, SAGAR framework.
• Future integration: IMEC, Chabahar 10-year agreement (2024) and INSTC as chokepoint hedges; strategic petroleum reserve expansion.
• Green pivot: Gulf sovereign funds in Indian renewables and green hydrogen, OSOWOG, ISA; critical minerals via KABIL and the Mineral Security Partnership; nuclear including SMRs.
• Strategic method: de-hyphenation across Saudi-Iran-Israel fault lines and multi-alignment to insulate energy flows from regional conflicts.

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• Charter amendment under Articles 108-109 needs ratification by all P5, giving each a veto over reform itself — the structural lock.
• Veto use has split along bloc lines: US-UK-France versus Russia-China, e.g. repeated vetoes on Syria and Ukraine, damaging Council legitimacy.
• Neither camp will surrender or dilute privilege, so the 'delicate imbalance' is sustained by mutual obstruction.
• Critically, reform is also blocked by regional rivalries: Uniting for Consensus (Italy, Pakistan) opposes the G4's bid for permanent seats.
• Africa's Ezulwini Consensus (two permanent seats with veto) adds another fault line beyond East-West.
• Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) since 2008 remain without a single negotiating text — procedural inertia matters as much as great-power rivalry.
• Way forward: text-based IGN, veto restraint in atrocity cases (France-Mexico initiative), realistic expansion reflecting multipolarity.

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• The right to vote is a statutory right under Section 62 of the RP Act 1951, resting on Article 326.
• PUCL (2003) protected the act of voting as expression under Article 19(1)(a).
• Anoop Baranwal (2023) placed free and fair elections in the basic structure without elevating the vote itself.
• Article 324 gives the ECI superintendence over roll preparation; the RP Act 1950 and the 1960 Rules govern procedure.
• Section 16 of the RP Act 1950 makes citizenship a qualification for registration.
• The ECI may examine citizenship incidentally for registration, but cannot determine nationality — that lies under the Citizenship Act 1955 and Foreigners Act 1946.
• Procedural safeguards — notice, hearing, reasoned order, appeal — are what separate purification from disenfranchisement.

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• NALSA (2014) held gender identity integral to Article 21 dignity and rejected medical proof as a precondition of recognition.
• Section 4(2) of the 2019 Act had codified the right to self-perceived gender identity.
• The 2026 amendment omits Section 4(2) and requires a designated medical board's recommendation before the District Magistrate issues a certificate.
• The board is headed by the Chief Medical Officer or a Deputy CMO; the amendment came into force on 25 May 2026.
• The constitutional objection runs through Puttaswamy's decisional autonomy and the proportionality test's necessity limb.
• Practical harm lies in cost, delay and intrusive scrutiny, not only in the final outcome.
• The state's defence rests on the entitlements attached to the certificate and on curbing arbitrary refusal.

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• Women's reservation rests on Article 15(3), not on the backward-class provisions of Articles 15(4) and 16(4).
• The 73rd and 74th Amendments (1992) reserved at least one-third of seats and chairperson posts in panchayats and municipalities.
• Over twenty states have since legislated 50 per cent local reservation; more than 1.4 million elected women serve locally.
• The Bill was introduced in 1996 and repeatedly failed; it passed the Rajya Sabha in 2010 and lapsed in 2014.
• The 106th Amendment 2023 inserts Articles 330A, 332A and 334A, reserving one-third in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
• It excludes the Rajya Sabha and legislative councils, runs for fifteen years, and requires rotation after delimitation.
• Implementation waits on a census and delimitation, and no OBC sub-quota was included.

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• Paragraph 6 of the Tenth Schedule makes the Speaker sole adjudicator of disqualification petitions with no prescribed time limit.
• Indian Speakers do not resign from their party, unlike the Westminster convention.
• Kihoto Hollohan (1992) held the Speaker acts as a tribunal subject to judicial review.
• Keisham Meghachandra Singh (2020) prescribed a three-month norm and floated an independent tribunal.
• Nabam Rebia (2016) restrained a Speaker facing removal from deciding disqualifications.
• Delay is the operative problem: inaction decides which government survives.
• Reform options: external tribunal, statutory deadline, resignation convention, reasoned published orders, narrowed whip.

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• NCSC and NCST are constitutional bodies under Articles 338 and 338A, via the 65th and 89th Amendments.
• They have civil-court powers while inquiring: summons, documents, affidavit evidence, commissions.
• The Union and states must consult them on all major policy affecting SCs and STs.
• Their findings are recommendatory; no authority is bound and none can be punished for non-compliance.
• Annual reports and action-taken memoranda are routinely tabled years late, breaking the accountability loop.
• Chronic vacancies and deputation-based staffing limit investigative capacity.
• Reforms: binding response deadlines, statutory tabling timelines, independent cadre, transparent appointments, compliance index.

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• The legal architecture — Fifth and Sixth Schedules, PESA 1996, FRA 2006 — is unusually protective of tribal self-rule.
• PESA gives Scheduled-Area Gram Sabhas powers over minor forest produce, water bodies and land alienation.
• The FRA's community forest resource rights are the most transformative provision and the least implemented.
• Several states took two decades to frame PESA rules, and consent is often reduced to a formality.
• STs are around 8.6 per cent of the population but a disproportionate share of the development-displaced.
• Tribes Advisory Councils meet irregularly and the Fifth Schedule Governor's protective power is rarely used.
• The binding contradiction: the same state legislates consent and depends on the mineral belt tribal communities inhabit.

