UPSC Current Affairs 01 September 2026

• It is a weekly statistical bulletin on area coverage under Kharif crops across India.
• Issued by the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (DA&FW), Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, based on state-wise reporting.
• “Progressive” means it shows cumulative area sown up to a particular week during the Kharif season, updated every week until sowing is largely complete.
• It typically compares three numbers for each crop:
  1. Normal area (average of past 5 years, used as benchmark).
  2. Area sown in current year (2026–27).
  3. Area sown in the same week last year (2025–26).

• Paddy (Rice): Reached 408 lakh hectares, an increase from 393.57 lakh hectares in the corresponding period last year.
• Pulses: Cultivation climbed to 116 lakh hectares, showing a stable recovery trajectory.
• Coarse Cereals: Encompasses 187 lakh hectares, covering crops like maize, bajra, and jowar.
• Oilseeds: Sowing achieved 190 lakh hectares across major production belts like groundnut and soybean.
• Sugarcane: Planted area remains firm and stable at over 57 lakh hectares.

• Budget Support: The government expanded the agricultural budget allocation to ₹1.30 lakh crore for 2026-27.
• Direct Income Support: Under PM-KISAN, ₹4.27 lakh crore has been disbursed in 22 instalments to safeguard farmer livelihoods.
• Risk Protection: Crop insurance claims have exceeded ₹1.90 lakh crore, protecting farmers from erratic climate shocks.
• Buffer Norms: Central grain stock volumes for rice and wheat remain comfortably above mandated security thresholds.

• Samavesh Utsav is an outreach/awareness event organised under the broader SAMAVESH ecosystem of the Government of India.
• SAMAVESH stands for “Single Access Mechanism for All Verticals of Empowerment & Social Harmony”.
• It is a unified digital portal/platform that integrates multiple social-justice and empowerment schemes (especially for SC, OBC, Especially Abled, minorities, etc.) to simplify application, scrutiny, tracking, and disbursement.
• Samavesh Utsav is essentially a field-level campaign/event to:
  • Promote awareness about SAMAVESH portal and the schemes onboarded on it.
  • Facilitate on-ground registration, application filing, and grievance redressal.
  • Strengthen last-mile outreach in selected States/UTs through PIAs.

• Social Inclusion: Focused on integrating marginalized DNT communities into mainstream social and economic growth models.
• Showcasing Talent: Set up dedicated commercial stalls for DNT artisans to present traditional skills and unique craftsmanship.
• Heritage Promotion: Featured the "Bharat-TULIP Heritage Store" to give market visibility to nomadic community products.

• Demographic Reach: Brought together around 700 community members, grassroots leaders, local artisans, and direct welfare beneficiaries.

• Success Stories: The festival was used to showcase major milestones and individual success stories under the Central Government's Scheme for Economic Empowerment of DNTs (SEED).
• SEED Core Pillars: The scheme directly assists these vulnerable tribes across four major sectors: Education, Health Insurance, Livelihood Facilitation, and Housing.
• Implementation Footprint: The holistic welfare programs under SEED are actively implemented across eight priority states: Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh.

• The DWBDNC: The backing welfare board was originally constituted by the Central Government on February 21, 2019, specifically to design and execute developmental programs for nomadic populations.

• The Name: Named in honour of Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer, widely known as the "Mother of Hubble".
• Spy Satellite Heritage: The telescope's core hardware was originally built for a U.S. intelligence spy satellite program. When that program was cancelled, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) donated the hardware to NASA in 2012, which repurposed it for cosmic exploration.
• Former Identity: In its early development stages, the project was known as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).
• Budget: The total development and launch cost is estimated at approximately $4.3 billion.

• Destination: It is traveling to Lagrange Point 2 (L2), located roughly 1.5 million kilometers (1 million miles) away from Earth.
• Strategic Advantage: L2 is a gravitationally stable position that provides an unobstructed, 360-degree view of the cosmos, unlike Hubble's low Earth orbit which is frequently blocked by Earth. It will share this orbital region with the James Webb Space Telescope.

