The Hindu Editorial Analysis : 17th September 2026

The Hindu Editorial Analysis

We understand the significance of reading The Hindu newspaper for enhancing reading skills, improving comprehension of passages, staying informed about current events, enhancing essay writing, and more, especially for banking aspirants who need to focus on editorials for vocabulary building. This article will explore today’s editorial points, along with practice questions and key vocabulary.

Merchants to Pay 0.4% Fee on UPI Payments Above ₹2,000

• Merchants will have to pay a 0.4% charge on UPI transactions above ₹2,000 from October 15, as stated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in a circular issued on Tuesday. This charge is called the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR). The money collected through this charge will go to different partners involved in the payment system, such as banks and payment processing companies.
• The MDR will not be charged on person-to-person (P2P) transactions. It will also not be charged on payments made to small vendors who receive up to ₹1 lakh per month through UPI QR codes under the Person-to-Person Merchant (P2PM)
• All person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions of up to ₹2,000 made through UPI or RuPay debit cards will also remain free from the MDR charge.
• The Finance Ministry said that there will be no charge on person-to-person (P2P) transactions at all, no matter how large the transaction amount is. The Ministry also said that P2P transactions make up 37% of all UPI transactions by number and 70% by total value.
• In some areas, such as Railways, telecommunications, insurance, fuel and agricultural inputs, transactions above ₹2,000 will have a fixed MDR of ₹5. This means that instead of charging 0.4% of the transaction amount, a fixed amount of ₹5 will be charged. The Ministry said that this fixed-charge system will help keep costs stable in important public services and businesses that work with small profit margins.
• The Centre has told banks to make sure that merchants do not add the MDR charge to the amount paid by customers. This was an important concern that had come up during the discussions about the new charge in the public domain.
• The 0.4% MDR will be divided among the different partners involved in the payment system, including banks and app providers. For transactions of ₹75,000 or more, the MDR will not be more than ₹300 for one transaction.
• Payments made for mutual funds, securities, stock brokers and dealers will have a much lower MDR of 0.02%, with the charge limited to a maximum of ₹300 per transaction. The Ministry said that this lower charge is meant to encourage more ordinary people to take part in the formal financial markets.
• The Finance Ministry said that the new MDR system will help make UPI financially self-sustaining, encourage its further use and expansion in rural and semi-urban areas, and help UPI remain competitive. At the same time, it will ensure that most payments continue to remain free of charge.
• The Centre’s analysis of the data showed that only 4% of merchant transactions will be affected by the introduction of MDR. This is because most transactions are either below the ₹2,000 limit or come under the zero-MDR P2PM system, under which no MDR is charged.
• A separate fund to encourage small merchants to use UPI will also be created. This fund will be made using 5% of the total money collected through MDR charges.

Blockades in Red Sea and Persian Gulf Raise Serious Government Concerns

• India is “deeply concerned” about the blockades in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Tuesday. This came at a time when the Houthis increased their attacks on cities in Saudi Arabia, and a ship carrying 14 Indian seafarers was attacked on Sunday off the Oman coast.
• The situation in the Red Sea region was discussed on Sunday when External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Delhi. More than 2.4 million Indians live and work in Saudi Arabia. Several Saudi cities, including Abha, Jeddah, Jazan, Taif, Yanbu, Makkah and AlUla, have been put on alert because of the Houthi attacks. In response to these attacks, Saudi forces have carried out dozens of missile strikes on Yemen.
• MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that India had condemned the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s territory, including attacks on civilian infrastructure and economic assets. He called the Houthi attacks “unacceptable” and said that such attacks damage peace and stability in the region and also threaten the freedom of ships to safely pass through the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb.
• Jaiswal also said that, so far, the oil supplies coming from the region had not been affected by these developments.
• Jaiswal said that Omani authorities were helping in the search for a missing Indian seafarer after a ship carrying 23 crew members, including 14 Indians, was hit off the Oman coast. The ship was the Panamanian oil tanker El Gaia. It was believed that the tanker had hit an Iranian mine in the Strait of Hormuz and was being taken back to Oman.
• Out of the 23 crew members, all except two were rescued, including 13 Indians. The S. military has claimed that the ship had been targeted by an Iranian missile in the previous month and was also targeted by a drone over the weekend.
• Jaiswal said that India was deeply thankful to the Omani authorities for rescuing its citizens. He also said that the Indian Embassy in Muscat was in close contact with the Omani authorities. He stated that attacks on commercial ships, seafarers, civilians and civilian infrastructure in the region were unacceptable to India.
• He further said that India wanted free and safe movement of ships and the smooth flow of trade through international waterways in the region to be restored as soon as possible.
• The ship incident happened over the weekend when Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was in Delhi for the BRICS Summit. During his talks with Iranian President Pezeshkian, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed the need to protect freedom of navigation and trade and to ensure the safety and well-being of seafarers.
• However, the official statement about the meeting did not mention any assurance from the Iranian President that Indian ships and Indian seafarers would be allowed to pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz.
• The MEA spokesperson was also asked about statements made by Beijing regarding the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit on Saturday.
• After returning to Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters that the two leaders had reached an “important consensus”. He also claimed that, in response to Mr. Xi’s concerns, Mr. Modi had said that India would not allow “any force to engage in anti-China activities on its territory.”

