UPSC Current Affairs 07 September 2026

• Meaning of the Name: "Sarang" is the Sanskrit word for "Peacock," which is India’s national bird.
• Visual Appearance: Matching their name, the helicopters feature a striking, distinctive bright red and white livery modified with stylized peacock graphics.
• Official Designation: Formally established in 2005, they operate under the No. 151 Helicopter Unit.
• Base Location: The unit is permanently stationed at the Sulur Air Force Station near Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

• The Machine: The team flies five modified HAL Dhruv (Advanced Light Helicopter) Mk-I aircraft.
• Indigenous Pride: The Dhruv is a twin-engine, multi-role helicopter designed and manufactured entirely in India by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).
• World Standing: The IAF recognizes Sarang as the world's only active helicopter aerobatic display team, known for exceptionally tight, close-proximity formation flying.

• Extreme Difficulty: Helicopters are inherently unstable platforms. Flying five of them together in synchronized, choreographed patterns requires meticulous mathematics, physics, and ground planning.
• International Footprint: Over two decades, Sarang has performed globally at major aviation events, including the Singapore Airshow (2024, 2026), the Dubai Airshow, and the Bahrain International Airshow.
• Secondary Mission: Beyond looking spectacular in the skies, the unit is fully operational and frequently deployed to provide crucial Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) during domestic crises.

• Preventing Out-Migration: Reversing the trend of population loss in remote areas by upgrading local living standards.
• Security Through Communities: Integrating border residents into internal security matrices, treating them as the "eyes and ears" of border-guarding forces.
• Quality of Life: Bridging structural development gaps to ensure border villages have facilities on par with the rest of the nation.

• VVP-I (Northern Border Focus):
  • Type: Centrally Sponsored Scheme.
  • Financial Outlay: Initially allocated ₹4,800 crore.
  • Coverage: 2,967 villages across Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and Ladakh (UT).
• VVP-II (Pan-Border Expansion):
  • Type: Central Sector Scheme (100% funded by the Central Government).
  • Financial Outlay: Approved with a funding pool of ₹6,839 crore.
  • Coverage: Strategic villages in non-northern blocks across 17 States/UTs, including international land border regions in Rajasthan, Punjab, J&K, Gujarat, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, and Meghalaya.

• Connectivity & Infrastructure: Building all-weather roads, robust telecommunication towers, internet access, and full electrification.
• Livelihood & Economy: Promoting local tourism, establishing tourist circuits, and organizing livelihood support on a "hub-and-spoke" model.
• Enterprise Promotion: Backing local skill development, handloom, and sustainable eco-agribusinesses using the "One-Block-One-Product" concept.
• Social Ambiance: Incorporating smart classrooms in educational facilities, providing specialized healthcare centers, and setting up IT-enabled Common Service Centres.
• Community-Led Execution: Rather than a top-down model, implementation relies directly on collaboratively generated Village Action Plans drafted by district administrations alongside Gram Panchayats.

• Establishment: Founded on January 3, 1954, by the legendary physicist Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha.
• Evolution of Name: It was originally established as the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET). Following Dr. Bhabha’s tragic demise in 1966, it was renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in his honour.
• Headquarters: Located at Trombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra. Additional state-of-the-art facilities operate in locations like Kalpakkam (Tamil Nadu) and Challakere (Karnataka).
• Governance: Functions under the administrative control of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India.

• Peaceful Atomic Application: The primary mandate is to pioneer and sustain the peaceful applications of nuclear energy, primarily focusing on power generation.
• Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Manages the entire nuclear fuel cycle spectrum, including advanced reactor design, fuel fabrication, spent fuel reprocessing, and thorium-based technologies.
• Multidisciplinary Science: Conducts leading-edge R&D in nuclear physics, chemical engineering, materials science, radiation biology, lasers, instrumentation, supercomputers, and plasma physics.
• Societal Spin-offs: Develops critical commercial solutions including nuclear medicine (diagnostic and cancer therapies), radiation-assisted agricultural variants, and advanced membrane-based water purification/desalination units for rural India.

