Daily News Capsules
1. Draft deepfake rules not practical: Industry body
The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), a key industry body whose members include Google, Meta, Zomato, Airbnb, Amazon, Apple, Jio, Airtel, and Netflix, has warned that the government’s proposed law
amendments to regulate deepfakes and AI-generated content, or synthetically generated information (SGI), are “unimplementable and would undoubtedly result in large-scale disruptions to various segments of India’s digital economy.” A key concern large social media companies have is rule 4(1A), which requires significant social media intermediaries to obtain user declarations on whether content is synthetically generated, deploy technical measures to verify those declarations, and ensure that such content is clearly labelled. IAMAI said that verifying user declarations on every post is not technically feasible and conflicts with India’s “actual knowledge” standard and safe harbour protections, as laid out by the Supreme Court in the Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. It would also slow down user experience, create privacy risks, and incentivise platforms to over-censor content to avoid penalties, said the body. It also noted that existing laws already address SGI, empowering intermediaries to remove unlawful content, including deepfakes, and impersonations. Further, it said the government’s proposed definition of SGI is too broad and vague. IAMAI also found the mandatory labelling requirement, including visible or audible watermarks covering at least 10% of the content, to be premature and impractical. Lastly, the submission said the amendments blur the line between platforms that host third-party content (like social media sites) and those that generate content using their own AI tools. In closing, IAMAI noted that the proposed amendments contradict MeitY’s own India AI Governance Guidelines, which recommend the setting up a multi-stakeholder expert committee to first develop and test global standards for content provenance and authentication.
Possible Question
Evaluate the regulatory and technological trade-offs involved in mandating provenance labelling, watermarking, and user declarations for AI-generated content. How can India design a feasible oversight system without undermining safe-harbour protections and digital innovation?
2. Notify Saranda sanctuary, top court tells Jharkhand
The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Jharkhand government to notify the Saranda Wildlife Sanctuary across an area of over 31,000 hectares of forest land. A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan R Gavai and justice K Vinod Chandran said the notification must be issued within three months, covering 31,468.25 hectares of pristine forest — home to some of the world’s finest Sal trees and a rich array of wildlife — in West Singhbhum district. It clarified that essential public infrastructure like schools, dispensaries, and road and rail lines would remain protected, and directed the state to publicise this fact to allay fears among tribal and forest-dwelling communities. The order makes Saranda the first sanctuary in India to be notified on the direction of the Supreme Court. The bench relied on a 1968 Bihar government notification declaring the area as Saranda Game Sanctuary under the then Bihar Forest, Hunting, Shooting and Fishing Rules, 1958. The court excluded six forest compartments from the sanctuary’s limits for mining, but made it clear that no mining activity can take place in the remaining area or within the one-kilometre eco-sensitive zone around it, reiterating its April 2023 judgment in the batch of TN Godavarman cases. The judgment was delivered in the long-running Godavarman forest conservation case, following an application by Jharkhand resident Daya Shankar Srivastava, who alleged rampant mining in the ecologically fragile Saranda region despite a July 2022 National Green Tribunal direction to declare it a sanctuary.
Possible Question
Discuss the legal, ecological and socio-economic considerations involved in notifying forest areas as wildlife sanctuaries under judicial direction. How can conservation imperatives be balanced with tribal rights and legitimate development needs?
3. India won’t recognise or accept decision on IWT in Vienna: Official
India will not accept any decisions, including “proceedings” or “award”, by the Vienna-based Permanent Court of Arbitration on the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan as the pact remains in “abeyance”, an official aware of the matter said on Thursday, requesting anonymity. On Wednesday, Pakistan said it would go ahead with the next phase of neutral expert proceedings on the treaty slated to begin in Vienna next week, PTI reported. “Since the government of India has kept the Indus treaty in abeyance, India will consider any decision arising out of the proceedings in the Court of Arbitration as null and void. The Government of India doesn’t recognise or accept the so-called court of arbitration,” the official said. The proceedings under a neutral expert, Michel Lino, set to begin next week, are administered by the Vienna office of the arbitration court. According to the agenda for the proceedings, the court-administered neutral expert will look into Pakistan’s objections on India’s construction of two hydroelectric projects, the Kishanganga plant on the Kishanganga river and the Ratle power project on the Chenab river. Both projects are seen as critical for India’s power sector. On June 27, the Vienna court issued a supplemental award on its competence, but on the same day, India called it a “serious breach” of the treaty itself. “Consequently, the external affairs ministry had issued a statement in June that any proceedings before this forum and any decision are also, for that reason, illegal,” the official said.
