UPSC Mains Current Affairs for 9 June 2026

National Family Health Survey – Key Indicators and Changes

June 9, 2026

National Family Health Survey Latest News

The Union Health Ministry has released NFHS-6 fact sheets revealing notable gains in maternal care and child nutrition, but with a net reduction of 30 indicators, including critical metrics like anaemia, mortality, and sex ratio at birth.

About NFHS

The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is a large-scale, multi-round household survey conducted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, with the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, as the nodal agency.
It provides reliable data on population, health, and nutrition indicators.
NFHS-4 (2015-16): Introduced district-level estimates and tablet-based digital interviewing, measuring 114 indicators.
NFHS-5 (2019-21): Expanded to 131 key indicators, introducing new topics like preschool education, disability, and menstrual practices.
NFHS-6 (2023-24): Covered nearly 6.8 lakh households across all states and UTs except Manipur.
Historically, the NFHS has been additive by design, retaining previous questionnaires and adding new ones.
However, NFHS-6 marks a departure, for the first time, the survey has subtracted overall.

What NFHS-6 Gained

NFHS-6 introduced several new dimensions:
- Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT)
- Self-Help Group (SHG) memberships
- Digital literacy
- Financial transactions
- Hepatitis-B and Hepatitis-C testing among women and men
- Dried blood spot collection from children aged 4-5 for Hepatitis-B testing
- Biological HIV testing has been brought back as part of clinical and biochemical testing
Improvements in Key Indicators
- Mothers receiving at least 4 antenatal check-ups: Up about 7 percentage points from NFHS-5.
- Institutional births: Increased to 90.6% from 88.6%.
- Women's Internet use: Notable increase across states.
- Stunting among children under 5: Declined by over 6 percentage points, compared to under 3 percentage points between NFHS-4 and NFHS-5.
- Spousal violence: Dropped from 29.3% to 22.3%.
State-Level Highlights
- Health insurance coverage in West Bengal rose from 33.7% to 88.2%, the largest increase.
- Women's Internet use in Andhra Pradesh jumped from 21% to 63.6%, the steepest rise.
- However, the share of women classified as overweight or obese increased in every state.

What NFHS-6 Lost

The preliminary fact sheet of NFHS-6 has only 101 indicators, compared to 131 in NFHS-5, a net reduction of 30 indicators (43 dropped, 13 added).
Anaemia Dropped
- Anaemia had shown a worsening picture between NFHS-4 and NFHS-5:
  - - Children: 58.6% to 67.1%
    - Women aged 15-49: 53.1% to 57%
    - Pregnant women: 50.4% to 52.2%
    - The rise was near-universal, with child anaemia increasing in 28 states/UTs despite the Anaemia Mukt Bharat campaign (2018).
- Why dropped? NFHS measured haemoglobin from a finger-prick blood sample read on a portable analyser, which several nutrition researchers argued overstated anaemia compared to venous blood drawn by other surveys.
- Replacement: Anaemia will now be tracked through the Diet and Biomarkers Survey, launched in December 2022 at the ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad. This survey uses venous blood instead of the finger-prick method and tracks obesity alongside anaemia for the first time. Data collection is complete but yet to be released.
Mortality Indicators Removed
- Three mortality indicators have been cut:
  - Neonatal mortality
  - Infant mortality
  - Under-five mortality
  - These will now be tracked by the Sample Registration System (SRS), whose latest bulletin pegged infant mortality at 24 per 1,000 live births. However, SRS does not provide district-level data or socio-economic breakdowns available in NFHS.
Sex Ratio Indicators Removed
- Both the sex ratio of the total population and the sex ratio at birth (929 females per 1,000 males in NFHS-5) are absent.
- This removes a key signal of sex-selective practices in the country.
Sanitation and Clean Cooking Fuel Dropped
- Two indicators closely tied to flagship government programmes have been removed:
- Access to sanitation facilities: NFHS-5 recorded 70%, a measure linked to the Swachh Bharat Mission and the 2019 declaration of India as open defecation-free.
- Clean cooking fuel use: 58.6% in NFHS-5, a direct measure of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana's success.
Cancer Screening Indicators Gone
- Four cancer-screening indicators covering cervical, breast, and oral cancer, introduced for the first time in NFHS-5, have been dropped after a single round.

