Editorials, Opinions & Explained3 Items

Core TopicImportantConcise

EditorialsThe paper’s own view

01Great Indian Bustard & ‘Island’ Conservation

OpinionsSigned op-eds

02Youth Bulge & the Global Jobs Crisis03Disability, Accessibility & AI

EditorialsThe newspaper’s own arguments

01

Bird Islands: Why India’s Conservation Must Move from Species to Landscapes

Core TopicEditorialGS-III · Environment — Biodiversity Conservation, Endangered SpeciesPrelims + MainsThe Hindu · Editorial

The release of two captive-bred Great Indian Bustards in Desert National Park, Jaisalmer, is a real success — but the editorial argues that India’s wider conservation policy relies too much on flagship species and protected “islands”, and too little on the landscapes in which wildlife and people actually live.

◈ Basics First

• Species approach — conservation focused on saving one animal (a tiger, a cheetah, a bustard), usually through protected areas, captive breeding or relocation.
• Landscape approach — conservation that protects the whole ecosystem, including corridors, farmland, grasslands and villages, so that animals can move and survive outside fenced areas.
• Conservation breeding — raising a threatened species in captivity and then releasing it into the wild to rebuild numbers. It is an ex-situ method (outside the natural habitat); protecting habitat is in-situ.

▤ Great Indian Bustard (Godawan) — Species Profile

• Scientific name: Ardeotis nigriceps; one of the heaviest flying birds in the world; State bird of Rajasthan.
• Status: Critically Endangered (IUCN Red List); Schedule I, Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972; Appendix I of both CITES and CMS (listed at CMS COP-13, Gandhinagar, 2020).
• Habitat: dry, open grasslands and semi-arid scrub; the main population is in Jaisalmer–Barmer (Rajasthan), with small numbers in Gujarat (Kutch), Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
• Slow breeder: usually lays a single egg per breeding attempt, so populations recover very slowly.
• India’s four bustards: Great Indian Bustard, Lesser Florican, Bengal Florican and the migratory MacQueen’s (Houbara) Bustard.

Figure 1 — Great Indian Bustard numbers: a half-century decline

~1,2601969~6002000140–1752010s (Rajasthan)~120Present (as cited)Approximate estimates; survey coverage differs across years

Figures as cited in the editorial. The species lost roughly nine-tenths of its numbers in about five decades.

The conservation breeding programme — where it stands

The breeding effort is run jointly by the MoEFCC, the Rajasthan Forest Department and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), with breeding centres at Sam and Ramdevra in Jaisalmer. Eggs collected from the wild were used to build a founder flock.

97

birds in the programme

57

captive-bred

29

chicks this year (24 last year)

9

more awaiting release

Why the bird declined — the main threats

• Hunting — including by royalty; shooting reportedly continued into the late 1970s.
• Loss of grasslands — official land classifications long treated grasslands as “wastelands”; the spread of irrigation (notably after the Indira Gandhi Canal) converted them into farms using pesticides.
• Power lines — the bird is heavy, has poor frontal vision and flies at the height of overhead transmission lines, so collisions became the leading cause of death in its last stronghold.

◈ Static Anchor — History & the Supreme Court

• National bird debate: ornithologist Salim Ali proposed the bustard as national bird to secure its protection; the Indian Board for Wildlife chose the peacock, declared national bird in 1963.
• M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India: in April 2021, the Supreme Court ordered overhead lines in the bird’s priority habitat to be laid underground where feasible, and bird diverters elsewhere.
• After renewable-energy developers argued this would raise costs, the Court revisited the order in March 2024, set up an expert committee, and recognised a right against the adverse effects of climate change under Articles 14 and 21. Undergrounding now applies only to the bird’s critical habitat.

The editorial’s central argument — “conservation islands”

The editorial says India tends to save a few celebrated species inside walled or fenced reserves, while thousands of less famous species decline unnoticed. It gives the following examples:

• Translocations — a tigress moved from Valmiki (Bihar) to Buxa (West Bengal); African cheetahs kept in enclosures at Kuno.
• Asiatic lions — confined to the Saurashtra region of Gujarat and now spilling into villages, causing human–wildlife conflict.
• Delhi Ridge — planted with peepal and banyan, trees that ecologists say do not belong to this dry, Aravalli-type ecology.
• Wider bird decline — the editorial cites about 1,256 bird species (≈11.5% of the world’s total) as threatened, and steep falls in skylarks (~80%) and Indian rollers (~30%) over 12 years.

Analysis — the other side

• Flagships are not useless. Protecting a charismatic species can also protect its habitat (the umbrella-species effect), and public attention brings funding.
• Captive breeding buys time. For a bird with ~120 individuals, waiting for landscape-level change could mean extinction first.
• The real test is whether released birds survive outside enclosures — which depends on the same power lines and grasslands the editorial highlights.