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• NFHS-5: stunting 35.5 per cent, down only from 38.4 per cent in NFHS-4; wasting 19.3 per cent.
• Anaemia worsened to 67.1 per cent among children 6-59 months and 57 per cent among women 15-49.
• Stunting is concentrated among STs, SCs and the lowest wealth quintile — an equity gradient, not a random distribution.
• First-thousand-days stunting causes irreversible cognitive deficit and lowers lifetime earnings.
• Nutrition is administratively fragmented across at least five ministries; POSHAN Abhiyaan exists to converge them.
• Anganwadi workers carry multiple mandates on honorarium wages, limiting frontline capacity.
• Sanitation-driven enteric infection blocks absorption, so outcomes depend on non-nutrition programmes.

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• The generalist premise recruits for reasoning ability and rotates officers across sectors and levels.
• Advantages: cross-silo coordination, impartial arbitration, adaptability, national integration, continuity.
• Limitations: depth deficit from short tenures, expertise asymmetry with regulated sectors, weak outcome accountability.
• Reserving senior policy posts for generalists demotivates technical services and pushes expertise out of government.
• The T.S.R. Subramanian judgment sought fixed tenures and Civil Services Boards; implementation is uneven.
• Lateral entry imports expertise but raises reservation, tenure and capture questions.
• The workable answer is mid-career domain specialisation with tenure, not abolition of the generalist.

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• IPMDA was announced at the Quad Leaders' Summit in Tokyo, May 2022.
• It fuses commercial satellite radio-frequency data with existing fusion centres to track dark shipping.
• It resolves SAGAR's resource constraint and the Quad's legitimacy constraint simultaneously.
• India's Information Fusion Centre - Indian Ocean Region at Gurugram becomes a hub, not a recipient.
• Critical limit: awareness is not interdiction; most partners lack coast guard capacity to act.
• Dependence on commercially procured RF data raises continuity and control questions.
• Its constabulary framing is what makes ASEAN and IOR participation politically possible.

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• BRICS is a coordination platform, not an alliance, trade bloc or treaty organisation.
• The 2024 expansion added Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE, taking coverage to near half the world's population.
• The New Development Bank and Contingent Reserve Arrangement are its concrete institutional outputs.
• It has consistently pressed IMF quota reform and UNSC reform on behalf of developing countries.
• China's economy exceeds all other members combined, raising the risk of single-member capture.
• NDB lending remains small beside the World Bank and de-dollarisation rhetoric outruns settlement volumes.
• India uses BRICS for multipolarity while resisting an anti-Western framing, consistent with multi-alignment.

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• Appointed under Article 155, holds office during pleasure under Article 156, constitutional head under Article 154.
• Article 200 gives exactly four options: assent, withhold, return a non-Money Bill, or reserve for the President.
• If the House passes a returned Bill again, the Governor shall not withhold assent.
• Reservation is compulsory where a Bill would derogate from the powers of the High Court.
• State of Punjab (2023) held the Governor cannot veto by inaction; the Tamil Nadu matter (2025) went to an Article 143 reference.
• Article 163(1) binds him to aid and advice except where he acts in his discretion; 163(2) makes that his own decision.
• Genuine discretion: reservation, Article 356 recommendation, hung-assembly appointment, Sixth Schedule and 371-series duties.

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• Judicial legislation is the making of binding general rules by a court where statute is absent, resting on Articles 141 and 142.
• Gian Kaur (1996) overruled P. Rathinam but distinguished the right to die with dignity.
• Aruna Shanbaug (2011) permitted passive euthanasia with a High Court-supervised procedure.
• Common Cause (2018) recognised the living will and issued a detailed execution and implementation code.
• A 2023 Constitution Bench simplified those safeguards because the original procedure proved unworkable.
• The Court framed its directions as interim, operative until Parliament legislates — respecting legislative primacy in form.
• The critique: courts lack consultation, costing and amendment tools, and an interim regime that persists becomes permanent law.

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• Pluralist theory treats organised interests as the connective tissue of democracy between elections.
• MKSS produced the RTI Act 2005; the Right to Food campaign shaped the NFSA 2013.
• Access is asymmetric: resident industry associations are heard routinely, movements only when they can mobilise.
• Electoral bonds allowed unlimited anonymous corporate donations until ADR v. Union of India (2024) struck the scheme down.
• India has no lobbying registration or disclosure statute, so influence is invisible rather than regulated.
• Parliament is the weakest link: fewer sitting days, fewer bills to committees, thin pre-legislative consultation.
• The real risk is substitution — decisions migrating from open forums to private ones — rather than outright capture.

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• Corruption control is retrospective; trust is built prospectively in how decisions are reached.
• A clean but opaque decision still produces resistance — land acquisition disputes illustrate this.
• Measuring success by prosecutions creates risk aversion and decision paralysis.
• E. P. Royappa and Maneka Gandhi read Article 14 as a guarantee against arbitrariness, making reasons a legal requirement.
• The 2014 pre-legislative consultation policy is honoured inconsistently; Article 243ZD planning committees mostly remain unconstituted.
• The RTI 2019 amendment made Information Commissioners' tenure and salary executive-determined, and vacancies cripple throughput.
• The DPDP Act 2023 widened the RTI Act's personal-information exemption under Section 8(1)(j).

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