• Wide Field Instrument: Features a massive 300-megapixel infrared camera equipped with 18 individual 4K detectors.
• Panoramic View: It boasts a field of view 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope. This allows it to map the sky a thousand times faster than Hubble, acting like a "wide-angle lens" for the universe.
• Coronagraph Instrument (CGI): A cutting-edge technology demonstration designed to block out intense starlight. This allows astronomers to directly image faint exoplanets that are a billion times dimmer than their host stars.

• Investigating the Dark Universe: It will map over a billion galaxies to study dark matter and dark energy, which make up roughly 95% of the universe but remain completely invisible.
• Exoplanet Census: By using gravitational microlensing and its coronagraph, it will hunt for thousands of new worlds, aiming to discover if solar systems like our own are common in the Milky Way.
• Cosmic Timeline: It will peer deep into infrared light to examine how the structure of the universe evolved over billions of years.

• GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease): The most prevalent disorder where the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) fails to close tightly, allowing stomach acid to surge upward, causing chronic heartburn and tissue damage.
• Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE): A rapidly increasing allergic/immune condition where white blood cells (eosinophils) build up in the esophagus, causing scarring, narrowing, and intense difficulty swallowing.
• Barrett’s Esophagus: A pre-cancerous state triggered by long-term untreated acid reflux, where the normal lining of the esophagus mutates into tissue resembling the intestinal lining.
• Achalasia: A rare motility disorder where the lower esophageal muscle fails to relax, trapping food inside the esophagus instead of letting it pass into the stomach.
• Esophageal Cancer: Divided primarily into Squamous Cell Carcinoma (linked to smoking/alcohol) and Adenocarcinoma (linked directly to Barrett's esophagus and obesity).

• Dysphagia: Sudden or progressive difficulty swallowing food, or the sensation that food is actively stuck in the chest.
• Odynophagia: Experiencing sharp pain while trying to swallow.
• Acid Regurgitation: Acid or undigested food spontaneously bubbling up into the throat or mouth, leaving a bitter, metallic taste.
• Non-Cardiac Chest Pain: Burning chest pain mimicking a heart attack, often worsening when lying flat after eating.
• Atypical Symptoms: Chronic dry cough, voice hoarseness, night-time wheezing, or unexplained weight loss.

• Lifestyle Habits: Chronic smoking, heavy alcohol use, and drinking exceptionally hot beverages.
• Obesity: Increased abdominal pressure physically forces stomach acid past the sphincter into the esophagus.
• Pill Overuse: Taking common medications (like NSAIDs, iron supplements, or bisphosphonates) with inadequate water or right before sleeping can cause local chemical ulcers (pill esophagitis).
• Untreated Allergies: Underlying food or environmental allergies trigger systemic inflammation fuelling EoE.

• Lifestyle Modifications: Eating smaller meals, remaining upright for at least 3 hours post-dinner, losing weight, and avoiding triggers (citrus, alcohol, spicy food).
• Pharmacology: Standard usage of Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs) and H2 blockers. Newer Potassium-Competitive Acid Blockers (P-CABs like Tegoprazan) have recently demonstrated the ability to heal severe tissue erosion in just 2 weeks.
• Biologics: Targeted immune therapies like Dupilumab and the newly successful Tezspire block the specific allergy pathways causing EoE.
• Surgical & Endoscopic Fixes: Less-invasive procedures like Transoral Incisionless Fundoplication (cTIF) or surgical Nissen fundoplication to physically tighten a weak stomach valve.

• Location: A small island situated in the narrowest part of the Strait of Hormuz off Iran's southern coast.
• Proximity: Positioned roughly 45 km southeast of the major Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas and 18 km southeast of Qeshm Island.
• Size: Covers a land area of approximately 49 square kilometres.

• Chokehold Control: Overlooks the critical international shipping lanes linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, giving Iran absolute monitoring power over maritime traffic.
• Traffic Regulation: Iran utilizes the island to force commercial oil and gas tankers into a tight northern corridor for compulsory security checks, recently demanding steep $2 million (£1.5 million) passage permits.
• Fortified Network: Forms a core part of Iran's coastal defence network alongside larger island bastions like Qeshm, hosting IRGC naval units, missile systems, and surveillance outposts.

