11 June 2025

• Population: UNFPA's State of World Population 2025 report. India's population is 146.39 crore. Total Fertility Rate fell to 1.9, below the replacement level of 2.1.
• Economy: India's net FDI fell to $0.4 billion in 2024-25 even as gross FDI hit a 3-year high of $81 billion. Repatriation now accounts for 63.5 per cent of gross FDI.
• Space: Axiom-4 launch delayed again. A liquid oxygen leak in the Falcon 9 booster was detected, pushing the mission beyond 11 June.
• Biodiversity: a Siamese Fireback pheasant, Thailand's national bird, was sighted for the first time in Ranikhet, Uttarakhand.
• Oceans: the Blue NDC Challenge, launched by Brazil and France at the UN Ocean Conference (UNOC3) in Nice, asks countries to integrate ocean-based climate actions into their NDCs under the Paris Agreement.

GS area: Society, Economy (Demography)

UNFPA released the State of World Population 2025 report with India-specific and global data.

• India's population: 146.39 crore (April 2025 estimate). India became the world's most populous country in 2023, surpassing China.
• Total Fertility Rate (TFR): 1.9, below the replacement level of 2.1. A TFR of 2.1 means the population just replaces itself. Below that, a population will eventually shrink without immigration.
• Global population: 8.2 billion. The working-age group (15-64) exceeds 60 per cent globally.
• India's age structure: youth (0-14) at 24 per cent; working-age (15-64) at 68 per cent; elderly (65 and above) at 7 per cent. This demographic dividend (large working-age share) is a time-limited advantage.
• Life expectancy: Indian men live 71 years; Indian women 74 years on average.
• UNFPA: United Nations Population Fund, established in 1969. Headquartered in New York. The State of World Population is its flagship annual report.
• Policy implications: India's falling TFR has two implications. For the medium term, the dividend continues. For the long term (post-2050), India faces an ageing population. Some southern states with TFR below 1.5 are already on this trajectory.

The broader policy question: Andhra Pradesh's incentives for third and fourth children (a separate June news item) and the pro-natalist debate in southern states sit against this data. The UNFPA evidence is that demographic pressures respond to investment in education, healthcare, and women's economic empowerment rather than cash incentives.

Static linkage: Society (population policy, demographic dividend, ageing), Economy (labour force).

GS area: Economy (FDI, Balance of Payments)

India's FDI data for 2024-25 revealed a striking divergence that demands analytical attention.

• Gross FDI: $81.04 billion (14 per cent growth, 3-year high).
• Net FDI: approximately $0.4 billion. This is down from $44 billion in 2020-21.
• Repatriation rate: 63.5 per cent of gross FDI was repatriated (profits taken out, equity sold back). In the early 2000s the repatriation rate was below 1 per cent.
• Outward FDI: Indian companies invested $29.2 billion abroad in 2024-25.
• Top sources of inward FDI: Singapore (15 per cent), Mauritius (approximately 10 per cent). Both route investment through treaty networks, raising questions about the true origin of funds.
• Manufacturing share: manufacturing FDI fell to 12 per cent of total gross FDI. Service-sector and financial flows dominate.
• Balance of Payments: net FDI is the figure that matters for balance of payments stability. Near-zero net FDI means the capital account is not building a durable cushion.

The implication: India's FDI regime is globally competitive for market access. The challenge is creating the conditions (stable regulation, dispute resolution, infrastructure quality) for foreign investors to keep capital in India rather than repatriating it after initial returns.

Static linkage: Economy (FDI, BoP, industrial policy, Mauritius treaty).

GS area: Science and Technology (Space exploration)

The Axiom-4 mission launch was postponed again on 11 June 2025. Engineers detected a liquid oxygen leak in the Falcon 9 rocket's first-stage booster.

