UPSC Current Affairs Analysis: 7 September 2026 | Important News & Editorials

UPSC Current Affairs Analysis: 7 September 2026 | Important News & Editorials

Today’s UPSC current affairs digest is a busy one — from an escalating US-Iran war around the Strait of Hormuz to serious corruption allegations rocking the Rajasthan High Court, from India’s preparations for hosting the 18th BRICS Summit to a fresh academic debate on whether RBI’s inflation-targeting model actually works for Indian conditions. Add to that a tribal-rights tug-of-war over Gram Sabha consent, Amit Shah’s 2029 drug-free India target, Bhutan’s landmark rabies elimination, and two fascinating science stories — sun-surface whirlpools and life-friendly peptides surviving in concentrated sulphuric acid. Below is a complete, exam-oriented breakdown of every topic, mapped to its GS paper, with the “Why in News,” background, balanced analysis, and the way forward you need for both Prelims and Mains.

Overview Table

UPSC Current Affairs Analysis 2026 | Strait of Hormuz Geopolitics

Heading & Syllabus Mapping

GS Paper II — International Relations (India’s neighbourhood-adjacent extended West Asia, global energy security, and great-power conflict).

Why in News?

The six-month-old US-Iran war entered a dangerous new phase this week when Iran’s forces attacked American warships close to the Strait of Hormuz, and Washington retaliated by striking three Iranian oil tankers in Gulf waters. This is the first time in months that Iran has directly targeted US military vessels rather than only commercial shipping, marking a sharp escalation.

Core Facts & Background

The war began on 28 February this year, with the US and Israel framing it as an effort to dismantle Iran’s nuclear programme and push for regime change in Tehran. A ceasefire-style arrangement — the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) — was signed on 17 June to end the fighting through talks, but it collapsed within weeks. President Trump then pivoted from military strikes to “economic warfare,” tightening sanctions and imposing a naval blockade on Iranian ports, while managing to route some oil tankers through a safer southern path along the Omani coast. Iran, however, still holds an effective chokehold over the Hormuz waterway — through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil trade passes — and continued targeting tankers using that southern route. This forced the US back into direct strikes, which in turn triggered Iranian retaliation against American bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan, and now attacks on US ships themselves.

Pros & Cons

In favour of continued US pressure: Sanctions and blockades do impose real economic costs on Iran and limit its ability to fund proxy groups; a tougher posture also reassures regional allies watching for American resolve. Against continued escalation: Neither the military campaign nor the economic squeeze has forced any change in Iran’s position — the Strait remains unsafe for shipping, global oil markets are under strain, and Iran, despite economic distress, has only grown more assertive as it pursues its own “de-basification” strategy of gradually forcing US military assets away from its periphery.

Way Forward

Commentators argue that Washington’s current approach resembles “mowing the lawn” — degrading Iran’s capabilities only for them to regrow — without a genuine theory of victory. A more durable option would be reviving the collapsed MoU and returning to negotiation before the economic and human costs on both sides spiral further, since a war that has now dragged on for six months with no clear endgame carries risks for global energy security, shipping insurance costs, and regional stability that extend well beyond the two combatants.

UPSC Current Affairs Analysis 2026 | Judicial Accountability

Heading & Syllabus Mapping

GS Paper II — Indian Polity, Judiciary, and Accountability Mechanisms.

Why in News?

A judicial-integrity storm has broken out after Supreme Court judge Justice Sandeep Mehta wrote three letters (dated 2, 10, and 17 August) to the Chief Justice of India, alleging serious misconduct by Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma, the Acting Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court. Lawyers at the High Court staged a sit-in protest, and the Supreme Court Collegium has since recommended Justice Sanjay Agrawal as the new Chief Justice of Rajasthan High Court.

