UPSC Current Affairs 16 July 2026

• Birth: He was born on July 15, 1903, in Virudhunagar, Tamil Nadu, to a humble family from a marginalized caste. In Tamil Nadu, the day is widely celebrated as Education Development Day to honour his revolutionary structural reforms in schooling.

• Education: He dropped out of school at the age of 12 due to financial constraints and worked as a shop assistant.
• Turning Point: The 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre deeply moved him at age 15, prompting him to dedicate his life to the nation.

• Grassroots Worker: He joined the Indian National Congress (INC) at 18 and met Mahatma Gandhi in 1921.
• Protests and Prison: He actively participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement, Nagpur Flag Satyagraha, and Vedaranyam Salt Satyagraha.
• Imprisonment: The British colonial regime jailed him multiple times, including a three-year sentence during the Quit India Movement in 1942.
• Constituent Assembly: He served as a member of the Constituent Assembly of India in 1946, contributing to drafting the nation's constitution.

• Education Pioneer: Fondly remembered as Kalvi Thanthai (Father of Education), he reopened over 6,000 closed schools and built thousands of new ones.
• Mid-Day Meal Scheme: He introduced the landmark free Mid-Day Meal Scheme to alleviate child hunger and boost school enrolment among impoverished children.
• Industrialization: He setup key public sector undertakings like BHEL and the Neyveli Lignite Corporation, shifting Tamil Nadu's economic landscape.
• Infrastructure: He orchestrated the construction of multiple dams and extensive rural electrification channels across irrigation sectors.

• The Kamaraj Plan (1963): He proposed that senior Congress ministers resign from government posts to focus entirely on revitalizing grassroots party organization.
• National Leadership: He served as the President of the Indian National Congress following the demise of Jawaharlal Nehru.
• Kingmaker Moniker: He earned this legendary title for skillfully navigating the political transitions that appointed Lal Bahadur Shastri (1964) and Indira Gandhi (1966) as Prime Ministers.

• Simplicity: He was widely respected for his immense personal integrity and simple lifestyle, owning very few personal assets even at the peak of his power.
• Highest Honour: He passed away on October 2, 1975, and was posthumously awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1976.

• This major policy rollout serves as the direct successor to the highly successful Production Linked Incentive Scheme for Large Scale Electronics Manufacturing (PLI-LSEM), which concluded its term on March 31, 2026.

• Value Addition: Shifting India's position from basic handset assembly to deep domestic value-added manufacturing.
• Brand Sovereignty: Helping build native Indian smartphone brands to establish technological sovereignty and capture massive global economic value.
• Supply Resilience: Strengthening domestic supply chain ecosystem resilience against global tariff exposure and geopolitical disruptions.
• Patent Creation: Incentivizing Indian companies to create indigenous patents through intensive Research and Development (R&D) and product design.

• Scheme Tenure: Operational for a strict duration of 5 years, running from Financial Year 2026-27 to 2030-31.
• Base Incentives: Offers production-linked incentive support on eligible sales ranging between 2.25% and 5%.
• Component Sourcing Boost: Grants an additional incentive of up to 1.5% for companies that source key components and sub-assemblies locally within India.
• R&D Advantage: Provides an extra 3% incentive on eligible sales to domestic brands focusing heavily on product design and R&D.

• Massive Production: Projects a cumulative mobile phone production value of roughly ₹39,00,000 crore over the 5-year timeline.
• Job Creation: Anticipated to generate over 60,000 direct employment opportunities in electronic manufacturing and allied components industries.
• Export Push: Significantly expanding smartphone exports, building on its status as India's single largest exported product category in 2025.

• Global Stand: India stands firmly as the world's second-largest mobile phone manufacturer by volume.
• Local Assembly Success: Nearly 99.2% of mobile phones used across India are now assembled domestically.
• Value Share: The previous PLI version successfully pushed localized value addition to 24%, and the MPMS aims to drastically narrow the gap with China's 38% rate.

• Import Elimination: India currently faces a deficit, importing roughly 10 million tonnes out of its total 40 million tonne annual demand.
• Policy Certainty: The previous New Investment Policy (NIP-2012) expired in October 2019, necessitating a fresh regulatory framework to process new plant proposals.
• Plant Modernization: With 82% of existing plants being over 25 years old, this framework accelerates critical technological upgrades.
• Rising Demand: Addresses increased fertilizer requirements caused by changing cropping patterns and expanding crop sowing areas.

