The identity of the Indian state is irreducibly connected with the fact that the Indian state is a welfare-oriented entity. The state is anchored on the Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP) under Part IV of the constitution that is, Articles 38, 39 and 41 which stipulates that a social order should be guaranteed by the state which encourages a just distribution of resources. These principles are not legally binding but they serve as the moral compass of the governance.

Nonetheless, due to the proximity of 2026, the shift towards the delivery of public goods (education and healthcare) to the system of direct material distribution and cash transfers, with the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating its pace, has sparked a raging debate surrounding the difference between the issues of welfare and freebies.

The court interpretation: Welfare vs. Populism

The Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay in a landmark decision this month under the leadership of the Chief Justice, Surya Kant. The petition argued that unreasonable freebies were bribery, and their violation of the constitutional requirement to use public funds to serve its own purposes.

The Court thus found the important distinction:

•	Welfare Schemes: The long-term investments in human capital (e.g. MGNREGA, social health) that are directed at socio-economic development.

•	Freebies: Temporal, populist giving of non-merit goods (electronics, loan waivers) that is meant to gain electoral benefits but is not paid off in a long-term, financially planned manner.

The Court did not make any legislation on its own, but suggested the establishment of an expert consortium, composed of the RBI, NITI Aayog and the Election Commission to evaluate the economic consequences of populist promises.

The Fiscal Fault Lines: Two State Tale

The Economic Survey 2025 26 is heralding the appearance of the increasing fiscal fault lines. Although deficit is being consolidated by the central government, state finances are becoming worse. In March 2025, the aggregate outstanding liabilities of states were 28 per cent of GDP, which is much higher than the target of 20 per cent set by the FRBM Committee. This was met only by Gujarat (17 %), Maharashtra (18 %), and Odisha (15 %).

Punjab: The Cautionary Tale

The GDP of Punjab in India declined to 2.6 in 1990 91, compared to 3.7 in 1990 91. The state has a debt-to-GSDP ratio of 46, and it spends 107 of its revenue receipts on obligatory expenditures like salaries, pensions, and power subsidies, the latter taking 99 of its spending on subsidies. This type of expenditure inflexibility forces Punjab to borrow only to fund day to day activities.

Karnataka: The High Stakes Gamble

On the other hand, Karnataka unveiled its own program, Five Guarantees, allocating 51,034 crore in the 2025-26 budget. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah believes that the plans induce spending since they offer ₹10,000 in monthly benefit per family, but the CAG cautions that this can become counterproductive to nature. Infrastructure capital expenditure decreased by ₹5,229 crores, which the CAG considers as unfavourable to the growth in future.

The Shadow Economy: Transparency Issues

The CAG has listed the few means that states use to hide their real financial health:

•	Under-reporting Debt: Special Purpose Vehicles (e.g., Goa and Telangana).
•	Unaccounted Transactions: Making use of Minor Head 800 to hide revenue and expenditure.
•	Contingent Liabilities: Exhibits High exposure to loss making DISCOMs, including in Sikkim where guarantees were more than three times the tax receipts of a state.

In addition to this, the replacement of MGNREGA with the VB-GRAM G act (to raise the number of working days to 125) has put a large fiscal burden on the states and thus, limited their financial head room.

The Road Ahead: 16th Finance Commission

The Sixteenth Finance Commission, under the chairmanship of Dr. Arvind Panagariya, will cover the period of 2026- 2031. The Commission and state legislatures should focus on preventing a fiscal crisis, and this should include:

•	Rationalization: Moving to Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) based on education and health.
•	Institutional Control: Creating Autonomous Fiscal Councils to examine promises in the manifesto.
•	Revenue Mobilization: Promoting tax compliance with GST 2.0.

The 2026 dilemma is quite clear: without emptying the state budgets in political expediency, the state has to fulfil its constitutional duty to the poor.

The identity of the Indian state is irreducibly connected with the fact that the Indian state is a welfare-oriented entity. The state is anchored on the Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP) under Part IV of the constitution that is, Articles 38, 39 and 41 which stipulates that a social order should be guaranteed by the state which encourages a just distribution of resources. These principles are not legally binding but they serve as the moral compass of the governance.

Nonetheless, due to the proximity of 2026, the shift towards the delivery of public goods (education and healthcare) to the system of direct material distribution and cash transfers, with the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating its pace, has sparked a raging debate surrounding the difference between the issues of welfare and freebies.

The court interpretation: Welfare vs. Populism

The Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay in a landmark decision this month under the leadership of the Chief Justice, Surya Kant. The petition argued that unreasonable freebies were bribery, and their violation of the constitutional requirement to use public funds to serve its own purposes.

