UPSC Current Affairs 24 June 2026

• Birth: Born on July 6, 1901, in Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal.
• Illustrious Lineage: He was the son of Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee, a highly respected judge and the Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, popularly known as the "Tiger of Bengal".
• Youngest Vice-Chancellor: In 1934, at the exceptionally young age of 33, he became the youngest-ever Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, holding the office until 1938.
• Promoting Indian Languages: During his tenure, he invited Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore to deliver the university convocation address in Bengali, challenging the linguistic superiority of English.

• Pre-Independence Roles: He served as the finance minister of the undivided Province of Bengal (1941–1942) and was a prominent member of the Constituent Assembly.
• First Industry Minister: Following independence in 1947, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inducted him into India's first Union Cabinet as the Minister for Industry and Supply.
• Industrial Architect: He laid the structural foundation of India's modern economy by helping establish key public sector units, including the Chittaranjan Locomotive Works and the Sindri Fertilizer Factory.
• Resignation on Principle: He resigned from the Union Cabinet in April 1950 to protest the Nehru-Liaquat Pact. He strongly argued that the pact failed to secure the human rights and safety of minority Hindus left behind in East Pakistan.

• New Political Front: After leaving the government, he founded the All-India Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) on October 21, 1951, in New Delhi.
• Ideological Base: The BJS advocated for cultural nationalism, a unified Indian state, and strong protection for indigenous heritage.
• Precursor to the BJP: The Jana Sangh served as the ideological and political forerunner to the modern-day Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which considers Dr. Mookerjee its founding icon.

• Saving West Bengal: During the volatile partition negotiations of 1946–1947, he successfully spearheaded the Bengali Hindu Homeland Movement.
• Preventing Pakistani Control: He strongly opposed plans for a united but separate independent Bengal, ensuring that the Hindu-majority western districts were carved out to remain part of India as the state of West Bengal.

• Opposition to Article 370: He fiercely opposed the special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370, calling it the "Balkanisation" of India.
• Historic Slogan: He coined the iconic national unity slogan: “Ek desh mein do Vidhan, do Pradhan aur do Nishan nahi chalenge” (One country cannot have two constitutions, two prime ministers, and two flags).
• Arrest and Custodial Death: To protest the rule requiring Indian citizens to obtain a special permit to enter Jammu and Kashmir, he crossed the state border at Lakhanpur on May 11, 1953, without a permit and was arrested.
• Martyrdom: While detained in a cottage in Srinagar, his health collapsed under controversial and unexplained circumstances. He passed away in custody on June 23, 1953, a day now observed across India as Balidan Diwas.

• Nodal Agency: Operates as the apex body under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.
• Primary Objective: Formulates policy guidelines for citizen-centric governance, administrative documentation, and cross-ministry administrative reforms.
• Jurisdiction: Maximizes operational excellence by managing public grievances relating to both Central Government agencies and States/UTs.

• CPGRAMS: Manages the Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System, a 24/7 online platform connecting citizens to public authorities.
• NeSDA (National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment): Promotes the expansion of unified state portals, scaling digital public services across the country.
• Sevottam Scheme: Runs extensive capacity-building modules, training over 38,000 officers in quality public service delivery metrics.

• Reduced Resolution Timelines: The average time to resolve a citizen's grievance has drastically dropped to just 13–15 days in 2026, down from 32 days in 2021.
• Special Cleanliness Campaigns: Institutionalised "Swachhata" within government offices, freeing 989 lakh sq. ft. of space and weeding out 173 lakh obsolete physical files.
• Global Leadership: India secured the Presidency of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) for the 2025–2028 term through DARPG representation.

• Geographical Identity: It is an ancient folk instrument deeply rooted in the culture of Tripura, Northeast India.
• Associated Communities: It is closely associated with the Tripuri (Tipra) and other indigenous tribal communities of the region.
• Performance Use: It serves as a vital accompaniment in traditional folk songs, weddings, socio-religious ceremonies, festivals, and devotional Kirtans.
• Dance Accompaniment: The instrument is regularly used alongside flutes and cymbals to sound major tribal dances like the Garia, Jhum, and Lebang Boomani dances.
• Alternative Names: Locally, it is also referred to as Sarinda Uakhrap, serja, or serenja.

