UPSC Current Affairs 29 July 2026

• Dealers cannot hold more than 4,000 quintals or keep stocks for over 30 days. This move targets speculative hoarding and artificial scarcity that have recently driven up ex-mill sugar prices.

• Ownership: They are entirely owned by local cane-growing farmers, ensuring that profits are directly distributed back to rural communities through fair pricing rather than private corporate entities.
• No Central Ownership: The Central Government does not set up or own cooperative sugar mills; the industry was completely delicensed in August 1998. State governments and local cooperative societies handle their operations.
• Apex Body: The National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories Ltd (NFCSF) acts as the single national promotional agency representing the cooperative sugar sector.

• Rural Employment: They serve as major economic anchors in rural areas, offering direct employment to labourers, factory workers, and technical personnel.
• Cane Price Security: Mills pay farmers via the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) or State Advised Price (SAP), ensuring a guaranteed baseline income for families.
• Value Addition: Modern cooperatives go beyond raw sugar, generating alternative revenue streams by processing molasses into ethanol for the E20 petrol-blending target and converting processing residues into Compressed Biogas (CBG).

• Financial Stress: Unlike private mills, cooperatives lack access to equity markets or foreign financial leverage, making them heavily reliant on state subsidies or NCDC loans to upgrade old machinery.
• Delayed Dues: Cyclical cash crunches and stagnant Minimum Selling Prices (MSP) often cause a delay in clearing farmers' sugarcane dues, prompting some farmers to shift to alternate cash crops.
• Supply Clashes: Surging open-market sugar prices have made direct sugar sales highly lucrative, creating an operational dilemma for mills regarding whether to process raw juice into sugar or divert it to meet national ethanol blending mandates.

• Geographical Spread: The marine fisherfolk are distributed across 222 active fishing villages spread along Kerala's 589.5 km coastline. Thiruvananthapuram holds the highest density with 42 fishing villages.
• Social Composition: The community comprises roughly 10 lakh workers spanning three major religious segments: Christian (42%), Hindu (31%), and Muslim (27%), including specific traditional sub-castes such as the Arayans, Velans, and Mukkuvas.
• Cultural Legacy: Their identity is bound to a generational maritime inheritance, which includes localized knowledge of sea weather, tides, and marine ecology.

• Fleet Segmentation: Kerala's fishing fleet consists of over 19,000 crafts. Traditional and artisanal fishers account for nearly 93% of this footprint through non-motorised (49%) and motorised (44%) boats, contrasting with just 7% fully mechanized commercial trawlers.
• Traditional Craft Types: Artis artisanal fishers rely on indigenous designs like the Vallam (plank-built boats stitched with coir ropes) and traditional logs/catamarans, increasingly upgraded to lighter fiberglass versions.
• Preserved Techniques: They utilize community-centric, eco-friendly methods like shore seine fishing, gill nets, and hook-and-line fishing.

• Dwindling Shallow Water Yields: Overexploitation by commercial trawlers and climate anomalies have caused a drastic drop in marine stocks near the shore. Fishers must venture further out, risking life and escalating costs.
• Fuel Price Crisis: Traditional operations are highly sensitive to fuel dynamics. Subsidized kerosene allocations (140 liters/month) are insufficient, forcing reliance on expensive parallel markets.
• Debt Traps: High maintenance costs force many traditional fishers to borrow heavily from informal middlemen (Tharakans), yielding up to 10% of their daily catch as interest.
• Climate Vulnerability & Coastal Erosion: Nearly 60% of Kerala's coastline is prone to severe erosion. Monsoonal disasters and cyclones continuously displace seaside settlements and damage vital gears.

• Financial Allocations: The Union government has routed ₹1,418.51 crore to Kerala via the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) to introduce deep-sea fishing assets, alternative biofloc units, and artificial reef installations.
• State Interventions: The state government runs targeted programs including the Punargeham housing project, coastal sub-plans, and the construction of localized fishing harbors.
• Skill Deficit Gap: While funds emphasize deep-sea expansion, traditional fishers face a structural barrier, as they lack training in advanced deep-sea industrial longlining.

• Launched: February 2024 (Union Cabinet approval on 29 Feb 2024; PM launched on 13 Feb 2024).
• Ministry: Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
• Nature: Central scheme for rooftop solar in the residential sector.
• Outlay: ₹75,021 crore.
• Target: 1 crore (10 million) households to get up to 300 units of free electricity per month through rooftop solar.