Way forward — landscapes as the unit of conservation

• Recognise grasslands as ecosystems, not “wasteland”, in land records and renewable-energy siting policy.
• Build on community traditions such as orans (sacred groves of Rajasthan) and on Community and Conservation Reserves under the 1972 Act.
• Use OECMs (Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures), which count conservation outside formal reserves towards the “30 by 30” target of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022).
• Plan wildlife corridors and conflict mitigation together, as India’s experience with elephants shows is necessary.

✎ Mains Practice Question

India’s wildlife conservation is often criticised for favouring flagship species and enclosed reserves over landscapes. Critically examine this view with reference to the Great Indian Bustard, and suggest how a landscape approach could be adopted. 15 marks · 250 words

OpinionsSigned op-ed articles

02

The Looming Crisis of World Unemployment: When the Demographic Dividend Turns into a Burden

Core TopicOpinionGS-III · Economy — Employment, Growth & DevelopmentGS-I · Population & Associated IssuesPrelims + MainsThe Hindu · Opinion

A recent World Bank warning — that 1.2 billion young people in the Global South will reach working age over the next decade, against only about 400 million projected jobs — is the starting point for an argument that the classic route from a young population to prosperity is breaking down.

◈ Basics First

• Demographic dividend — the growth opportunity that arises when the share of the working-age population (15–64) rises relative to dependants (children and the elderly). It usually follows a fall in fertility.
• Why it helps — more earners and fewer dependants mean higher savings, more investment and faster growth. This powered the “East Asian Miracle” (a 1993 World Bank study of high-growth East Asian economies).
• Youth bulge — an unusually large share of young people in a population.
• The catch — the dividend is only an opportunity. It pays off only if young people find productive jobs; otherwise it becomes a demographic burden.

Figure 2 — The size of the gap, and India’s structural problem

A. Global South, next decade (World Bank warning)Youth reaching working age1.2 billionJobs projected~400 millionShortfall~800 millionB. India — agriculture’s shareShare of workforce~46%Share of GDP (FY24)~16%

Panel A: figures as cited in the article. Panel B: workforce share from PLFS 2023-24; GDP share as cited in the article.

The article’s argument in brief

• The global economy faces a shortfall of about 800 million jobs in the coming decade.
• The traditional ladder — agriculture → light manufacturing → services — is weakening because automation and robotics make factories need fewer workers.
• Developing countries are therefore seeing premature deindustrialisation: manufacturing jobs shrink before the country becomes rich.
• Unemployed youth can fuel social unrest, polarisation, extremism and forced migration towards the Global North.

Figure 3 — Why the old development ladder no longer works as well

Classic path (East Asia, late 20th century)Agriculturelow productivityLight manufacturingabsorbs semi-skilled labourServices & high incomeskills, savings, capitalToday’s path for many developing economiesAgriculturesurplus labour staysManufacturing rungweakened by automationInformal servicesunder-/unemploymentWorkers skip industry and move straight into low-productivity services — “premature deindustrialisation”

The term “premature deindustrialisation” is associated with economist Dani Rodrik (2015).

◈ Static Anchor — Concepts to Know

• Lewis Dual-Sector Model (1954) — growth happens as surplus labour moves from low-productivity agriculture to higher-productivity industry. Premature deindustrialisation breaks this transfer.
• Structural transformation — the shift of output and workers from agriculture to industry and services.
• Jobless growth — GDP rises but employment does not rise proportionately.
• Disguised unemployment — more people working on a farm than needed; removing some would not reduce output.

India’s position

• World’s most populous country since 2023 (UN estimates), with a median age below 30.
• Fertility has fallen below replacement — TFR 2.0 (NFHS-5, 2019–21) against the replacement level of 2.1 — so the demographic window will not stay open indefinitely.
• Agriculture still employs about 46% of workers (PLFS 2023-24) while producing roughly 16% of GDP — a sign of low productivity and disguised unemployment.
• Female Labour Force Participation has risen to about 41.7% (PLFS 2023-24), but much of the increase is in self-employment and unpaid family work.
• The ILO–IHD India Employment Report 2024 found that youth make up about 83% of India’s unemployed.

Solutions suggested — sector by sector

• Enabling reforms — lower the cost of capital, simplify regulation, stabilise taxation and protect property rights so that MSMEs, the main job creators, can grow.
• Infrastructure — creates jobs during construction and lowers business costs afterwards; the article notes India does better here than on regulation.
• Agriculture — move to high-value agribusiness: cold chains, food processing and climate-resilient farming, reducing distress migration.
• Care economy — nurses, community health workers and elder-care staff; these are non-outsourceable jobs that especially open doors for women.
• Tourism and culture — labour-intensive, hard to automate and with a broad multiplier effect on transport, hospitality and crafts.
• Reimagined manufacturing — green manufacturing (solar components, electric two-wheelers) and decentralised production, combined with skilling.

Indian policy responses (for answer-writing)

• Skill India Mission (2015) and PMKVY; vocational education under NEP 2020.
• Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes (2020) to expand manufacturing.
• Employment Linked Incentive, approved in 2025 as the Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana, which rewards employers for adding formal jobs.
• PM Internship Scheme (2024) to give youth work experience in large companies.

