The Hindu Gist - 11th September, 2026
1 . Should the use of Gen AI be banned among younger students in schools?
Benefits of Gen AI in Education
- Personalised learning – Gen AI can offer “personalised learning” through explanations, quizzes, gamified exercises and feedback, allowing students to learn according to their pace and needs rather than through a one-size-fits-all approach.
- Teacher support – AI can act as a “learning assistant” by helping teachers prepare lessons, generate different explanations and use visual methods; e.g., difficult concepts such as fractions can be explained through simple, visual representations.
- Learning accessibility – AI can potentially help bridge teacher and resource shortages, particularly in government and rural schools, by providing additional explanations and learning support where adequate educational resources may not be available.
- Adaptive feedback – AI-enabled tools can track a child’s performance and provide immediate feedback; such continuous assessment and personalised intervention can improve learning outcomes when used under teacher supervision.
- Technological literacy – Since children are increasingly “tech savvy” and AI is already becoming an integral part of everyday digital life, schools need to prepare students to understand AI and its pros and cons, rather than simply shield them from it.
Risks of Excessive Use
- Cognitive dependency – Excessive reliance can make AI a “crutch”, depriving children of the “productive struggle” through which logical thinking, problem-solving and independent reasoning develop.
- Learning deficit – When a student asks AI for the answer and simply copies it, the task may be completed but “the child is not using his brain”; thus, apparent academic performance may conceal weak conceptual understanding.
- Critical thinking loss – Education requires students to struggle, make errors, think logically and synthesise ideas. Outsourcing these processes to AI risks weakening the very cognitive capacities that schooling is supposed to develop.
- Information reliability – AI can provide incorrect information, while younger children may lack the ability to identify such errors. Hence, critical evaluation, verification and digital discernment become essential components of AI literacy.
- Human interaction – Primary education is not merely knowledge acquisition; stories, activities and conversations develop human relationships and social-emotional abilities. Excessive technological mediation could weaken the teacher–student bond and experiential learning.
Need for Regulation, Not Blanket Ban
- Guided use – A complete ban may be counterproductive; instead, children should be guided on how and when to use AI, with restrictions where its use directly undermines learning.
- Attempt before AI – Students should first attempt the problem independently and use AI subsequently for assistance or clarification. This preserves independent reasoning and productive struggle while retaining AI’s benefits.
- Human oversight – AI should “extend the teacher, not replace the teacher”. Teachers remain essential for contextual understanding, mentorship, assessment and ensuring that students actually comprehend what AI produces.
- Age-appropriate exposure – Schools can differentiate between foundational learning and assisted learning, restricting AI during activities where independent cognitive development is the primary objective.
- AI literacy – Instead of treating AI as an infallible authority, children should learn its capabilities, limitations and risks, including how to question and verify its outputs.
- Human-centric education – The ultimate objective should remain “human beings that make their own contribution to the world”. Technology should therefore serve education, not allow education to become dependent on technology.
2. How should RUPPs be regulated?
RUPP (Registered Unrecognised Political Party) refers to political parties registered with the Election Commission under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, but not recognised as State or National parties. Registration provides benefits such as tax exemption on eligible donations and certain electoral benefits.
The concern is that while India had 2,800+ RUPPs, only around 750 contested the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. At the same time, six Gujarat-based RUPPs reportedly received around ₹1,700 crore in donations in 2023–24, raising concerns about “letter-pad parties”, opaque funding and misuse of tax exemptions.
Problems with RUPPs
- Inactive parties – The large gap between registration and actual electoral participation raises concerns that some RUPPs may exist merely to retain statutory benefits, rather than function as genuine political organisations.
- Funding opacity – Only 26% of RUPP annual reports for 2022–23 were publicly available, creating a transparency deficit and making political funding difficult to scrutinise.
- Tax misuse – Weak compliance combined with tax exemptions can make inactive parties potential channels for money laundering and other financial irregularities, undermining the integrity of political finance.
Regulatory gaps
- Limited EC powers – The EC can register political parties under Section 29A, but lacks explicit broad powers to de-register parties merely for prolonged inactivity or poor compliance.