• Apsara & Apsara-U: Apsara was Asia's very first research reactor (criticality achieved in 1956). Its upgraded indigenous version, Apsara-Upgraded (Apsara-U), was successfully commissioned in 2018.
• Dhruva Reactor: India’s largest operating research reactor (100 MW thermal). It serves as a vital national facility for neutron beam research and acts as the primary source for high-specific-activity radioisotopes.
• Strategic Backbone: Acts as the principal R&D backbone for the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and has parented core sister bodies like IGCAR Kalpakkam and RRCAT Indore.

• Fairy Lanterns: It belongs to the genus Thismia, a group of tiny, elusive plants commonly referred to as "fairy lanterns" or "fairy lamps" due to their unique, bulbous flower shapes.
• Expanding Diversity: This discovery marks the 16th species of the Thismia genus recorded in Thailand.
• Range Extension: It belongs to the Geomitra section of the genus. Previously, this section was only documented further south in Malaysia, Borneo, and Sumatra, meaning this find extends the group's known geographic range significantly northward.

• The "Devil" Look: The name daemona (derived from demon or ghost) was chosen because the flower looks like a sinister creature emerging from the soil.
• Demonic Colours: The flower body is predominantly blackish-red with thick, fleshy, bright reddish-orange patches near its base that look strikingly like glowing eyes.
• Horned Crown: The inner petals fuse together into a dome-shaped cap (called a "mitre") topped with three long, slender, club-like appendages that resemble horns.
• Alien Biology: The plant has no leaves, no branches, and no green parts whatsoever.

• No Sunlight Needed: Unlike standard plants, it lacks chlorophyll and is entirely incapable of photosynthesis.
• Fungal Thief: It is a mycoheterotrophic plant, meaning it survives entirely by connecting to underground fungal networks and stealing carbon and nutrients from them.
• Mostly Invisible: The plant lives a highly secretive, underground life buried beneath layers of decaying leaf litter. It only breaches the surface for a very brief window of time to flower and fruit, making it exceptionally difficult for scientists to spot.

• Location: Discovered inside Thong Pha Phum National Park in Kanchanaburi Province, western Thailand.
• Unusual Elevation: It was found growing in leaf litter mixed with small bamboo at an elevation of nearly 1,000 meters (approx. 3,100 feet). Most Thismia species strictly prefer perennially humid, lowland rainforests rather than these dry, seasonal mountain forests.
• Threats to Survival: Its entire known population is confined to a patch of forest smaller than a football field. Because its microhabitat sits within a national park that is highly popular with tourists, it faces a severe risk of accidental destruction or extinction.

• Exercise Veer Guardian 2026 is recently in the news as the Japanese Air Self-Defence Force (JASDF) contingent has officially arrived in India for the highly anticipated second edition of this bilateral air combat exercise.
• Scheduled to take place from September 9 to September 22, 2026, at Air Force Station Jodhpur, Rajasthan, this iteration marks a major milestone in India-Japan defence relations.

• Nature of Exercise: A bilateral air combat exercise between the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Japanese Air Self-Defence Force (JASDF).
• Edition: 2nd Edition (The inaugural exercise, Veer Guardian 2023, was successfully hosted at Hyakuri Air Base, Japan).
• Timeline: September 9 to September 22, 2026.
• Venue: Air Force Station Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.

• Japanese Fighters: Japan has dispatched three Mitsubishi F-2A fighter aircraft (a Japanese development inspired by the US F-16 platform) from the 8th Air Wing at Tsuiki Air Base.
• Japanese Transport Support: Two Kawasaki C-2 transport aircraft handled the logistics and transport for the contingent.
• Manpower: Japan has sent approximately 110 personnel to participate in the complex war games.

• Interoperability: To enhance joint tactical proficiency and operational synergy in highly complex aerial combat scenarios.
• Combat Training: The drills primarily focus on advanced air-combat manoeuvring and real-time defensive/offensive aerial configurations.
• Strategic Bonding: To deepen mutual defence understanding and cement the long-term military cooperation between New Delhi and Tokyo.

