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DEFINITIONS

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 DEFINITIONS

INDEX
ECONOMY......................................................................................................................................................... 4
Primary Sector ......................................................................................................................................... 4
Allied sectors ........................................................................................................................................... 4
Food Security and PDS ........................................................................................................................... 4
Land reforms ........................................................................................................................................... 4
Inclusive Growth and Development ........................................................................................................ 5
Poverty .................................................................................................................................................... 5
Secondary sector ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Tertiary sector ......................................................................................................................................... 5
Mobilization of resources ........................................................................................................................ 5
Banking and Money Market .................................................................................................................... 6
National Income and Accounting ............................................................................................................ 6
Taxation................................................................................................................................................... 6
Government Budgeting and Fiscal Policy ............................................................................................... 6
Infrastructure & Energy .......................................................................................................................... 7
Miscellanous ........................................................................................................................................... 7

SOCIAL ISSUES & SOCIAL JUSTICE ......................................................................................................... 9

Regionalism............................................................................................................................................. 9
Communalism ......................................................................................................................................... 9
Secularism ............................................................................................................................................... 9
Urbanization ............................................................................................................................................ 9
Globalization ........................................................................................................................................... 9
Women .................................................................................................................................................... 9
Health .................................................................................................................................................... 10
Education............................................................................................................................................... 10
Hunger, Poverty and Inequality ............................................................................................................ 11
Vulnerable Sections............................................................................................................................... 11
Miscellaneous ........................................................................................................................................ 11

ENVIRONMENT ............................................................................................................................................. 12
Climate Change ..................................................................................................................................... 12
Pollution and Waste Management ......................................................................................................... 12
Environment degradation ...................................................................................................................... 13
Water and its Conservation ................................................................................................................... 13
Energy – Renewable and Non-renewable ............................................................................................. 13
Environment Impact Assessment .......................................................................................................... 14
Disaster Management ............................................................................................................................ 14

INTERNAL SECURITY ................................................................................................................................. 16

Defense .................................................................................................................................................. 16
Terrorism ............................................................................................................................................... 16
Left Wing Extremism ............................................................................................................................ 16
Organized Crime ................................................................................................................................... 16
Cyber Security ....................................................................................................................................... 16
Miscellaneous ........................................................................................................................................ 17

POLITY............................................................................................................................................................. 18
Democracy ............................................................................................................................................ 18
Constitution ........................................................................................................................................... 18
Significant Provisions ........................................................................................................................... 18
Parliament ............................................................................................................................................. 19

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 DEFINITIONS
Federalism ............................................................................................................................................. 19
Judiciary ................................................................................................................................................ 20
Elections ................................................................................................................................................ 21
Miscellaneous ........................................................................................................................................ 21

GOVERNANCE ............................................................................................................................................... 22
General .................................................................................................................................................. 22
Civil Services ........................................................................................................................................ 22
Social Audit ........................................................................................................................................... 22
Custodial Violence ................................................................................................................................ 22
Citizen Charter ...................................................................................................................................... 22
SHGs ..................................................................................................................................................... 22
Civil Society .......................................................................................................................................... 22
Miscellaneous ........................................................................................................................................ 23

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY .................................................................................................................. 24

Biotechnology and Health Sciences ...................................................................................................... 24
Health and associated technologies ....................................................................................................... 24
IT and Communication Technology...................................................................................................... 25
Super Computers ................................................................................................................................... 25
R&D and IPR ........................................................................................................................................ 25
Miscellaneous ........................................................................................................................................ 26

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ................................................................................................................. 27

GEOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................................. 28

WORLD HISTORY ......................................................................................................................................... 30

ETHICS ............................................................................................................................................................. 31

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 DEFINITIONS
ECONOMY
Primary Sector
• Irrigation: It is the controlled application of water through man-made systems to meet the water
requirements of agriculture.
• E-Agriculture: It refers to designing, developing and applying innovative ways to ICT with focus on
agriculture and food including fisheries, forestry and livestock.
• Contract Farming: Agreement between farmers and processing/marketing firms for production and supply
of agricultural products under forward agreements, frequently at predeterminedprices.
• GM Crops: Plants in which DNA is modified using genetic engineering methods. Currently, Bt cotton is the
only GM crop legally permissible to be grown in India.
• Minimum Support Price: It is the rate at which the government purchases crops from farmers, and is based
on a calculation of at least one-and-a-half times the cost of production incurred by the farmers.
• Agricultural Marketing: It comprises all operations involved in the movement of farm produce from the
producer to the ultimate consumer such as collecting, grading, processing, transportation and financing.
• Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS): These are village level cooperative credit societies that
serve as the last link in a three-tier cooperative credit structure headed by the State Cooperative Banks.
• Organic Farming: It is based on a system of cultivation that makes optimal use of natural resources without
the use of chemicals.
• Zero Based Natural Farming (ZBNF): It is a farming method that uses on-farm resources to increase
soil productivity and reduce costs.
• Green revolution: Refers to a period when Indian Agriculture was converted into an industrial system
due to the adoption of modern methods such as the use of HYV seeds, pesticides and fertilizers.
• Green revolution 2.0: It places an emphasis on sustainability by promoting less water-intensive crops,
introducing water pricing mechanisms, and addressing unsustainable practices.
• Evergreen revolution: It is a concept that aims to increase agricultural productivity without causing
ecological harm.
• Integrated Farming System: A sustainable agricultural system that integrates livestock, crop
production, fish, poultry, tree. crops, plantation crops and other systems that benefit each other.
• Crop diversification: Addition of new crops or cropping systems to agricultural production on a
particular farm.
• Watershed management: It is a comprehensive approach to manage and protect the natural resources
in a specific geographical area of watershed.
• Fertigation: It is the technique of supplying dissolved fertiliser to crops through an irrigation system.
• Total factor productivity: It measures the efficiency with which inputs are utilised. An increase in TFP
would mean that inputs are more efficiently utilised through improved management techniques.

Allied sectors
• Horticulture: It is the science and art of growing plants for food, medicine, or aesthetic purposes.
• Horticulture Plus: Within horticulture, there are specific crops that can be considered as
“Horticulture Plus”. These include flowers, cashew, cocoa, mushrooms, spices and aromatics, etc
• Sericulture: Sericulture, or silk farming, is the cultivation of silkworms to produce silk.

Food Security and PDS

• Public Distribution System: It is a Government-run program for distributing essential commodities
to vulnerable sections of society.
• Buffer Stock: It refer to a pool of certain commodities like Rice, Wheat, etc which are maintained to
provide food security and tackle unforeseen emergencies like drought, famine, etc.

Land reforms
• Land titling: Land titling is a land reform process that grants formal property rights to individuals
and families who have used or occupied land informally.

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 DEFINITIONS
• Land Banks: These are quasi-governmental entities created by the government to effectively manage
and repurpose an inventory of underused, abandoned, or foreclosed property.
• Land pooling: It is a process where landowners voluntarily consolidate their land parcels to develop
infrastructure or urban projects.

Inclusive Growth and Development

• Inclusive Growth: Economic growth that is distributed fairly across society and creates opportunities for all.
It includes providing equality of opportunity, empowering people through education and skill development.
• Financial Inclusion: Process of ensuring access to affordable and appropriate financial products and
services like bank accounts, credit, insurance, and payments for all sections of society.
• Jobless growth: It is when the economy experiences growth but unemployment remains stubbornly high.
• Gig Economy: It is an economic model wherein the firms hire workers on a part-time flexiblebasis rather
than as full time employees.
• Universal Basic Income: It is an income support mechanism typically intended to reach all or a very large
portion of the population regardless of their earnings or employment status.
• Income inequality: Income inequality refers to how unevenly income is distributed throughout a population.
• Intra-generational equity: Refers to the distribution of resources and opportunities within a single
generation.
• Inter-generational equity: Refers to the distribution of resources and opportunities across different
generations.

Poverty
• Absolute Poverty: Defined as lacking the basic means to survive i.e. food, safe drinking water,
Sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information.
• Relative Poverty: When people in a country do not enjoy a certain minimum level of living standards
as compared to the rest of the population.
• Situational Poverty: Poverty caused because of adversities such as earthquakes, floods, illness etc.
• Generational Poverty: Poverty handed over to individuals from their generations.
• Multi-dimensional Poverty: It is made up of multiple factors such as poor health, lack of education,
inadequate living standard etc.

Secondary sector
• Special Economic Zones: It is an area within a country that offers fiscal concessions, different
business and commercial laws to encourage investment and create employment.
• Food Processing: It is mainly defined as a process of value addition to the agricultural or
horticultural produce by various methods such as grading, sorting and packaging.

Tertiary sector
• Fintech: Fintech refers to businesses that use technology to enhance or automate financial services
and processes.