- Exceptional grounds – As reflected in Indian National Congress v. Institute of Social Welfare (2002), de-registration is largely restricted to exceptional situations such as fraudulent registration, loss of allegiance to the Constitution or declaration of unlawfulness.
- Reform deficit – The Law Commission’s 255th Report and the EC’s 2016 memorandum proposed stronger de-registration provisions, including action against parties that repeatedly fail to contest elections, but such reforms remain pending.
Way Forward
- De-registration power – Give the EC explicit statutory authority to de-register parties for persistent non-participation and non-compliance, subject to due process and safeguards against arbitrary action.
- Vote threshold – Link eligibility for tax exemptions to a suitable minimum level of electoral performance so that statutory benefits accrue to parties demonstrating genuine electoral participation.
- Financial transparency – Strengthen mandatory disclosure of donations, annual reports and financial transactions, with consequences for persistent non-compliance.
- Periodic scrutiny – Introduce regular review of registered parties to distinguish genuine political organisations from inactive “letter-pad” parties, while preserving political pluralism.
3 . Why are Volkswagen and JLR trimming their workforce?
European automakers Volkswagen and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) are cutting jobs as they struggle to keep pace with Chinese EV manufacturers. Volkswagen plans to reduce its workforce by 1 lakh by the end of the decade, while JLR is cutting 4,000 jobs, reflecting the difficult transition from the internal-combustion-engine era to electrification. High restructuring costs, declining demand in key markets, cheaper Chinese competitors backed by state-supported financing, and geopolitical uncertainty including U.S. tariffs are putting pressure on their traditional business models.
The larger concern is that European manufacturers are losing cost and technological competitiveness in the rapidly evolving EV market. Volkswagen’s Chinese sales have fallen by about one-third from 2019 levels, while Chinese firms such as BYD and Geely are gaining ground. The disruption, however, creates an opportunity for India, with Volkswagen seeking a local partner and JLR benefiting from India’s growing market and the India–UK FTA. The broader lesson is that the EV transition is not only an environmental shift but also a major industrial restructuring, with implications for jobs, manufacturing competitiveness and global supply chains.
4 . Why India must rethink the way it values skills, jobs and productive work
Employment and productivity
- Job creation – Manufacturing remains insufficiently labour-absorbing, while post-pandemic recovery has favoured capital-intensive sectors, limiting quality employment.
- Low-productivity cycle – Stagnant wages → weak consumption → sluggish investment → low job creation can reinforce one another, trapping the economy in low productivity.
- Productivity enclaves – Gains remain concentrated in narrow, capital- and skill-intensive enclaves, limiting economy-wide productivity diffusion.
- Middle-income trap – India risks exhausting cheap-labour and catch-up gains without transitioning to innovation-led, high-productivity employment.
Skills and work
- Credentialism – Excessive emphasis on technical/engineering degrees has come at the expense of vocational and practical skills, widening the gap between qualifications and productive capability.
- Skill mismatch – Weak vocational education limits occupational competence and employability; fewer than 3% of the workforce has formal vocational education.
- Dignity of labour – Social hierarchy undervalues manual and artisanal work despite its importance for industrial development, weakening the supply of skilled workers.
- Women’s work – Unpaid and undervalued work, particularly women’s work, remains poorly recognised, showing that social norms also shape how productive work is valued.
Structural transformation
- Beyond binaries – India needs to move beyond the pro-market vs Keynesian policy divide towards deeper structural and institutional transformation.
- Useful knowledge – Escaping the middle-income trap requires diffusion of useful knowledge and technology beyond a narrow group of productive firms and workers.
- Vocational ecosystem – Strengthen vocational education, industry-linked training and practical skills, while raising the social status of skilled occupations.
- Technology diffusion – Wider diffusion of technology can spread productivity gains beyond existing capital-intensive enclaves and improve employment quality.
- Productive investment – Investment should expand productive capacity and labour absorption, rather than merely reinforce capital-intensive growth.
