UPSC Current Affairs 17 July 2026

• The festival is marked by the grand "Sansad Kutch Carnival" organized along the historic Hamirsar Lake in Bhuj, Gujarat.

• The Date: It is celebrated annually on Ashadhi Bij (the second day of the Shukla Paksha/waxing phase of the moon) in the Hindu month of Ashadha.
• Unique System: While the rest of Gujarat celebrates the New Year the day after Diwali (Kartik Pratipada), the Kutch region follows its own distinct calendar cycle starting in the monsoon season.

• Monsoon Herald: The festival directly marks the official arrival of the life-giving monsoon rains in the otherwise arid, desert-prone Kutch region.
• Moisture Prediction: Historically, farming experts check environmental parameters and atmospheric moisture on this day to forecast which crops will thrive best in the upcoming season.

• Culinary Delights: Kutchi households traditionally prepare a special sweet dish called Lapsi to celebrate the sweet beginnings of the new year.
• Spiritual Prayers: Families perform domestic rituals dedicated to Lord Ganesha, Goddess Lakshmi, and other regional deities to seek prosperity.
• Global Community: The festival underscores the deep-rooted cultural resilience of the global Kutchi diaspora, who celebrate their heritage no matter where they reside in the world.

New Year Name	Region / Community	Key Features
Ashadhi Bij	Kutch, Gujarat	Celebrated in the monsoon; tied directly to rainfall and farming.
Gudi Padwa	Maharashtra & Goa	Marks the arrival of spring; uses a vibrant hoisted flag/Gudi.
Ugadi	Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka	Commemorates the creation of the universe; features Ugadi Pachadi pickle.
Bestu Varas	Rest of Gujarat	Observed the day after Diwali; marks the close of the financial year.
Navreh	Kashmir	Celebrated with a ritualistic viewing of a custom platter (Thaal).
Sajibu Cheiraoba	Manipur (Meitei community)	Features ritualistic house cleaning and climbing local hilltops.

Aspect	Detail
Nodal Ministry	Ministry of Rural Development (DoLR)
Technical Partner	National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA)
Primary Funding Split	70:30 between World Bank and State Governments
Key Technologies	GIS mapping, high-resolution satellite tracking, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)

• Full Form: REWARD stands for Rejuvenating Watersheds for Agricultural Resilience through Innovative Development.
• Primary Objective: It aims to strengthen the capacities of national and state institutions to adopt improved, science-backed watershed management.
• Target Audience: The initiative focuses on increasing farmers' resilience to climate change, boosting land productivity, and fostering rural value chains.

• Global Partner: The project is actively assisted and funded by the World Bank.
• Timeline: It is a multi-year initiative running from 2021 to 2026.
• Implementing Agency: Managed at the central level by the Department of Land Resources (DoLR) under the Ministry of Rural Development.
• Geographical Focus: The implementation primarily scales across selected rainfed watersheds in the states of Karnataka and Odisha.
• Funding Model: Operates via a Program for Results (PforR) instrument where the World Bank disburses loans based on the verified achievement of specific performance indicators.

• Resource Recharging: Prevents soil run-off, regenerates native vegetation, and rapidly recharges depleting groundwater tables.
• Agricultural Shift: Enables rainfed farmers to shift from single-crop dependencies to multi-cropping systems.
• Alternative Livelihoods: Introduces diverse, sustainable agro-based enterprises to enhance overall rural household incomes.

• Implemented under the “One Nation, One Time” vision, this high-precision network utilizes White Rabbit technology to establish a secure, uniform time standard across India, eliminating the country's reliance on foreign time sources like GPS.

• The Creator: White Rabbit is an open-source technology originally co-developed by CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) alongside various research institutes and commercial partners.
• Original Purpose: It was custom-engineered to synchronize electronic devices across CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerator chain down to sub-nanosecond levels.
• Global Standard: In 2020, it was formalized into the worldwide industry standard known as the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) governed by the IEEE (IEEE 1588).

• Extreme Accuracy: Provides sub-nanosecond accuracy (< 1 billionth of a second) and picosecond precision of synchronization across connected devices.
• Deterministic Data Transfer: It forces data across Ethernet networks with a precisely known, mathematically fixed maximum latency.
• Massive Scaling: A single White Rabbit network can effortlessly bridge and synchronize thousands of nodes spanning distances of over 1,000 kilometres.
• Open-Source Nature: The hardware, firmware, and software designs are completely open-source, allowing global governments and industries to modify and implement them independently.

• Financial Markets: Crucial for high-frequency trading (HFT), stock exchanges, and digital banking where nanosecond transaction timestamps prevent multi-million-dollar data manipulation and flash crashes.
• Telecommunications: Allows 5G and next-generation networks to transmit data efficiently across cellular towers without phase mismatch delays.
• Power Grids: Synchronizes massive national smart power grids to instantly detect and self-heal localized voltage faults before they spiral into widespread blackouts.
• Space and Deep Science: Deployed globally in deep-space radar setups, neutrino telescopes, particle accelerators, and satellite tracking stations.