The Court thus found the important distinction:

•	Welfare Schemes: The long-term investments in human capital (e.g. MGNREGA, social health) that are directed at socio-economic development.

•	Freebies: Temporal, populist giving of non-merit goods (electronics, loan waivers) that is meant to gain electoral benefits but is not paid off in a long-term, financially planned manner.

The Court did not make any legislation on its own, but suggested the establishment of an expert consortium, composed of the RBI, NITI Aayog and the Election Commission to evaluate the economic consequences of populist promises.

The Economic Survey 2025 26 is heralding the appearance of the increasing fiscal fault lines. Although deficit is being consolidated by the central government, state finances are becoming worse. In March 2025, the aggregate outstanding liabilities of states were 28 per cent of GDP, which is much higher than the target of 20 per cent set by the FRBM Committee. This was met only by Gujarat (17 %), Maharashtra (18 %), and Odisha (15 %).

The GDP of Punjab in India declined to 2.6 in 1990 91, compared to 3.7 in 1990 91. The state has a debt-to-GSDP ratio of 46, and it spends 107 of its revenue receipts on obligatory expenditures like salaries, pensions, and power subsidies, the latter taking 99 of its spending on subsidies. This type of expenditure inflexibility forces Punjab to borrow only to fund day to day activities.

On the other hand, Karnataka unveiled its own program, Five Guarantees, allocating 51,034 crore in the 2025-26 budget. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah believes that the plans induce spending since they offer ₹10,000 in monthly benefit per family, but the CAG cautions that this can become counterproductive to nature. Infrastructure capital expenditure decreased by ₹5,229 crores, which the CAG considers as unfavourable to the growth in future.

The CAG has listed the few means that states use to hide their real financial health:

•	Under-reporting Debt: Special Purpose Vehicles (e.g., Goa and Telangana).
•	Unaccounted Transactions: Making use of Minor Head 800 to hide revenue and expenditure.
•	Contingent Liabilities: Exhibits High exposure to loss making DISCOMs, including in Sikkim where guarantees were more than three times the tax receipts of a state.

In addition to this, the replacement of MGNREGA with the VB-GRAM G act (to raise the number of working days to 125) has put a large fiscal burden on the states and thus, limited their financial head room.

The Sixteenth Finance Commission, under the chairmanship of Dr. Arvind Panagariya, will cover the period of 2026- 2031. The Commission and state legislatures should focus on preventing a fiscal crisis, and this should include:

•	Rationalization: Moving to Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) based on education and health.
•	Institutional Control: Creating Autonomous Fiscal Councils to examine promises in the manifesto.
•	Revenue Mobilization: Promoting tax compliance with GST 2.0.

The 2026 dilemma is quite clear: without emptying the state budgets in political expediency, the state has to fulfil its constitutional duty to the poor.

Welfare Dilemma; Uncovering The Freebie culture in India 

The 2026 F1 season is shaping up to be one of the most exciting season so far. It is quite early to tell what lies ahead of us in the year, as not even the first race has taken place yet, but speculations have started to creep in since the last grand prix weekend at Yas Marina Circuit last year.

Fans of the sport are expecting close racing, intensifying rivalries and teams walking a careful line between short-term successes and long-term planning from the 2026 season. 

The focus remains on the new regulation change, with the new strategies teams will be utilising to remain competitive on the grid, as the last few F1 seasons have shown that the era of complete dominance is fragile and teams must stay ahead of the game and keep improving and innovating throughout the season to expect even decent results. The new 2026 engine and aerodynamic regulations aim to level the playing field among the teams, promoting more wheel-to-wheel racing and overtakes. 

The major changes in the 2026 regulations include fully sustainable fuel being mandated with all engines using 100 % carbon-neutral drop-in fuels which aligns with F1’s Net Zero 2030 goal, the MGU-H being removed to simplifies the power unit and reduces costs, with MGU-K output being increased significantly (≈ 350 kW) and up to 50 % of total power coming from electric components, introduction of the Double energy recovery mode to harvest more energy per lap.

Car size has also changed, with the wheel base being reduced and the weight of the car roughly around 768 kg. Downforce has also reduced, 30% less than the previous year and with that, the drag has also reduced to 40-50%, increasing the agility and overtaking opportunities of the car. 

Aerodynamic changes are now more evident than ever with the introduction of active aerodynamics replacing the traditional DRS, which includes the X-Mode for low drag straights and Z-Mode for high downforce corners, with manual override replacing the overtake mode. Drivers can now trigger extra electrical power when close to a rival, replacing DRS functionality.