Mobilization of resources
• Asset monetization: It is the process of creating new/alternative sources of revenue by unlocking the
economic value of underutilized public assets.
• Disinvestment: Disinvestment means sale or liquidation of assets by the government, usually Central
and state public sector enterprises, projects, or other fixed assets.
• Off budget financing: Refers to expenditure undertaken by PSUs through market borrowings based
upon guarantee of repayment of loans given by Government.
• Fiscal federalism: It refers to how federal, state, and local governments share funding and
administrative responsibilities within India’s federal system.

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 DEFINITIONS
Banking and Money Market
• Microfinance: It is a form of financial service which provides small loans and other financial services to poor and
low-income households. In India, all loans that are below Rs. 1 lakh can be considered as microloans.
• Balance of payments: It is a systematic record of economic transactions made by residents of a country with
other country in a specific time frame.
• Bad banks: A bad bank is a financial entity set up to buy Non-Performing Assets (NPAs), or Bad Loans,
from banks.
• Bank recapitalization: It is the process of injecting capital into state-run banks to help them meet capital
adequacy norms and strengthen their financial position.
• NPA: NPA means interest or principal is not repaid by the borrower during a specified time period (‘overdue’
for a period of 90 days).
• Restructured loans: Assets which got an extended repayment period, reduced interest rate, converting a part
of the loan into equity, providing additional financing, or some combination of these measures.
• Central Bank Digital Currency: Form of digital currency issued by a country's central bank. They are
similar to cryptocurrencies, except that their value is fixed by the central bank and equivalent to the country's
fiat currency.

National Income and Accounting

• Monetization of deficit: It refers to monetary support by RBI extending to centre as part of government’s
borrowing programme i.e. central bank directly purchasing government bonds in primary market providing
the government with money which will then fund the deficit.
• Public finance: Public finance is the management of a country's revenue, expenditures, and debt through
various Government, quasi-government institutions, policies, and tools.
• Corporate Social Responsibility: It is referred as a corporate initiative to assess and take responsibility for
the company's effects on the environment and impact on social welfare and to promote positive social and
environmental change.
• Deflation: A reduction in the general level of prices, linked to a reduction in the level of economic activity
in the economy.
• Potential GDP: The maximum level of output or real GDP that an economy can sustain without generating
inflationary pressures.
• Gross Fixed Capital Formation: It refers to the growth in the size of fixed capital in an economy.

Taxation
• GST: It is an indirect tax imposed on the supply of goods and services. It is a multi-stage, destination-
oriented tax imposed on every value addition, replacing multiple indirect taxes.
• Dividend distribution tax: It is a tax charged on dispersed earnings or dividends that the corporation
deducts before a dividend distribution to shareholders.

Government Budgeting and Fiscal Policy

• Capital Budget: The Capital Budget is an account of the assets as well as liabilities of the central
government, which takes into consideration changes in capital.
• Revenue budget: Revenue budget comprise revenue receipts and expenditure met from these revenues.
• Zero Based Budgeting: It refers to planning and preparing the Budget right from the basic (zerobase). The
process involves review of the expenditures incurred by every department each year. It considers current
expectations. On the basis of this, expenditures are allocated and revenues are estimated for the next period.
• Gender Budgeting: It means preparing budgets from gender perspective. It aims at dealing with budgetary
gender issues including gender hierarchies and gender pay gap.
• Free trade: Free trade occurs when goods and services can be bought and sold between countries or sub-
national regions without tariffs, quotas or other restrictions being applied.
• Devaluation: A reduction in the value of a currency relative to other currencies.
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 DEFINITIONS
• Protectionism: The use of tariffs, quotas and other measures to restrict imports, supposedly to protect
domestic industries.
• Non-tariff barriers: Rules, regulations or practices that hinder imports through, for instance, govt.
procurement policies, systematic border delays, or complex health and national standards.
• Most favoured nation (MFN): It is a treatment accorded to a trade partner to ensure non- discriminatory
trade between two countries vis-a-vis other trade partners. Under WTO rules, if a country grants someone a
special favour such as lower customs duty rate for one of their products, it must do the same for all other
WTO members.
• Import substitution: It is a strategy under trade policy that abolishes the import of foreign products and
encourages production in the domestic market. Its purpose is to change the economic structure of the country
by replacing foreign goods with domestic goods.
• Free trade agreement: It is an agreement between two or more countries to lower import and exporttariffs. It
allows products and services to be bought and sold across international borders with little orno restrictions from
the government in the form of taxes, subsidies, quotas, or prohibitions.
• Corruption: A failure to carry out ‘proper’ or public responsibilities because of the pursuit of private gain,
usually involving bribery or misappropriation
• Fiscal consolidation: It refers to the government's efforts to reduce its budget deficit and stabilize its debt
levels relative to the size of the economy.

Infrastructure & Energy

• Priority sector lending (PSL): Priority Sector refers to those sectors which are consider as important for the
development of the basic needs of the country and they may notget timely and adequate credit and priority
lending to those sectors is called PSL.
• Smart cities: It is one which has basic infrastructure, uses ‘smart’ solutions to make infrastructure and
services better.

Miscellanous
• Blue economy: It refers to sustainable use of marine resources for exploration, economic growth, improved
livelihoods while preserving the health of marine and coastal ecosystems.
• Circular economy: It is a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing,
repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible.
• Monetized economy: It is an economy where goods and services are bought and sold using money as the
medium of exchange.
• Digital economy: It refers to the economic activities that emerge from connecting individuals, businesses,
devices, data and operations through digital technology.
• Internationalization of Rupee: It is a process that involves increasing use of the local currency in cross-
border transactions.
• Economic Nationalism: It is an ideology that prioritizes government intervention in the economy to protect
and strengthen a nation's economy.
• Hindu rate of growth: It is a term used to describe the lower rate of economic growth observed in the Indian
economy during the 1950s to 1980s.
• Foreign direct investment: It is an investment made by a firm or individual in one country into business
interests located in another country.
• Foreign portfolio investment: It refers to the purchase and holding of a wide array of foreign financial assets
by investors seeking to invest in a country outside their own.
• Informal Economy: It represents enterprises that are not registered, where employers do notprovide
social security to employees.
• Monetary policy transmission: It is the process by which monetary policy decisions like changes in interest
rates or reserve requirements affect the economy and price levels.
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 DEFINITIONS
• Bilateral netting: Bilateral netting is the process of consolidating all swap agreements betweentwo parties
into one single, or master, agreement.
• Swiss challenge method: It is a procurement method used in public projects where a proposal is invited from
a private entity for a public project. Once this proposal is submitted, it is made public, and other interested
parties are invited to submit counter proposals
• Social stock exchange: It is a platform that helps organizations working for social welfare toraise capital
via debt, equity and mutual funds. This idea was mooted in Union Budget 2019-20.
• Global Value chain: It is the international production sharing, where production is broken intofunctional
activities carried out in different countries
• Demographic Dividend: Demographic dividend means, the economic growth potential that can result from
shifts in a population’s age structure. India has one of the youngest populations (62.5% of its population in
the age group 15-59) in an aging world.
• Digital Divide: It is the gap that exists between individuals who have access to modern ICT and those who
lack access. It also means discrepancy between those who have the skills, knowledge and abilities to use
the technologies and those who do not.
• Globalisation: Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people,companies, and
governments of different nations, driven by international trade and investment and aided by information
technology.
• Resource curse/Paradox of Plenty: It is the phenomenon of countries with an abundance of natural
resources having less economic growth, less democracy, or worse development outcomesthan countries with
fewer natural resources.
• Customs union: An arrangement whereby a number of states establish a common external tariffagainst the
rest of the world, usually whilst abolishing internal tariffs.
• Common market: An area, comprising a number of states, within which there is a free movement of labour
and capital, and a high level of economic harmonization; sometimes called asingle market.
• Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT): These are reciprocal agreements between two countries to promote and
protect foreign private investments in each other's territories.

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 DEFINITIONS

SOCIAL ISSUES & SOCIAL JUSTICE

Regionalism
• Regionalism: Regionalism is the expression of a common sense of identity and purpose by people
within a specific geographical region, united by its unique language, culture etc.
• Supra-State regionalism: It involves regional divisions on a larger scale, such as the North versus
South India divide.
• Inter-State regionalism: This type revolves around disputes between states, often related to resources
like river water disputes.
• Sub-regionalism: It is the emergence of regionalism within a state, like the demand for Vidarbha in
Maharashtra or Saurashtra in Gujarat.

Communalism
• Communalism: It is a belief that because a group of people follow a particular religion they have
common social, political and economic interests.
• Religiousness/Religiosity: Religiosity is the totality of religious beliefs, values, practices and rituals.

