UPSC Current Affairs 14 July 2026

• NIDAR Stand For: National Innovation Challenge for Drone Application and Research

• Parent Initiative: It operates under SwaYaan, an ₹89.87 crore national capacity-building program aimed at training human resources in drone technology.
• Target Audience: The challenge is primarily designed for student innovators, engineers, and academic researchers across India.
• Core Microprocessor: Hardware development will center around the VEGA processor, developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) using open-standard RISC-V architecture.
• Strategic Goal: It aims to drastically reduce reliance on foreign chip designs and eliminate heavy licensing costs, advancing Atmanirbhar Bharat.
• Dual-Use Applications: Solutions designed under this framework will strengthen both civilian and defence technologies.

• Track 1 (Drone Innovation): Student teams must create fully autonomous swarm drones for disaster-hit zones to find survivors without external communication networks.
• Track 1 Alternative Challenge: Teams are tasked with engineering GPS-denied drones tailored for indoor industrial mapping and confined-space rescue operations.
• Track 2 (Component Innovation): Teams are challenged to design a customized, indigenous flight controller and autopilot board around the native VEGA chip.
• Hardware Support: Following initial technical evaluations, the top 100 teams will each receive two VEGA processor kits for hardware implementation and testing.

• Increased Prize Pool: Total cash rewards have expanded to over ₹65 lakh.
• Startup Incubation: Winning teams get incubation support to scale their engineering prototypes into actual commercial businesses.
• Career and Tech Pipelines: Finalists will be granted corporate internships, cloud computing credits, and direct software ecosystem assistance.

• Scientific Name: Tyto longimembris.
• Alternative Names: Eastern Grass Owl or Chinese Grass Owl.
• Taxonomic Family: Belongs to the Tytonidae family, sharing a close biological group with traditional Barn Owls.

• Size Profiles: Medium-sized, slim owls where females (35–42 cm) run noticeably larger than males (32–38 cm).
• Facial Disc: Features a distinctive, heart-shaped facial disc that is pale orange-buff with dark spots in females and pure white in males.
• Eye Patterns: Possesses relatively small eyes compared to other owl families, marked by black-and-buff "tear marks" underneath.
• Unique Limbs: Equipped with unusually long, slender legs with unfeathered lower portions, helping them wade through thick brush.
• Plumage Colour: Deep chocolate-brown and buff on the upper side, contrasted by pale, highly spotted underparts.

• Global Range: Native to eastern, southern, and southeast Asia, New Guinea, the western Pacific, and Australia (predominantly Queensland).
• Preferred Biomes: Strictly prefers grassland environments, including savannas, swampy floodplains, cane fields, and agricultural fields.
• Ground Dwellers: Unlike most arboreal owls, it roosts, hunts, and builds its carefully hidden tunnels and nests directly on the ground amid tall grass.

• Dietary Focus: Carnivorous predators feeding predominantly on small rodents, swamp rats, small birds, and frogs.
• Hunting Patterns: Nocturnal and crepuscular hunters that fly low over vegetation or physically walk through grass to flush out prey.
• Conservation Status: Listed globally as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
• Primary Risks: Localized populations face decline from heavy habitat destruction, uncontrolled grassland fires, overgrazing, and wetland reclamation.

• Establishment: Set up by the Government of India on February 8, 1989.
• Original Name: Initially launched as the National Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Finance and Development Corporation (NSCSTFDC).
• Bifurcation: Separated into two distinct bodies on April 10, 2001, leaving NSFDC to focus solely on Scheduled Castes.
• Corporate Structure: Operates as a Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE) and a "not-for-profit" Section 8 company.
• Nodal Ministry: Functions under the administrative control of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
• Headquarters: Headquartered in Delhi, with 4 liaison centers in Mumbai, Kolkata, Lucknow, and Bengaluru.

• Poverty Reduction: Acts as a primary catalyst to systematically eradicate poverty among the SC community.
• Economic Empowerment: Finances, facilitates, and mobilizes funds for income-generating schemes and self-reliance.
• Skill Enhancement: Provides grants for skill development and entrepreneurship training to boost employability.
• Marketing Support: Helps beneficiaries market their final products by organizing or participating in national fairs and exhibitions.

• Caste Requirement: The applicant must belong to the Scheduled Caste community and hold a valid caste certificate.
• Revised Income Ceiling: The annual family income limit for both rural and urban areas was increased to ₹5.00 lakh.
• Skill Exemption: There is no income ceiling if an SC individual applies exclusively for the NSFDC-sponsored Skill Development Training Programmes.
• Group Entities: Partnership firms and cooperative societies can apply if 100% of their members belong to the SC category and meet individual income caps.