• Free Monthly Electricity: Eligible households receive up to 300 units of free electricity every single month.
• Annual Savings: Households can save up to ₹15,000 annually on power bills and can even earn money by selling surplus electricity back to the grid.
• Financial Subsidies: The government provides a direct Central Financial Assistance (CFA) subsidy into the bank account of beneficiaries:
  • 1 kW system: ₹30,000 subsidy
  • 2 kW system: ₹60,000 subsidy
  • 3 kW system (or higher): Maximum of ₹78,000 subsidy

• Financial Outlay: The project operates with a massive central investment of over ₹75,000 crores.
• Concessional Loans: Beneficiaries can access heavily discounted, low-interest bank loans to cover the remaining installation costs with minimal to no upfront payment.
• National Portal: The complete process, from registration to subsidy release, is fully digitised through the official PM Surya Ghar National Portal.

• Domestic Households: Open to all residential consumers who own a house with a concrete roof and an active grid-connected DISCOM electricity connection.
• Approved Equipment: To claim the government subsidy, households must only use solar modules from manufacturers listed under the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM).

• Climate Targets: The program aims to add 30 GW of solar capacity, significantly cutting down carbon dioxide emissions by 720 million tonnes to support India’s Net-Zero 2070 goal.
• Job Creation: The widespread deployment is projected to generate roughly 1,00,000 jobs for Solar PV technicians, vendors, and maintenance workers across the country.

• Ministry: Implemented by the Ministry of Textiles, Government of India.
• Mission Framework: It operates under the Research, Development, and Innovation component of the National Technical Textiles Mission (NTTM).
• Launch Year: Introduced in August 2023.

• Ecosystem Building: To support the early-stage start-up ecosystem in the high-growth technical textiles sector.
• Commercial Translation: To bridge the gap between research and manufacturing by translating innovative ideas and prototypes into commercial products.
• Self-Reliance: To cut down on high-value imports and drive domestic manufacturing under the Make in India vision.

• Grant Support: Offers a maximum financial grant-in-aid of ₹50 Lakh per approved project.
• Project Duration: Funding is provided over a standard timeline of 18 months.
• Incubator Incentive: The Ministry grants an additional 10% of the total grant amount to incubators to manage the operational ecosystem.
• Equity Contribution: Incubatees or promoters are mandated to bring a minimum contribution of 10%.

• Smart & Functional Fabrics: Graphene-based smart wearables, temperature-responsive textiles, and self-sanitizing apparel.
• Sustainability: Bio-based innovations like hemp-bioplastic composites, algae-derived leather, and biodegradable tire yarns.
• Healthcare Wearables: Shape-memory medical wearables, advanced antimicrobial hospital wear, and surgical training simulators.
• Industrial Composites: Heavy-duty composites built for automotive, defence, aerospace, and construction sectors.

• Age and Nationality: Individual applicants must be Indian citizens aged 21 years or above.
• Incubation Rule: Must be associated with a recognized incubation centre (like IITs, NITs, or Textile Research Associations).
• Corporate Identity: Funding is strictly conditional upon registering a formal start-up company before the actual release of the grant.

• Evolution: Originally launched as NAPS in August 2016, the overhauled version NAPS-2 has been implemented nationwide since FY 2022–23.
• Nodal Ministry: Regulated and monitored 100% as a Central Sector Scheme under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE).
• Primary Objective: To promote skill development and on-the-job experiential training while enhancing the overall ease of doing business for corporate employers.

• Stipend Sharing: The Government of India provides partial stipend support, covering 25% of the prescribed stipend up to a maximum of ₹1,500 per month per apprentice.
• Employer Contribution: Participating corporate establishments pay the remaining 75% directly to the apprentice.
• Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT): To eliminate leakages and assure transparency, the government's financial share is credited directly to the apprentice’s bank account via DBT.
• Exclusions: Central/State Government departments, Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), and Public Sector Banks are not eligible to claim the government stipend subsidy.

• Governance Framework: Governed strictly under the regulatory guidelines of the Apprentices Act, 1961.
• Sectors Covered: Training spans over 49 sectors partitioned into Designated Trades and Optional Trades.
• Sunrise Sector Focus: Focuses heavily on high-growth industries like semiconductors, drones, biotechnology, renewable energy, and IT.
• MSME Mobilisation: Utilises empanelled Third-Party Aggregators (TPAs) to simplify onboarding for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), which make up over 38,000 of the registered employers.
• NEP 2020 Alignment: Integrates academic coursework with corporate training via the Apprenticeship Embedded Degree Programme (AEDP) managed alongside UGC and AICTE.
• Monthly Recruitment Drives: Organises the Pradhan Mantri National Apprenticeship Mela (PMNAM) on the second Monday of every month across rotating districts to bridge the student-employer gap.

• The Name: "Kalpasar" is derived from Kalp (fulfilling future needs) and Sarovar (lake/reservoir).
• Alternative Name: It is officially known as the Gulf of Khambhat Development Project.
• Location: Located across the Gulf of Khambhat in Gujarat, connecting its eastern and western banks.