Core Facts & Background

The allegations reportedly include victimisation of fellow judges through retributive transfers, maladministration, improper “shifting of cases,” nepotism in appointments to the Permanent Lok Adalat, favouritism towards a chosen set of lawyers, and misuse of the “master of roster” power that lets a Chief Justice allocate cases among judges. Justice Mehta has also flagged the CJI’s apparent inaction despite Justice Sharma’s imminent retirement. This episode has reignited a much older structural debate: India’s Collegium system (comprising the CJI and senior-most judges) lacks clear, objective criteria for appointments, making the process appear opaque and difficult to scrutinise. On the accountability side, the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 — the principal law for probing judicial misconduct — has become largely toothless in practice, and the landmark K. Veeraswami v. Union of India (1991) ruling requires the CJI’s prior permission before an FIR can even be registered against a sitting High Court or Supreme Court judge, creating an extra institutional shield. History offers cautionary precedents: the 1990 impeachment motion against Justice V. Ramaswami failed in Parliament after the ruling party’s strategic abstention, Justice P.D. Dinakaran resigned before his impeachment could conclude, and the Justice C.S. Karnan episode further exposed how weak the in-house mechanism really is. No sitting higher-judiciary judge has ever actually been removed through impeachment.

Pros & Cons

Way Forward

Legal experts argue judicial independence must not be confused with an absence of accountability. The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, first introduced in 2010, passed the Lok Sabha in 2012 but lapsed with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha in 2014 and was never revived — reviving a similar law, alongside a time-bound, transparent preliminary-examination process for complaints (with safeguards against frivolous ones), is widely seen as the missing piece. A UPSC Mains-worthy formulation of this debate: “Judicial independence cannot be sustained without judicial accountability.” Discuss existing mechanisms for ensuring accountability of the higher judiciary in India and suggest reforms.

UPSC Current Affairs Analysis 2026 | 18th BRICS Summit

Heading & Syllabus Mapping

GS Paper II — International Relations, International Groupings and Agreements.

Why in News?

With the 18th BRICS Summit scheduled in New Delhi on 12-13 September, China’s Ambassador to India, Xu Feihong, published an op-ed backing India’s presidency and outlining what he called BRICS’ “POWER” agenda for the grouping’s future.

Core Facts & Background

The five-letter “POWER” framework stands for Principles (upholding the UN Charter, sovereign equality, non-interference, and peaceful dispute settlement instead of a “law of the jungle” where powerful states dominate weaker ones), Openness (defending the multilateral trading system, WTO rules and most-favoured-nation treatment against rising protectionism and tariff walls), Win-Win cooperation (keeping development central to the BRICS agenda, accelerating the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and ensuring Global South countries share equally in global growth), Engine (deepening economic, financial, digital and technological cooperation — including local-currency settlement, cross-border payments, and new China-BRICS centres for AI development and “new quality productive forces”), and Responsibility (BRICS nations acting as the backbone of global peace, fairness and sustainable development). The scale involved is significant — BRICS nations together account for roughly half the world’s population, about 30% of global economic output and a fifth of global trade, with the IMF projecting the bloc’s growth will be nearly three times faster than the G7’s by 2028. Notably, India and China will hold the BRICS rotating presidency in succession, and bilateral ties have shown recent signs of a thaw — five direct flight routes have resumed and border trade has reopened after a six-year suspension — even as long-standing tensions over the Line of Actual Control, including in the Eastern (Arunachal Pradesh) and Western (Ladakh) sectors, persist in the background.

Pros & Cons

Strengths of the platform: BRICS gives India a strong voice for the Global South, a channel to push for reform of global governance institutions, and an opportunity to demonstrate issue-based leadership and strategic autonomy while hosting. Challenges: Internal diversity among members with different political systems and priorities, unresolved India-China bilateral friction, and the risk that BRICS commitments remain declaratory unless implementation mechanisms are strengthened.

Way Forward

Making BRICS more representative, inclusive and development-oriented — while ensuring it complements rather than undermines the existing multilateral, rules-based order — will determine whether it becomes a genuine platform for Global South leadership. A likely Mains angle: “BRICS can become an effective platform for Global South leadership only if it combines economic cooperation with responsible global governance.” Discuss in the context of India’s BRICS presidency.

