UPSC Current Affairs 21 June 2026

• The Date: On June 20, 1947, the Bengal Legislative Assembly met under the British Mountbatten Plan to vote on the partition of the province.
• The Strategic Vote: Members representing the non-Muslim/Hindu-majority Western districts voted overwhelmingly in favour of partitioning Bengal and joining the Indian Union.
• The Safeguard: This democratic choice ensured that Kolkata and the western districts remained part of India, preventing the entire province from being absorbed into East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

• Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee: Prominently credited by the central and state governments as the saviour of West Bengal's Indian identity. He actively led the movement following the horrors of Direct Action Day and the Noakhali riots.
• Other Prominent Leaders: Intellectuals and politicians like Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, Jyoti Basu, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, and transport economist Dr. Nalinaksha Sanyal also played vital roles in shaping the state's eventual boundary.

• Decades of Exclusion: For decades after Independence, successive Congress, Left Front, and TMC governments chose not to officially institutionalise June 20 as a state holiday, seeking to avoid painful memories of the Partition.
• The Alternative Date: In 2023, the previous TMC government had passed a legislative resolution designating Poila Baisakh (April 14/15) as the official state day to emphasize cultural inclusivity over partition lines.
• The Shift: In early June 2026, the newly elected state administration formally repealed the previous order, establishing June 20 as the permanent, official state-backed date.

• Economic Boost: PM Modi launched the national Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) for West Bengal, targeted to cover nearly 50 lakh farmers.
• Infrastructure: Over ₹590 crore in railway projects and 49 road connectivity plans under the PMGSY-III scheme were dedicated to the state.
• Border Security: Highlighting a shift in policy, the current government fast-tracked the transfer of pending lands for international border fencing along the India-Bangladesh frontier.

• Governed by: Biological Diversity Act, 2002
• Supporting rules: Biological Diversity Rules, 2024
• Specific regulations: ABS Regulations, 2025
• International obligation: Nagoya Protocol on ABS (India signatory since 1992 to CBD)

• The Core Philosophy: When corporate bodies (like pharmaceutical, cosmetics, or seed companies) commercialise a natural resource (a medicinal plant or indigenous crop), they are mandated by law to pay a percentage of their revenue back to the native region.
• Preconditions: Commercial users must obtain Prior Informed Consent (PIC) and establish Mutually Agreed Terms (MAT) before accessing the biological resource.
• International Linkage: The framework aligns directly with the international Nagoya Protocol (under the CBD), which India signed to prevent biopiracy.

• National Level: The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) processes approvals for foreign entities, intellectual property rights (IPR), and third-party transfers.
• State Level: State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) regulate commercial utilisation by domestic Indian entities. Under current rules, the NBA transfers 85% to 90% of collected funds to SBBs for direct localized distribution.
• Local Level: Over 2,76,653 Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) operate at local local-body levels to maintain People’s Biodiversity Registers and receive payout funds.

• Red Sanders Monopoly: The trade of endangered Red Sanders (Pterocarpus santalinus) remains the single largest contributor, generating 45% (₹120 crore) of the total lifetime ABS collections.
• Agriculture & Seed Industry: The seed sector is the second largest driver at 32.3% (₹84.61 crore), led by major entities like Pioneer Overseas Corporation and Syngenta.
• Ayush & Pharma: The commercialisation of traditional herbs and ayurvedic remedies accounts for 13.8% (₹36.61 crore), driven by brands like Dabur and Himalaya Wellness Company.

• Grassroots Beneficiaries: Payouts have directly supported more than 10,500 BMCs across 23 states and hundreds of individual traditional knowledge holders.
• Conservation Initiatives: Communities use the funds for habitat restoration, documenting dying indigenous wisdom, building community gene banks, and setting up dedicated medicinal plant parks.
• Exemptions: Cultivated medicinal plants remain exempt from the ABS levy to encourage active farming and reduce regulatory burdens on AYUSH practitioners.

• Sensitising Men: The primary goal is to change behavioural attitudes and foster positive masculinity among male local leaders.
• Massive Scale: It aims to train and sensitise over 17.5 lakh male elected representatives across Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in India.
• Trainer Network: The ministry is establishing a nationwide network of 28,500 Master Trainers at the State, district, and block levels.
• Cascading Model: These master trainers will filter down to train local panchayat members across all States and Union Territories.
• Pilot Batch: The first phase kicked off with 40 master trainers representing six states: Assam, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Uttarakhand.

1. Nirbhay Chetna: Focusing strictly on the gender-sensitisation of male elected representatives.
2. Nirbhay Netri: Centered on leadership capacity building and intensive legal awareness training for 14.5 lakh elected women representatives.
3. Nirbhay Drishti: Aimed at strengthening technological surveillance infrastructure by installing CCTV cameras at strategic rural areas.

• Nirbhaya Fund: The initiative is financed under the central Nirbhaya Fund project.
• Collaborative Design: The special training module for this program was curated and developed by the non-profit organisation, Transform Rural India (TRI).
• Key Themes Covered: The training incorporates group discussions and case studies addressing positive masculinity, community participation, and identifying/responding to gender-based violence.
• Multilingual Reach: To ensure maximum penetration in rural pockets, training materials are designed to be available in English, Hindi, and several regional languages.

• Gender-Responsive Governance: It marks a crucial shift in public policy by acknowledging that women's empowerment cannot be achieved without actively involving men as allies in leadership positions.
• Social Transformation: Panchayats act as primary institutions for community mobilization and dispute resolution; altering the mindset of the Sarpanch or village head directly influences local societal norms.
• Alignment with National Goals: As highlighted by the Ministry, creating a secure environment for women is deemed absolutely essential to realizing the country’s long-term vision of a Viksit Bharat (Developed India).

