UPSC Current Affairs 02 August 2026

• The ceremony took place with full naval traditions at Titagarh Rail Systems Limited (TRSL) in Kolkata, West Bengal.

• Catamaran Hull: Features a twin-hull design providing superior stability and enhanced deck area.
• Displacement: Weighs approximately 300 to 400 tons.
• Dimensions: Measures roughly 30 metres in length.
• Testing Standards: Design underwent extensive hydrodynamic analysis and model testing at the Naval Science and Technological Laboratory (NSTL) in Visakhapatnam.
• Regulatory Compliance: Built strictly under the Naval Rules and Regulations of the Indian Register of Shipping (IRS).

• Specialised Equipment: Outfitted with state-of-the-art diving systems tailor-made for advanced underwater operations.
• Core Missions: Purpose-built to handle diving support, underwater inspections, and salvage assistance.
• Operational Limits: Engineered for tactical deployment in harbours and shallow coastal waters.

• High Indigenisation: More than 70% of the main and auxiliary equipment is sourced directly from domestic Indian manufacturers.
• Make in India: Serves as a vital milestone for local defence production and self-reliance initiatives spearheaded by the Ministry of Defence.

• Conferring Body: The honour is presented annually by the Tilak Smarak Trust.
• Award Components: The prize includes a traditional memento, a citation, and a cash reward of ₹1 lakh.
• Core Philosophy: It recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary and remarkable contributions to the progress and development of the nation.

• Strategic Operations: Honoured for leading high-stakes counter-terrorism operations, covert missions, and critical border security negotiations.
• Key Achievements: He played a defining role in major national security events like Operation Black Thunder, the Doklam diplomatic standoff, and the Balakot airstrikes.
• Framework Development: Credited with laying the foundation of the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC), which acts as the backbone of India's intelligence sharing.
• Historic Tenure: He is a 1968-batch IPS officer, former Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), and the longest-serving National Security Advisor in India's history.

• Official name: Republic of Naoero.
• Former name: Nauru.
• Region: Southwestern Pacific Ocean, in Micronesia/Oceania.
• Area: About 21 sq km, making it one of the world’s smallest sovereign states.
• Population: Around 10,000–13,000 people.
• Capital: Yaren is the de facto administrative centre; Nauru has no formally declared capital in the usual sense.
• System of government: Republic with a Westminster-style parliamentary system.

• Location: About 42 km south of the equator and roughly 4,000 km northeast of Sydney.
• Nature: A raised fossilised coral atoll.
• Neighbourhood: One of the smallest independent island nations in the Pacific; nearest neighbour is Banaba in Kiribati.

• Independence: Gained independence in 1968.
• Head of state: President David Adeang.
• Name origin: “Nauru” was a colonial-era rendering of the native name “Naoero,” adopted because Europeans found the original pronunciation difficult.
• Current identity push: The renaming reflects a broader effort to assert indigenous heritage, language, and post-colonial identity.

• Historical economy: Heavily dependent on phosphate mining, which shaped the island’s economy and environment.
• Current challenges: Small land area, limited resources, and development constraints remain major issues for the island state.
• Social relevance: The name change is symbolic but significant for nation-building and cultural revival.

• Primary Region: Dhimsa is widely celebrated as the official folk dance of Visakhapatnam and is deeply rooted in the Araku Valley region of Andhra Pradesh.
• Historical Roots: The word "Dhimsa" translates to the "sound of the footsteps". Its actual origin is traced back to the Koraput district of Odisha, the home of the Ghond tribe.

• Associated Tribes: It is traditionally performed by indigenous communities of the Eastern Ghats, including the Poraja (or Porja), Bagata, Valmiki, Khond, Gadaba, Kondadora, Mukadora, and Kotia tribes.
• Gender Roles: The dance is primarily performed by a group of 15 to 20 women forming chains or circles, while men play the musical instruments.

• Festivals & Weddings: It is performed during major tribal festivals, community gatherings, and weddings to pray for a peaceful domestic life.
• Hunting Celebration: It holds a special significance during the "hunting festival" in April, when men and women dance together for hours.
• Everyday Life Themes: There are 12 distinct varieties of the Dhimsa dance. The choreography represents daily tasks like farming, picking leaves, marital rituals, and protection from wild animals.

• Movement-Centric: The artistic beauty focuses purely on synchronized footwork and hand movements. It does not emphasize intense facial expressions or literary scripts.
• Formations: Dancers lock their arms behind each other's backs to form large, twisting chains or concentric circles.
• Traditional Musical Instruments: The rhythmic dance steps change dynamically with the beat of unique tribal instruments:
  • Mori: A traditional wind instrument (pipe).
  • Thudum / Tudumu: A prominent drum.
  • Dappu: A circular percussion hand-drum.
  • Other instruments: Includes the Kiridi, Jodukommulu, and Gilka.

• 100-Week Duration: The initiative is designed as a long-term, sustained 100-week campaign rather than a temporary drive.
• Sunday Activism: Awareness events, programs, and community sessions will systematically take place every Sunday across the entire country.
• Milestone Recognition: The government will track progress and publicly honour volunteers, clubs, and non-profits hitting exceptional milestones at the 50th, 75th, and 100th weeks of the campaign.

• Slogan & Strength: The central theme emphasizes that "drug-free youth are the greatest strength of Viksit Bharat".
• Viksit Bharat 2047 Alignment: Clean and healthy youth are framed as the foundation necessary to build a fully developed nation by the year 2047.
• GenZ Against Addiction: The primary target group is Gen Z and university students, transforming them from vulnerable targets into active ambassadors for social change.