Implications of the Changes

Data Gaps: The removals leave no current survey-based national figure for:
- Infant mortality with district-level breakdowns
- Sanitation coverage
- Sex ratio at birth
- Cancer screening rates
- Comprehensive HIV knowledge
- These are gaps that no other single source fills at the same scale.
Concerns Over Programme Evaluation
- The removal of indicators tied to flagship schemes, sanitation, clean cooking fuel, anaemia, limits the ability to:
- Independently evaluate the effectiveness of programmes like Swachh Bharat Mission, Ujjwala Yojana, and Anaemia Mukt Bharat.
- Track district-level disparities that aggregate statistics cannot reveal.
- Identify socio-economic patterns in health outcomes.
Trade-offs in Survey Design
- The shift represents a fundamental change in NFHS philosophy, moving from an additive design to a more selective approach.
- While this may reduce respondent burden and improve data quality, it also reduces the survey's role as a single comprehensive source of health and demographic data.

Significance of NFHS-6 Changes

Methodological Improvements
- The dropping of finger-prick anaemia measurement in favour of venous blood methods reflects efforts to improve data accuracy.
- The reintroduction of biological HIV testing addresses a gap from NFHS-5.
New Areas of Inquiry
- The addition of digital literacy, DBT, and SHG indicators acknowledges the changing landscape of welfare delivery and women's empowerment in India.
Concerns Over Transparency
- The lack of a published rationale for many changes raises questions about:
- Transparency in survey design decisions.
- Consistency in measuring progress over time.
- Continuity of long-term data series critical for policy evaluation.

Source: TH

National Family Health Survey FAQs

Q1: How many indicators are in NFHS-6 compared to NFHS-5?

Ans: NFHS-6 has 101 indicators compared to 131 in NFHS-5 — a net reduction of 30 indicators.

Q2: Why was anaemia dropped from NFHS-6?

Ans: The finger-prick method used by NFHS was found to overstate anaemia. It will now be tracked through the Diet and Biomarkers Survey using venous blood samples.

Q3: Which mortality indicators were removed from NFHS-6?

Ans: Neonatal, infant, and under-five mortality indicators were removed; these will now be tracked by the Sample Registration System.

Q4: What new topics were added in NFHS-6?

Ans: Direct Benefit Transfers, Self-Help Group memberships, digital literacy, financial transactions, and Hepatitis-B and C testing were newly added.

Q5: Which state recorded the largest increase in health insurance coverage?

Ans: West Bengal recorded the largest increase, with household health insurance coverage rising from 33.7% to 88.2%.

What Is Holding Back Household Solar Adoption in India? The Subsidy Paradox Explained

June 9, 2026

Solar Adoption in India Latest News

India added more solar power in 2025 than any country in the world except China. Solar now accounts for nearly 30% of India's total installed electricity capacity.
Yet two flagship government schemes for decentralised solar — PM Suryaghar Yojana and PM-KUSUM — are performing well below their targets.
The article examines why, and arrives at a counter-intuitive finding: existing power subsidies are undermining solar adoption, and the solution being explored is more subsidies.

The Two Flagship Schemes

PM Suryaghar Yojana: Targets installation of rooftop solar units on one crore households. Benefits include free electricity up to 300 units per month and a cash subsidy for equipment purchase.
PM-KUSUM (Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha Evam Utthan Mahabhiyan): Targets farmers — helping them set up small solar plants on unused land or install solar water pumps for irrigation. Farmers can earn income by selling surplus solar electricity or save on diesel and pump electricity bills.
Together, both schemes carry a combined budget of roughly Rs 95,000 crore.

Achievements: How Far Have These Two Schemes Reached

Combined, the two schemes have installed about 13 GW of decentralised solar against a target of 40 GW by the end of the FY2025-26 — less than one-third of the goal.
PM-KUSUM's most successful component has been standalone off-grid solar water pumps for farmers — 10.9 lakh pumps installed against a target of 14 lakh.
The scheme, originally meant to be completed by 2022, has been extended due to pandemic disruptions.
Under PM Suryaghar, the five best-performing states — Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, and Rajasthan — account for nearly 70% of all 33 lakh rooftop installations so far.
States like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab, Bihar, and Jharkhand lag significantly.

The Central Problem: Free Electricity Kills the Incentive

When grid electricity is already free or heavily subsidised, households and farmers have no financial reason to invest in rooftop solar.
Installing a solar system requires an upfront cost of a few lakh rupees. That investment only makes financial sense if it saves you money on your electricity bill. If your bill is already near zero, the calculation simply does not work.
- The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy itself confirmed this to Parliament's Estimates Committee: one of the primary reasons for low PM Suryaghar adoption is that the effective electricity tariff for domestic consumers is near zero or actually zero in many states.
Punjab is the clearest example. It offers 300 units of free electricity to domestic consumers every month and completely free power to all agricultural tubewells.
Punjab's annual power subsidy bill exceeded Rs 20,000 crore last year — yet its adoption of both solar schemes is among the lowest in the country.
Similarly, Karnataka (Rs 27,000 crore subsidy bill) and Tamil Nadu (Rs 15,700 crore subsidy bill) show relatively poor solar scheme uptake.
In contrast, Gujarat, Kerala, and Maharashtra — which have higher electricity tariff rates, especially for large consumers — have seen much higher adoption.

