UPSC Current Affairs 28 September 2026

• The Organizer: The awards are given out by the Lalit Kala Akademi (National Academy of Art), which is India's premier government institution for visual arts.
• Inauguration: The Akademi was established on August 5, 1954, by the Government of India and is autonomous under the Ministry of Culture.
• History of the Exhibition: The National Exhibition of Art (NEA) and its associated awards began in 1955 to showcase the country's yearly progress in visual arts.

• Promoting Visual Arts: The main goal is to promote, create, and foster a deeper public understanding of contemporary Indian visual arts.
• Honouring Talent: The event serves as a crucial national platform to recognize extraordinary talents in fields like painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, and mixed media.
• Economic Impact: Beyond recognition, the exhibition significantly boosts India’s creative economy.

• Number of Awards: In recent iterations (such as the 64th and 65th editions), 20 meritorious artists are selected annually.
• The Reward: Winners traditionally receive a National Art Award plaque, a ceremonial shawl, and a cash prize of ₹2 Lakh.
• Selection Process: A highly meticulous, multi-tier jury consisting of eminent art practitioners, critics, and visual artists from all over India evaluates thousands of entries to pick the winners.

• The "Art for Sale" Initiative: In a landmark historical shift introduced during the 64th NEA, the Akademi decided to make award-winning artworks available for purchase. This initiative was launched to directly financially benefit local artists and foster a culture of art collection across India.
• Diverse Media Representation: Recent 65th NEA awardees highlight multi-disciplinary achievements, including Chandra Shekhar Sain (Sculpture), Chandra Naskar (Painting), Pankaj Kumar Sharma (Drawing), and Pritam Madhukar Deuskar (Printmaking).

• Harbour and Sea Phases: The drills included professional shore interactions, tabletop training, and a high-tempo sea phase featuring complex tactical manoeuvres.
• Drills Practised: Operations spanned search and rescue (SAR), helicopter deck landings, cross-deck operations, hydrographic surveys, and simulating medical evacuations.
• Security Protocols: Navies actively rehearsed the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) and refined cross-border information-sharing protocols to monitor vessels-of-interest.
• Future Leaders' Program: Alongside the hardware deployment, the event embedded a dedicated program aimed at building interpersonal trust and networking among younger military officers.

• The Platform: It is the highest-level defence dialogue framework for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN Official Site) to cooperate with external partners.
• Composition: It comprises 18 nations in total—the 10 ASEAN member countries and 8 dialogue partners (referred to as the "Plus" countries: India, USA, Japan, Australia, China, New Zealand, Russia, and South Korea).
• Seven Areas of Practical Cooperation:
  1. Maritime Security
  2. Counter-Terrorism
  3. Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR)
  4. Peacekeeping Operations
  5. Military Medicine
  6. Humanitarian Mine Action
  7. Cyber Security

• Act East Policy: Active engagement aligns directly with India’s proactive foreign policy towards Southeast Asian alignment.
• MAHASAGAR Vision: India's participation promotes its security doctrine of "Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions" in the Indian Ocean and adjacent waters.
• Bilateral Ties: The deployment specifically amplified the burgeoning defence and security relationship between India and the Philippines.

• The Participants: The initiative engaged 48 students from seven local schools who logged a massive total of 5,932 independent ecological observations over 30 days.
• The Technology Used: Students were trained in digital field photography and used the iNaturalist app to upload observations, where AI and global experts helped verify species identification.
• Breakdown of Documented Species: The extensive 1,517 species tally consists of:
  • Plants (Flora): 993 species
  • Insects: 221 species
  • Birds: 117 species
  • Mammals: 25 species
  • Reptiles: 10 species
• The Vision: Driven by the conservation group Help Earth and the Assam Climate Change Management Society, the long-term goal is to transition schools into living classrooms where biodiversity auditing is a continuous process rather than a one-time event.

• Definition: It is a collaborative process where non-professional volunteers—such as students, forest-fringe communities, and nature enthusiasts—actively participate in scientific research, data collection, and ecological monitoring.
• Levels of Engagement: It ranges from contributive projects (citizens merely crowdsource data collections) to co-created projects (where citizens work hand-in-hand with scientists to formulate hypotheses).

• Plugging Data Gaps: Professional scientific bodies lack the manpower and budget to track massive geographic expanses. Citizen scientists act as a distributed human sensor network, mapping remote areas and urban pockets alike.
• Real-Time Climate Tracking: Continuous tracking allows researchers to capture shifts in animal migration, variations in flowering seasons (phenology), and the early arrival of destructive invasive species.
• Empowering Policy via Global Repositories: Aggregated community observations feed into international databases like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Today, open-source networks like eBird and iNaturalist generate the majority of the world's real-time species occurrence data.