• Return on Equity (RoE): Assures a stable financial incentive structure with a minimum floor of 12% and a ceiling cap of 16% on equity.
• Forex Risk Mitigation: Protects investors by automatically converting fixed costs into Indian Rupees (INR) after four years based on active market exchange rates.
• Cost Transparency: Introduces structural clarity by strictly separating fixed operating costs from variable manufacturing inputs.
• Fiscal Savings: These streamlined policy mechanisms are estimated to save over ₹250 crore in setup costs for each new plant compared to the 2012 policy.
• Level Playing Field: The regulatory and financial incentives apply equally to private, government, and cooperative sector projects.

• Production Targets: The policy aims to completely eliminate India's dependency on imported urea by setting up 8 to 9 new gas-based manufacturing plants. This will add 10 million tonnes (1 crore metric tonnes) of fresh annual production capacity to achieve full domestic self-sufficiency.

• Energy Security Integration: While primarily designed for natural gas-based units, the structure leaves clear pathways to integrate coal gasification technologies over time.
• Subsidy Relief: Drastically lowers long-term central government financial outlays by shrinking high international logistics expenses and import import-subsidy bills.

• Existing Capacity: India currently houses 33 operational urea manufacturing units with an installed footprint of 26.94 million tonnes (269.42 LMT).
• Historical Impact: The predecessor NIP-2012 successfully yielded six operational units (four public sector joint ventures and two private ventures).

• Investment Mobilization: Aims to attract fresh commercial investments worth approximately ₹4,00,000 crore.
• Production Boost: Targets local semiconductor manufacturing output worth ₹2,00,000 crore during the scheme period.
• Job Creation: Anticipated to generate over 60,000 direct, high-skilled employment opportunities across the tech sector.
• Self-Reliance: Designed to achieve 75% domestic self-reliance in crucial chip manufacturing metrics by 2030.
• This upgraded version features a massive financial outlay of ₹1,27,500 crore, a significant step up from the ₹76,000 crore allocated to its predecessor, Semicon 1.0.
• While the first phase focused primarily on setting up infrastructure, Semicon 2.0 transitions towards deepening the domestic supply chain and establishing technological sovereignty.

1. Deepening Chip Design: Focuses on expanding domestic chip design infrastructure. It looks to scale up the 105 startups funded in phase one into major systems creators and owners of global Semiconductor Intellectual Property (IP).
2. Localizing Machines & Materials: Incentivizes companies manufacturing precision fabrication tools, machinery, industrial gases, and specialty chemicals to curb heavy import dependency.
3. Expanding Semiconductor Fabs: Continues to pitch and attract global investments to establish Silicon Fabs, Compound Semiconductor Fabs, and Display Fabs. (Note: India's first primary silicon fabrication plant is expected to open in 2028).
4. Advanced Packaging Infrastructure: Strengthens local ATMP (Assembly, Testing, Marking, and Packaging) and OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) capabilities by actively bringing complex, next-generation packaging tech to India.
5. Advanced Research & Development: Shifts research priorities from mature processes (28nm–110nm nodes) toward the development of advanced sub-nanometer sub-nodes in close collaboration with global research hubs.
6. Strategic Talent Development: Building on the 68,000 students already trained across 315 universities, it aims to scale advanced curricula focusing on clean-room protocols, fab operations, and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tool sets.

• Fab & Packing Units: Approved 12 commercial manufacturing projects with combined investments crossing ₹1.64 lakh crore.
• Active Production: Global players like Micron, Kaynes, and CG Semi have officially initiated commercial semiconductor packaging production in India.
• Start-Up Ecosystem: Provided 24 major semiconductor design projects direct financial funding, while offering over 105 startups plug-and-play access to high-end industrial software tools.

• Digital Access: To democratize legal education by providing global, unified digital access to authoritative legal literature.
• Language Focus: To promote the use of simple, lucid, and citizen-friendly Hindi within the judicial and legal domains.
• National Vision: To advance the "Digital India" campaign and strengthen the mandate for ease of justice across the country.

• Official URL: The portal is securely hosted and accessible at the official web domain: www.vsp.gov.in.
• Supreme Court Judgments: Features prominent, reportable judgments from the Supreme Court of India translated into Hindi.
• High Court Rulings: Hosts notable judgments and landmark case citations from various state High Courts in Hindi.
• Legal Literature: Offers an exhaustive online library of law textbooks, case indexes, short summaries, and headnotes.
• Academic Journals: Houses digital editions of popular, authoritative Hindi law journals published by the division.
• The launch ceremony took place at Kartavya Bhawan-2 in New Delhi, marking a significant step toward the digitization of Hindi legal literature.

• Legal Practitioners: Advocates and lawyers can search and cite authentic Hindi legal text during court proceedings.
• Judiciary Members: Judges and judicial officers across lower and higher courts can leverage it for reference.
• Academia: Law students, researchers, and university professors gain seamless download access to standard study materials.
• General Public: Common citizens can easily download and read bilingual Bare Acts and basic central law literature.