The Solution: Ironically, More Subsidies

The answer some states have found is to offer additional, one-time financial incentives on top of the central scheme's benefits — making the upfront equipment purchase easier to bear.
Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, both of which already offer heavily subsidised power, have done remarkably well on PM Suryaghar and PM-KUSUM by layering extra state-level subsidies to help consumers cross the upfront cost barrier.
This is not as contradictory as it sounds. Recurring power subsidies are an unending fiscal liability for state governments — they go on forever.
A one-time equipment subsidy is a finite expenditure that eventually reduces the need for recurring subsidies.
The Estimates Committee of Parliament endorsed this logic and suggested the government explore ways to make upfront costs easier for consumers.
If PM Suryaghar is fully implemented, it is estimated to save the government approximately Rs 75,000 crore per year in electricity costs.

Why Decentralised Solar Is Increasingly Urgent

There are two structural reasons why getting households and farmers onto solar matters beyond just reducing subsidy bills.
Land scarcity for large solar parks is becoming a real constraint on India's centralised solar expansion. Decentralised generation — on rooftops and farmlands — uses space that already exists without displacing other land uses.
Hydropower is stagnating as a backup source. Traditionally, hydropower supplemented grid electricity during peak summer demand, driven by monsoon reservoir levels.
But large hydropower capacity has stopped growing, and peak electricity demands in April-May 2026 were met largely through solar power — not hydro.
In a year of low rainfall and high temperatures, which is increasingly the norm due to climate change, decentralised solar becomes a critical buffer against grid stress.

Conclusion

India aims for 500 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030. Understanding why decentralised solar schemes underperform despite large budgets is important for policy analysis.
The paradox of power subsidies undermining solar adoption illustrates the unintended consequences of poorly designed subsidy regimes.
Also, the wide variation in solar scheme performance across states reflects how state-level electricity pricing decisions can either enable or undermine central government clean energy programmes.

Source: IE

Solar Adoption in India FAQs

Q1: What Is Holding Back Household Solar Adoption in India despite government support?

Ans: What Is Holding Back Household Solar Adoption in India is largely the availability of free or heavily subsidised electricity, which reduces the financial incentive for solar investments.

Q2: How do electricity subsidies affect household solar adoption?

Ans: What Is Holding Back Household Solar Adoption in India is the fact that consumers with near-zero electricity bills see little economic benefit from rooftop solar systems.

Q3: Which government schemes aim to promote solar adoption?

Ans: What Is Holding Back Household Solar Adoption in India is being addressed through PM Suryaghar Yojana and PM-KUSUM, which provide subsidies and support for decentralised solar.

Q4: Why are some states performing better in solar adoption than others?

Ans: What Is Holding Back Household Solar Adoption in India varies across states because electricity pricing policies and additional state-level incentives significantly influence adoption rates.

Q5: Why is decentralised solar important for India's energy future?

Ans: What Is Holding Back Household Solar Adoption in India matters because decentralised solar can reduce subsidy burdens, ease land constraints, and strengthen energy security amid climate challenges.

India Revamps Its Bilateral Investment Treaty Model to Balance FDI and Sovereignty

June 9, 2026

Bilateral Investment Treaty Model Latest News

India is remodelling its Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) framework around three key principles: a minimum two-year local remedy window before international arbitration, no Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clause, and exclusion of tax-related provisions.
The Union Budget 2025-26 had announced a revamp of the existing 2016 BIT model to make it more investor-friendly.
The new model is still being finalised, with the government considering tailoring terms country-by-country.

What Is a BIT and Why Does It Matter

A Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) is an agreement between two countries to promote and protect investments made by investors of each country in the other's territory.
It gives foreign investors certain guarantees — against arbitrary treatment, expropriation without compensation, and denial of justice.
When disputes arise, BITs typically allow investors to take the host country to international arbitration.
BITs are crucial for attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). They signal to investors that the host country offers a stable, rules-based environment for investment.

