BharatNotes Contemporary World Politics is the Class XII Political Science NCERT (Part 1) on the world after the Cold War: how the Soviet system ended and what replaced it, the regional and national centres of power that limit American dominance, the conflicts and cooperation of India's own neighbourhood, the United Nations and the other international organisations and the case for reforming them, what "security" means in its traditional and non-traditional senses, the politics of the environment and natural resources, and globalisation and its critics. The current book, Reprint 2026-27, has seven chapters: the rationalisation of 2022-23 dropped the opening chapter on the Cold War and the chapter on US hegemony, and retitled "Alternative Centres of Power" as "Contemporary Centres of Power". These pages follow the current chapters in NCERT's order and keep the site's original numbering, so pages 02, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08 and 09 are NCERT's chapters 1 to 7 and each says so in its opening paragraph; pages 01 and 03 keep the dropped chapters from the 2020-21 edition, labelled, because the book's other chapters still assume them and the exam still asks them. Every page prints NCERT's statement first and the dated record beside it: NCERT's ten-member ASEAN against the eleventh member admitted in October 2025, its 164-member WTO against today's 166, its "195 parties" to Paris against the 194 after the United States' second withdrawal, its Indus Waters Treaty that "has survived to this day" against the Treaty's abeyance since April 2025.
For UPSC the book is the baseline of GS2's international-relations section (India's neighbourhood, the great powers, regional and international organisations, groupings and agreements) and of the security and environment questions in GS3; GS1 draws on its globalisation chapter for the questions on culture and society, and Prelims on its timelines, treaties and membership counts.
The chapters
| Site page | NCERT chapter (Reprint 2026-27) | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The Cold War Era | Dropped in 2022-23 (the 2020-21 edition's Chapter 1), retained here | The Cuban Missile Crisis, deterrence, the two blocs (NATO, the Warsaw Pact, SEATO, CENTO), the arenas and NCERT's timeline, the arms-control treaties from the LTBT to START-II and their successors to New START's expiry in 2026, the Non-Aligned Movement from Belgrade 1961 to Kampala 2024, the New International Economic Order, India's non-alignment and its critics |
| 2. The End of Bipolarity | Chapter 1 | The Soviet system and its stagnation, Gorbachev's reforms, NCERT's timeline of disintegration to 25 December 1991, the three consequences, shock therapy and its results, the post-Soviet conflicts, and India-Russia relations with the summits and arms-transfer shares dated |
| 3. US Hegemony in World Politics | Dropped in 2022-23 (the 2020-21 edition's Chapter 3), retained here | The First Gulf War, the Clinton years, 9/11, the Iraq invasion, hegemony as hard, structural and soft power, NCERT's three constraints, India's three strategies and the Lok Sabha debate on the nuclear deal, bandwagon, hide and resist, and the India-US record from 2005 to the tariff episode and court ruling of 2026 |
| 4. Contemporary Centres of Power | Chapter 2 (titled "Alternative Centres of Power" until 2022-23) | The European Union from the Marshall Plan to Lisbon and its strengths and limits, ASEAN's founding, the ASEAN Way, the Community and the ARF, Timor-Leste's admission, China's rise from the Soviet model to the WTO, India-China relations with the 2024-26 record, and NCERT's boxes on Japan and South Korea |
| 5. Contemporary South Asia | Chapter 3 | NCERT's seven-country region, democracy and its interruptions in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, the India-Pakistan conflicts and the hostilities of May 2025, India's other neighbours, SAARC and SAFTA, China and the United States, with the region's governments dated |
| 6. International Organisations | Chapter 4 | Why international organisations exist, the founding of the UN and its Secretaries-General, the two kinds of reform, the Security Council debate and India's case, the UN in a unipolar world, and NCERT's boxes on the IMF, World Bank, WTO, IAEA, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, with the 2026 Secretary-General selection |
| 7. Security in the Contemporary World | Chapter 5 | What security means, the traditional conception (deterrence, defence, balance of power, alliances; disarmament, arms control, confidence building), human and global security from the UNDP's 1994 report, the new threats, cooperative security, and India's four components with the nuclear doctrine of 2003 quoted |
| 8. Environment and Natural Resources | Chapter 6 | Environment as politics, the Earth Summit and Agenda 21, the global commons and Antarctica, common but differentiated responsibilities, common property and sacred groves, India's stand from Kyoto to the 2031-35 NDC, environmental movements, resource geopolitics and water, indigenous peoples |
| 9. Globalisation | Chapter 7 | Globalisation as flows and interconnectedness, its causes, its political, economic and cultural consequences, India from protectionism to 1991, and the resistance from Seattle 1999 and the World Social Forum to India's left and right critics |
How to read the book for the exam
- Follow the argument from bipolarity to multipolarity. Chapter 1 ends bipolarity; chapter 2 asks what limits the remaining superpower; chapter 4 asks whether the UN can; chapter 3 shows the region where India must act. The dropped chapters supply the Cold War and the hegemony the book argues about.
- Keep NCERT's figures and the official ones side by side. NCERT's counts and dates belong to its 2022 setting (with a few 2024 updates); the organisations' own pages give today's. Answer keys follow NCERT; Prelims statements can test either, so every page prints both with the date.
- Quote the documents. The Rio Declaration and the UNFCCC on common but differentiated responsibilities, the 1994 Human Development Report on human security, the Cabinet Committee on Security's release of 4 January 2003 on India's nuclear doctrine, the UN Charter's veto, the Chairman's Statement that admitted Timor-Leste: each page quotes the text where coaching notes paraphrase it.
- Date the live items. New START (expired 5 February 2026), the Paris Agreement (194 parties after 27 January 2026), the WTO's e-commerce moratorium (lapsed 30 March 2026), the Indus Waters Treaty (in abeyance since April 2025), the governments of Bangladesh and Nepal (2026), the next UN Secretary-General (not yet recommended on 4 October 2026): each page gives the status as of October 2026 and names the record.
Sources used across the book
- NCERT, Contemporary World Politics, Reprint 2026-27 (whole-book zip) and the 2020-21 edition (Wayback copy of 9 April 2022).
- The organisations' own pages, read on 3-4 October 2026: the United Nations (member states, the Security Council, the Secretary-General selection, the Treaty Collection's status pages, the Dag Hammarskjöld Library's veto list), the IMF, the WTO, NATO, the European Union, ASEAN, the SCO, the BRICS chair, the SAARC Secretariat, the Non-Aligned Movement's chair, UNODA, the OPCW and the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat.
- Government of India records: the Ministry of External Affairs' bilateral briefs, Press Information Bureau releases and backgrounders, Akashvani News reports of government statements, the Reserve Bank of India, NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
- Foreign government records for foreign facts: the US Federal Register, Supreme Court and State Department archives, the Office of the Historian, the Kremlin, the Gazette of Pakistan, Nepal's Prime Minister's Office, and the UNDP, SIPRI, the World Bank and EDGAR for figures with their own dates.