Possible Question
In light of India’s decision to keep the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance and reject the competency of the Court of Arbitration proceedings in Vienna, examine the legal and strategic rationale behind India’s stance.
4. Trump signs bill to end shutdown
US President Donald Trump signed a bill to end the longest federal shutdown in US history on Thursday. The 43-day funding freeze had paralysed Washington and left hundreds of thousands of workers unpaid while Republicans and Democrats played a high-stakes blame game. The Republican-led House of Representatives voted on Wednesday, largely along party lines, to approve a Senate-passed package that will reopen federal departments and agencies, as many Democrats fume over what they see as a capitulation by party leaders. Trump lashed out at Democrats as he put his signature to the bill later in the Oval Office, urging Americans to remember the chaos when voting in the hotly contested US midterm elections in a year’s time. The package funds military construction, veterans’ affairs, the Department of Agriculture, and Congress itself through next fall, and the rest of government through the end of January when lawmakers will again need to reach a funding agreement. Around 670,000 furloughed civil servants will report back to work, and a similar number who were kept at their posts with no compensation — including more than 60,000 air traffic controllers and airport security staff — will get back pay. Several federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, told their staff to return to the office on Thursday, according to US media. Travel delays looked set to improve but not disappear with almost 1,000 flights cancelled on Thursday, according to tracking website FlightAware. The deal also restores federal workers fired by Trump during the shutdown.
Possible Question
Examine how prolonged federal shutdowns in the United States affect administrative continuity, workforce morale, and crisis-response capacity. How is the Indian system different?
5. ‘97% of listeners can’t tell AI music from human-composition’
A staggering 97% of listeners cannot distinguish between artificial intelligence generated and human-composed songs, a Deezer–Ipsos survey showed on Wednesday, underscoring growing concerns that AI could upend how music is created, consumed and monetised. The findings of the survey, for which Ipsos polled 9,000 participants across eight countries, including the US, Britain and France, highlight rising ethical concerns in the music industry as AI tools capable of generating songs raise copyright concerns and threaten the livelihoods of artists. The study found that 73% of respondents supported disclosure when AI-generated tracks are recommended, 45% sought filtering options, and 40% said they would skip AI-generated songs entirely. Around 71% expressed surprise at their inability to distinguish between human-made and synthetic tracks. Deezer, which has 9.7 million subscribers, has seen daily AI music submissions rise to more than 50,000 — about a third of total uploads, up sharply from 18% in April. It has introduced tagging and excluded AI produced tracks from editorial playlists and algorithmic recommendations to promote transparency. “We believe strongly that creativity is generated by human beings, and they should be protected,” Deezer CEO Alexis Lanternier told Reuters, urging transparency. Lanternier noted the complexity of implementing differential payout structures for AI music, stating a “massive change” in remuneration policies remains challenging.
Possible Question
Critically assess the implications of AI-generated music for copyright frameworks, cultural industries, and creator remuneration. Should regulators differentiate between human and synthetic creativity in policy design?