- Value productive work – India needs a shift from credentials to capabilities, recognising skilled manual, technical and artisanal work as essential to productive development.
The Indian Express Gist - 11th September, 2026
1. Forget BRICS, look West
Limited gains from BRICS
- Weak strategic voice – Despite repeated BRICS declarations supporting India’s greater role in the UN Security Council, India has little influence over the grouping’s major unresolved issues; its expansion has also made consensus harder.
- Institutional under-delivery – India contributed about $2 billion to the New Development Bank (NDB) and committed another $18 billion to the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, while the NDB’s lending has remained below its target; the author therefore views the financial commitments as an “insurance premium” with limited returns.
- Consensus deficit – The 2024 BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting failed to produce a joint statement, reflecting the difficulty of reconciling divergent interests among an expanded membership.
- Strategic silence – The grouping has not adequately addressed major concerns such as the Russia–Ukraine war, Gaza, China’s silence on COVID-19 origins and Chinese mercantilism, weakening its relevance as a platform for India’s strategic interests.
- China dilemma – BRICS has not questioned China’s undervalued currency and mercantilist strategy, even though the author links these policies to persistent trade imbalances; India consequently remains a relatively weak voice within the grouping.
Growth and economic interests
- Growth deficit – The contrasts BRICS economies’ income trajectories with countries such as South Korea, Poland and Vietnam, which have successfully moved towards higher-income status; India’s per-capita income remains far below the World Bank’s high-income threshold.
- Consumption constraint – China’s model is criticised for prioritising mercantilist surpluses over domestic consumption, with household consumption at only about 40% of GDP compared with a global average of 64%.
- Slow convergence – India’s per-capita income is cited at around $2,550, while achieving the Viksit Bharat 2047 goal would require roughly 10% annual growth in dollar-denominated income, compared with only about 9% achieved over the preceding 11 years.
- Wrong benchmark – The scholars argues that countries currently achieving the kind of economic transformation India seeks—Korea, Poland and Vietnam—are outside BRICS, questioning the grouping’s usefulness as India’s growth model.
Why look West?
- Economic interdependence – The U.S. is a major destination for Indian goods and software exports, contributes substantially to remittances, holds large Indian securities and has significant FDI in India, making Western markets central to India’s economic interests.
- Strategic diversification – China’s relatively low cumulative FDI in India, persistent trade deficit and restrictions affecting rare-earth magnets and Foxconn’s iPhone operations, highlighting vulnerabilities in the China relationship.
- Trade orientation – Europe and the U.S. provide access to large, high-income markets, technology, capital and investment, which the author considers more consequential for India’s long-term development than BRICS membership.
- Global partnership – The proposed shift is therefore not merely geopolitical alignment but an economic strategy: India’s future should be built as a global partner of the West, using trade, investment and technology integration to accelerate income growth and productive transformation.
2 . The challenges for BRICS in a changing world order
After 20 years, BRICS has evolved from an economic grouping into a major Global South voice. Its expansion has increased its global weight, but also sharpened internal fault lines over its purpose, geopolitical orientation and economic architecture. For India, the challenge is to use BRICS for Global South interests and institutional reform while preserving strategic autonomy.
BRICS: Growing weight, internal divergence
- Global South voice – BRICS’ economic weight has expanded significantly: the enlarged grouping accounted for 8% of global GDP (PPP) in 2024, compared with 29% for the G7, strengthening its claim to represent the developing world.
- Reform agenda – BRICS originally emerged around demands for reform of global financial institutions and greater voice for developing countries; its continuing relevance lies in correcting the mismatch between the distribution of economic power and institutional power.
- Competing visions – China and Russia increasingly see BRICS as a counterweight to Western dominance and dollar hegemony, whereas India and Brazil view it primarily as an economic and reform-oriented grouping—creating a fundamental disagreement over its purpose.
- Consensus challenge – Expansion has amplified geopolitical contradictions; the failure to issue a joint declaration at the May 2026 Foreign Ministers’ meeting, amid the Iran–UAE confrontation, exposed the difficulty of maintaining consensus in an increasingly heterogeneous grouping.