• Leak location: liquid oxygen feeds into the rocket engine. Even a small leak at launch pressure is a mission-critical fault.
• Response: the launch was scrubbed and the rocket returned to the hangar for inspection and repair.
• Mission background: Ax-4 carries Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla (India, pilot), Mission Commander Peggy Whitson (USA), and crew members from Poland and Hungary. It is a private crewed spaceflight to the ISS organised by Axiom Space.
• Historical weight: Shukla's flight will be the second human spaceflight from India, the first since Rakesh Sharma's 1984 Soyuz T-11 mission. Sharma flew to the Soviet station Salyut 7.
• Gaganyaan context: Shukla is among the shortlisted astronauts for ISRO's Gaganyaan programme. His Ax-4 experience will feed directly into Gaganyaan mission planning. Gaganyaan aims to launch a 3-person crew to a 400 km orbit for 3 days.
• Eventual launch: the mission launched successfully on 25 June 2025.

Static linkage: Science and Technology (space exploration, ISRO Gaganyaan, commercial spaceflight).

GS area: Environment and Ecology (Biodiversity, Wildlife)

A Siamese Fireback pheasant was sighted in Ranikhet, Uttarakhand, marking the first recorded sighting of this species in India.

• Scientific name: Lophura diardi.
• National bird of Thailand.
• IUCN status: Least Concern.
• Geographic range: normally confined to Southeast Asia, covering Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
• Physical features: males have a metallic blue-black body and a distinctive fiery red-orange rump. Females are brown.
• Breeding: March to June; 4-6 eggs per clutch.
• Significance of the sighting: a Southeast Asian bird appearing in the western Himalayas is unusual. It may reflect range expansion driven by climate change or an escaped captive bird. The sighting adds to India's recorded avifauna.
• Pheasant family: pheasants (Phasianidae) include peafowl (Indian Peafowl is India's national bird), jungle fowl, and tragopans. Several Himalayan pheasants (Monal, Koklass) are recorded in Uttarakhand.

Static linkage: Environment and Ecology (avifauna, biodiversity, IUCN status).

GS area: Environment (Climate change, International conventions)

Brazil and France launched the Blue NDC Challenge at the third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3) in Nice, France.

• Purpose: encourage countries to integrate ocean-based climate mitigation and adaptation actions into their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement.
• Participating countries at launch: Australia, Fiji, Kenya, Mexico, Palau, Seychelles, among others.
• Key focus areas: conservation of mangroves and coral reefs (carbon sinks), offshore fossil fuel phaseout, and coastal community resilience.
• NDCs: Nationally Determined Contributions are each country's self-set plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Agreement. Countries submit updated NDCs every five years.
• Alignment: the Blue NDC Challenge aligns with COP30, scheduled in Belem, Brazil, and the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C target.
• UNOC3: the third United Nations Ocean Conference, held in Nice, France. The conferences aim to build global action on Sustainable Development Goal 14 (Life Below Water).
• Ocean as carbon sink: oceans absorb approximately 30 per cent of anthropogenic CO2 and 90 per cent of excess heat generated by the greenhouse effect.

Static linkage: Environment (climate change, NDCs, Paris Agreement, ocean governance).

• MV Wan Hai 503 fire: a Singapore-flagged container ship carrying 157 containers of hazardous cargo and 2,000 tonnes of fuel oil caught fire off the Kerala coast. Kerala has a 590 km coastline with 44 rivers, 41 of which flow westward. The incident highlighted gaps in coastal fire response.
• GLP-1 weight-loss drugs: semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy by Novo Nordisk) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound by Eli Lilly) are GLP-1 receptor agonists that produce 10-15 per cent body weight loss in clinical trials. Real-world effectiveness is lower. These drugs are reshaping the global pharmacology of obesity treatment.
• KATRIN experiment: conducted at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. It measured the neutrino mass using 36 million electrons over 259 days. The latest upper limit on neutrino mass is 8.8 × 10^-7 of the electron mass. This is the world's most precise direct measurement of neutrino mass, relevant to physics beyond the Standard Model.