Table of Contents
Today’s brief reads three articles. Harsh V. Pant of the Observer Research Foundation writes that maritime chokepoints have become instruments of coercion. E.D. Mathew in the South Asia Monitor reads the resignation of a minister as a new demand for accountability between elections. Anubhuti Raje asks why a reserved seat in a panchayat does not always carry the power of the office.
Cheap weapons in a narrow sea can now impose costs on the whole world economy.
Harsh V. Pant writes that geography has come back to the centre of world politics. His starting point is the renewed Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Two narrow seas are under pressure at the same time. The Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz carry a large part of the world’s oil and trade. Trouble in them is not only a regional matter. It reaches freight rates, insurance and the price of food in countries far away.
The record
- The Strait of Hormuz carries nearly one-fifth of globally traded oil. It also carries substantial volumes of liquefied natural gas.
- The Bab el-Mandeb is the southern gateway to the Red Sea and then the Suez Canal. It carries roughly a tenth of global maritime trade and a significant share of Gulf energy exports going to Europe.
- Pant places these two passages with the Strait of Malacca, the Taiwan Strait, the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal. Together they are the backbone of the global trading system.
- The wider conflict began with the United States and Israeli military campaign against Iran in February. Yemen became a theatre of proxy competition once again. The Bab el-Mandeb is formally open. It is now a high risk route, above all for ships linked to Saudi Arabia.
- The Houthis have used drones, precision guided missiles and small maritime platforms. Pant writes that such modest means can impose enormous costs on the global economy.
- Freight rates, insurance premiums and shipping costs have risen. Transit times are longer. Prices have gone up along supply chains.
- Europe and Asia are the most exposed, because they depend on the Suez and Red Sea corridor. Developing economies pay more for food, fertilizers, manufactured goods and energy.
- The Cape of Good Hope is the principal alternative to the Red Sea. It adds between one and two weeks to a passage between Asia and Europe.
- The Northern Sea Route across the Arctic is held back by seasonal limits, by Russian regulatory control, by insurance and by concern for the environment.
- The overland answers are the China-Europe Railway Express, the International North-South Transport Corridor, the Middle Corridor and the proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. None of them matches the Suez and Red Sea route on cost.
The argument
This is the old question of power and geography in a new form. A state does not need a large navy to hurt world trade. It needs a narrow sea and cheap weapons. Carry the case into answers on national interest, security and power, and on what military strength cannot buy. It also gives a clear case of a non-state actor with strategic weight.
For India the argument is direct. Trouble in the Red Sea raises the cost of trade with Europe and makes energy imports from the Gulf harder. Pant asks India to look past a continental view of security and to act as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean Region. He wants naval modernisation, maritime domain awareness, logistics agreements with partners and work through the Quad. That is the ground for the 2025 Paper II question on a free and open Indo-Pacific.
“Maritime chokepoints are no longer passive geographical features but active instruments of coercion.”
Harsh V. Pant
“The era of globalization defined by efficiency is giving way to one in which resilience, redundancy and maritime security shape the global order.”
Harsh V. Pant
A mandate won at an election is now being treated as a licence that can be taken back.
E.D. Mathew writes on the resignation of the Education Minister after weeks of student protest. He says the resignation is not the real story. The story is a generation that asks for answers between elections. Indian politics has long worked on one assumption. Citizens use their power on polling day, and a government is then left alone for five years. These students reject that. They hold that a government must answer every day.
The record
- Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as Education Minister after weeks of student protest over the leak of the NEET examination paper.
- The failure affected nearly two million candidates. Mathew writes that reports link it to a number of student suicides.
- The protest ran through Instagram reels watched by millions, the Cockroach Janata Party and an occupation of Jantar Mantar in Delhi. There were satirical slogans and police action against the students.
- The Cockroach Janata Party began as a sarcastic answer to a judicial remark likening unemployed young people to cockroaches.
- In many parliamentary democracies a minister resigns after a large administrative failure. Mathew calls this an accepted constitutional convention. Britain has seen cabinet resignations over smaller failures. Japan has a political culture of public apology and resignation. Sri Lanka has seen ministers leave office under public pressure.
- Mathew writes that India had become an exception. The expectation that a minister should carry the blame faded, especially after Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014.
- Earlier student movements were tied to larger causes. The movement of Jayaprakash Narayan stood against authoritarian rule. The Mandal protests reshaped the debate on reservation and social justice. The campaign of Anna Hazare against corruption produced a new party. The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act became an argument over citizenship.