Driver dynamics and in-team drama will remain in the spotlight this season, also starting from Red Bull with the debut of Izac Hazar, to Red Bull Racing from junior team Visa Cash App Racing Bulls. Will he be able to break the curse of being the second driver in the team? With the gamble of Lewis Hamilton changing his team to Ferrari from Mercedes last year not paying off, and Ferrari suffering a terrible 2025 season with sluggish car performance and problems with team strategy, fans expect a comeback for the team. Bold steps taken toward changing the team's overall working procedure by James Vowles, Williams Racing is expected to build on the success of the previous season. With one of the best driver lineups in the F1 grid, Alex Albon and Carlos Sianz the trajectory for the British racing team is seemingly heading towards a great direction. The 2025 F1 constructors and drivers champion team, McLaren, has faced problems with their driver lineup in the previous year, too. The question remains, will they be able to keep their performance this year and secure another championship title? With the debut of two new teams on the grid, Audi and Cadilac the grid is set to be ever more competitive than last year.

Speculations aside, as usual this season of F1 will also treat the fans with great racing, team and drivers' rivalry and set to push the envelope of the sport even further.

The 2026 F1 season is shaping up to be one of the most exciting season so far. It is quite early to tell what lies ahead of us in the year, as not even the first race has taken place yet, but speculations have started to creep in since the last grand prix weekend at Yas Marina Circuit last year.

Fans of the sport are expecting close racing, intensifying rivalries and teams walking a careful line between short-term successes and long-term planning from the 2026 season. 

The focus remains on the new regulation change, with the new strategies teams will be utilising to remain competitive on the grid, as the last few F1 seasons have shown that the era of complete dominance is fragile and teams must stay ahead of the game and keep improving and innovating throughout the season to expect even decent results. The new 2026 engine and aerodynamic regulations aim to level the playing field among the teams, promoting more wheel-to-wheel racing and overtakes. 

The major changes in the 2026 regulations include fully sustainable fuel being mandated with all engines using 100 % carbon-neutral drop-in fuels which aligns with F1’s Net Zero 2030 goal, the MGU-H being removed to simplifies the power unit and reduces costs, with MGU-K output being increased significantly (≈ 350 kW) and up to 50 % of total power coming from electric components, introduction of the Double energy recovery mode to harvest more energy per lap.

Car size has also changed, with the wheel base being reduced and the weight of the car roughly around 768 kg. Downforce has also reduced, 30% less than the previous year and with that, the drag has also reduced to 40-50%, increasing the agility and overtaking opportunities of the car. 

Aerodynamic changes are now more evident than ever with the introduction of active aerodynamics replacing the traditional DRS, which includes the X-Mode for low drag straights and Z-Mode for high downforce corners, with manual override replacing the overtake mode. Drivers can now trigger extra electrical power when close to a rival, replacing DRS functionality.

Driver dynamics and in-team drama will remain in the spotlight this season, also starting from Red Bull with the debut of Izac Hazar, to Red Bull Racing from junior team Visa Cash App Racing Bulls. Will he be able to break the curse of being the second driver in the team? With the gamble of Lewis Hamilton changing his team to Ferrari from Mercedes last year not paying off, and Ferrari suffering a terrible 2025 season with sluggish car performance and problems with team strategy, fans expect a comeback for the team. Bold steps taken toward changing the team's overall working procedure by James Vowles, Williams Racing is expected to build on the success of the previous season. With one of the best driver lineups in the F1 grid, Alex Albon and Carlos Sianz the trajectory for the British racing team is seemingly heading towards a great direction. The 2025 F1 constructors and drivers champion team, McLaren, has faced problems with their driver lineup in the previous year, too. The question remains, will they be able to keep their performance this year and secure another championship title? With the debut of two new teams on the grid, Audi and Cadilac the grid is set to be ever more competitive than last year.

Speculations aside, as usual this season of F1 will also treat the fans with great racing, team and drivers' rivalry and set to push the envelope of the sport even further.

Wheel-to-Wheel Again

The Indian legal area stands at a crossroads in early 2026, which has never been as historic. A shift of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of the colonial era to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) on 1 July 2024 has been proclaimed a process of decolonisation of the very basis of Indian jurisprudence. However, in the small print to Section 63 of the BNS, remains a remnant of the legal imagination of the seventeenth century, the Marital Rape Exception (MRE). This stipulation that gives husbands a warrant against being prosecuted in instances of non-consensual sexual intercourse with their adult wives has proven to be the most debatable boundary in the transformation of the criminal law of the Republic.

The MRE is an echo of the Doctrine of Coverture, and the 1736 Hale Principle according to which, when married, the legal identity of a woman is absorbed in that of her husband. A wife, by contract of marriage, according to a famous argument of Sir Matthew Hale, is in a state of relinquishment of her body to her husband, a state which she cannot retract. As India has gradually increased the age of consent in marriage, and this has been 10 years in 1860 and it has since been 18 years since the landmark case of Independent Thought v. The judgment of Union of India (2017) - the main immunity to the action against wives of adult age is stuck.