Secularism
• Secularism: It is an ideology that emphasizes the separation of religion and the state and the neutrality
of the government with respect to religious beliefs.

Urbanization
• Urbanization: It refers to the process by which a growing proportion of a population comes to live in
cities and other urban areas and the ways in which this affects society and the environment.
• Urban agglomeration: A continuous urban area of the city/town and also the suburban fringe/rural
areas lying within the administrative boundaries of a nearby town/city.
• Over urbanization: refers to urbanization where the urban areas are excessively developed, and the
natural resources are over-utilized.
• Suburbanization: Process where the urban areas are growing outwards, and the rural areas are
becoming urbanized.
• Counter urbanization: It refers to the movement of people and businesses from urban to rural areas.

Globalization
• Globalization: Process of increasing interaction and integration between people, companies, and
governments around the world.
• De-globalization and reverse globalization: Refers to the process of reducing or reversing the level
of global integration and interdependence among countries and economies.
• McDonaldization: It is the way in which the principles that fast-food chains use to succeed are
applied to the world at large.

Women
• Gender Discrimination: Gender discrimination means discrimination based on a person's gender or
sex, which more often affects girls and women.
• Gender Divide: The disparity between different genders in society in the fields of social, politics and
economics.
• Glass ceiling: Metaphorical invisible barrier that prevents certain individuals from being promoted to
managerial- and executive-level positions within an organization or industry.
• Surrogacy: Surrogacy is an arrangement in which a woman carries and delivers a child for another
couple or person.

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 DEFINITIONS
• Altruistic surrogacy: It generally refers only to those arrangements in which the surrogate does not receive
compensation for her services beyond reimbursement for medical costs and other reasonable expenses.
• Female labour force participation: It is a ratio of the number of women who are part of the labour force to
the number of women in the working age.
• Care Economy: It is the sector of the economy that provides care and support services, including paid and
unpaid work.
• Gender equality: It refers to the equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of all genders.
• Gender equity: Gender equity is the process of being fair to women and men according to their respective
needs.
• Women’s empowerment: It is the process of giving women the power and control to make their own choices,
and to influence social change.

Health
• Health: It is a state of complete physical,mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of
disease or infirmity, physical, mentaland social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or
infirmity.
• One Health approach: It is a collaborative effort to improve the health of people, animals, and the
environment. It acknowledges that the health of these groups is interconnected and interdependent.
• Malnutrition: Malnutrition refers to deficiencies or excesses in nutrient intake, imbalance of essential
nutrients or impaired nutrient utilization.
• Herd immunity: Resistance to the spread of an infectious disease within a population that is based on
pre-existing immunity of a high proportion of individuals as a result of previous infection or vaccination.
• Rare Diseases: Rare diseases, also called “Orphan” diseases, are broadly defined as diseases that
infrequently occur in a population. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines a rare disease as
having a frequency of less than 6.5-10 per 10,000 people.
• Epidemic: It is the rapid spread of a disease within a community over a given area.
• Pandemic: An epidemic disease that has spread over multiple countries and continents.
• Contagious Disease: A disease that is transmitted from person to person either through physicalcontact
or through exchange of bodily secretions
• Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients: It is substance or substances that are biologically activewithin
drug & is specific component responsible for desired effect it has on individual taking it.
• ASHAs: They are community health workers and also activists instituted by govt as part of
National Rural Health Mission to look into basic health issues and to create awarenesson health
• Anganwadi Workers: It is a government sponsored child-care and mother- care center in India.
• Digital Health: Digital health refers to use of information technology/electronic communicationtools,
services and processes to deliver health care services or to facilitate better health.
• Vaccine Hesitancy: Refers to delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability ofvaccine
services due to lack of confidence and complacency and convenience
• Family planning: It is a program to regulate number, timing, and spacing of children in familythrough
contraception or other birth control methods.
• Palliative care: It is an interdisciplinary medical caregiving approach aimed at optimizing
quality of life and mitigating suffering among people with complex, and often terminal illnesses.
• Geriatric care: It refers to a comprehensive system of healthcare for older patients that focuses on
managing chronic illnesses, promoting function, and optimizing quality of life in the later years.

Education
• Learning Poverty: It is defined as the percentage of 10-year olds who cannot read andunderstand a
simple story- World Bank.
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 DEFINITIONS
• Digital Literacy: Digital literacy are the individual’s capabilities to be able to effectively and
responsibly function and perform work in a digital society.
• Brain drain: Brain drain is a term indicating substantial emigration or migration of individuals.

Hunger, Poverty and Inequality

• Poverty: Social definition -Poverty is a state of deprivation where a person is not able togettwo
complete square meals in a day.
• Absolute poverty: A standard of poverty that is based on an income level or access to resources,
especially food, clothing and shelter, which are insufficient to ‘keep body and soultogether’.
• Relative poverty: A standard of poverty in which people are deprived of the living conditionsand
amenities which are customary in the society to which they belong.
• Poverty cycle: A set of circumstances that tend to make poverty self-perpetuating through itswider
impact on health, civic order, political and economic performance and so on.
• Zero food children: Zero-food children are children between 6 and 23 months old who did not
consume any milk, formula, or food in the last 24 hours.
• Hidden Hunger: Deficiencies in essential micronutrients (vitamins & minerals) in individuals or
population that negatively impact health, cognition, function, survival & economic development.
• Food Security: It means access to food by every strata of society socially, physically, and
economically. Means it should be in a physical reach, affordable and without any discrimination.
• Income Inequality: It is how unevenly income is distributed in a population. Less equal the distribution,
the higher income inequality is. It is often accompanied by wealth inequality, which is the uneven
distribution of wealth.
• SDGS: They are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure all peopleenjoy
peace and prosperity.
Vulnerable Sections
• Bonded Labor: A practice in which employers give high-interest loans to workers whose entire
families then labor at low wages to pay off the debt
• Child Labour: Work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity,and
that is harmful to physical and mental development
• Silver economy: It is the system of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services aimed at
using the purchasing potential of older and ageing people.

Miscellaneous
• Social capital: Social capital is a set of shared values or resources that allows individuals to work
together in a group to effectively achieve a common purpose.
• Social reflexivity: The tendency of individuals and other social actors to reflect, more or less
continuously, on the conditions of their own actions, implying higher levels of self- awareness, self-
knowledge and contemplation.
• Social Exclusion: Social Exclusion is the process through which individuals or groups are excluded
from facilities, benefits and opportunities that the others (their “betters”) enjoy.
• Human capital: Human Capital means the skills, education, capacity and attributes of labour which
influence their productive capacity and earning potential.

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 DEFINITIONS
ENVIRONMENT
Climate Change
• Climate Change: ‘Climate change’ represents a change in the long-term weather patterns. The World
Economic Forum ranked climate change as the biggest risk to the economy and society.
• Global Warming: Global warming is the long-term increase in the Earth's average surface temperature due
to human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels.
• Carbon inequality: It refers to the disproportionate distribution of carbon emissions and their impact on
individuals and communities.
• Climate tipping points: These are critical thresholds in the Earth's climate system, beyond which natural
systems can undergo irreversible and disastrous changes.
• Carbon farming: It is a set of agricultural practices that aim to store carbon in the soil, crop roots,
wood, and leaves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change.
• Net zero emission: It is a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero by balancing the amount
released into the atmosphere with the amount removed and stored.
• Carbon markets: Carbon markets are trading systems in which carbon credits are sold and bought.
Companies or individuals can use carbon markets to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions by
purchasing carbon credits from entities that remove or reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• Urban heat island: presence of significantly higher temperatures in urban areas compared to the
temperatures in surrounding rural zones mainly due to human factors.
• Climate smart agriculture: It is an integrated approach to managing landscapes—cropland, livestock,
forests and fisheries--that address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change.
• Climate Finance: Climate finance refers to local, national or transnational financing—drawn from public,
private and alternative sources of financing—that seeks to support mitigation and adaptation actions that will
address climate change.
• Acid rain: Rain that is contaminated by Sulphur, nitric and other acids that are released into theatmosphere
by the burning of fossil fuels.
• Ozone depletion: A decline in the total amount of ozone in the Earth’s stratosphere, particularly the
development of a so-called ‘ozone hole’ over the Antarctic.
• Green taxes: Taxes that penalize individuals or businesses for, for instance, the waste they generate,the pollution
they cause, the emissions they generate or the finite resources they consume.
• Adaptation: Changing in the light of new circumstances; in particular, learning to live withclimate
change.
• Green washing: Greenwashing is the act of making false or misleading statements about the environmental
benefits of a product or practice.
• Climate engineering: It is the intentional large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system to counter
climate change. It includes techniques to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and technologies to
rapidly cool the Earth by reflecting solar energy back to space.