- Mathew calls this the first post-ideological student movement in India. It asked for responsibility and not for revolution.
- By the general election of 2029 this generation will be the largest voting bloc in the country.
The argument
Hold on to the distinction Mathew draws. A victory at the polls gives legal authority. It does not give trust, and trust has to be renewed. He calls the mandate a licence that can be taken back. The argument belongs in answers on representative democracy, on social movements and on pressure groups.
The method is the second point. The students did not ask for a change in the Constitution and did not ask the government to fall. They asked one man to take responsibility for an administrative failure. Mathew adds that the technology cuts both ways. Narendra Modi was among the first Indian leaders to see what social media could do, and the same platforms now carry the case against the government.
“Electoral victory is not a five-year guarantee. It is a revocable licence, continuously subject to public scrutiny, competence and accountability.”
E.D. Mathew
“It has been proven that Gen Z can mobilise public opinion, compel institutional responses and impose political costs long before citizens enter polling booths.”
E.D. Mathew
Reservation puts a woman in the chair of the panchayat, and not always in charge of it.
Anubhuti Raje writes about the pradhan pati. In the panchayat the elected head is a woman. Her office is secured by the Constitution and her authority is recorded in the proceedings. In meetings and in dealings with officials it is often a male relative who speaks and decides. The law names one person as the holder of the office. Governance proceeds through another. Raje asks whether the law has kept authority where it placed it.
The record
- The practice is called pradhan pati or mukhiya pati. The husband of an elected woman village head does the work of her office in her place.
- The 73rd and 74th Amendments put women’s reservation into the structure of local self-government. Over 1.4 million women hold elected positions in panchayats. Raje calls it one of the most expansive exercises in reservation by gender anywhere in the world.
- The Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023 carries the same idea to the legislatures. Article 330A reserves seats for women in the House of the People. Article 332A reserves seats for women in the Legislative Assembly of every State. In each, as nearly as may be, one third of the seats to be filled by direct election are to be reserved for women.
- That reservation waits on the census and on delimitation. Raje calls it constitutionally recognised but deferred in time.
- The Report of the Advisory Committee on Women Pradhans is titled Transforming Women’s Representation and Role in Panchayati Raj Institutions: Efforts to Eliminate Proxy Participation. It recorded that elected women representatives are often represented by their husbands or male relatives. It asked for stringent and exemplary penalties.
- Raje takes her rule from Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws. Every man with power is apt to abuse it. Power must therefore be a check to power.
- She ends on an old rule of law, ubi jus ibi remedium. Where there is a right, there must be a remedy.
The argument
This is the answer to the question on women in local government. Reservation can place a woman in the seat. It cannot by itself hand her the authority of the seat. No rule is broken. The practice works through influence and through authority that society sanctions, which the law does not reach easily.
Two lines for an answer. The first is that the pradhan pati is not a passing feature of a young institution, because Raje finds the same separation of office from authority above the village level. The second is that a right without enforcement is left as a form and little more. Use both on the 2025 Paper I question on the obstacles to women in local governance, and on the 2024 question on the Gram Sabha.
“The seat is secure; the power it is meant to carry is not.”
Anubhuti Raje
“Until that gap is addressed, power will not disappear; it will simply relocate.”
Anubhuti Raje
Where this belongs in your syllabus
Open the note and read the full topic.
The questions this feeds
Questions from earlier years that today’s reading speaks to. Where the answer is written, the red link opens it. The full set is in the PYQ Vault.
- PSIR Paper I · 2025 · 20mEnunciate the impediments to women's participation in local governance in the process of political decentralisation.Answer
- PSIR Paper II · 2025 · 20mThe world currently has been in the throes of a twin process of 'democratic backsliding' and 'democratic backlash'. How would you explain this paradox?Answer
- PSIR Paper II · 2025 · 15mIndia maintains strong ties with countries that will assure a free and open Indo-Pacific and guarantee greater connectivity with rest of the world. Analyze.Answer
- GS-2 · 2024Discuss the geopolitical and geostrategic importance of Maldives for India with a focus on global trade and energy flows. Further also discuss how this relationship affects India's maritime security and regional stability amidst international competition?
- PSIR Paper I · 2024 · 15mGram Sabha in the Panchayati Raj system is a forum which gives expression to the collective wisdom, aspirations and the will of the people. Comment.Answer
- PSIR Paper I · 2023 · 20mDiscuss the major provisions of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act. Do you think that the Act remains an 'unfulfilled dream'? Argue your case.Answer