• Strategic Coordinates: It is a tiny island measuring roughly 10.3 square kilometres situated in the Persian Gulf.
• Choke Point Sentinel: It sits directly at the entrance of the narrow Strait of Hormuz, a vital maritime gateway through which roughly 20% (one-fifth) of global oil supplies pass daily.

• The Trio: Greater Tunb, alongside Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa, forms a group of three highly contested islands.
• The 1971 Takeover: The Iranian military seized control of these islands in November 1971, just as British forces were withdrawing from the region.
• UAE Claims: The UAE considers the islands an integral part of its sovereign territory (originally belonging to the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah) and formally labels Iran's decades-long administration as an illegal occupation.

• Garrison Fortifications: Under de facto Iranian control, the island has been heavily fortified by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
• Tactical Advantage: Iran uses its network of islands to blanket the commercial shipping lanes with surveillance radars, fast-attack speedboats, kamikaze drones, and anti-ship missiles.
• Control of the Gulf: Analysts note that controlling Greater Tunb provides immense military leverage, allowing any occupying force to effectively monitor or completely freeze maritime traffic entering or exiting the Arabian Gulf.

Island	Key Strategic Features	Status
Greater Tunb	Hosts cruise missile storage, coastal batteries, and radar installations.	Disputed (Controlled by Iran / Claimed by UAE)
Lesser Tunb	Acts as an observation outpost overlooking main transit routes.	Disputed (Controlled by Iran / Claimed by UAE)
Abu Musa	Features a 3-kilometre runway capable of handling fighter jets and heavy cargo planes.	Disputed (Controlled by Iran / Claimed by UAE)
Qeshm & Hormuz	House underground hardened bunkers for drone swarms and fast attack boats.	Iranian Territory

• Full Name: Capacity Building Project on Low Carbon and Climate Resilient City Development in India.
• Launch Year: The initiative originally rolled out in 2016.
• Core Goal: It aims to strengthen the institutional capacity of Indian cities to integrate low-carbon planning into daily governance.
• Net-Zero Alignment: It directly supports India's national goal of reaching Net-Zero emissions by 2070.

• Funding Source: Fully funded by the Embassy of Switzerland to India and Bhutan.
• Implementing Consortium: Executed collaboratively by ICLEI South Asia, South Pole, and econcept.
• Knowledge Partner: Governed in close coordination with the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA).

• Target Cities: Focused primary support on 8 distinct cities: Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Vadodara, Udaipur, Siliguri, Coimbatore, Tiruchirappalli, and Tirunelveli.
• State Support: Worked closely with the state governments of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.
• Climate Action Cells: Established permanent Net-Zero and Climate Action Cells in six project cities to ensure long-term local budgeting and tracking.
• Methodology Adoption: Over 35 cities across India have actively adopted its Climate Resilient City Action Planning framework.
• Regional Expansion: The program's success led to its replication in neighbouring countries like Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia.

• Ahmedabad: Deployed a solar-powered electric bus charging station.
• Coimbatore: Built a floating solar power plant.
• Rajkot: Introduced a green mobility zone featuring subsidized electric autorickshaws.
• Tiruchirappalli: Executed a massive urban lake restoration initiative.
• Tirunelveli: Implemented a smart, localized flood early warning system.
• Vadodara: Developed a dense Miyawaki urban forestry project.
• Financial Impact: Identified urban climate investment avenues worth INR 7.142 trillion and trained over 1,000 local practitioners.

• Scientific Name: Lestes paloti.
• Family and Order: Belongs to the family Lestidae under the order Odonata (suborder Zygoptera).
• Naming Tribute: Named in honour of Muhamed Jafer Palot from the Zoological Survey of India for his extensive work on regional fauna.
• Key Holotype: A male specimen collected in 2020 at Taliparamba, Kerala, serves as the primary name-bearing reference.

• Seasonal Colour Transformation: The species displays striking variation, changing from brown during the dry season to bluish during the monsoon.
• Microscopic Distinctiveness: Differentiated from its closest relatives strictly through internal structures, including the male anal appendages and a unique preapical notch on the cercus.

• Geographic Spread: Documented across six districts of Kerala: Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram, Palakkad, and Ernakulam.
• Unusual Microhabitat: Unlike common damselflies that dwell near open water, Lestes paloti prefers hidden scrub vegetation around homesteads and laterite hillocks.
• Cryptic Nature: Its secretive habits and physical camouflage are the main reasons it remained undetected for decades.

• Ecosystem Bioindicators: Damselflies are highly sensitive to pollution and environmental changes; monitoring them helps track freshwater health and forest degradation.
• Natural Pest Control: They function as critical aerial predators that feed on mosquitoes and minor farm pests.
• Conservation Alert: These discoveries underline that the Western Ghats' biodiversity is still not fully documented, emphasizing an urgent need to shield its fragile forest networks from infrastructure and climate stress.

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