• The Sea Dam: Envisages building a massive 60.13 km long dyke/dam directly inside the sea.
• Freshwater Reservoir: It will block seawater ingress to create a 2,000 sq. km freshwater lake, making it one of the largest coastal reservoirs globally.
• Storage Capacity: Designed to hold 7,807 million cubic metres (MCM) of water, larger than major existing domestic dams.
• River Feeding: The reservoir will trap freshwater from major rivers including the Sabarmati, Mahi, Dhadhar, and Narmada.

• Mitigating Scarcity: Designed to supply drinking water and irrigate 10 lakh hectares of land across 9 drought-prone districts of the Saurashtra region.
• Mega Transport Corridor: A 130-metre-wide corridor on top of the dam will accommodate a 16-lane roadway and a 4-lane railway.
• Travel Reduction: It will cut the transport distance between Bhavnagar and Surat by 179 km (halving the journey from 356 km to 177 km).
• Clean Energy: Reclaimed land will host a 2,470 MW hybrid wind-solar renewable energy park.
• Ecological Gain: It prevents groundwater salinity ingress, recharges local aquifers, and expands freshwater fisheries.

• Hard-Kill System: Unlike traditional systems that only jam signals, Bhargavastra physically destroys targets like weaponised drones, loitering munitions, and coordinated autonomous drone swarms.
• Dual-Layer Kill Mechanism:
  • First Layer: Fires unguided micro-rockets that clear areas with a wide lethal radius of 20 metres.
  • Second Layer: Deploys precision-guided micro-missiles to single out specific high-threat drones.
• Mass Interception: It features a rapid "salvo mode" capable of launching up to 64 micro-missiles within 10 seconds to overwhelm massive drone swarms.

• Sensor Integration: Combines radar, Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) cameras, and passive radio-frequency (RF) detectors.
• Target Ranges: The integrated radar tracks medium-to-large Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) up to 10 km and pinpoints small drones up to 6 km away.
• Interception Range: The current configuration effectively destroys hostile targets within a 2.5 km range.
• Reaction Speed: The system takes less than 16 seconds from initial target recognition to complete interception.

• C4I Architecture: Runs on an advanced Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence network to generate real-time air pictures and auto-assign launcher targets.
• All-Terrain Mobility: Mounted on all-terrain vehicles, it operates seamlessly across plains, deserts, and high-altitude, snow-bound border regions up to 5,000 metres above sea level.
• Cost Efficiency: Using low-cost micro-munitions protects premium, expensive surface-to-air missile stockpiles from being depleted by cheap enemy drones.

• Extended Range: Upgraded variants are already under development to extend the micro-missile interception range to 6 km.
• Sudarshan Chakra Integration: The platform is slated for integration into India's proposed Sudarshan Chakra integrated air defence network by 2030, which plans to push layered ranges up to 25 km.

• Core Objective: To promote Guru Ravidas’s timeless message of equality, social justice, humanity, and social harmony across India.
• Timeline: The national campaign spans nearly seven months, starting on 29 July 2026 and concluding on 20 February 2027 (Guru Ravidas Jayanti / Magha Purnima).
• Inauguration & Soil Collection: Launched at the saint's birthplace, Seer Govardhanpur in Varanasi, the campaign began with a "Mati Pujan" where sacred soil was filled into 131 urns (Kalash).
• Kalash Vandan Abhiyan: Out of the 131 sacred urns, 104 will be distributed across various organizational units, and 27 will travel to different states to conduct prayers at 21,000 locations.
• Samrasta Deepotsav: A massive lamp-lighting ceremony was held at 51,000 temples and religious sites nationwide, including 11,000 lamps lit on the Ganga Ghats in Varanasi.
• Samrasta Yatra: A month-long foot march is scheduled from 5 October to 5 November 2026, tracing a route from Jalandhar (Punjab) to Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh).
• Sant Sampark & Dialogue: Running through August 2026, party workers will visit spiritual leaders of the Ravidasia community, followed by "Samrasta Samvaad" sessions in student hostels to engage youth with teachings of equality.
• Infrastructure Upgrades: Alongside the public yatra, the central government announced a dedicated push to fully develop and upgrade key heritage sites and temples associated with Guru Ravidas, including locations in Junagadh, Sagar, Chittorgarh, and Khuralgarh Sahib.

1. It is implemented by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
2. The scheme targets 1 crore households.
3. The maximum Central Financial Assistance for a rooftop solar system is ₹78,000.

1. It is a Central Sector Scheme under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.
2. The Government provides 25% of the prescribed stipend, subject to a maximum of ₹1,500 per month per apprentice.
3. Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) are eligible to claim the Government stipend subsidy.

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