- Strategic autonomy – India’s simultaneous participation in BRICS, G20, Quad and SCO reflects a strategy of multi-alignment—creating room for manoeuvre among competing power centres rather than tying itself to any single bloc.
De-dollarisation: Progress with limits
- Local-currency trade – Russia and China conduct over 90% of bilateral trade in the ruble and yuan, while India–Russia trade has also increasingly shifted towards national currencies, reducing dependence on dollar-based settlement.
- Payment alternatives – BRICS is exploring interoperable payment mechanisms involving systems such as Russia’s SPFS, China’s CIPS and India’s UPI, seeking greater financial autonomy.
- De-dollarisation constraint – Despite growing local-currency settlements, the S. dollar still accounts for 57.13% of global central-bank reserves, showing that BRICS is far from displacing the dollar-based system.
- No common currency – The idea of a single BRICS currency has largely been shelved; the more practical trajectory is currency diversification and alternative settlement mechanisms, rather than immediate monetary integration.
- Economic institutions – The New Development Bank (NDB) has approved around $44 billion across 141 projects, demonstrating that BRICS can build parallel development-finance capacity even without replacing existing global institutions.
India’s priorities and way forward
- Bridge role – India can position BRICS as a bridge between the Global South and the West, rather than allowing it to become an explicitly anti-Western platform; this strengthens India’s strategic autonomy.
- Consensus diplomacy – Conflicts involving Iran, Israel, the U.S. and Russia–Ukraine will test BRICS’ ability to sustain a common position; India’s role is to pursue consensus-building without sacrificing its own interests.
- Economic resilience – India’s 2026 priorities include resilient and diversified supply chains, reform of global financial institutions, NDB expansion and intra-BRICS trade, shifting the grouping towards tangible economic outcomes.
- Developmental cooperation – Digital public infrastructure, climate finance, health cooperation, critical minerals and connectivity offer relatively broad areas for practical cooperation and can strengthen BRICS as a development-oriented platform.
- Inclusive multilateralism – India should preserve BRICS as a “big tent” for the Global South, advancing multipolarity and institutional reform while avoiding bloc politics that could deepen existing geopolitical divisions.
3. Good governance is when State, society and markets deliver together
Collaborative governance delivers better outcomes
- Decentralised action – Experiences of the Green & White Revolutions, Rural Livelihoods Mission, Swachh Bharat Mission–Gramodaya, watershed development show that locally driven collective action improves outcomes.
- Community participation – SHGs, community organisations and grassroots representatives bring local knowledge and ownership, making governance more responsive and effective.
- Women’s agency – Women’s collectives can act as agents of accountability and development, particularly in improving livelihoods and multidimensional poverty outcomes.
- State–market synergy – Good governance need not mean State versus market; public agencies, community institutions and market professionals can combine capabilities to solve complex problems.
- Technology as enabler – Technology can strengthen delivery and monitoring, but its value lies in enabling institutions and communities, not replacing them.
India’s governance challenge is institutional, not merely financial
- Vulnerability persists – Despite significant poverty reduction, many households remain vulnerable, while productivity gains, wages and manufacturing employment remain inadequate.
- Weak local capacity – Decentralisation is constrained by inadequate management systems, institutional weaknesses and limited professional capacity at the grassroots.
- Skills deficit – Better governance requires higher-order education, skills and useful knowledge so communities can convert development interventions into sustained productivity gains.
- Dignity of work – Social norms and credentialism/caste-based occupational hierarchy undervalue vocational, manual and artisanal skills, weakening the productive base.
From “sarkari” to impactful governance
- Empowered local governments – Real decentralisation requires funds, functions and functionaries, along with legitimate authority close to communities.
- Community validation – Initiatives such as the Panchayat Advancement Index (PAI) can become more meaningful through community validation of outcomes, rather than merely administrative ranking.
- Professional capacity – Models such as ASHA workers show how community resource persons can improve accountability; professionals from the market can similarly supplement public capacity.
- Convergent action – Effective governance requires convergence among the responsibilities under the Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules, rather than fragmented scheme-based implementation.