• The "Beauty Bias": Recent global studies indicate that citizen data is skewed heavily toward aesthetically pleasing, colourful species (like birds and butterflies), leaving dark, cryptic, or less visually attractive species under-reported.
• Geographical Imbalance: Data collection remains heavily saturated in urban areas or developed western nations, creating data blanks in critical tropical biodiversity hotspots like the Western Ghats or Northeast India.
• Data Validation: Relying on amateurs can introduce errors in species identification, making rigorous filtering and validation by taxonomic experts a prerequisite before data is used for official policy formulation.

• Single Integrated Platform: The portal acts as a centralized digital gateway handling the entire lifecycle of the Livestock Insurance Scheme—including registration, policy issuance, claim processing, real-time monitoring, and reporting.
• Multilingual Accessibility: To ensure small-scale rural farmers can easily navigate the platform, it supports 11 regional languages in addition to Hindi and English (13 languages in total).
• Premium Subsidy Structure: Under the linked scheme, beneficiaries (predominantly small and marginal farmers) only need to pay 15% of the insurance premium, while the Central and State governments jointly fund the remaining 85%.
• Coverage Limits: Subsidised livestock coverage is generous, extending up to 10 cattle units per beneficiary household for most eligible animals, with separate specialized limits applicable to smaller livestock like pigs and rabbits.
• Advanced Tech Integration: The Union government is planning to integrate Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tagging via the portal to improve animal identification accuracy and eliminate fraudulent claim settlements.
• Enhanced Transparency: By shifting management to a data-driven web portal, the government aims to eliminate middlemen, minimize delays in claim payouts when animals die, and foster better institutional coordination.

• Targeted Drug Delivery: Using nanoscale carriers like liposomes and polymeric nanoparticles to deliver active pharmaceutical ingredients directly to diseased cells, lowering systemic toxicity and side effects.
• Advanced Cancer Therapies: Utilizing gold nanoparticles for localized photothermal therapy (destroying tumours with heat without harming surrounding healthy tissue) and deploying "quantum dots" for hyper-precise tumour imaging.
• Microscopic Surgeries: Developing autonomous nanobots capable of navigating the bloodstream to clear arterial blockages, repair cells, or deliver localized drug payloads.
• Crossing the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB): Designing nanoparticles engineered to bypass the rigid blood-brain barrier to deliver targeted therapies for complex neurological disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
• Combating Antibiotic Resistance: Utilizing ultra-small "nanoantibiotics" that easily penetrate resilient bacterial cell membranes to disrupt infection pathways directly.
• Smart Wound Care & Regenerative Medicine: Designing smart bandages that monitor real-time infection markers while releasing controlled amounts of antimicrobials.

• The Translational Gap: While thousands of nanoparticles are tested in labs, only an estimated 50 to 80 nanomedicine products have successfully achieved global clinical approval, leaving a steep gap between laboratory success and patient bedside application.
• Manufacturing Variability: Complex nanomedicines suffer from batch-to-batch inconsistencies when scaled up from small lab environments to mass production lines.
• Safety Concerns: Issues regarding "bio-corona" formation (proteins sticking to nanoparticles inside the body) and the risk of unintended nanoparticle accumulation in major organs like the liver and spleen.
• Regulatory Deficits: A global lack of harmonized regulatory frameworks specifically tailored to evaluate the unique properties and safety profiles of active nanotherapeutics.

• Drug-Free India: The mission aims to build a physically healthy, mentally robust, and confident youth population free from self-destructive habits.
• Foundation for Viksit Bharat: It serves as a foundational step to harness youth power to transform India into a developed nation by 2047 (Viksit Bharat @2047).

• Nodal Agencies: Organised primarily by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports through the Mera Yuva Bharat (MY Bharat) platform and the National Service Scheme (NSS).
• Collaborative Network: It unites educational institutions, youth clubs, industrial associations, NGOs, and over 125 spiritual organisations.

• Jan Bhagidari (People's Movement): It is structured as a 100-week nationwide public movement.
• Weekly Campaigns: Every Sunday, specific grassroot activities are scheduled across the country.
• Diverse Initiatives: Weekly activities include sports tournaments, walkathons, health check-ups, meditation camps, nukkad nataks (street plays), and art/discussion forums.

• Prevention & Early Intervention: Focuses on transparent communication between parents and children, campus-level tracking, and eliminating the social normalisation of drugs.
• Rehabilitation & De-stigmatisation: Promotes medical treatment, counselling, and yoga. The PM uniquely describes survivors as "real warriors" to encourage social acceptance and secondary chances.
• Strict Enforcement: Integrates security measures to crack down on narcotics trafficking, acknowledging its threats to national security and organized crime networks.