• Phygital Coordination: The campaign is heavily driven by the government's digital-physical youth portal, MY Bharat Platform.
• Widespread Network: Implementation relies on millions of MY Bharat volunteers, National Service Scheme (NSS) volunteers, and student youth clubs.
• Collaborative Ecosystem: The drive bridges educational institutions, schools, colleges, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), industry bodies, and more than 125 spiritual organisations on a unified platform.

• Fitness & Health: Organizing localized walkathons, marathons, sports tournaments, and group meditation sessions.
• Creative Arts: Hosting street plays (Nukkad Nataks), music and rap face-offs, slam poetry, and poster-making competitions.
• Dialogue: Conducting academic seminars, open discussion forums, and community counseling drives.
• Digital Pledges: Encouraging youth to log onto the MY Bharat Event Portal to download certificates and formally register their commitment to a drug-free lifestyle.

• Ayurgenomics Integration: Machine learning couples genetic sequencing with ancient Ayurvedic constitution profiling (Prakriti) to predict disease vulnerabilities and customize patient diets.
• Herbal Compound Screening: Deep learning models map complex multi-herbal architectures, screening millions of active molecules in minutes to separate therapeutic components from toxins.
• Predictive Drug Design: Neural networks forecast how herbal mixtures interact with biological receptors, speeding up drug repurposing and formulation optimization.

• Pattern Recognition Diagnostics: Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) analyze tongue images, pulse variations, and skin parameters to categorize syndromes objectively.
• Imaging-Guided Therapies: Advanced AI combined with ultrasound helps acupuncturists differentiate muscle and nerve tissue in real-time for ideal needle placement.
• Sensory Quantification: Neural chemical networks function as artificial sensors to evaluate sensory parameters like taste profile (Rasa) and potency (Virya) during formulation production.

• Decoding Ancient Manuscripts: Natural Language Processing (NLP) translates, parses, and performs semantic analysis on classical texts to extract hidden therapeutic knowledge.
• Biopiracy Prevention: Automated tracking models protect indigenous data inside repositories like India's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), ensuring intellectual property safety.

Challenge Area	Description & Impact
Data Scarcity & Quality	Traditional records are often scattered, unstructured, or paper-based, leading to small, fragmented training datasets.
Inconsistent Ontologies	Terminologies differ heavily across systems like Ayurveda, TCM, and Unani, making standardization across software frameworks difficult.
Biopiracy & IP Risks	Uploading ancient, ecosystem-linked data to cloud networks creates critical intellectual property misappropriation concerns.
Nascent Regulations	Most global bodies lack robust validation parameters or regulatory pathways for AI-discovered multi-herbal products.

• Capital: Kigali, located precisely in the geographical center of the country.
• Sobriquet: Globally renowned as the "Land of a Thousand Hills" due to its remarkably mountainous and scenic landscape.
• Demographics: The population primarily comprises the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.

• Landlocked Position: Situated in East-Central Africa, positioned just south of the Equator.
• Borders: Shares land borders with four nations: Uganda (north), Tanzania (east), Burundi (south), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (west).
• Highest Elevation: Mount Karisimbi, peaking at 4,507 metres within the Virunga volcanic range.
• Hydrology: Home to Lake Kivu (its largest lake, shared with the DRC). The country acts as a source for two of Africa's most iconic river systems: the Nile and the Congo.

• Independence: Gained full independence from Belgian trusteeship on July 1, 1962.
• The 1994 Genocide: In April 1994, the downing of President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane triggered a devastating genocide. Over 100 days, Hutu extremists systematically murdered an estimated 800,000 to 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
• Current Leadership: The genocide was halted by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Paul Kagame, who serves as the President of Rwanda.

• Digital Transformation: Rwanda has built a reputation as Africa's "tech incubator," heavily investing in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), telecom, and automated financial systems.
• Carbon Market Pioneer: The nation has launched a state-of-the-art Carbon Market Framework and independent carbon registry to handle international green investments fairly.
• Eco-Tourism: Famous worldwide for high-end wildlife conservation tourism, particularly mountain gorilla trekking in the bamboo rainforests.

• Real-Time P2P Remittances: Individuals residing in the Maldives can seamlessly make instant Person-to-Person (P2P) transfers directly to UPI-enabled bank accounts in India.
• Currency Conversion: Transactions originate in Maldivian Rufiyaa (MVR) and are automatically credited to recipients in Indian Rupees (INR) within seconds.
• Participating Local Banks: The initial phase has launched with two primary banks in the Maldives: Bank of Maldives Plc and Maldives Islamic Bank Plc.
• User Application: Customers execute these cross-border transfers directly through their existing mobile banking apps using the Favara payment network.
• Approved Categories: It supports family maintenance payments under both inward/outward rules and gift-related transfers under outward remittance guidelines.

• Regulators: The project is a coordinated execution between the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
• Implementation Partner: NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) managed the structural integration alongside participating commercial banks.

• Inbound Remittance Focus: Unlike typical UPI international expansions that mostly cater to Indian tourists spending abroad, this architecture focuses on enabling inbound remittances to India from overseas residents.
• Cheaper & Faster: It eliminates traditional, expensive banking channels, offering low-cost transfers for thousands of Maldivians with families or financial obligations in India.
• Global Footprint: This link expands India's Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) globally, with UPI networks now linked or accepted across multiple nations like Singapore, UAE, France, Mauritius, and Sri Lanka.

• Merchant Payments: Subsequent implementation phases will introduce QR-based merchant payments for retail consumers.
• Bidirectional Scope: Future upgrades plan to introduce bidirectional transfer categories to expand the corridor's flexibility.

Download Pdf