• Lending Channel: NSFDC does not disburse loans directly to individuals; it works through State Channelizing Agencies (SCAs), Public Sector Banks, Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), and NBFC-MFIs.
• Loan Limits: Offers regular term loans for projects up to ₹50 lakh per unit.
• Educational Loan Scheme: Provides low-interest funding up to ₹40 lakh for technical or professional courses in India or abroad.
• Microfinance Focus: Runs specialized low-interest microcredit frameworks, such as the Udyam Nidhi Yojana (UNY) and Aajeevika Microfinance Yojana.
• Interest Concessions: Extends credit at highly concessional rates, featuring special interest rebates (e.g., 0.5% lower) for women entrepreneurs.
• Digital Upgrades: Recently integrated its loan systems with the central PM-SURAJ portal to digitize applications and boost delivery transparency.

• Launch Year: Formally rolled out during 2014–15.
• Nodal Ministry: Managed entirely by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India.
• Current Framework: It operates as an integral component of the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY).
• Core Philosophy: Guided by the objective to "reach the unreached" by pushing mechanical power to remote and low-powered farming pockets.

• Expanding Reach: Delivers affordable farm machinery to small and marginal farmers who face low farm power availability.
• Offsetting High Costs: Overcomes high capital investment and small land-holding limitations through community machinery leasing models.
• Promoting High-Tech Hubs: Promotes specialized, high-value technical hubs for high-end agricultural production tools.
• Quality Assurance: Ensures standard safety and output quality via performance testing and certifications across designated national testing centers.

• Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT): Subsidies are sent straight to beneficiaries via DBT portals.
• Subsidy Structure:
  • 40% financial assistance for general category farmers.
  • 50% financial assistance for SC, ST, small/marginal farmers, women, and North-Eastern/Himalayan states.
• Funding Splits: The Union government splits costs 60:40 with general states, 90:10 with North-Eastern/Himalayan states, and provides 100% funding to Union Territories.
• Service Support: Small and marginal farmers receive up to ₹2,000 per hectare for utilizing mechanized drone or hiring services through custom centers.

• Custom Hiring Centres (CHCs): Localized platforms that let small scale farmers hire heavy equipment like tractors or combine harvesters for a minimal rental fee.
• Farm Machinery Banks (FMBs): Community-driven or village-level storage spaces meant for cooperative and shared tool usage.
• Dedicated Women Funding: Explicitly earmarks 30% of its operational pool specifically to women farmers to boost inclusion and mitigate manual farm drudgery.

• Kisan Drones: Promotes advanced precision farming for exact chemical, nutrient, and fertilizer placement.
• Institutional Grants: Grants 100% financial assistance (up to ₹10 lakh per drone) to ICAR institutes, Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), and State Agricultural Universities for trial procurement.
• Commercial Grants: Offers up to 75% grants to Farmer-Producer Organizations (FPOs) and up to ₹6,000 per hectare contingency support to independent service agencies deploying agricultural drones.

• Nodal Ministry: Led primarily by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).
• Collaborating Partners: Involves the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Indian Coast Guard, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), National Service Scheme (NSS), and various NGOs.
• Origin: Launched first in 2022 as a historic 75-day campaign across 75 beaches to mark 75 years of India's independence (Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav).
• Global Milestone: Recognized globally as one of the longest-running, citizen-led coastal cleanup drives with the highest mass participation.
• Culmination Event: Timed annually to conclude around International Coastal Cleanup Day, observed on the third Saturday of September.

• Marine Litter Reduction: Focuses heavily on removing single-use plastic, microplastics, and solid waste from the shorelines.
• The Three Pillars: Driven by the behavioural principles of Consume Responsibly, Segregate waste at home, and Dispose Responsibly.
• Blue Economy Support: Aims to protect vulnerable marine biodiversity (corals, turtles, fish) and sustain coastal livelihoods like tourism and fisheries.
• Digital Integration: Supported by the "Eco Mitram" mobile application for citizen registration, tracking waste collection, and spreading awareness.

• Inter-Departmental Synergy: Emphasizes breaking down ministerial silos so scientific institutions function as an integrated ecosystem.
• Technological Innovation: Combines modern scientific tracking and tools with traditional beach cleanup activities to map pollution hotspots.
• Community-Led Stewardship: Targets active mobilization of coastal communities, school/college students, NCC cadets, and local village groups to make it a true Jan Bhagidari (people's movement).

• Onomastus brahmagiri: It was discovered in the Brahmagiri Hills of the Western Ghats in India.
• Onomastus silentvalley: It was discovered in the shola forests of Silent Valley National Park, Kerala.
• Onomastus wijesinghei: It was discovered in the montane forests of Sri Lanka.

• Scientific Family: They belong to the Salticidae family, which represents roughly 10% to 13% of all known spider species globally.
• Massive Diversity: There are nearly 7,000 distinct species of jumping spiders scattered across every continent except Antarctica.
• Microscopic Size: They range anywhere from a tiny 2 mm up to a maximum of 25 mm in body length.