Pollution and Waste Management

• Fly ash: Fly ash is a fine grey powder consisting mostly of spherical, glassy particles that are produced as a
by-product in coal-fired power stations. It is a by-product from burning pulverized coal in electric power
generating plants.
• Air pollution: It refers to contamination of air by harmful gases, dust and smoke which affects the
environment and ecosystem in negative way.
• Land pollution: The degradation of the earth's land surfaces, both above and below ground level, is referred
to as land pollution.
• Noise pollution: Regular exposure to elevated sound levels that may lead to adverse effects in humans
or other living organisms.
• Indoor air pollution: refers to the degradation in physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of air in
the indoor environment within a home, building, or an institution or commercial facility.
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 DEFINITIONS
• Land Degradation Neutrality: A state whereby the amount and quality of land resources, necessary to
support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security, remains stable or increases within
specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems.
• E-waste pollution: Electronic pollution is the form of pollution caused by the discarded electrical
or electronic devices.
• Plastic pollution: Plastic pollution is the accumulation of plastic objects and particles in theEarth's
environment that adversely affects wildlife, wildlife habitat, and humans.
• Micro-plastics: Microplastics are small plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in diameter.
• Cloud seeding: It is a weather modification technique that improves a cloud's ability to produce rain or snow
by introducing tiny ice nuclei into certain types of subfreezing clouds.
• Decarbonization: Decarbonisation is the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions through the use of lowcarbon power
sources, achieving a lower output of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
• Emissions trading: A mechanism that allows parties to the Kyoto Protocol to buy or sellemissions from or
to other parties, while keeping within overall emissions targets.
• Mitigation: Moderating or reducing the impact of something; in particular, reducing greenhouse gas
emissions in order to limit climate change.
• Carbon price: It is a cost applied to carbon pollution to encourage polluters to reduce the amount of
greenhouse gases they emit into the atmosphere.
• Carbon finance: Carbon financing is an innovative funding tool that places a financial value on carbon
emissions and allows companies wishing to offset their own emissions to buy carbon credits earned from
sustainable projects.
• Carbon Capture, Utilization and storage (CCUS): It is a process that captures carbon dioxide emissions
from sources like coal-fired power plants and either reuses or stores it so it will not enter the atmosphere.
• Extended Producers Responsibility (EPR): Extended Producer Responsibility or EPR is the commitment
made by a producer to facilitate a reverse collection mechanism and recycling of end of life, post-consumer
waste. The objective is to circle it back into the system to recover resources embedded in the waste.
• Photo-chemical smog: It is a mixture of pollutants that are formed when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic
compounds (VOCs) react to sunlight, creating a brown haze above cities.

Environment degradation
• Land degradation: Loss of biological or economic productivity of land resulting from land uses or
from a combination of factors including human activities.
• Coastal erosion: Coastal erosion is the gradual wearing away of the land along the shoreline by the
action of water and wind.
• LIFE- Lifestyle for Environment: An India-led global mass movement to nudge individual and
community action to preserve the environment.

Water and its Conservation

• Marine Plastic pollution: It is the accumulation of plastic objects and particles in the Marine environment
that adversely affects aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem.
• Water pollution: It is the contamination of water bodies by the pollutants that are harmful to thehealth of
humans and other living beings.
• One water approach: It is the recognition that all water has value, regardless of its source. It includes
managing that source in an integrated, inclusive and sustainable manner by including all stakeholders.
• Groundwater pollution: Groundwater Pollution occurs when man-made products such as gasoline, oil, road
salts and chemicals get into the groundwater and cause it to become unsafe and unfit for human use.
• Water trading: Water Trading is a water market mechanism that considers water as a commodity and can
be traded amongst users according to their needs.

Energy – Renewable and Non-renewable

• Energy Security: The International Energy Agency defines energy security as the uninterrupted availability

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 DEFINITIONS
of energy sources at an affordable price.
• Geothermal energy: It is a renewable and sustainable energy source that harnesses heat from the earth's
crust to generate electricity and heat homes.
• Bio energy: It refers to the energy derived from biomass, which includes organic materials such as
agricultural residues, wood, and dedicated energy crops.

• Biodiversity
• Definition of Forest
o Under SC judgment all areas recorded as “forest” in any government (Union and State) record; All
areas that conformed to the “dictionary” meaning of forest; Areas identified as “forest” by expert
committees set up by State governments.
o Under Forest Conservation (Amendment) Act, 2023, Land declared as a forest under the Indian
Forest Act, 1927 or other laws, or recorded in the Government as forest as on or after 1980.
• Ex-Situ conservation: It means the conservation of species outside their natural habitats. Examples
include Zoological parks and botanical gardens. o Purpose: Rescuing threatened germplasm, produce
material for reintroduction, translocation, reinforcement, habitat, and management.
• In-Situ conservation: It is a method of conserving the animals and plants in their natural habitats.
Examples include national parks, sanctuaries, Biosphere reserves, protected forests etc
• Bioremediation: It can be defined as any process that uses bacteria, fungi, green plants or their enzymes to
return the environment altered by contaminants to its original condition.
• Bio-digesters: These are airtight, oxygen-free systems that provide an optimal environment with the
necessary parameters for a controlled anaerobic digestion to produce biogas.
• Biodiversity Hotspots: Biodiversity hotspots are defined as regions “where exceptional concentrations of
endemic species are undergoing an exceptional loss of habitat”. These are regions with high species richness
and a high degree of endemism.
• Invasive Species: A species is termed invasive if it is previously absent in that ecosystem and has been
introduced in that area from outside mostly by human intervention.
• Ecological footprint: A measure of ecological capacity based on the hectares of biologically productive land
that are needed to supply a given person’s consumption of natural resources and absorb their waste.
• Biocentric equality: The principle that all organisms and entities in the ecosphere are ofequal moral worth,
each being part of an interrelated whole.
• Eco Sensitive Zones: ESZs are ecologically important areas notified under the Environment Protection Act
to be protected from industrial pollution and unregulated development.
• Carrying capacity: The carrying capacity of an environment is the maximum population size of a biological species
that can be sustained by that specific environment, given the food, habitat, water, and other resources available.
• Sustainable development: Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present,
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
• Marine protected areas: MPAs are geographically defined zones within marine environments where human
activities are restricted or managed to achieve long-term conservation goals.

Environment Impact Assessment

• Environment Impact Assessment (EIA): It is a decision making tool which compares various
alternatives for a project and chooses which ensures best combination of economic and environmental
costs.

Disaster Management
• Disaster resilience: It is our ability to prevent, withstand and recover from the harmful impacts of natural
hazards on people, places and the natural environment.
• Glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF): It is a sudden release of water from a glacial lake, which can

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 DEFINITIONS
happen when the lake's dam fails.
• Heat waves: prolonged periods of excessively hot weather that can cause adverse impacts on human health,
the environment, and the economy.
• Cloud burst: It is an enormous amount of precipitation in a short period of time, sometimes accompanied
by hail and thunder, which is capable of creating flood conditions
• Landslides: A landslide is defined as the movement of a mass of rock, debris, or earth down a slope.
• Drought: Drought refers to a temporary decrease in water or moisture availability below the anticipated level
for a specific duration.
• Cyclones: Cyclones are large revolving tropical storms caused by winds blowing around a central area of
low atmospheric pressure.
• Urban flooding: Inundation of land or property in densely populated areas due to heavy rainfall, overflowing
rivers, poor drainage systems, or other water-related incidents.
• Disaster risk reduction: It is the concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic efforts
to analyse and reduce the causal factors of disasters.
• Hazard: It is a threat (natural or human) that has the potential to cause loss of life, injury, property damage,
socio-economic disruption or environmental degradation
• Environmental Migration: Environmental migrants are people who are forced to migrate their
home/region/country due to sudden environmental disasters like earthquakes, floods, droughts, etc.

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 DEFINITIONS

INTERNAL SECURITY

Defense
• Hybrid Warfare: Hybrid warfare is an emerging, but ill-defined notion in conflict studies. It
refers to the use of unconventional methods as part of a multi-domain warfighting approach.
• Integrated Theatre command: It is a unified command under which all the resources of the
Army, Navy and Air Force are pooled, depending on the threat perception.
• Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD): A condition in which a nuclear attack by either state
would only ensure its own destruction, as both possess an invulnerable second- strike capacity.
• Grey zone warfare: Grey zone warfare generally means a middle, unclear space that exists between
direct conflict and peace in international relations.
• Integrated Theatre command: It envisages a unified command of the three Services, under a single
commander, for geographical theatres that are of security concern.

