India's Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare chaired the first BRICS Health Working Group meeting of 2026 in New Delhi, convening senior health officials and delegates from all nine member states: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia. The session operates under India's 2026 BRICS Chairship theme, "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability," anchored in commitments articulated at the 2025 Rio Summit. Union Health Secretary Punya Salila Srivastava proposed two new priority areas for India's Chairship term: a BRICS Mission for Healthy Lifestyles targeting tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diets, and harmful alcohol consumption; and a dedicated workstream on Mental Health and Wellness focused on service strengthening and stigma reduction. These join seven existing priorities, including a BRICS TB Research Network, regulatory authority collaboration, an integrated early warning system for infectious diseases, and digital health architecture for remote care delivery. Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia each formally endorsed the new mental health and healthy lifestyles priorities, while all member countries aligned on advancing tuberculosis research, regulatory harmonisation, and local vaccine and medicine production. The meeting closed with consensus on a roadmap covering technical meetings and ministerial-level engagements across the full BRICS Health Track 2026, signalling structured follow-through rather than declaratory alignment alone.
India's government plans to amend the Payment and Settlement Systems Act to restore UPI merchant discount rates, ending the zero-MDR regime in place since January 2020.
India's government has introduced the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, proposing changes to payments regulation, income tax, and the Finance Act to attract FDI and support Make in India. The Bill's final shape will depend on parliamentary debate and committee review.
The government's Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, proposes to replace the blanket UPI MDR ban with a system allowing the Centre to notify which payment modes stay fee-free.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Rs 5,000 crore Bhogapuram greenfield airport in Andhra Pradesh, built under a public-private partnership model. He also laid foundation stones for infrastructure projects worth nearly Rs 18,000 crore in the state, signalling a broad investment push for the region.