• Eight-Eyed Vision: They possess four pairs of eyes (eight eyes total), with two massive forward-facing primary eyes that grant them exceptional, high-resolution 3D vision.
• No Leg Muscles: They do not rely on standard leg muscles to jump. Instead, they use a hydrostatic pressure system to pneumatically extend their limbs, making their movement incredibly energy-efficient.
• Hydrophobic Qualities: Some species sport water-repelling hairs that lock in bubbles of oxygen, allowing them to temporarily survive entirely submerged underwater.

• No Prey Webs: Unlike traditional spiders, jumping spiders do not spin webs to snare their food.
• Stalk-and-Pounce Strategy: They act as active diurnal predators, tracking down insects by sight during daylight hours and leaping forward like a cheetah to ambush them.
• The Safety Dragline: Before taking a leap, they anchor a single structural strand of silk to the ground, serving as a bungee safety line in case their jump misses the target.
• Silken Tents: They generate silk primarily to weave protective overnight shelters, cocoons for moulting, and safe storage sacs for their eggs.

• Core Definition: It is a screen-based, electronic, anonymous order-matching system for secondary market trading of Government Securities.
• Ownership: The system is fully owned, operated, and managed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
• Launch Year: The order-matching (OM) module was officially launched in August 2005.
• Tradable Instruments: Central Government Securities, State Development Loans (SDLs), and Treasury Bills (T-Bills) are traded here.

• Anonymity: The identity of buyer and seller entities remains hidden during order execution to encourage fair pricing.
• Order-Driven System: Trades are matched automatically by the system based on standard price-time priority rules.
• Bilateral Negotiation: The platform includes a "Request for Quote" (RFQ) segment allowing members to negotiate directly when preferred.

• Direct Members: Includes financial entities like Banks, Primary Dealers, Mutual Funds, and Insurance Companies.
• Direct Requirements: Direct members must maintain a Subsidiary General Ledger (SGL) account and a current account with the RBI.
• Indirect Members: Includes smaller financial institutions, foreign institutional investors, and select corporates.
• Indirect Mechanics: These entities do not hold direct RBI current accounts and must route trades via Direct Members.

• Settlement Cycle: Transactions executed on the NDS-OM platform settle on a standard T+1 basis.
• Central Counterparty: All completed trades are cleared and guaranteed by the Clearing Corporation of India Limited (CCIL).
• Risk Reduction: The clearing arrangement eliminates counterparty default risk for trading participants.

• Price Discovery: The order matching engine ensures transparent, competitive, and real-time market-driven asset pricing.
• Efficient Borrowing: High secondary liquidity directly assists the government in managing public debt efficiently at lower costs.
• Individual Inclusivity: Complements the RBI Retail Direct Scheme by giving common retail investors institutional-grade access to risk-free sovereign debt.

• SASCI Stand For: Special Assistance to States for Capital Investment

• Launch Year: Introduced in FY 2020–21 by the Ministry of Finance to support state-level capital expenditure (capex) and prevent public spending cutbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 50-Year Interest-Free Loans: Financial aid is given entirely in the form of 50-year interest-free loans rather than grants, ensuring states do not face immediate debt servicing pressure.
• Borrowing Cap Relief: Funds released under SASCI are over and above the normal Net Borrowing Ceiling (NBC) permitted to states.
• Tied vs. Untied Structure: Outlays are split into "untied" funds (for states to spend flexibly on general capex) and "tied" funds (conditioned on states implementing core administrative reforms).

• Development of Iconic Tourist Centres: Financial assistance (like the ₹3,295 crore allotted previously for 40 projects) is designated for upgrading lesser-known historic and cultural landmarks to global scale standards.
• Digital Infrastructure (Agri Stack and Telecom): States are incentivised to link Farmer IDs with fertilizer usage and standardise digital "Right of Way" (RoW) rules.
• Urban Reforms: Focused on updating industrial building bylaws, municipal accounting, and optimal urban land utilisation.
• Mining Sector Upgrades: A ₹5,000 crore component specifically aims at mine operationalisation and transparent resource allocation governance.
• Other Elements: Includes allocations for police personnel housing, setting up automated vehicle scrappage test centers, and building Unity Malls to promote local "One District One Product" (ODOP) merchandise.

• Challenge Method: Key project tracks (like the tourism infrastructure) use a competitive challenge-based framework.
• Evaluation Parameters: Projects submitted by state governments are screened for site connectivity, carrying capacity, localized economic growth, and sustainability mechanisms.
• Execution & Timelines: While the Centre supplies 100% of the loan funding, projects are implemented and operated entirely by the respective State Governments. Specific infrastructure projects carry a tight, maximum 2-year execution period.

• High GDP Multiplier Effect: Capital expenditure under SASCI has a profound multiplier response; every ₹1 spent under the scheme is estimated to generate ₹3 in national Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• Encourages Internal Fiscal Discipline: By tying substantial bonuses (like the ₹756 crore allocated to Delhi) to states using their own resources for capex, the scheme discourages a reliance on central hands-outs and drives fiscal prudence.

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