Terrorism
• Terrorism: Terrorism, in its broadest sense, refers to attempts to further political ends by using violence
to create a climate of fear, apprehension and uncertainty.
• Bioterrorism: Biological weapons are microorganisms like virus, bacteria, fungi or other toxins that are
produced and released deliberately to cause disease and death in humans, animals or plants (WHO).
• Over Ground Workers: Over ground workers are people who help militants or terrorists with logistical
support, cash, shelter and other infrastructure with which armed groups and insurgency movements such
as can operate.
• Hot Pursuit: It refers to the pursuit of fleeing terrorists across borders in real-time, aiming to prevent
their escape and hold them accountable for their actions.
• Surgical strikes: It is a swift and targeted attack on a specific target that aims to neutralize them while
ensuring minimum collateral damage to the surrounding areas and civilians.
• Narco terrorism: use of drug trafficking networks—routes, funding mechanisms, and incomes—by
terrorist organisations.
• Bio terrorism: Bioterrorism involves the deliberate release of bioweapons to cause death or disease in
humans, animals, or plants.

Left Wing Extremism

• Left Wing Extremism: LWEs are individuals or groups who espouse radical leftist ideologies and seek
to overthrow established systems of power through violent means.
• Urban naxals: People of the Naxalite bent of mind who reside in urban areas and work as activists,
supporters, and protectors of the ideology.

Organized Crime
• Organized Crime: Organized crime is a continuing criminal enterprise that rationally works toprofit
from illicit activities that are often in great public demand.
• Money laundering: Money laundering is concealing or disguising the identity of illegallyobtained
proceeds so that they appear to have originated from legitimate sources (INTERPOL).

Cyber Security
• Cyber security: Cyber security is the practice of defending computers, servers, mobile devices,
electronic systems, networks and data from malicious attacks. It is also known as information technology
security or electronic information security.

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 DEFINITIONS
• Ransomware: It is a sophisticated malware that bypasses the traditional layers of security and makes
the user's computer files inaccessible by either locking them up or encrypting them.
• Advanced Persistent Threat (APT): It is a prolonged and targeted cyberattack in which an intruder
gains access to a network and remains undetected for an extended period of time to monitor network
activity and steal data.
• Denial of Service (DOS): It is an attack in which a malicious bot sends more traffic to a targeted IP
address that the programmers who planned its data buffers anticipated someone might send.
• Rootkit is a type of malware designed to obtain administrator level access to the victim's system. Once
installed, the program gives threat actor the root or privileged access to the system.
• Distributed Denial of Service - DNS Flood: In a DNS flood attack the offender tries to overbear a
given DNS server (or servers) with apparently valid traffic overwhelming server resources and impeding
the servers' ability to direct legitimate request to zone resources.
• Phishing: Phishing is when malicious party send a fraudulent email disguised as a legitimate email,
often purporting to be from a trusted source.
• Social Engineering: Is an attack vector that relies heavily on human interaction and often involves
manipulating people into breaking normal security procedures and best practices in order to gain access
to systems, networks or physical locations or financial gains.
• Cyber Stalking: It involves online harassment where the activities of victim in cyberspace is tracked in
online space and the victim is subjected to a plethora of emails and online messages.

Miscellaneous
• Ethnic cleansing: A euphemism that refers to the forcible expulsion of an ethnic group or
groups in the cause of racial purity, often involving genocidal violence.
• Peace dividend: The opportunity afforded by the end of superpower rivalry to reduce military spending
and increase economic and social expenditure, often described as turning ‘guns’ into ‘butter’.
• National interest: Foreign policy goals, objectives or policy preferences that supposedlybenefit a
society as a whole (the foreign policy equivalent of the ‘public interest’).
• Weaponization of Space: It is the process of deploying weapons in space, which can be used to destroy
targets in orbit or on Earth's surface.
• Unmanned aerial vehicles: It is an aircraft that carries no human pilot or passengers. UAVs—
sometimes called drones—can be fully or partially autonomous.

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 DEFINITIONS
POLITY
Democracy
• Democratic decentralization: Democratic decentralization is a system that distributes power to local
governments, so that decisions are made closer to the people who are affected by them.
• Direct democracy: It is one where the citizens directly participate in the day-to-day decision-making
and in the running of the government such as the ancient city-states in Greece and Switzerland.
• Indirect democracy/ Representative democracy: Citizens choose their representatives who are
actively involved in governing and administering the country. The method followed to choose these
representatives is referred to as an election.
• Doctrine of Democratic Governance: It emphasizes that the effectiveness of governance in a
democracy hinges on the trust and confidence citizens have in the institutions and individuals that govern
them.
• Principle of subsidiarity: It refers to the idea that decision-making authority should be placed where
responsibility for outcomes will occur and in close proximity to where actions are taken.
• Social democracy: A moderate or reformist brand of socialism that favours a balance between the
market and the state, rather than the abolition of capitalism.
• Communitarianism: The belief that the self or person is constituted through the community, in the
sense that individuals are shaped by the communities to which they belongand thus owe thema debt or
respect and consideration
• Sovereignty: The principle of absolute and unlimited power; the absence of a higher authority ineither
domestic or external affairs
• Secularism: Secularism is an ideology, which implies that the public sphere should remain freefrom
religious influence. Though it does not bar individual from its individual sphere.
• Welfare state: A state that takes prime responsibility for the social welfare of its citizens,
discharged through a range of social security, health, education and other services.
• Intra party democracy: It refers to the practice of making decisions within a political party through
democratic means. This involves the participation of party members in electing party leaders, deciding
party policies, and selecting candidates for public office.
• Proportional representation: It is an electoral system in which voters cast a vote for a single
candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins the election.

Constitution
• Constitutional Morality: Constitutional morality means adherence to the core principles of the
constitutional democracy. It means an effective coordination between conflicting interests of different
people and the administrative cooperation to resolve the issues without any confrontation amongst
various groups.
• Constitutionalism: Constitutionalism is the principle that the authority of the government is derived
from and limited by a constitution, which legally bounds both the government and the governed.
• Basic structure: The Basic Structure Doctrine is a key constitutional principle in India that limits the
power of the Parliament to amend certain fundamental features of the Constitution. According to this
doctrine, certain core principles and values cannot be altered through constitutional amendments.

Significant Provisions
• Preamble:
o Sovereign: India is an independent nation without depending on other countries in taking decisions
and to conduct its own affairs.
o Democratic Socialism: India follows a mixed economy where both private industries and public
industries exist favoring both capitalism and socialism
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 DEFINITIONS
o Positive secularism: Where the nation follows principled distance with all religions to minimize
orthodox and harmful practices and maximize benefits
o Doctrine of popular sovereignty: It says that supreme power and authority is held by public
o Republic: The head of the state is elected rather than an inherited through hereditary like UK. There
are no privileges, and everyone are treated equally irrespective of power, caste, religion and class.
• Citizenship: Citizenship is a legal status that gives an individual certain rights and duties in relation to a state.
• Preventive detention: Under Section 151 of the CrPC, preventive detention is police action taken on
grounds of suspicion that some wrong actions may be done by the person concerned.
• Capital Punishment: It is a legal penalty ordered by the Court against the person who has committed a
certain crime that is prohibited by the law. In India, it is only given in the rarest of the rare cases as per
the Indian Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure.
• Uniform Civil Code: It provides for one law for the entire country, applicable to all religious
communities in their personal matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance etc.
• Rule of law: It is a fundamental principle that ensures that all individuals and institutions within a
country are subject to the same laws and held accountable for their actions.
• Procedure Established by Law: It means that a law is duly enacted by the legislature or the concerned
body is valid only if the correct procedure has been followed to the letter.
• Due process of Law: It is a doctrine that not only checks if there is a lawto deprive the life and
personal liberty of a person but also ensures that the law is made fair and just.
• Euthanasia: Euthanasia is the practice of ending the life of a patient to limit the patient's suffering.
• Doctrine of Separation of powers: It states that the three organs of the government, the executive, the
legislature and the judiciary have separate functions and powers, and one organ does not interfere in the
functioning of the others.
• Principle of checks and balances: It is a fundamental principle in government structures designed to
prevent any branch from wielding absolute power.

Parliament
• Delegated Legislation: The Delegated legislation refers to the executive government assuming vast
legislative powers through a wide legislation and framing rules which endow it with wide powers.
• Public Authority: It is any authority or body or institution of self-government established or constituted
by or under the Constitution; or by any other law.
• Whip: A whip is a written order that party members be present for an important vote, or that they vote
only in a particular way. In India all parties can issue a whip to their members.
• Parliamentary sovereignty: It refers to the supremacy of the Parliament in the legislative process and
its ability to make or repeal laws without interference from other branches of government.