• Parent Department: The portal is developed under the Vidhi Sahitya Prakashan (VSP), an active wing of the Legislative Department, Ministry of Law and Justice.
• Core Mandate: VSP is the premier government body responsible for publishing standard textbooks, central acts, and legal reports natively in the Hindi language.

• This launch delivers on a commitment made by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw following a viral interaction where students from MNIT Jaipur pointed out critical design flaws, slow performance, and frustrating captcha requirements.
• It marks the first major, comprehensive overhaul of India's largest online public utility platform in over two decades.

• User Validation: To allow everyday passengers to experience the upgraded look and feel and catch live operational defects.
• Feedback Mechanism: To actively gather public feedback, which the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) will incorporate before completely replacing the old portal.
• System Integration: To rigorously test performance while the backend Passenger Reservation Engine (PRS) undergoes a parallel modernization overhaul.

• 1. Minimal Distractions: It eliminates unnecessary captchas, frustrating pop-up advertisements, and flashing or heavy graphics that routinely choke user login speeds.
• 2. Unified Seat Availability: Passengers can view live seat availability across all travel classes simultaneously on a single screen, ending the need to click individual filters (like Sleeper, 3AC, or 2AC) repeatedly.
• 3. Faster Checkout Flow: Features a vastly shortened checkout funnel with fewer intermediate pages and clicks, specifically optimizing the platform to handle extreme traffic spikes during Tatkal booking hours.
• 4. Streamlined Repeat Booking: Automatically caches and manages saved passenger profiles, preventing frequent travellers from having to manually fill out descriptive identity forms every single session.

• How to Access: The public can test the trial layout directly via the standalone sub-domain at IRCTC Beta Platform or by clicking the dedicated "Beta Version" toggle pinned to the existing homepage.
• Login Information: Regular passengers do not need to create a new profile. Active registered User IDs and passwords from the legacy system transfer seamlessly onto the beta interface.
• Platform Footprint: The overhaul is built to run smoothly across desktops, mobile viewports, and tablet devices. This is essential as the platform handles an average of 14.5 lakh ticket bookings every single day.

• Scientific Name: It is classified under the name Anarhynchus leschenaultii (formerly Charadrius leschenaultii).
• Family: It belongs to the Charadriidae family, encompassing small to medium-sized wading shorebirds.
• Complex Distinction: Genetic and mitochondrial profiling identifies it as a distinct sister taxon to the mongolus subspecies group of the Lesser Sand-Plover.

• Bill Structure: It features a noticeably long, heavy, and hefty black bill which serves as its primary distinction from smaller plovers.
• Breeding Plumage: Breeding adults present a distinct dark eye mask accompanied by a striking orangish-chestnut chest, neck, and forehead.
• Non-Breeding Plumage: During winter migration, they turn sandy brown on their upper bodies and white underneath, retaining a white throat and pale "eyebrows".
• Throat Border: Unlike variations of the Lesser Sand-Plover, the Greater Sand-Plover never possesses a black border enclosing its white throat.
• Proportions: Typically measures 22 to 25 cm in length with a wingspan ranging from 53 to 60 cm, resting on noticeably pale, long legs.

• Breeding Grounds: It breeds primarily during April and May in the high-altitude, arid semi-deserts of Central Asia, extending from Turkey through Jordan, southern Siberia, Mongolia, and northern China.
• Wintering Migration: It undergoes long-distance seasonal migration to winter on the tropical sandy beaches, coastal mudflats, and marine estuaries of East Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australasia.
• Inland Vagrancy: While heavily dependent on saline shorelines, individual birds occasionally deviate inland as vagrants, using historical clearings, open wetlands, or old rural airstrips to rest and forage.

• Social Instincts: It is a highly gregarious bird that forms coordinated, active flocks to feed, fly, and roost together alongside other wader species.
• Feeding Habits: Forages primarily using a run-and-pause visual technique to hunt for coastal invertebrates, marine worms, small crustaceans, and insects.
• Vocalizations: A relatively vocal species that communicates across open mudflats using a distinctive loud trill and soft, piping distress notes.

• IUCN Red List: Categorized under "Least Concern" (LC), meaning it does not face an immediate global threat of extinction.
• Threat Profiles: Despite a stable global status, localized numbers are facing steady declines due to rapid habitat degradation, coastal reclamation, and urban encroachment on natural wetlands.

• Universal Access: Non-Hindus are traditionally not allowed inside the 12th-century Puri temple. During the Rath Yatra, the Lord of the Universe breaks all boundaries and steps outside so that devotees of all faiths, castes, and backgrounds can receive his direct darshan.
• The Divine Sojourn: The Yatra commemorates the sibling deities' annual holiday journey from their primary residence to the Gundicha Temple (considered their aunt's home or birthplace), located roughly 3 km away.
• Ancient Textual Roots: The holy festival finds prestigious, historic mentions across sacred Hindu texts, including the Skanda Purana, Brahma Purana, and Padma Purana.