• Classification: In Indian musical classification, it falls under the "Tat Vadya" (stringed instruments played with a bow) category.
• Single-Block Body: Master craftsmen carve the entire body of the instrument from a single block of wood or bamboo.
• Unique Resonator: It is about 65–70 cm long with a narrow waist and a hollow, oval-shaped wooden vibrating chamber at the bottom. The lower part is covered with thin animal skin/parchment, while the top remains open.
• The Strings: Traditionally, it features three strings. Historically made from animal gut or Muga silk thread, modern variants frequently use metal strings.
• Tuning and Sound: It is tuned to the notes Sa-Ma-Sa and played vertically using a horsehair bow, producing a deeply soulful sound similar to the classical Indian Sarangi.

• Heritage Protection: The GI tag safeguards the authenticity of the Sarinda against duplicate commercial duplicates.
• Economic Boost: The legal backing will enhance visibility, driving market value and financial security for local tribal artisans and folk musicians.
• Tripura's GI Tally: With this addition, Tripura now boasts four official GI-tagged products: the Tripura Queen Pineapple, Matabari Peda (sweet), Risa/Pachra (hand-woven textile), and the Tripura Sarinda.

• Known as the "Mahakumbh of the East," the mega-gathering has drawn over 8 lakh pilgrims, sadhus, and tantric practitioners from across India and abroad.
• The temple’s sanctum sanctorum was sealed on the night of June 22 and is scheduled to reopen after grand purification rituals on the morning of June 26, 2026.

• Divine Menstruation: The festival celebrates the symbolic annual menstrual cycle of Goddess Kamakhya, who represents the ultimate manifestation of Mother Shakti, fertility, and the divine feminine.
• No Idols: Unlike traditional Hindu temples, there is no physical idol of the deity in the main temple. Instead, she is worshipped in the form of a yoni-shaped stone over which a natural underground spring flows.
• De-stigmatising Taboos: While menstruation is treated as a taboo in many cultures, Ambubachi celebrates it scientifically and spiritually as a sacred, clean process of cosmic creation, life, and renewal.
• Agricultural Connection: Historically linked to ancient agrarian societies, the festival marks the arrival of the monsoon. The accompanying rains are viewed as the earth becoming fertile and ready for regeneration.
• Shakti Peeth: The Kamakhya Temple is regarded as one of the oldest and most prominent of the 51 Shakti Peethas in Hinduism.

• Pravritti (The Closure): Marked by the onset of the goddess's cycle, the temple doors are completely sealed shut to the public.
• Three Days of Rest: For three consecutive days, all religious activities, worship, and farming are halted across Assam out of respect for Mother Earth's rest period. Priests inside the temple perform guarded, private rituals.
• Nivritti (The Reopening): On the fourth day, the temple undergoes extensive purification and ritual bathing of the deity. The doors are then thrown open for holy darshan.

• The Parents: It is a natural interspecies hybrid of Liberica (Coffea liberica) and Excelsa (Coffea dewevrei).
• Scientific Label: Formally designated as Coffea × libex, or simply Libex.
• The "X" Meaning: The "×" in its name explicitly denotes its hybrid status.

• Heat Tolerance: Inherits characteristics from lowland, heat-tolerant parentage, allowing it to thrive in warmer temperatures.
• Moisture Flexibility: Capable of coping with erratic rainfall patterns, extreme drought, and excess moisture stress.
• Disease Resistance: Carries crucial genetic immunity to coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix), a devastating fungus that heavily cripples other major species.

• Higher Yields: Yields significantly more than pure Liberica, boosting overall farm profitability and outturn.
• Thinner Exterior: Features a notably thinner pulp and parchment layer.
• Processing Efficiency: The thinner skin speeds up and simplifies post-harvest processing and anaerobic fermentation windows.
• Optimised Seed Size: Its seeds are smaller than Liberica and closer in size to Arabica. This uniformity makes roasting and grinding much more stable.