Federalism
• Decentralization: The expansion of local autonomy through the transfer of powers and responsibilities
away from national bodies.
• Devolution: The transfer of power from central government to subordinate regional or provincial
institutions that have no share in sovereignty; their responsibilities and powers being derived entirely
from the centre.
• Cooperative Federalism: Cooperative federalism implies the centre and states share a horizontal
relationship, where they “cooperate” in larger public interest.
• Competitive Federalism: It refers to promoting healthy competition between the states to keep them
motivated in pursuit of economic development.
• Asymmetric Federation: In this federation, Centre and the States do not have matching powers in all
matters, there are some differences in the way some States and other constituentunits of theIndian Union
relate to the Centre.
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 DEFINITIONS
• Multinational federations: A multinational state is a sovereign state that comprises twoor more nations
or states.
• Inner Line Permit: A document required for purposes of visit and staying in areas declared
under the Inner line permit owing to its unique demography or security situation.
• Principle of Federal Supremacy: It is a constitutional doctrine that establishes the supremacy of federal
law over state laws. This principle is essential in a federal structure where both the central and state
governments have their own spheres of authority
• Doctrine of Harmonious Construction: It states that when there’s a conflict between two or more
statutes or between different parts or provisions of a statute, we should interpret them in a way that
harmonises them.

Judiciary
• Public Interest Litigation: The Public Interest Litigation (PIL) refers to a legal action initiated in a
court of law wherein a public minded person can litigate on the basis of oppressed sections of society,
relaxing the natural justice principle of ‘Locus standi’.
• Judicial review: It is the power of the judiciary (courts) to examine the constitutionality of legislative
enactments, executive actions, and administrative decisions. If such laws or actions are found to be
unconstitutional, the judiciary has the authority to invalidate them.
• Judicial Activism: Judicial activism refers to the proactive role of the Judiciary in protecting the rights
of citizens.
• Contempt of court: It is the offence of being disobedient to or disrespectful towards a court of law.
According to the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, contempt of court can either be civil contempt or
criminal contempt.
• Sealed cover jurisprudence: It is a practice used by the courts (Supreme Court and lower courts), of
asking for or accepting information from government agencies in sealed envelopes that can only be
accessed by judges.
• Gram Nyayalayas: Gram Nyayalayas are village-level courts in rural areas that provide quick and
easy access to justice to the citizen at their doorsteps.
• Lok Adalats: Lok Adalat is a place where disputes/cases pending in the court of law or at the pre-
litigation stage are peacefully settled/compromised. It is one of the alternative dispute redressal
mechanisms in India.
• Tribunals: A judicial or quasi-judicial institution which deals with more specialized matters and are
less formal than courts.
• Arbitration tribunals: Arbitration Tribunals are forums created to resolve disputes, often contractual in nature,
through arbitration instead of litigation. It is governed by the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996.
• Alternate dispute resolution: It is a mechanism of dispute resolution that is non adversarial, i.e.
working together co-operatively to reach the best resolution for everyone.
• Conciliation: An impartial third party, called conciliator plays active role and assists the parties to reach
a mutually satisfactory agreed settlement which is non-binding on parties.
• Mediation: An independent and impartial third party, called a mediator, helps the parties reach a
common outcome. The mediator plays a more passive role, acting as a communicator.
• Principle of Natural Justice: They are those rules laid down by the Courts as being the minimum
protection of the rights of the individual against the arbitrary procedure.
• Doctrine of Essentiality: It the judicial doctrine where a practice or process within religion is justified
to be essential and thus judicial pronouncement asking for its removal is tantamount to violation of the
religion itself
• Judicial Overreach: It is the extreme form of judicial activism which involves frequent and unnecessary
judicial interventions in legislation as well and executive functions of the government.

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 DEFINITIONS
• Judicial legislation: It is a term used to describe situations where courts, particularly higher courts, are
perceived as overstepping their traditional role of interpreting and applying the law and instead making
law-like decisions.

Elections
• Criminalization of Politics: It means there is increase in criminals entering the politics and
contesting elections and get elected to the Parliament and state legislature.
• Political Morality: The use of moral and ethical judgements in making political decisions and
general polity
• Political Victimization: Treating political opponents poorly and unfairly and made to feel as if
• Registered Unrecognised Political Parties (RUPP): A newly registered party, a political group that
has not attained a certain vote percentage or general elections to be recognised as a state/national party,
or one that has not contested elections since its registration, are considered RUPPs.
• Model of conduct: It is a set of guidelines issued by ECI for political parties and candidates to
maintain decorum in their campaigning. It lays down a list of dos and don’ts for leaders and parties
ahead of elections.
• Electoral bonds: Electoral bonds are instruments launched by the Indian government that allow
donations to political parties using banks as an intermediary.
• Simultaneous elections: Also known as One Nation, One Election, it refer to the proposal of
conducting both Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections concurrently in India. It aims to streamline
the electoral process, save resources, and reduce the disruptions caused by frequent elections.

Miscellaneous
• Affirmative action: It refers to policies and practices aimed at promoting equal opportunities for
historically disadvantaged groups, particularly in areas such as education and employment.
• Freedom of speech and expression: Guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a), freedom of speech
and expression means the right to speak and to express one's opinions or to air grievances by
words of mouth, writing, printing, pictures or in any other manner.
• Hate speech: It is stated as an incitement to hatred primarily against a group of persons defined in
terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief and the like.
• Quasi-judicial body: These are administrative or non-judicial entities that possess the authority to
adjudicate disputes, make decisions, and impose penalties in specific areas.

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 DEFINITIONS

GOVERNANCE
General
• Governance: Governance is commonly defined as the exercise of power or authority by politicalleaders
for the well-being of their country’s citizens or subjects.
• Good Governance: Good Governance is the process of providing services to the citizen by inducting
their participation, to meet their aspiration, to resolve their conflict and hold government accountable.
• E-Governance: E-Governance is the delivery of service through ICT (WAN, Mobile Computing,
Internet) in an E3 (Equitable, Efficient and Effective) manner
• M-governance: M-Governance is the use of mobile or wireless to improve Governance service and
information "anytime, anywhere". It takes electronic services and makes them available via mobile
technologies using devices such as mobile phones.

Civil Services
• Consequential Seniority: If a reserved category candidate is promoted before a general category
candidate because of reservation in promotion, then for subsequent promotion the reserved
candidate retains seniority.
• Doctrine Proportionality: Proportionality means that the administrative action should not be more
drastic than it ought to be for obtaining the desired result. In India, the doctrine ofproportionality was
adopted by the Supreme Court in Om Kumar v. Union of India.
• Lateral entry: Lateral entry refers to the direct induction of domain experts at the middle or
senior levels of administrative hierarchy, rather than appointing regular civil servants through
promotion.
Social Audit
• Social Audit: It is a process in which citizens assess and monitor government operations on the ground,
then utilize the findings to demand accountability from the government via a public hearing system.

Custodial Violence
• Custodial violence: Custodial violence is the violence which takes place in the judicial and police
custody where an individual who has done a crime is tortured mentally as well asphysically.

Citizen Charter
• Citizen Charter: A citizen charter is basically a set of commitments made by an organisation regarding
the standards and service which it delivers. Its objective is to inform citizens about thestandard of
services which the government is going to provide and hold the government accountable.
• Sevottam model: The Sevottam model is a framework for improving the quality of public services in
India. The term "Sevottam" is a combination of the Hindi words "seva" (service) and "uttam" (excellent).

SHGs
• Self Help Groups: Self-help groups are informal groups of people who come together to addresstheir
common problems, usually financial.
Civil Society
• Pressure Groups: Pressure groups are forms of organizations, which exert pressure on the political or
administrative system of a country to extract benefits out of it and to advance their own interests.
• Public charitable trusts: These are non-profit entities created to support causes like education, medical
relief, and poverty relief. They are governed under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882, and operate with the
objective of contributing to public good.

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 DEFINITIONS
Miscellaneous
• Domestic violence: It is violence and abuse within the household often in a marital relationship.It can
also be non-physical and includes attempts to gain power over wife/husband.
• Financial Prudence: The careful and economic management of financial resources for effective and
productive use
• Custodial violence: Custodial violence primarily refers to violence in police custody and judicial
custody. It may be mental or physical in nature.
• Public data governance: Public data governance is the management of public data from its creation to
its disposal, including how it is stored, used, and accessed.
• Net neutrality: Net neutrality is a fundamental principle that ensures all data on the internet is treated
equally, without discrimination or preference.
• Public Service: It is a service provided by the government to people living within its jurisdiction, either
directly (through the public sector) or by financing provision of services.