• The Manufacturer: Abhayrab is manufactured by Indian Immunologicals Limited (IIL), a prominent government-backed pharmaceutical company.
• Market Share: It is one of India's most critical human anti-rabies vaccines, accounting for roughly 40% of the country's rabies vaccine market. IIL has supplied over 210 million doses globally across two decades.
• Application: It is a human rabies vaccine used for both pre-exposure prophylaxis (preventative vaccination for high-risk individuals) and post-exposure prophylaxis (administered immediately after an animal bite).
• How it Works: The vaccine helps the body develop specific antibodies that recognize and fight the rabies virus, preventing it from attacking the central nervous system.
• Critical Importance: Rabies is a viral disease that is virtually 100% fatal once clinical symptoms appear. Because a fake or low-potency vaccine offers zero protection, the circulation of counterfeit batches poses a life-threatening risk to animal bite victims.
• Company Status on Safety: IIL has clarified that the original, authorized batch of KE25012 passed all regulatory safety steps. They emphasize that any doses bought or administered through authorized hospitals, clinics, or licensed pharmacies are completely safe and unaffected by the counterfeit racket.

• Common Name: It is popularly known as the Indian cooperative spider or the Indian social spider.
• Taxonomy: It belongs to the velvet spider family and is one of the very few permanently social spider species recognized globally.
• Geographical Range: It is widely distributed across the Indian subcontinent, specifically found in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Myanmar.
• Habitat: These spiders primarily inhabit semi-arid, dry tropical regions, showing a strong nesting preference for thorny trees.

• Colonial Living: Unlike typical solitary and aggressive spiders, hundreds of these individuals live peacefully together in permanent, cooperatively built colonies.
• Nest Architecture: Their communal nests are constructed out of spider silk woven tightly with leaves, twigs, food carcasses, and discarded exoskeletons.
• Female Dominated: The colonies exhibit a highly skewed sex ratio where females vastly outnumber males (e.g., a colony of 90 females may only host 5 to 10 males).
• High Social Tolerance: Interestingly, members from entirely different colonies are socially accepted and tolerated by both adults and juveniles.

• Cooperative Predation: They hunt and feed communally at night, strategically positioning their massive shared webs in shaded areas to lure diverse insects.
• Group Coordination: They use task differentiation to attack prey; a larger number of spiders will collectively rush out to overwhelm a trapped insect.
• Agricultural Allies: They act as excellent biological pest control agents, actively preying upon major crop pests like rice ear bugs and cercopids in agricultural fields.

• What it is: Ayushman Arogya Mandir is the rebranded avatar of the Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centres (AB-HWCs), renamed by the Union Government with the tagline “Arogyam Parmam Dhanam”.
• The Mission: To shift India's public health delivery from selective healthcare to a comprehensive, people-centric wellness model.
• The Mechanism: Upgrading existing Sub-Health Centres (SHCs) and Primary Health Centres (PHCs) into well-equipped community health hubs.

• Comprehensive Care Spectrum: Delivers a broad matrix of services including preventive, promotive, curative, rehabilitative, and palliative care.
• Expanded Clinical Domains: Moves beyond basic maternal and childcare to tackle:
  • Screening and management of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, hypertension, and oral, breast, and cervical cancers.
  • Screening for chronic communicable illnesses like Tuberculosis and Leprosy.
  • Basic mental health support, oral health, and ENT care.
  • Emergency first-level trauma care.
• Financial Relief: Minimizes out-of-pocket patient expenditures by providing free essential medicines and diagnostic testing services.
• On-Ground Leadership: Led by a dedicated cadre of Community Health Officers (CHOs) or Mid-Level Health Providers who drive clinical and public health programs.

• The Two-Pillar System: AAM serves as the foundational Pillar 1 (Comprehensive Primary Health Care). It seamlessly coordinates with Pillar 2, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), which covers secondary and tertiary hospitalization costs up to ₹5 lakh per year for eligible families.
• Synergy with Allied Schemes:
  • Integrates with Nikshay Poshan Yojana to give ₹1,000/month nutritional assistance to identified TB patients.
  • Connects with the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) for cash benefits during institutional deliveries.
  • Routes complex over-budget treatments to the Rashtriya Arogya Nidhi (RAN) for financial aid up to ₹15 lakh.

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