• Energy Bottleneck: Because one-fifth of the world’s petroleum transits through this immediate area, military tension on Larak Island instantly destabilises global energy markets.
• Naval Blockades: The island has become the ground zero for the ongoing US-Iran conflict regarding freedom of navigation, following a reimposed US blockade on Iranian ports earlier in the year.
• Global Supply Shift: Due to the persistent threat of mine-laying from Larak, major East Asian energy consumers are actively pivoting their long-term supply strategies away from the Persian Gulf toward alternative Western markets.

• Nodal ministry/department: Department of Fertilizers, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, GoI.
• Technical support: National Informatics Centre (NIC).
• Nature: End-to-end digital platform for tracking fertilizer from production/import to retail sale and subsidy settlement.
• Coverage:
  • >14 crore Aadhaar-linked buyers (farmers).
  • >2.5 lakh retailers (PoS devices).
  • ~70 million tonnes of fertilizer sales/year.
  • Supports ~₹2 lakh crore annual fertilizer subsidy.

• Framework for Fertilizer Sale (FFS): Introduces a mobile app-based pre-booking mechanism where farmers generate a dynamic QR code against verified land allocations to match actual quotas at point-of-sale (PoS) machines.
• Vehicle Location Tracking (VLTS): Combines dispatch details with GPS-based vehicle location telemetry to monitor fertilizer trucks in real time, curbing route deviations and transit delays.
• Smart Analytics: Examines fertilizer purchases across buyer categories, landholdings, specific crops, and districts to identify skewed consumption patterns.
• End-to-End Visibility: Maps the complete ecosystem, linking production, imports, port arrivals, warehouse dispatch, retail movement, and ultimate sale.

• Optimising Soil Health: Dissuades farmers from overusing chemical components like urea, which triggers heavy ground-water contamination and soil degradation.
• Curbing Diversion: Prevents commercial diversion, illegal smuggling, and artificial localized supply crunches.
• Ensuring Equitable Distribution: Restricts bulk buying by massive landholders to ensure genuine small and marginal farmers get their necessary share on time.
• Data-driven Policy Making: Provides granular, localized consumption trends to help the government plan seasonal crop demands accurately.

• Definition: An ice mass that originates high on a mountain wall or valley flank and terminates abruptly at a steep precipice or cliff face rather than flowing smoothly to the main valley floor.
• Perched Snout: Its terminal edge (snout) hangs precariously over a vertical drop, making mass loss happen via mechanical cracking, calving, and icefalls rather than simple melting.
• Natural Instability: Unlike typical glaciers positioned on flat valley floors, their position on steep bedrock slopes subjects them to immense gravitational shear stresses.

• Glacial Retreat Disconnection: As large primary valley glaciers melt and recede due to global warming, smaller tributary glaciers feeding into them from steep sidewalls get cut off and left stranded high up.
• Permafrost Thawing: Climate change pushes zero-degree temperatures to higher altitudes, thawing the subglacial ice and permafrost that acts as "glue" bonding the glacier to the bedrock.
• Basal Meltwater Lubrication: The resulting subglacial water acts as a lubricant, transforming relatively stable ice bodies into precarious, moving hazards.

• Secondary Hazards: A major break-off can cause massive ice-rock avalanches or create temporary dams in mountain rivers, triggering catastrophic Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) downstream.
• Critical Sites at Risk: In India, these glaciers pose severe threats to holy pilgrimage towns like Badrinath, nearby human settlements like Mana village, and arterial routes like National Highway 7 (NH7).
• Infrastructure Danger: High-altitude hydropower projects and Char Dham highway connectivity routes are directly vulnerable to sudden surges.
• Rapid Human Exposure: Built-up infrastructure in these high-risk areas has scaled massively, expanding from 8,000 sq. meters in the year 2000 to an estimated projection of 150,000 sq. meters by 2030.

• Precision Satellite Mapping: Implementing high-resolution satellite arrays to flag structural deformation and detect glaciers nearing tipping points.
• Early Warning Systems (EWS): Developing downstream communication networks to initiate rapid public evacuations during the narrow window between an ice-front collapse and secondary flooding.
• Ecological Buffer Zones: Strictly enforcing construction, heavy blast-drilling, and development restrictions in high-altitude regions to protect natural slope integrity.

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