UPSC Current Affairs Analysis 2026 | Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) Schemes

Heading & Syllabus Mapping

GS Paper II/III — Government Policies, Welfare Schemes, Indian Economy.

Why in News?

An economic commentary has reignited debate over Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) schemes — such as Tamil Nadu’s Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam, West Bengal’s Lakshmir Bhandar, and Karnataka’s Gruha Lakshmi — after some state governments that expanded such cash-support programmes still lost the 2026 elections, suggesting these schemes carry a real political cost despite being popular with women voters.

Core Facts & Background

Since 2020, UCTs have become a favoured electoral tool, with states projected to spend roughly $18 billion on such schemes in 2025-26 alone, largely targeted at women. Proponents link UCTs to Sustainable Development Goal 5.4, which calls for recognising women’s unpaid domestic and care work, and argue they provide immediate income security, boost household bargaining power, and stimulate local demand and consumption. The Tamil Nadu case illustrates the practical difficulty: the scheme initially promised ₹1,000 a month to women-headed households before the 2021 election, but fiscal constraints forced eligibility restrictions based on income and land ownership when it finally launched in September 2023, covering 1.13 crore women. After widespread complaints of unfair exclusion, another 16.94 lakh beneficiaries were added in December 2025, taking the scheme’s annual cost to ₹13,807 crore — yet dissatisfaction persisted, and some already-excluded women reportedly felt even more aggrieved once existing beneficiaries received an advance three-month payment with a special summer top-up. The core problem is one of targeting: since governments cannot directly observe informal-sector incomes, they rely on proxy indicators like land ownership or electricity use, which inevitably create both “inclusion errors” (ineligible households receiving benefits) and “exclusion errors” (eligible households left out) — and both types of error, real or merely perceived, generate political backlash.

Pros & Cons

Way Forward

The article points to India’s Midday Meal Scheme — where benefits are tied to school enrolment — as a model where self-selection reduces targeting disputes while still delivering nutrition and education outcomes. A balanced approach would combine UCT-style immediate relief with conditional elements linked to health, education or skill development, alongside rigorous cost-benefit evaluation, social audits, and grievance-redress systems, so that welfare spending builds durable capability rather than just short-term political goodwill.

UPSC Current Affairs Analysis 2026 | Inflation Targeting & Phillips Curve

Heading & Syllabus Mapping

GS Paper III — Indian Economy, Monetary Policy, Inflation.

Why in News?

Ten years after India formally adopted flexible inflation targeting in 2016, new academic research argues that the underlying economic assumption behind the framework — the “Phillips Curve” relationship between output and inflation — doesn’t really hold for India, raising questions about whether the policy achieves its goals without unnecessary economic pain.

Core Facts & Background

Under the current framework, the RBI targets 4% CPI inflation with a tolerance band of 2% to 6%, using the repo rate as its main tool: raising rates when inflation is high (to cool borrowing and demand) and cutting them when inflation is low. This logic rests on the traditional Phillips Curve, which assumes higher output and employment push wages and prices up, because workers gain bargaining power in a tight job market. However, researchers testing Indian data from April 2012 to March 2026 found the curve is nearly flat — meaning changes in economic output have very little measurable effect on inflation. If that is true, raising interest rates to slow the economy may not bring down inflation by much, while still hurting growth and jobs — a troubling trade-off if inflation is actually being driven by supply-side shocks like crude oil or food prices rather than by excess demand. Compounding the problem, a separate household-survey finding shows people’s inflation expectations (both three-month and one-year ahead) have consistently run higher than the RBI’s own projections, suggesting the central bank’s credibility in anchoring public expectations is itself a work in progress. Economists attribute India’s flat curve to structural factors — a large informal workforce with weak bargaining power, wages that don’t move much with output, and inflation that is heavily influenced by food, fuel and supply-chain shocks rather than pure demand pressure.

Pros & Cons

Case for the current framework: A clear, rule-based inflation target improves policy predictability and has helped keep inflation broadly within the tolerance band for a decade. Case for caution: If the Phillips Curve is genuinely flat, aggressive rate hikes primarily hurt output and employment without proportionately taming inflation — especially when the inflation is supply-driven rather than demand-driven.