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 DEFINITIONS

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Biotechnology and Health Sciences
• Biotechnology: Biotechnology is technology that utilizes biological systems, living organisms orparts
of this to develop or create different products.
• Genetically Modified Crops: The crop plants in which genetic material (DNA) has been alteredusing
modern biotechnology to insert non-naturally occurring traits in plants like disease resistance, stress
tolerance, insect resistance, etc.
• Gene Editing: It is a type of genetic engineering in which DNA is inserted, deleted, modified or replaced
in the genome of a living organism. CRISPR is widely considered the most precise,most cost-
effective and quickest way to edit genes.
• Genome Sequencing: The process of determining the genetic information that is carried in a particular
DNA segment.
• Bioremediation: It is the use of microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) to degrade the environmental
contaminants into less toxic forms.
• Gene Therapy: Gene therapy is a technique that uses a gene(s) to treat, prevent or cure a diseaseor
medical disorder.
• Stem Cell Therapy: A medical process which utilizes the stem cells for preventing or treating a disease.
• Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART): A technology to address infertility and assist the couple to
conceive using techniques like vitro fertilization- embryo transfer (IVF - ET), gamete intra-fallopian
transfer (GIFT), etc.
• Traditional Medicine: The WHO describes traditional medicine as the total sum of the “knowledge,
skills and practices indigenous and different cultures have used over time to maintain health and prevent,
diagnose and treat physical and mental illness”.
• Transfats: Trans fatty acids (TFAs) are unsaturated type of fats which have adverse effects onour
body. These fats are largely produced artificially but a small amount also occurs naturally.
• Biofortification: The technique of improving nutritional content of crops using modern
biotechnology or conventional agronomic practices.
• Biopiracy: Biopiracy happens when researchers or research organisations take biologicalresources
without official sanction, largely from less affluent countries or marginalised people.

Health and associated technologies

• Rare diseases: A rare disease is any disease that affects a small percentage of the population such as
fewer than 200,000 people across a broad range of possible disorders.
• Neglected tropical diseases: These are a diverse group of conditions1 caused by a variety of
pathogens (including viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi and toxins) and associated with devastating
health, social and economic consequences.
• Antimicrobial Resistance: It occurs when a microorganism changes over time and no longer responds
to medicines making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread,severe illness
and death.
• Generic drugs: A generic drug is a medication created to be the same as an already marketed brand-
name drug in dosage form, safety, strength, route of administration, quality, performance
characteristics, and intended use.
• Food adulteration: Food adulteration takes place when intentionally or unintentionally substances
that degrade the quality of food are added to it.
• mRNA vaccines: Messenger RNA (a mRNA) is a type of single-stranded RNA involved in protein
synthesis. mRNA is made from a DNA template during the process of transcription.

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 DEFINITIONS
IT and Communication Technology
• Internet of Things (IoT): IoT is the interlinking of digital devices, people, machines, appliances, and
other objects with one another through wireless networks. It allows machinesand people to be
connected to each other and communicate as well.
• Cloud computing: Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources,
especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user.
• Open source platform: An open-source platform is a software platform that allows users and
developers to access its source code, which is the code that makes up the platform.
• Web 3.0: It is the decentralized form of internet run on blockchain technology. In this users can own
stakes in platforms and applications which is now controlled by big Tec companies.
• Edge Computing: A technique where data is processed by the device itself or by a localserver rather
than being transmitted to a centralized data processing warehouse.
• Deep Web: Part of the internet that is unidentified or that cannot be readily accessed through
conventional search engines.
• Dark Web: The concealed portion of deep web that is often linked to criminal or illegal content.
Example: trading sites where users can purchase illicit or banned good and services.
• Big Data: Big data is a term for data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data processing
application software is inadequate to deal with them. It refers to the use of predictive analytics, user
behaviour analytics, or certain other advanced data analytics methods that extract value from data.
• Artificial intelligence: AI refers to the ability of machines to perform cognitive tasks like thinking,
perceiving, learning, problem solving and decision making. It includes technologies like machine
learning, pattern recognition, big data, neural networks, self-algorithms etc.
• Blockchain technology: Blockchain technology is a decentralized, distributed ledger that stores the
record of ownership of digital assets. Any data stored on blockchain is unable to be modified, making
the technology a legitimate disruptor for industries like payments, cybersecurity and healthcare.
• Standard Positioning Systems and Protection Positioning Systems: In the GPS era, Standard
Positioning Systems (SPS) offer an accuracy of about 20-30 meters and are primarily used for civilian
applications. Precision Positioning Systems (PPS), on the other hand, offer accuracy around 10 meters
and are primarily used by the U.S. military and its allies.
• Cyber-Physical System (CPS): An interdisciplinary system that deals with the use of computer-based
systems that do things in the physical world.
• Ex: Smart Grid, Robotic Systems, Medical Monitoring, Industrial Control Systems,etc.
• Deep fakes: Deepfakes are synthetic media, including images, videos, and audio, generated by artificial
intelligence (AI) technology that portray something that does not exist in reality or events that have never
occurred.
• Cryptocurrency: A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security. It
is a decentralized currency, meaning it is not controlled by any government or institution.
• Big data analytics: Big data analytics describes the process of uncovering trends, patterns, and
correlations in large amounts of raw data to help make data-informed decisions.

Super Computers
• Quantum Supremacy: It describes the point where quantum computers can do things that classical
computers cannot. Superposition and entanglement are what give quantum computers the ability to
process so much more information so much faster.

R&D and IPR

• Intellectual Property Rights: IPR is the right given to persons over the creations of their minds:
inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names and images used in commerce. They usually
give creator an exclusive right over use of his/her creation for a certain period of time.

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 DEFINITIONS
• Patent Pool: Two or more patent holders transfer their intellectual property into a joint venture known
as patent pool for the purpose of cross-licensing.

Miscellaneous
• Neutrinos: A neutrino is a subatomic particle that resembles an electron in many ways but differs in
that it lacks an electrical charge and has a very small mass that might potentially be zero.
• Space tourism: Space tourism is the commercial practice of sending private individuals to space for
recreational, adventure, or leisure purposes.
• Bio-piracy: Biopiracy is the practice of commercial exploitation of biochemicals or genetic materials
which occur naturally.
• Car-T cell therapy: CAR-T cell therapy stands for Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell therapy. It is a
type of cancer immunotherapy that uses the patient’s own T cells, genetically modified in a laboratory
to enhance their ability to locate and destroy cancer cells.
• Additive manufacturing: It is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a
digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or
solidified under computer control, with the material being added together, typically layer by layer.
• Radio frequency identification (RFID): Radio frequency identification is a type of passive wireless
technology that allows for tracking or matching of an item or individual.
• Asteroids: Asteroids, sometimes calledminor planets, are rocky remnants left over from the
earlyformation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.
• Traditional knowledge digital library: It is an Indian digital knowledge repository of the traditional
knowledge, especially about medicinal plants and formulations used in Indian systems of medicine.
• Nanotechnology: A technology that involves the manipulation of matter on atomic, molecularand
supramolecular scales. This includes particles of a scale of 1 to 100 nanometers.
• Hypersonic Technology: Technology used in aircrafts, missiles, rockets and spacecraftsthat aidsthem
to reach a very high speed (nearly 4000 miles per hour).
• Ex: Computational Fluid Dynamics, Using high temperature structures and materials.

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 DEFINITIONS
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
REFER MAINS GS 2 BOOK & CA – for MORE TERMS & DEFINITIONS

• Soft power diplomacy: Soft Power is a country’s ability to influence the preferences and behaviours of
various actors in the international arena (states, corporations, communities, publics etc.) through attraction
or persuasion rather than coercion.
• Diaspora: Diaspora is a generic term to describe people who migrated from territories that are currently
within India and their descendants. Official classification of Indian Diaspora includes Overseas Citizens
of India and Non-Resident Indians.
• No-first use policy: It is a nuclear weapons policy that states that a country will only use nuclear weapons
in response to a nuclear attack on its territory or forces. India has a "No First Use" policy, which is part of
its nuclear doctrine.
• De-dollarization: De-dollarisation refers to the process of reducing the dominance of the US dollar in
global financial transactions.
• Strategic autonomy: It is defined as the capability to make decisions independent from external pressure,
especially from great powers, in the main policy areas.