• Nandighosha: The chariot of Lord Jagannath; it stands the tallest, features a yellow and red canopy, and runs on 16 massive wheels.
• Taladhwaj: The chariot of elder brother Lord Balabhadra; it is draped in a green and red canopy and rides on 14 wheels.
• Darpadalan (Padmadhwaja): The chariot of sister Goddess Subhadra; it features a black and red cloth canopy and runs on 12 wheels.

• Snana Purnima: The deities are brought out and ceremonially bathed with 108 pots of sacred water.
• Anavasara: Following their bath, the deities are believed to fall sick and remain in 15 days of strict ritual seclusion, away from public sight.
• Nabajaubana Darshan (July 15): The highly anticipated day when the deities are fully rejuvenated and reveal their fresh, vibrant appearance to the public.
• Rath Yatra / Chariot Pulling (July 16): The grand event where thousands of devotees hold thick ropes to pull the massive chariots through the grand road.
• Hera Panchami (July 20): A ritual where a disgruntled Goddess Lakshmi visits the Gundicha temple to search for Lord Jagannath.
• Bahuda Yatra (July 24): The grand return journey of the three siblings back to the main Jagannath temple after their nine-day stay.
• Suna Besha (July 25): The magnificent concluding ritual where the deities are adorned completely in pure gold attire inside their chariots.

• AI & Drone Surveillance: To manage the massive human footprint safely, the government has integrated smart policing powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), over 100 aerial drones, 3D mapping, and multi-layered security cordons.
• Weather Realities: The regional meteorological center has put operations on high alert as Puri recorded over 200 mm of heavy rainfall leading up to the main day.
• Global Footprint: Propagated globally by institutional organizations like ISKCON, similar large-scale chariot processions are being taken out simultaneously across multiple Indian states (including a massive security-monitored 16-km run in Ahmedabad, Gujarat) and major global capitals.

• Classification: Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) A(H5N1) is an aggressive, fast-mutating Type A influenza virus.
• Origin: Originally traced to a poultry farm outbreak in China in 1996, the current panzootic variant has rapidly expanded globally since late 2020.
• Clade Dynamics: The predominantly circulating Clade 2.3.4.4b has driven an unprecedented surge in geographical range and host cross-species jumps.

• Wild Birds: Causing severe ecological damage and massive die-offs among migratory waterfowl, penguins, and endangered species like California condors.
• Marine Mammals: Linked to sudden, mass-mortality events killing tens of thousands of elephant seals, sea lions, and dolphins.
• Commercial Livestock: Uniquely established in US dairy cow herds, spreading systematically through mechanical commercial milking equipment.
• Other Carnivores: Sporadically detected jumping to apex mammals, including recent cases in polar bears, foxes, and wild walruses.

• Infection Pathway: Spreads primarily through direct contact with infected animal feces, saliva, nasal discharges, or unpasteurized raw milk.
• Airborne Status: The virus does not spread efficiently through the air from person to person, keeping general public health risk low.
• Global Spurt: Between mid-2025 and mid-2026, sporadic human cases were recorded internationally across the US, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and India.
• Fatality Profile: While rare in humans, contracted cases remain highly dangerous, carrying a historical case-fatality rate of roughly 54%.

• Mild Manifestations: Conjunctivitis (pink eye), persistent cough, sore throat, fatigue, and low-grade fever.
• Gastrointestinal Action: New medical updates confirm it can infect the GI tract, causing nausea, vomiting, or acute diarrhea.
• Severe Complications: Rapid progression to severe community-acquired pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), multi-organ failure, or brain swelling.

• Culling and Quarantine: Agricultural sectors rely on immediate flock isolation and massive culling regimes to protect the human food supply.
• Antiviral Drugs: Early cases are treatable with standard neuraminidase inhibitors like Oseltamivir (Tamiflu), Zanamivir, or Peramivir.
• Vaccination: Biosecurity hubs have begun target-vaccinating endangered breeding birds, while human clinical trials for H5N1 vaccines commenced in April 2026.

1. He served as the Chief Minister of Madras State from 1954 to 1963.
2. He introduced the Mid-Day Meal Scheme to improve school enrolment.
3. He was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1976.

1. The scheme will operate from FY 2026–27 to FY 2030–31.
2. It provides additional incentives for local sourcing of components.
3. It replaces the Production Linked Incentive Scheme for Large Scale Electronics Manufacturing (PLI-LSEM).

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