Way Forward

Economists suggest a more nuanced framework — one that gives greater weight to supply-side causes of inflation, invests more in understanding and managing household inflation expectations, improves the transparency of inflation data and methodology, and avoids reflexively tightening policy when price pressure stems from temporary shocks rather than an overheating economy. A likely Mains framing: Critically evaluate whether tightening monetary policy effectively controls inflation in India or disproportionately harms output and employment, given evidence of a flat Phillips Curve.

UPSC Current Affairs Analysis 2026 | FRA & Gram Sabha Consent

Heading & Syllabus Mapping

GS Paper II — Polity, Tribal Rights, Centre-Ministry Coordination.

Why in News?

The Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs has told the Power Ministry that the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006 contains “no provision for obtaining consent of the Gram Sabha” for forest clearance, and that such matters therefore fall outside its purview — a position that has surprised many, since Gram Sabha consent has long been treated as central to forest-diversion procedure.

Core Facts & Background

The clarification came in an official communication to the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) desk of the Power Ministry, following a 3 August report by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Undertakings, which had flagged the requirement of “100% gram sabha consent” as the single biggest bottleneck delaying forest clearances — with the average clearance time for NHPC projects running to a staggering 106 months, and projects like the Teesta-IV Hydroelectric Project stalled indefinitely because a small minority of gram sabhas withheld consent. While the FRA’s own text does not explicitly use the phrase “gram sabha consent” for diverting forest land, the government’s own Rules and the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 guidelines require that all FRA-related processes — identifying claimants, recognising their rights, and obtaining a no-objection certificate (NOC) from concerned gram sabhas — be completed before a certificate diverting the forest can be formally issued. This is what has commonly come to be known as the “gram sabha consent” procedure. The Parliamentary panel, headed by BJP MP Baijayant Panda, has recommended a “qualified super-majority consent” standard — 70-75% approval among affected gram sabhas — as sufficient for large infrastructure projects of national importance, and has asked the Power Ministry to discuss this proposal’s feasibility with the Tribal Affairs Ministry.

Pros & Cons

In favour of easing the requirement: Long delays (nearly nine years on average for some projects) raise costs and stall genuinely important national infrastructure; a super-majority threshold could unblock stalled projects without eliminating community input entirely. Against diluting the requirement: Weakening gram sabha consent risks tribal displacement, erosion of hard-won community forest rights, environmental damage to biodiversity and water sources, and the danger that consent becomes a token numerical exercise rather than a genuine consultation.

Way Forward

The debate essentially comes down to how India protects legally recognised tribal rights while also enabling timely infrastructure development — a balance that will require faster and more transparent clearance procedures, proper rehabilitation and compensation frameworks, and stronger coordination between the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Environment Ministry, state governments and gram sabhas, so that neither development nor tribal rights are treated as expendable.

UPSC Current Affairs Analysis 2026 | Drug-Free India Roadmap

Heading & Syllabus Mapping

GS Paper III — Internal Security, Social Issues, Government Policies.

Why in News?

Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced at a Panaji press conference that the government has prepared a comprehensive roadmap to make India drug-free by 2029, framing a drug-free youth population as a stepping stone towards the broader “Viksit Bharat” vision for 2047.

Core Facts & Background

The announcement came after a high-level meeting on narcotics chaired with Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and officials from the Union Home Ministry and the Goa government. Shah described a coordinated, nationwide strategy aimed at dismantling the entire narcotics network — from trafficking to the financing that sustains it — alongside a stronger focus on rehabilitation. Dedicated Anti-Narcotics Task Forces (ANTFs) have been set up in every state and Union Territory, with local police forces linked into the national strategy. The institutional backbone includes the four-tier National Coordination Committee for Countering Drug Trafficking (NCORD), created in 2019 to coordinate action at the executive, state, and district levels, and a Joint Coordination Committee, also formed in 2019, that allows central agencies and states to jointly act against major drug networks, their international links, and operational gaps. The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) — the key agency operating under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act — has also been strengthened through cadre reorganisation and expanded zonal presence. On the demand-reduction side, the government has linked awareness campaigns, treatment, rehabilitation and livelihood opportunities, and introduced the 1933 MANAS helpline to support individuals struggling with drug addiction.