• Host Nation: The initiative was hosted by the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
• Co-Hosting Partners: It brought together a global coalition including India, the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, Africa CDC, the World Coalition on Sickle Cell Disease, and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

• Strengthening International Cooperation: It aims to connect global political leadership, technical expertise, and financing mechanisms behind country-led health programs.
• Bridging Health Gaps: A major focus is placed on eliminating barriers to care caused by geographical location (place of residence) and socio-economic circumstances.
• Improving the Continuum of Care: The partnership scales up efforts to improve access to prevention, newborn/childhood screening, diagnostics, and affordable long-term treatments.

• Population-Wide Screening: Facilitates the early identification of affected individuals and genetic carriers.
• Early Diagnosis: Emphasizes newborn screening and rapid diagnostics to initiate prompt medical management.
• Comprehensive Counselling: Provides medical and genetic support systems for both patients and their families.
• Treatment and Continuous Follow-up: Ensures patients retain long-term connection to medical care, including affordable access to essential therapies like hydroxyurea.

• The 2047 Elimination Goal: At the launch, India highlighted its own National Sickle Cell Anaemia Elimination Mission (launched in 2023), which aims to completely eliminate SCD as a public health problem by 2047.
• Scale of Progress: India shared its population-scale milestones achieved under its national mission, including:
  • Over 7.29 crore people screened
  • More than 20 lakh carriers identified
  • 2.5 lakh individuals diagnosed
  • Distribution of over 4.93 crore digital Sickle Cell Cards to streamline follow-up tracking.
• Advanced Research: India also highlighted its current local research into developing an indigenous, affordable gene-editing therapy for SCD.

• Adoption: Adopted by the UN General Assembly under Resolution 79/243 on December 24, 2024, following five years of negotiations.
• Secretariat: Developed and facilitated with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) acting as the core secretariat and technical guide.
• Significance: It marks the first universal, legally binding international criminal justice treaty negotiated at the UN in over 20 years.
• Entry into Force: The treaty remains open for signature through December 31, 2026, and will officially enter into force 90 days after 40 states deposit their national ratifications.

• Expanded Scope of Offences: Criminalizes cyber-dependent activities (such as illegal access, interception, and malware/ransomware distribution) alongside cyber-enabled harms like online fraud and child sexual exploitation material.
• International Cooperation: Mandates the creation of a 24/7 global network for immediate law enforcement assistance, evidence preservation, and the tracing or recovery of criminal proceeds across borders.
• Victim Support: Encourages signatory nations to provide victims with access to physical and psychological recovery services, restitution, compensation, and prompt removal of illicit content.
• Capacity Building: Directs technical assistance and financial aid toward developing countries to bridge global gaps in cybersecurity preparedness.
• Sovereignty Safeguards: Explicitly asserts that state obligations must align with sovereign equality, territorial integrity, and international human rights frameworks.

• Surveillance Risks: Human rights organizations and digital rights groups have cautioned that the treaty features broad definitions and open-ended data collection provisions.
• Potential for Misuse: Critics argue that authoritarian or repressive regimes could exploit the text's cooperation clauses to justify wide-scale surveillance, censor online speech, or target political dissent and journalists.

• Duration: The project is scheduled to run for a seven-year period from 2025-26 to 2031-32.
• Total Outlay: The total budget allocated for the initiative is ₹537.10 crore.
• Funding Split:
  • JICA Contribution: The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is contributing ₹440.42 crore (via an international development loan agreement).
  • Government of India Share: The remaining ₹96.68 crore is funded by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC).
• Geographical Coverage: It will cover all Indian States and Union Territories, prioritizing new participating states while continuing support for states from previous forestry projects.

• Empowering Frontline Personnel: Focuses heavily on upgrading the administrative and operational capabilities of field-level forest guards and officers who handle day-to-day forest protection.
• Adapting to Evolving Challenges: Equips Forest departments to handle changing wildlife management requirements, human-animal conflicts, and complex environmental concerns.
• Climate Action: Designed to align directly with India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement to expand carbon sinks.

• Modern Technology Integration: Emphasizes moving away from pure classroom training to practical applications like using real-time satellite data (MODIS, VIIRS) to manage global threats like forest fires.
• Region-Specific Training Modules: Instead of a generic approach, the project mandates localized training modules that reflect regional ecology and unique administrative challenges.
• Research and Development (R&D): Strengthening research institutions to convert raw data and scientific outcomes directly into practice-oriented training material for field guards.
• Global Best Practices Sharing: Includes mechanisms to share successful field-level practices with SAARC countries and other developing nations.

• Tribal & Local Livelihoods: Enhances rural economic resilience by training forest managers to partner with local communities for the sustainable harvesting and commercialization of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP).
• Participatory Conservation: Integrates traditional community knowledge with modern science under frameworks like Joint Forest Management (JFM).

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