Urban local bodies, a fragmenting world order, and the standing of international law — PSIR & GS2 Brief, 11 August 2026

In Brazil the city is a level of government. In India it is a level of administration.

Ramanath Jha compares urban local bodies in the two countries. Both were colonies. Both are founding members of BRICS. But Brazil became a city country much earlier. It reached an urbanisation rate of 32 percent around 1940. India reached the same level, 31.16 percent, only in 2011. By 2025 Brazil was 88 percent urban, with a population of about 214 million.

The facts that matter

• The Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, 1988 deals with municipalities at length. Article 18 gives urban local bodies political, administrative and financial autonomy, and places them on an equal constitutional footing with the states and the Union. A state cannot interfere in a matter the Constitution has given to the municipality.
• The Constitution also names the taxes a municipality may collect, and makes transfers from the federal and state governments compulsory.
• The mayor is elected by the people and is the chief executive of the city. The term is four years. The mayor prepares the budget, places it before the city council and carries it out once approved.
• The City Statute, 2001 added public meetings and popular initiative to the making of planning laws. It also brought in participatory budgeting, which began in Porto Alegre in 1989 and later spread to other countries.
• In India, before the Constitution Seventy-fourth Amendment Act, 1992, urban local bodies were created by state legislatures under the State List of the Seventh Schedule. The Constitution said nothing about them.
• The Amendment gave them a five-year term and a State Election Commission to hold their elections. Dissolving an elected body was made difficult.
• But the municipal commissioner, appointed by the state, remained the chief executive. Functions and finances stayed with the state. City plans still require the state’s approval.

Why it matters for PSIR

Two different things are being called by one name. Brazil gave its cities powers of their own, with the money and the staff to use them. India gave its cities work to do and kept the powers with the state. The first is self-government. The second is only administration.

This changes the answer a student writes. The common argument is that the 73rd and 74th Amendments were not carried out properly. Jha’s comparison points at the drafting itself. The Amendment left functions, funds and functionaries with the state, so the third tier could not become a government even where a state was willing.

Use it in questions on grassroots democracy, and in the federalism answer on why the third tier is the weakest of the three.

The four supports of the post-Cold War order have weakened. Strategic autonomy is now a question of capacity.

Prerna Gandhi writes that the calm of the years after 1991 was rare in human history, and that it rested on four things holding at the same time: military preeminence of the United States, dominance of the dollar, the scale of Chinese manufacturing, and stable maritime commons. Countries could plan for efficiency because the international system carried the security cost. That is no longer the case.

The facts that matter

• The IMF used the term geoeconomic fragmentation in 2023. It does not mean that trade will shrink. It means that trade will be reorganised for reasons of national security, and that the reorganisation will differ from country to country and from sector to sector.
• NITI Aayog launched the DPI@2047 roadmap in April 2026. The goal it sets is an economy of 30 trillion dollars with a per capita income of 18,000 dollars by 2047.
• The Indian Ocean overlooks one third of India’s periphery. The nine coastal states contribute about half of India’s GDP.
• The author reads statecraft of the present day through the four Kautilyan principles of saam, daam, dand and bhed.

Why it matters for PSIR

The article gives a structure for the standard question on the changing world order. Name the four supports, then show which of them has given way. That is a firmer answer than a list of trends.

It also changes what strategic autonomy means. Under non-alignment it was a position India took. Here it is a capacity India has to build, in critical technologies, in manufacturing and in defence production. A country that cannot make a thing cannot refuse to buy it.

This is the material for the 2024 question that speaks of “multi-alignment”.

Violations of international law are reported. Compliance is not.

Ukraine, Gaza and West Asia have made international institutions look powerless, and the common verdict is that international law is dead. The article holds that this verdict measures the wrong thing. Breaches are few and loud. Compliance is large and silent, and it does not become news.

The facts that matter

• Abram Chayes and Antonia Handler Chayes explained obedience in this manner. States keep to a treaty less from fear of punishment and more because of the working of the treaty regime itself, which makes them report, explain and meet again.
• Law-making has not stopped. The High Seas Treaty, the efforts towards pandemic preparedness and the United Nations convention against cybercrime all belong to the present.

Why it matters for PSIR

There is an argument here that a student can use as it stands. A state that breaks a rule still defends itself by naming a rule. It claims self-defence, or sovereignty, or humanitarian law. Nobody prepares such a defence in a court he believes has been abolished. The plea admits the law even while breaking it.

For India and for the developing countries the point is practical. A rules-based order lets a middle power argue its case. Without it, disputes are settled by strength, and India is not the strongest party in most rooms in which it sits.