Pros & Cons

Strengths: A multi-tier coordination structure (NCORD) addresses the long-standing problem of state and central agencies working in silos, while linking enforcement with rehabilitation acknowledges that supply-side action alone rarely solves addiction. Challenges: A five-year target for a “drug-free India” is ambitious given porous borders, evolving trafficking routes, and the scale of demand; sustained funding and inter-state cooperation will be essential to avoid the plan remaining aspirational.

Way Forward

Effective delivery on this roadmap will likely depend on strengthening demand-reduction efforts alongside supply-side crackdowns, expanding rehabilitation infrastructure in vulnerable and border states, deepening international cooperation on trafficking routes, and building robust monitoring of how effectively bodies like NCORD are actually functioning on the ground.

UPSC Current Affairs Analysis 2026 | Rabies Elimination in Bhutan

Heading & Syllabus Mapping

GS Paper III — Health, Science and Technology, One Health Approach.

Why in News?

The World Health Organization has validated Bhutan as the first country in its South-East Asia Region to eliminate dog-transmitted human rabies as a public health problem, with the Himalayan kingdom’s last recorded rabies death dating back to June 2023.

Core Facts & Background

Rabies is a viral, zoonotic disease that spreads mainly through the bite or saliva of infected animals and is almost always fatal once clinical symptoms appear — yet it is entirely preventable with timely treatment. Globally, rabies still claims an estimated 59,000 lives every year, roughly a third of them in India, where about 96% of rabies mortality and morbidity is linked to dog bites, and where local bodies have often struggled with animal birth-control and vaccination drives. Bhutan achieved elimination through a combination of mass dog vaccination, active dog-population management, sustained community awareness, and quick post-bite treatment — supported by a strong “One Health” collaboration between its Ministries of Health and Agriculture & Livestock, local governments, and communities. Notably, Bhutan’s De-suung volunteers, known as “Guardians of Peace,” played a direct role in dog vaccination drives, population management, and spreading community awareness. WHO’s validation framework requires a country to demonstrate the absence of human deaths from dog-transmitted rabies for at least two years, alongside the institutional capacity to prevent the disease from re-emerging — recognising that rabies deaths are entirely preventable through a two-pronged global strategy: vaccinating dogs to control the disease at its source, and ensuring access to post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) — thorough wound washing with soap and water, a full course of the human rabies vaccine, and rabies immunoglobulin where medically required.

Pros & Cons

What Bhutan’s model offers: Proof that rabies elimination is achievable even for a developing country, and a template — the One Health approach — that links human health, animal health and community participation rather than relying on hospitals alone. India’s persistent challenges: A very large free-roaming dog population, uneven vaccination coverage across states, limited PEP access in some rural areas, and weak coordination between human-health and animal-husbandry departments continue to hold back progress.

Way Forward

India’s National Rabies Control Programme aims to progressively bring rabies deaths to zero by 2030, and Bhutan’s experience suggests the path runs through at least 70% dog vaccination coverage in high-risk areas, scientific dog-population management, easier availability of vaccines and immunoglobulin, sustained public awareness on immediate wound care, stronger Health-Animal Husbandry coordination, and better surveillance of both animal bites and rabies cases — essentially, replicating the One Health model at scale.

UPSC Current Affairs Analysis 2026 | Solar Convection Cells (DKIST Discovery)

Heading & Syllabus Mapping

GS Paper III — Science and Technology, Space Science.

Why in News?

Scientists using the world’s largest solar telescope have captured the sharpest-ever images of the Sun’s surface, revealing tiny, violently rotating plasma whirlpools that had never been observed before — a finding published in the journal Nature on 5 August.