Without any definitive ruling of the Supreme Court, the High Courts of India have turned into an ideological battleground:

The Progressive View: In Hrishikesh Sahoo v. The Karnataka High Court has taken a bold step in stating that rape is rape without considering the defendant being a husband (State of Karnataka, 2022).
Split Verdict: In 2022, Justice Rajiv Shakdher of the Delhi High Court invalidated the MRE and found it arbitrary, whereas Justice C. Hari Shankar affirmed it in reference to the legitimate expectation of sex in the marriage relationship.

The Literalists: In Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the judges have generally been literalists, and have determined that the consent of a wife is legally irrelevant under existing laws.

The discussion has moved away even in statutory interpretation to a deep examination of the basic rights. The petitioners believe that the MRE infringes:

1. Article 14 (Equality): It introduces an artificial difference between married and unmarried women, in turn withholding the former the equal protection against violence.

2. Article 21 (Dignity and Autonomy): Since the Puttaswamy decision, the right to own the body is considered as a fundamental aspect of the Right to Privacy, and the Supreme Court has already mentioned that being married does not necessarily mean consent to sexual intercourse.

3. Article 15 (Non-discrimination): It is argued that the MRE defends a patriarchal stereotype, which is that a wife belongs to her husband.

The main champion of the exception is still the Union Government. With its latest 2024 affidavits, the Centre said that making marital rape a crime would cause a wave of serious disruption in the institution of marriage. It also holds that forced sex is detestable but terming it as rape is a form of disproportionate punishment that would be abused during marriage conflicts.

The country is on the lookout as the Supreme Court gets ready to conduct a final constitutional review. This will be what will define whether the consent in India is really a universal right or privilege that stops at the frontier to the matrimonial house.

The Indian legal area stands at a crossroads in early 2026, which has never been as historic. A shift of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of the colonial era to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) on 1 July 2024 has been proclaimed a process of decolonisation of the very basis of Indian jurisprudence. However, in the small print to Section 63 of the BNS, remains a remnant of the legal imagination of the seventeenth century, the Marital Rape Exception (MRE). This stipulation that gives husbands a warrant against being prosecuted in instances of non-consensual sexual intercourse with their adult wives has proven to be the most debatable boundary in the transformation of the criminal law of the Republic.

The MRE is an echo of the Doctrine of Coverture, and the 1736 Hale Principle according to which, when married, the legal identity of a woman is absorbed in that of her husband. A wife, by contract of marriage, according to a famous argument of Sir Matthew Hale, is in a state of relinquishment of her body to her husband, a state which she cannot retract. As India has gradually increased the age of consent in marriage, and this has been 10 years in 1860 and it has since been 18 years since the landmark case of Independent Thought v. The judgment of Union of India (2017) - the main immunity to the action against wives of adult age is stuck.

Without any definitive ruling of the Supreme Court, the High Courts of India have turned into an ideological battleground:

The Progressive View: In Hrishikesh Sahoo v. The Karnataka High Court has taken a bold step in stating that rape is rape without considering the defendant being a husband (State of Karnataka, 2022).
Split Verdict: In 2022, Justice Rajiv Shakdher of the Delhi High Court invalidated the MRE and found it arbitrary, whereas Justice C. Hari Shankar affirmed it in reference to the legitimate expectation of sex in the marriage relationship.

The Literalists: In Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the judges have generally been literalists, and have determined that the consent of a wife is legally irrelevant under existing laws.

The discussion has moved away even in statutory interpretation to a deep examination of the basic rights. The petitioners believe that the MRE infringes:

1. Article 14 (Equality): It introduces an artificial difference between married and unmarried women, in turn withholding the former the equal protection against violence.

2. Article 21 (Dignity and Autonomy): Since the Puttaswamy decision, the right to own the body is considered as a fundamental aspect of the Right to Privacy, and the Supreme Court has already mentioned that being married does not necessarily mean consent to sexual intercourse.

3. Article 15 (Non-discrimination): It is argued that the MRE defends a patriarchal stereotype, which is that a wife belongs to her husband.

The main champion of the exception is still the Union Government. With its latest 2024 affidavits, the Centre said that making marital rape a crime would cause a wave of serious disruption in the institution of marriage. It also holds that forced sex is detestable but terming it as rape is a form of disproportionate punishment that would be abused during marriage conflicts.

The country is on the lookout as the Supreme Court gets ready to conduct a final constitutional review. This will be what will define whether the consent in India is really a universal right or privilege that stops at the frontier to the matrimonial house.

The Veritas Desk

Articles by The Veritas Desk