Editorial Snapshots
A. Responding to the Delhi blast
As investigations progress in the Red Fort blast case, in which at least 10 people were killed when a car laden with explosives blew up near the monument in the national capital on Monday, November 10, three aspects deserve consideration. The first is the measured and responsible way in which the State has reacted to the blast. It was not quick to label the blast a terror attack, but focused on gathering the facts first. The authorities waited till they had enough proof before linking the blast to the seizure of a huge tranche of explosive material from Faridabad a day earlier. All through, there has been no sabre rattling, no bravado, no calling out of Pakistan. Indeed, this is the way it must always be — but it rarely is in the heat of the moment. The second is the gaps the blast has shown up in Delhi’s own security net. The last terror attack in the national capital was in 2011, and it is only natural for some degree of complacency to have crept in over the years, even as the challenges and threats have multiplied. Like all police forces, the Delhi Police are woefully short-staffed; and despite the overwhelming number of CCTV cameras in the Capital — more than in any other Indian city — there isn’t much effort on visual surveillance. A review (and upgrade, if required) is called for. The third is the worrying level of radicalisation on display among members of the Pulwama Faridabad module (as some intelligence agencies have termed the cell). Highly educated, with good career prospects, and seemingly well-integrated, members of the module do not fit the image of the everyday terrorist. Many of those arrested, including a woman operative, are doctors. Even as investigative agencies focus on the arms seized from members of the module, the sources of their finances, and the people they were communicating with, they would do well to understand their motivations — and how they were radicalised.
Possible Question
Analyse India’s capacity for rapid, evidence-based investigation of urban mass-casualty incidents. How have policing, intelligence and digital-forensics systems evolved?
B. Trump rethinks H-1B visa stance
It was TACO (Trump always chickens out) time again, as US President Donald Trump dialled down the emphasis on the immigration of skilled workers into the US. Less than two months after he raised H-1B visa fees to a prohibitive $100,000 — this amount is higher than the median wage for entry-level H-1B employees — Trump has accepted that the US cannot do without skilled migrants from other countries. To be sure, Trump’s initial H-1B bombshell was diluted much earlier when his administration clarified that those shifting their US visa status to H-1B — this would include university students in the US — need not pay the high fees. Trump’s change of stance is perfectly rational. The US and its blue-collar workforce are right about America’s decline as a manufacturing power, a position which they first ceded to the Japanese, and eventually to the Chinese. But the US as a whole has undergone anything but economic decline, not just in the realm of finance but also, cutting-edge science and technology. A lot of this success has come from the work done by skilled migrants of other nationalities in the US who have either studied in America or migrated there to pursue better employment opportunities. Asia, primarily China and India, but also other smaller countries, has been the main supply line of skilled workers in the US, as was reported in these pages a couple of days ago. For a country like India, which has been the biggest beneficiary of the H-1B visa programme by a distance and is also one of the biggest sources of international students in the US, all this is good news. This, however, should not lead to complacency but yet another lesson that there is no other option but a continuous, patient and nimble engagement with Trump’s America.
Possible Question
Analyse how India can leverage global mobility trends to strengthen domestic innovation capacity. What policy changes are needed in higher education, research funding and talent retention to reduce dependence on external labour markets?
Fact of the day
India logged most TB cases in 2024 but mortality rate, new cases down: India accounted for the highest number of tuberculosis (TB) cases in 2024, the WHO Global Tuberculosis Report 2025 said. Quoting the same report, the government of India said that new cases emerging each year reduced by 21% — from 237 per lakh population in 2015 to 187 per lakh population in 2024 – at almost double the pace of the decline observed globally. This is one of the highest declines in TB incidence globally, outpacing reductions noted among other high-burden countries, the government said in a statement.
Geographically, most people who developed TB in 2024 were in the WHO regions of South-East Asia (34%), the Western Pacific (27%) and Africa (25%), with smaller proportions in the Eastern Mediterranean (8.6%), the Americas (3.3%) and Europe (1.9%), the report said. The 30 high-TB burden countries accounted for 87% of all estimated cases worldwide, with eight of these countries accounting for two-thirds (67%) of the global total. India registered the highest, 25%, of these cases, followed by Indonesia (10%), the Philippines (6.8%), China (6.5%), and Pakistan (6.3%), the report said. The government, however, pointed to the surge in the country’s treatment coverage to over 92% in 2024, from 53% in 2015, with 26.18 lakh TB patients diagnosed in 2024, out of an estimated 27 lakh cases. The statement also said that India’s TB mortality rate has decreased from 28 per lakh population in 2015 to 21 per lakh population in 2024, reflecting significant progress in reducing deaths due to TB.