India's BIT History: From 1993 to 2016

India signed BITs with 83 countries based on its 1993 model (amended in 2003). Of these, 74 were ratified.
The 1993 model allowed foreign investors to go directly to international arbitration without exhausting domestic remedies first.
A turning point came when global companies like Vodafone and Cairn Energy filed international arbitration cases against India in tax disputes — and won.
These cases exposed India to significant financial liability and raised concerns about regulatory sovereignty. India responded by overhauling its BIT framework.
The 2016 BIT model introduced a major change: foreign investors must now exhaust all domestic remedies before initiating international arbitration.
Of the 74 ratified BITs, India issued termination notices to 68 countries and asked them to renegotiate on the basis of the 2016 model.

The Three Pillars of the New Model

Two-Year Local Remedy Window
- The most debated feature of the 2016 model was the requirement to exhaust local remedies for five years before accessing international arbitration. Critics called this excessive and investor-unfriendly.
- The new model proposes reducing this to a minimum of two years. For some countries, even a one-year cooling window is being considered during ongoing negotiations. The India-UAE BIT had already reduced this to three years.
- The government's rationale is clear: India must protect its parliamentary sovereignty and judicial authority.
- International arbitration — where India has limited representation and faces discretionary decisions — should be a last resort, not the first recourse.
No Most Favoured Nation (MFN) Clause
- The MFN clause in investment treaties requires a country to extend to the treaty partner whatever favourable treatment it gives to any third country.
- If India signs a more liberal BIT with Country B, Country A can use the MFN clause to claim the same benefits.
- Removing MFN gives India flexibility to negotiate different terms with different countries based on the nature of bilateral engagement — without being locked into automatic extension of better terms across all treaties.
Taxation Kept Outside BITs
- Tax disputes — like the Vodafone and Cairn cases — triggered India's BIT crisis in the first place.
- The new model explicitly excludes tax-related provisions from BITs, insulating domestic tax policy from investor-state arbitration.
- Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reinforced this in February 2025, stating that BITs should be negotiated separately from Free Trade Agreements, by specialists with expertise in taxation and policy.

The Ongoing Debate

Critics: The Local Remedy Window Is Still Too Long
- The experts argued that the "most damaging provision" in India's BIT was the five-year local remedy requirement.
- Even the proposed two-year window, he argued, is far above global norms.
- They cited Indonesia's model — which scrapped its old BITs in 2014 and restarted with a 12-month cooling period, a three-judge panel, and a presiding judge agreed upon by both parties who cannot be a national of either country.
Government's Defence
- Chief Economic Adviser V Anantha Nageswaran responded that academic research shows weak or no relationship between individual BIT signings and FDI inflows.
- What matters is the cumulative stock of treaties — which signals an overall regime of investor protection.
- He acknowledged that the investment climate needs continuous improvement and that the BIT revision is still incomplete.
Global Trend: Moving Away from ISDS
- Many countries are moving away from Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) — the traditional model where investors can directly sue host governments in international tribunals.
- Australia and the UAE, for example, have shifted to State-to-State Dispute Settlement (SSDS) in their bilateral investment treaty, where disputes are resolved between governments rather than between investors and states.

Where Things Stand

Since the 2016 model, India has signed new BITs with Belarus, Kyrgyz Republic, Brazil (as an Investment Cooperation and Facilitation Treaty), UAE, and Uzbekistan.
A Bilateral Investment Agreement has also been signed with Taiwan (through the India Taipei Association).
The new model being developed is expected to be country-specific and flexible — with terms calibrated to the nature of each bilateral relationship — rather than a single rigid template applied universally.

Source: IE

Bilateral Investment Treaty Model FAQs

Q1: Why is India Revamps Its Bilateral Investment Treaty Model significant?

Ans: India Revamps Its Bilateral Investment Treaty Model to attract foreign investment while safeguarding regulatory autonomy, judicial authority, and parliamentary sovereignty.

Q2: What are the key changes under India Revamps Its Bilateral Investment Treaty Model?

Ans: India Revamps Its Bilateral Investment Treaty Model introduces a two-year local remedy window, removes the MFN clause, and excludes taxation matters from BIT coverage.

Q3: Why did India decide to revise its BIT framework?

Ans: India Revamps Its Bilateral Investment Treaty Model following arbitration disputes such as Vodafone and Cairn, which raised concerns about regulatory and fiscal sovereignty.

Q4: What is the debate surrounding India Revamps Its Bilateral Investment Treaty Model?

Ans: Critics argue that local remedy requirements remain lengthy, while supporters believe they protect domestic institutions and reduce excessive reliance on international arbitration.

Q5: How could India Revamps Its Bilateral Investment Treaty Model affect FDI?

Ans: India Revamps Its Bilateral Investment Treaty Model seeks to create a balanced investment environment that protects investors while preserving national policy flexibility.