Analysis — a balanced view

• Strength: the article correctly treats jobs, not GDP alone, as the core test of development, and links employment to social stability.
• Limitation: global job projections are uncertain; new sectors (the gig and platform economy, digital services) may create jobs that forecasts miss — though often without social security.
• Quality matters as much as quantity: India’s problem is often underemployment and informality, not only open unemployment.
• Skills mismatch: many graduates are not job-ready, so education reform is as important as job creation.

✎ Mains Practice Question

“The demographic dividend is an opportunity, not a guarantee.” Discuss the factors that threaten to turn India’s youth bulge into a demographic burden, and suggest sector-specific strategies for absorbing labour. 15 marks · 250 words

03

Disabled Citizens and the Future of AI: Building Inclusion into the System, Not After It

ImportantOpinionGS-II · Social Justice — Vulnerable Sections, Persons with DisabilitiesGS-III · S&T — Artificial IntelligencePrelims + MainsThe Hindu · Opinion

AI tools are giving many persons with disabilities new independence, but the article warns that India is deploying AI in public services, recruitment and healthcare without testing it for disability bias — repeating the old mistake of building systems first and adding accessibility later.

◈ Basics First

• Accessibility — designing buildings, websites, services and devices so that everyone, including persons with disabilities, can use them without special help.
• Universal design — designing for the widest range of users from the start, rather than adding fixes later.
• Social model of disability — disability arises mainly from barriers in society (inaccessible buildings, websites, attitudes), not only from a person’s impairment.
• Algorithmic bias — when an AI system gives worse or unfair results for some groups, usually because its training data under-represents them.

▤ Legal Framework at a Glance

• UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), 2006 — India ratified in 2007.
• Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016 — replaced the 1995 Act; recognises 21 types of disability; Section 40 (accessibility standards) and Section 42 (access to information and communication technology).
• Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities — statutory authority under the RPwD Act that monitors compliance; the article notes it penalised 155 establishments, including ministries, for inaccessible websites and apps.
• Rajive Raturi v. Union of India (November 2024) — the Supreme Court held accessibility to be part of the right to life and dignity (Article 21), found the existing rules merely advisory, and directed the Centre to frame mandatory standards within three months.
• Amar Jain v. Union of India (April 2025) — the Court held digital access (e.g. accessible e-KYC) to be part of Article 21.
• Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan), 2015 — national campaign for accessible buildings, transport and ICT.

The problem — how AI can exclude

• Biased language models — in the AccessEval benchmark, 21 language models tested across nine kinds of disability made more errors, used a more negative tone and stereotyped more when disability was mentioned.
• Biased image models — the widely used CLIP model was 15 percentage points less accurate on photos taken by blind and low-vision users; objects like a white cane or Braille display appeared up to 17 times less often in training data.
• Patronising responses — chatbots often respond to a blind person’s career question with sympathy (“I’m sorry you’re blind”) instead of advice.
• Weak existing compliance — digital accessibility has been mandatory since 2019 under the 2016 Act, yet most services still fall short; AI is being built on this weak base.

Figure 4 — AI helps, but rarely on its own

Users surveyed2,462Completed a task earlier closed to them1,313…through AI alone543…needed a staff member’s help770770 = 1,313 − 543 (derived). Survey by the author’s organisation, as cited in the article.

Fewer than half of the successful users managed with AI alone — showing the need for a human fallback.

The infrastructure angle — data centres and the grid

• The Centre is seeking about $200 billion in AI investment over two years; India’s data-centre capacity is projected to more than quadruple to 6.5 GW or more by 2030 (as cited).
• States compete with power subsidies and duty waivers; Maharashtra relaxed the renewable-energy requirement for data centres from 100% to 51%.
• Extra electricity demand can strain the grid at summer peaks, and server heat can worsen urban heat. Persons dependent on powered wheelchairs or oxygen concentrators are among the first harmed by power cuts.

Analysis — a balanced view

• AI as an enabler: screen readers, image descriptions and form-filling help are real gains; the article does not argue against AI.
• Inclusion by design: the principle “Nothing about us without us” — disabled persons should help shape AI from data collection to deployment.
• Data and consent: the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 requires verifiable consent of a lawful guardian for some persons with disabilities, so inclusive datasets must be gathered carefully and ethically.
• Implementation gap: courts have spoken clearly, but enforcement capacity and penalties remain weak.

Way forward

• Mandatory bias testing for disability in every AI system the government deploys.
• Representative training data, collected with consent, that includes the lives and tools of disabled persons.
• Human-in-the-loop support so that no citizen is left stranded when AI fails.
• Conditions on data-centre incentives — renewable sourcing and assessment of grid and heat impact.
• Align AI deployment with the IndiaAI Mission (2024) and accessibility standards such as GIGW and WCAG.

✎ Mains Practice Question

The Supreme Court has held accessibility to be a facet of the right to life with dignity. In this light, examine the risks that the rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence poses for persons with disabilities in India, and suggest safeguards for inclusive AI governance. 15 marks · 250 words