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 DEFINITIONS
GEOGRAPHY
REFER MAINS GS 1 BOOK – for MORE TERMS & DEFINITIONS
• Waves: Waves are a disturbance on the surface of the sea or ocean, in the upside down form.
• Tides: The periodical rise and fall of the sea level mainly due to the attraction of the sun and the moon
is called a tide
• Currents: Ocean currents are like river flow in oceans which represents a regular volume of water in a
definite path and direction.
• Volcano: A volcano is an opening in Earth's crust that allows molten rock from beneath thecrust to reach
the surface.
• Volcanism: It is the phenomenon of eruption of molten rock (magma) onto the surface of the Earth.
• Soil: The unconsolidated mineral or organic material on the surface of the Earth that serves as a natural
medium for the growth of land plants.
• Tropical cyclones: Tropical cyclones are intense water-rotating systems formed by strong winds
around low-pressure areas.
• Polar vortex: It is a large area of low pressure and cold air surrounding the Earth’s North and South
Pole.
• El Nino/La Nina: El Nino is the abnormal warming of sea surface temperature (SST) of the Pacific
Ocean off the coast of Peru in South America, while La Nina is the opposite, an abnormalcooling of
SST.
• Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD): It is a condition when the Sea Surface Temperature of the western region
of Indian Ocean alternately becomes abnormally colder and then abnormally hotter than the eastern
region.
• Twisters: A twister, commonly known as a tornado, is a violently rotating column of air extending from
a thunderstorm to the ground. They are characterized by their funnel-shaped cloud and intense wind
speeds, which can exceed 300 mph in extreme cases.
• Sea surface temperature rise: Sea surface temperature rise (SST rise) refers to the increase in the
temperature of the ocean’s surface, primarily due to global warming and climate change.
• Indo- Pacific: he Indo-Pacific is a geopolitical construct which represents an integrated theatre that
combines the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, and the land masses that surround them.
• Permafrost: Permafrost is a ground that remains completely frozen at 0°C or below for at least two
years. It is composed of rock, soil and sediments held together by ice and are believed to have formed
during glacial periods dating several millennia.
• Heat Budget of Earth: Heat Budget of the Earth is the balance between incoming solar insolation and
outgoing terrestrial radiation.
• Cryosphere: The cryosphere is the part of the Earth's climate system that includes solid precipitation,
snow, sea ice, lake and river ice, icebergs, glaciers and ice caps, ice sheets, ice shelves, permafrost, and
seasonally frozen ground.
• Ocean Currents: Ocean Current is a horizontal movements of seawater that is produced by gravity,
wind and water density.
• Demographic winter: It refers to a situation where birth rates fall significantly below the replacement
level, leading to an aging population, a shrinking workforce, and economic challenges.
• Aurora: Multicoloured lights that appear in the upper atmosphere (ionosphere) over the polar regions
and visible from locations in the middle and high latitudes. Caused by the interaction of solar wind with
oxygen and nitrogen gas in the atmosphere. Aurora in the Northern Hemisphere are called aurora
borealis and aurora australis in the Southern Hemisphere.
• Mantle Plume: A mantle plume is a buoyant mass of material in the Earth's mantle that rises due to its
buoyancy. It is associated with volcanic activity and can have a significant impact on the Earth's surface
geology.
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 DEFINITIONS
• Standardized precipitation index: The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is a drought index that
measures how precipitation deviates from the average over a specific time period.
• Dead zones: The term “dead zone” or “hypoxia” refers to low-oxygen areas in the world’s lakes and
oceans. It occurs as a result of eutrophication, which happens when a body of water is inundated with
too many nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen.
• Water stress: Water stress occurs when the demand for water exceeds the available amount during a
certain period or when poor quality restricts its use.
• Straits and Isthmus: Straits are the narrow water bodies connecting two large water bodies while
Isthmus are narrow piece of land which joins two larger landmasses and separates two water bodies.
• Fjords: Fjords are long, narrow, deep inlets of the sea, often flanked by steep cliffs or mountains. They
are typically formed through a combination of geological and glacial processes.

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 DEFINITIONS
WORLD HISTORY

• Colonization: Colonialism is the establishment, exploitation, maintenance, acquisition and expansion

of colonies in one territory by people from another country. It is a set of unequal relationships between
colonial power and colony.
• Industrial revolution: It was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Europe and United States
in the period between 1760 to 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand production
methods to machines and iron production processes.
• Neo-colonialism: It is the policy whereby industrialized country dominates the policies of
underdeveloped nation with purpose of economic profiteering in disregard to the economic and social
interests of under-developed country.
• Communism: It is a political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-
based economy with public ownership and communal control on the means of production.
• Socialism: A system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of the means of
production by the community as a whole.
• Imperialism: It is the practice of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial
acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas.
• Renaissance: From the French, literally meaning ‘rebirth’; a cultural movement inspired by revived
interest in classical Greece and Rome that saw major developments in learning and the arts.
• Enlightenment: An intellectual movement that challenged traditional beliefs in religion, politics and
learning in general in the name of reason and progress.
• De-Colonization: Decolonization is undoing of colonialism. In aftermath of second world war, the
imperial nations began transferring power to indigenous people in their respective colonies. This process
is termed as Decolonization.

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 DEFINITIONS
ETHICS
REFER MAINS GS 4 BOOK – for MORE TERMS & DEFINITIONS
• Ethics: Ethics is a set of standards that a society places on itself, which helps to guide behavior, choices
and actions. It allows an individual to differentiate between right and wrong action andto choose the
path of dharma in every condition.
• Values: Values are basic and fundamental beliefs that guide or motivate attitudes or actions. They help
us to determine what is important to us. They help guide judgement and behavior of a person or a group
and help one decide what is right and wrong.
• Morality: Morality is set of standards that an individual considers to be right and which are shaped by
his own belief system. It deals with individuals’ values, preferences which they considered as right or
wrong.
• Belief: Belief is an internal feeling that something is true, even if it is unproven or irrational; things we
hold to be true.
• Norms: Norms are generally informal guidelines of a particular group or community about right or
wrong social behaviour.
• Integrity: It means the ability of an individual to remain consistent and committed to his/her personal
and professional values. It is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
• Responsibility: Moral obligation of an individual to behave with essence of commitment and duty. It
comes from within.
• Accountability: It is a formal responsibility based on possession, power, hierarchy, laws, specially
applied in context of government and administration
• Probity: Means being upright, active, disciplined, vision in adherence civil service values. It
encompasses integrity and honesty
• Aptitude: Related to future potential of a person. It deals with ability, capability of a person which is
inborn, innate based on nature not nurture.
• Attitude: Its about orientation, feeling, pre-disposition of a person towards all those objects living/non-
living which he/she faces and reacts. It is about reaction in favour or against objects we face.
• Impartiality: It is the principle of justice holding that decision should be based on objective criteria
rather than on the basis of bias or prejudice.
• Non-partisanship: Non-partisanship means non-disposition towards any political party, i.e., to exhibit
political neutrality. It is the process of not being involved in any political party even if theperson has
strong faith in any political thought.
• Emotional Intelligence: Emotional Intelligence is the ability to sense, understand and effectively apply
the power and acumen of emotions as a source of human energy, information, connection and influence.
• Character: Character is quality of human values which is cultivated through its life experiences.When
values are practiced, they build character.
• Behavior: Outer refection of human character and conduct may also be influenced by many other
factors such as situation, consequence, uncertainty etc. Therefore, behavior may not alwaysreflection of
true character and conduct.
• Cognition: Cognition means knowledge. Knowledge about objects helps in formation of attitude.
• Socialization: Socialization is a process of learning human behavior from social institutions both
formally and informally.
• Leadership: Act of influence i.e. when a person influences behavior of other person through which
personality, views, values, it is an act of leadership.
• Empathy: Empathy is the ability to place oneself in another position and understand their feelings and
experience their emotions.
• Tolerance: It is having permissive attitude/considerate attitude towards others’ feeling, views, values,

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 DEFINITIONS
culture, tradition etc. called tolerance
• Objectivity: It is the quality of being truthful, unbiased, impartial and sticking to the facts beyond the
influence of one’s feelings and prejudices.
• Social Influence: Social influence occurs when emotions, opinions or behavior of a person are affected
by others in the society.
• Persuasion: Persuasion is a form of social influence. It refers to process of changing theattitudes and
beliefs of target group in the intended direction. The process involves use of different methods of a
verbal and non-verbal communication to convey information.
• Conflict of interest: It involves a conflict between the public duty and private interests of a public
official, in which the public official has private-capacity interests which could improperly influence the
performance of their official duties and responsibilities.
• Ethical Dilemma: A situation before decision that a person faces and there may or may not be extreme
level of guilt feeling because dilemma may be moderate, general and extreme level.
• Moral realism: It follows philosophy that power alone can establish peace and harmony in the world
• Moral idealism: Value should dominate rather money in relations
• Transparency: When citizens have accessibility to decisions of government that how, for what and why
decision have been made and what is the outcome of decision, then it result into transparency.
• Responsibility: Responsibility is the quality of an individual to satisfactorily perform his/her own duty
as a part of particular group or organization.
• Courage of Conviction: The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger or fear
with self-possession, confidence and resolution.

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 DEFINITIONS

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