• Balanced Flavour: Unlike pure Liberica, which can have an intense, "vegetal" or "smoky" flavour profile that polarises consumers, Libex is much more balanced and approachable.
• Flavour Notes: Early tasting trials show complex, consumer-friendly notes of cherry fruit, floral aromatics, orange rind, cocoa, and toasted nuts.
• Rapid Scale-Up: Because the hybrid displays excellent genetic compatibility and a low rate of peaberry defects, high-performing selections can be scaled quickly through grafting or cuttings.

• Sarawak, Malaysia: Identified as harbouring the world's highest known natural concentration of Libex.
• India: Collaboration with organizations like the South India Coffee Company revealed that much of India’s historical "Tree Coffee" is actually Libex, featuring high Excelsa proportions (35% to 90%).

• Plausibility Engines: AI tools do not think like humans; they are "predictive word-matching" systems designed to gauge the most probable next word in a sequence.
• Strategic Guessers: When an AI model encounters a gap in its training data, it uses internal logic to "fill in the blanks" to provide a complete answer rather than admitting it does not know.
• Unwavering Confidence: The most dangerous trait of a hallucination is its polished, authoritative delivery, making it highly deceptive and difficult to spot without manual verification.

• Flawed Training Data: If an AI is fed biased, incomplete, or corrupted training data, it maps out incorrect patterns as objective reality.
• Lack of Grounding: Large Language Models (LLMs) operate mathematically and lack a basic, fundamental understanding of real-world physics, logic, or genuine contextual facts.
• Flawed Grading Systems: Standard industry benchmarks reward models for giving answers but rarely penalise incorrect guesses, forcing AIs to make blind but confident predictions.
• Overfitting: When an AI is trained too rigidly on a single dataset, it fails to handle different variations or new topics gracefully, leading to weird fabrications.

• Healthcare Risks: Medical AI tools can falsely identify healthy tissue as cancerous or omit crucial symptom durations from patient history files.
• Business Deal Failures: Businesses are losing critical contracts due to automated AI agents fabricating non-existent product discounts or misinterpreting old data.
• Societal Misinformation: The rapid spread of factually unverified summaries and fake news generated by autonomous agents heavily erodes public trust.

• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): Forcing AI systems to look up facts from a pre-verified, secure database before formulating a text response.
• Real-time Guardrails & Correctors: Tech architectures are embedding multi-agent pipelines (like "Guardian Agents") that automatically edit and correct inaccuracies locally before the user ever sees them.
• New Benchmarking Goals: Shifting AI testing models to heavily reward an honest "I don't know" answer, minimizing the machine's incentive to lie.

• Scientific Name: Portunus reticulatus (specifically for the Indian region).
• Family: Belongs to the Portunidae family, which comprises brachyuran "swimming crabs".
• Common Aliases: Also referred to as the blue crab, blue manna crab, and flower crab.

• Swimming Appendages: Easily recognized by flat, disc-shaped hind legs that function as paddles for swimming.
• Carapace Features: Features nine distinct spikes or horns along the shell (carapace) on either side of its eyes.
• Vibrant Colouration: Adorned with deep blue to olive-green shells and brilliant blue claws.

• Global Presence: Naturally distributed across Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, China, Japan, Malaysia, Australia, and Singapore.
• Indian Ecosystem: Found along both the east and west coasts of India, with dominant natural fisheries located in Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar.
• Substrate Choice: Prefers to live at depths up to 40 meters, staying buried under coastal sand or mud during the daytime and winter.

• High Chemical Tolerance: Spending long periods buried gives them an exceptionally high tolerance to ammonium (NH₄⁺) and ammonia (NH₃).
• Diet: Active nocturnal feeders that emerge during high tide to hunt for bivalves, small fish, and occasionally macroalgae.
• Fast Maturation: Possesses a rapid growth rate, reaching adulthood in roughly one year, and has a relatively short lifespan of about 3 years.

• Global Seafood Demand: Highly sought after in domestic and western international markets due to its sweet, low-fat, protein-rich meat.
• Blue Economy Booster: Commercial scaling of this aquaculture technology via agencies like the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) is expected to significantly increase India's seafood export basket.

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