• System Integration: Integrates food security, water management, and climate adaptation into unified national climate action frameworks.
• Reducing Fragmentation: Resolves the historically disjointed manner in which individual country climate plans handle agricultural policies versus water conservation.

• Parent Programme: Functions as a proposed initiative under the FAO's multi-stakeholder Food and Agriculture for Sustainable Transformation (FAST) Partnership, originally launched during COP27 in Egypt.
• Timeline: Unveiled as a primary agenda in mid-2026, it is slated for a formal global launch at the UNFCCC COP31 summit later this year.

• Developing Nations: Directly targets helping developing states rewrite and update their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Paris Agreement obligations.
• Farmer-Centric Models: Places actual farmers at the core of resource policy making to ensure grassroots feasibility.
• Climate Finance Access: Streamlines mechanisms to route targeted international investments toward water-focused, resilient agriculture.

• Access to Finance: Enhancing localized capabilities to successfully secure and identify green investments.
• Knowledge and Capacity: Providing voluntary operational guidelines and stakeholder training to developing governments.
• Policy Support and Dialogue: Systematically embedding agrifood security into wider national economic and ecological policy agendas.

• Definition: FXTs are hyper-energetic, brief, and non-repeating flashes of low-energy ("soft") X-rays originating from violent extra-galactic events.
• Duration: They flare up out of nowhere and typically last from a few minutes to several hours before completely vanishing.
• Elusive Enemies: Because they blink on and off rapidly at unpredictable times and locations, they are historically notoriously difficult to track.

• Failed/Trapped Jets: A massive star dies in a core-collapse supernova, but its high-energy particle jet gets trapped inside the stellar layers, releasing muffled X-rays instead of a full gamma-ray burst.
• Neutron Star Mergers: The cataclysmic collision of two neutron stars that births a magnetar (a neutron star with a monstrous magnetic field).
• Tidal Disruption Events (TDE): A cosmic meat-grinder scenario where a white dwarf star wanders too close to an intermediate-mass black hole and gets torn to shreds.

• Einstein Probe (EP): This specialized Chinese Academy of Sciences space mission has completely revolutionized transient astronomy by catching these fleeting flashes in near-real-time.
• Historical Discovery: Originally, FXTs were found only by pure luck while digging through deep archival data from telescopes like NASA’s Chandra or ESA’s XMM-Newton.
• Cosmic Beacons: Because they are so bright, they act as background lamps illuminating the early universe, helping scientists study the epoch of reionization when the very first stars lit up the cosmos.

• Hyperledger Fabric Fork: It is built as an enhanced fork of Hyperledger Fabric Framework, maintaining backwards compatibility with version 2.5.x.
• Decoupled Roles: The framework improves throughput by splitting blockchain peers into separate, independent endorsement and commit roles.
• Distributed SQL Support: It integrates YugabyteDB alongside traditional NoSQL options for optimized on-chain data storage and analytics.
• Stateless Validation: Network validation functions are decoupled into a stateless service, which reduces network latency.
• Shared Transient Store: Uses a KeyDB (Redis-compatible) cache layer to cut down on-chain network calls for private data.

• Permissioned Architecture: Engineered as a secure, private, and compliance-controlled blockchain for institutional use.
• Horizontal Scaling: Supports horizontal scaling to handle high transaction volumes across large public networks.
• Parallel Processing: Features parallel transaction execution for maximized execution speed.
• No Crypto Association: It operates strictly as an enterprise infrastructure ledger and does not feature or support cryptocurrencies.

• Asset Tokenisation: Converting physical or financial real-world assets into secure digital tokens.
• Digital Asset Ecosystems: Managing institutional digital registries, tracking orders, and securing cross-organization transactions.
• Multi-Organization Networks: Connecting disparate enterprise environments through a single, tamper-evident source of truth.

• Establishment: Founded in 1989 during the G7 Summit held in Paris, France.
• Headquarters: Located at the OECD headquarters in Paris, France.
• Nature: An autonomous, intergovernmental standard-setting body.
• The Global Watchdog: Functions as the premier international watchdog for financial integrity.

• Initial Focus: Launched strictly to study and combat Money Laundering (AML).
• Mandate Expansion (2001): Expanded to tackle Terrorist Financing (CFT) following the 9/11 attacks.
• Mandate Expansion (2012): Added efforts to counter the financing of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) proliferation.
• Policy Making: Creates national-level legislative frameworks to safeguard the global financial system.

• The Grey List: Officially known as Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring.
• Grey List Meaning: Countries actively working with FATF to fix strategic deficiencies in their financial system.
• The Black List: Officially known as High-Risk Jurisdictions subject to a Call for Action.
• Black List Meaning: Countries with severe strategic gaps that face economic countermeasures and strict financial sanctions.
• Plenary Sessions: The decision-making body meets three times a year to review and update these lists.

• Total Members: Comprises 40 members, including 38 countries and 2 regional organizations.
• Regional Bodies: The two member blocs are the European Commission and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
• Global Footprint: Over 200 jurisdictions globally are committed to implementing FATF standards.
• The 40 Recommendations: Operates based on a foundational list of 40 specific standards to fight financial crimes.

• Observer Status: India initially joined the network as an observer country in 2006.
• Full Membership: Admitted as the 34th full member of the FATF in June 2010.
• Regional Alliances: India is also a part of FATF-style regional groups, including the Asia-Pacific Group (APG).
• Domestic Laws: India enforces FATF compliance using the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967.

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