(a) India is playing a very significant role in world affairs. Examine the stands taken by India in important global and regional…

(a) India's stands at global and regional summits

India's approach across summits has been consistent. It seeks strategic autonomy and issue-based partnerships, and it presents itself as a voice for the Global South. Its stands can be examined forum by forum.

• G20: under India's presidency, the New Delhi Summit (September 2023) reached a consensus Leaders' Declaration despite divisions over Ukraine, and the African Union became a permanent member. India also launched the Global Biofuels Alliance there and announced the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) with its partners. Its agenda stressed multilateral development bank reform, debt distress and digital public infrastructure.
• Voice of the Global South summits (2023–24): India convened developing countries before and after its G20 presidency to carry their concerns on food, fuel, fertiliser and finance into the G20.
• Climate summits: at COP26 (Glasgow, 2021) India announced the "Panchamrit" targets, including net zero by 2070, and the LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) idea. It pressed for "phase-down" rather than "phase-out" of coal and insists on equity and common but differentiated responsibilities, with finance and technology from developed countries. It launched the Green Credit initiative at COP28 (2023). It leads the International Solar Alliance and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.
• UN and the Ukraine war: India abstained on most UN resolutions on the war, called for dialogue and diplomacy, and stated that "this is not an era of war" (SCO Samarkand, 2022). It pushes for reform of the UN Security Council, including at the Summit of the Future (2024).
• WTO ministerial conferences (MC12, MC13): India defended a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security and fisheries flexibility for small fishers, and opposed plurilateral deals such as investment facilitation.
• SCO: India has consistently declined to endorse the Belt and Road Initiative, citing sovereignty concerns over the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. It presses for firm language on cross-border terrorism and in June 2025 declined to sign an SCO defence ministers' statement that omitted the Pahalgam attack. The Tianjin summit declaration (September 2025) later condemned that attack.
• BRICS: India supports reform of global financial institutions and trade in local currencies, but has said it does not favour a common BRICS currency or de-dollarisation. It accepted the 2024–25 expansion while seeking consensus-based criteria, and holds the BRICS chair in 2026.
• Quad: India backs a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific, maritime domain awareness (IPMDA, 2022), vaccines, critical technology and supply chains, but treats the Quad as a non-military grouping.
• Regional forums: with SAARC summits stalled since 2014, India has shifted energy to BIMSTEC (charter in force 2024; Bangkok summit 2025), promoting connectivity, disaster management and security cooperation around the Bay of Bengal.

These stands show a balancing strategy: working with the West in the Quad and IMEC, and with Russia and China in BRICS and the SCO, while resisting bloc alignment. The limits are also visible. Consensus in the G20 and SCO is fragile, and climate and trade positions are sometimes read as obstruction by developed countries.

(b) Achievements of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act

The 73rd Amendment (1992, in force from 24 April 1993) made panchayats constitutional institutions. It left the actual transfer of the 29 subjects in the Eleventh Schedule (Article 243G), and of finances and staff, to the states. Its achievements are therefore uneven but real.

Institutional and democratic achievements

• A uniform three-tier structure with regular five-yearly elections conducted by State Election Commissions (Article 243K). There are about 2.6 lakh gram panchayats and roughly 31 lakh elected representatives.
• Reservation has changed rural leadership. About 46% of elected representatives are women, and more than 20 states have raised women's reservation to 50%. SC and ST reservation has brought marginalised groups into local office.
• Gram sabhas became forums for social audit, and PESA (1996) gave gram sabhas in Fifth Schedule areas ownership of minor forest produce and a say over land acquisition and local resources.

Functions: examples of decentralised planning

• Kerala's People's Plan Campaign (1996) devolved about a third of the state plan outlay to local bodies. Gram sabhas prepare projects, and Kudumbashree links women's groups with panchayats.
• Karnataka has built strong panchayat institutions and topped the Devolution Index in the MoPR–IIPA report "Status of Devolution to Panchayats in States" (2024), followed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
• Gram Panchayat Development Plans (since 2015) now make every panchayat prepare an annual plan, uploaded on the eGramSwaraj portal.
• Village-level examples: Hiware Bazar (Maharashtra) used gram sabha decisions for watershed work and groundwater budgeting. Punsari (Gujarat) built village services with panchayat funds. Mendha Lekha (Maharashtra) secured community forest rights through its gram sabha. Piplantri (Rajasthan) linked tree planting with the birth of girls.

Finances

• State Finance Commissions (Article 243I) and Central Finance Commission grants gave panchayats predictable transfers. The 14th Finance Commission gave gram panchayats about ₹2 lakh crore, and the 15th about ₹2.37 lakh crore for rural local bodies (2021–26), much of it tied to water and sanitation.
• The SVAMITVA scheme (2020) is mapping rural homesteads and issuing property cards, which can expand property-tax revenue.

Functionaries

• Panchayat secretaries, Rozgar Sevaks and frontline workers now operate at panchayat level in many states, and the Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan funds capacity building.

The limits remain significant. Own-source revenue is very small, states often transfer functions without funds or staff, parallel bodies bypass panchayats, and proxy representation by male relatives ("pradhan-pati") persists. Where states devolved genuinely, as in Kerala and Karnataka, local planning has improved service delivery.

(c) Small and fragmented landholdings and the agro-ecological system

According to the Agriculture Census 2015–16, the average holding in India is 1.08 hectares. Marginal and small holdings form 86% of holdings but only about 47% of the operated area, and many are split into scattered plots through inheritance.

Effects on the agro-ecological system

• Soil degradation: small farmers cannot leave land fallow or invest in terracing, bunding and organic matter. Continuous cropping and unbalanced fertiliser use (heavy on urea) deplete soil nutrients and organic carbon.
• Groundwater depletion: each fragment tends to get its own tube-well, which causes well interference and falling water tables, as seen in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
• Loss of land and inefficient water use: boundary bunds and field channels take up land, and flood irrigation of small scattered plots wastes water.
• Monocropping and residue burning: subsistence pressure pushes cereal monoculture, and small farmers without machinery burn paddy straw.
• Barriers to conservation technology: micro-irrigation, laser levelling and farm machinery are uneconomic on tiny plots.
• A qualification: small farms often have higher crop diversity and output per hectare, and their hedges and bunds hold biodiversity. Fragmentation is harmful mainly when it is combined with poverty, weak tenure and poor access to technology.

Resilient steps needed

• Land consolidation and records: voluntary consolidation (chakbandi) as in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, supported by digitised land records under DILRMP and the unique land parcel number (Bhu-Aadhaar).
• Legal land leasing: state laws based on NITI Aayog's Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act (2016) let small owners lease land securely and let tenants invest in it.
• Collective farming: Farmer Producer Organisations (the scheme for 10,000 FPOs was launched in 2020), cooperatives and Kudumbashree-style joint liability groups that lease and farm land together.
• Shared services: custom hiring centres for machinery, and community-managed wells and micro-irrigation, as in the Andhra Pradesh farmer-managed groundwater systems.
• Ecological practices: crop diversification to millets and pulses, integrated farming systems, agroforestry (National Agroforestry Policy, 2014) and natural farming clusters under PKVY and the National Mission on Natural Farming (2024).
• Risk cover: crop insurance under PMFBY and soil health cards to guide balanced fertiliser use.

These steps make small farms viable without forcing land concentration, which would displace the rural poor.