VB-G RAM G Scheme Trails MGNREGS by 9% in August

• In the second month of its working, the government’s new rural employment scheme, Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G), showed a small improvement in providing employment. However, when the figures for August were compared with the same month under MGNREGS, the amount of work available to poor people in rural areas was 9% lower.
• In the first month of the new scheme, the number of persondays generated was 48.01% lower than under MGNREGS. The number of persondays fell from 17.65 crore in July 2025 to 9.18 crore in July 2026.
• In August 2026, the fall was smaller than it was in July. The number of persondays decreased from 12 crore in August 2025 to 11.03 crore in August 2026, which means there was a 9.01% decline.
• If the figures for July and August 2026 are taken together, the new scheme provided less employment than MGNREGS had provided during the same two months in 2025. The total number of persondays fell from 29.78 crore to 20.21 crore, which is a 32.13% decline.
• However, the difference in employment generation during both July and August may actually be larger than these figures show, because West Bengal had generated no persondays in 2025. The MGNREGS programme in West Bengal had stopped working in December 2021, and the Union government officially stopped all financial payments to the State on March 9, 2022.
• According to senior officials of the Union Rural Development Ministry, it is still too early to judge how well the new scheme is performing. They explained that the 60-day break during the main agricultural period, when agricultural activities are at their peak, has also played a part in the fall in employment generation.
• So far, 16 States and Union Territories have officially informed the government about their peak agricultural periods. The Act gives States the freedom to set these periods according to their local farming calendars. If needed, States can also issue separate notifications for particular districts, blocks or gram panchayats, depending on their agro-climatic conditions and local cropping patterns.
• This flexibility helps the employment programme work along with farming activities instead of competing with them. In this way, the employment programme can be planned according to the time when farming work is at its highest in different areas.
• Since the new rural jobs programme started, 6,40,779 new Gramin Rozgar Guarantee cards have been issued in different States and Union Territories.
• The government has again made it clear that workers can continue to get employment using the job cards that were issued under MGNREGS. It has also clarified that every worker registered under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has been moved to VB-G RAM G, even if the worker’s job card has not completed e-KYC.
• The Ministry has also clearly stated that if a worker’s e-KYC is still pending, it does not stop that worker from asking for employment or receiving employment under the new programme.
• So far, 89 crore workers have completed their e-KYC. This includes 10.27 crore out of the 10.84 crore active workers, which means that approximately 95% of the active workers have completed their e-KYC.

Important Questions

1. According to the new UPI MDR system, what charge will merchants have to pay on UPI transactions above ₹2,000 from October 15?
2. Under the new UPI MDR system, which P2P and P2PM transactions will remain free from the MDR charge?
3. Why did India’s Ministry of External Affairs say it was “deeply concerned” about the blockades in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and Strait of Hormuz?
4. What did Prime Minister Narendra Modi stress during his talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian regarding freedom of navigation, trade and the safety of seafarers?
5. How many persondays were generated under VB-G RAM G in August 2026 compared with 12.12 crore under MGNREGS in August 2025?
6. How many active workers had completed their e-KYC under the VB-G RAM G rural employment programme?

Important Vocabulary

1. Merchants – People or businesses that sell goods or services.
2. Transactions – Acts of transferring money or making payments.
3. Sustainable – Able to continue for a long time.
4. Expansion – The process of becoming larger or wider.
5. Blockades – Actions that stop movement or access.
6. Seafarers – People who work or travel on ships.
7. Infrastructure – Basic systems and facilities needed for a country or region.
8. Navigation – The process of finding and following a route at sea.
9. Persondays – The amount of work done by one person in one working day.
10. Agro-climatic – Related to the climate and farming conditions of an area.
11. Notifications – Official announcements or information issued by an authority.
12. Cropping – The growing of crops on agricultural land.