Core Facts & Background

The visible surface of the Sun, called the photosphere, behaves somewhat like a boiling liquid: hot plasma rises, spreads outward, cools, and sinks again, forming large “convection cells,” each about 2,000 km across and visible for only 5-10 minutes before dissipating — these individual structures are known as solar granules. For nearly a century, every image of these granules showed blurred, frayed-looking edges, leaving solar physicists unsure whether that blur reflected real physical detail or just a limitation of the instruments. The new images, captured using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) — located near the summit of Hawaii’s Haleakalā volcano and equipped with a giant four-metre primary mirror — have finally settled the debate: the edges of solar granules are lined with small, rapidly rotating plasma whirlpools formed by the interaction of magnetic fields, which twist, grow, merge with neighbouring whirlpools, and break apart, all within a matter of seconds. Using a specialised high-speed camera paired with the telescope, researchers achieved a resolution of about 19 km — sharp enough, researchers noted, to be equivalent to spotting a 10-rupee coin from a great distance — and found that the fastest-growing whirlpools became 2.7 times larger than their original size within just 18 seconds, rotating at speeds of 1.6-2.8 km per second. The team combined these direct observations with computer-based magnetohydrodynamic simulations — the study of how conducting fluids like plasma interact with magnetic fields — to confirm the whirlpools form roughly 100-400 km below the visible solar surface.

Pros & Cons

Scientific significance: Since magnetic fields can store and later release energy — powering solar flares and eruptions — these newly observed whirlpools may hold clues to how energy is transported and released from deep within the Sun into its outer, unexpectedly hot atmosphere, a long-standing puzzle in solar physics. Limitations: The images capture only a tiny, high-resolution slice of solar activity; scaling these findings into fully reliable space-weather prediction models will require much more observational and simulation work.

Way Forward

Because strong solar eruptions can disrupt satellites, radio communication, navigation systems, power grids, and even endanger astronauts, the next step for researchers is to determine how much energy these small-scale instabilities actually transport, and how they connect to the far more energetic solar flares and eruptions that drive space weather — directly improving our ability to monitor and forecast such events.

UPSC Current Affairs Analysis 2026 | Peptide Stability in Sulphuric Acid

Heading & Syllabus Mapping

GS Paper III — Science and Technology, Astrobiology.

Why in News?

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on 4 September has found that certain peptides — short chains of amino acids that make up proteins — not only survive in 98% concentrated sulphuric acid but also fold into the complex 3D shapes needed to function biologically, challenging long-held assumptions about where life-friendly chemistry can exist.

Core Facts & Background

Peptides are essentially the building blocks that link up to form proteins, which are life’s fundamental “worker molecules.” Previous research had already shown that nucleic acid bases and amino acids can remain stable in concentrated sulphuric acid, but this is the first time a full macromolecule — a peptide capable of holding a defined, functional shape — has been shown to survive and retain structure in such a harsh solvent. Normally, strong acids destroy peptides through a process called hydrolysis, where water molecules break the crucial bonds holding amino acids together. But 98% sulphuric acid contains almost no water, which means the hydrolysis reaction simply cannot proceed effectively — allowing the peptides studied to remain intact and stable for several weeks at room temperature. Using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, researchers discovered that these peptides fold into a specific structure known as an “omega loop,” with the surrounding sulphuric acid molecules themselves acting like a scaffold that helps hold the shape in place — a striking departure from how proteins typically fold in water, forming helices or sheets instead.

Pros & Cons

Why this matters: The discovery directly challenges the old assumption that concentrated sulphuric acid is inherently too hostile for complex biological chemistry — a significant point given that Venus is covered in thick clouds of concentrated sulphuric acid, an environment scientists had largely written off as chemically incompatible with life. Caveats: Peptide stability alone does not prove life exists or could exist on Venus; it only shows that one previously assumed dealbreaker for complex chemistry may not be as absolute as thought, and much more research is needed before drawing conclusions about actual habitability.

Way Forward

The broader lesson for astrobiology — the study of the origin, evolution, and possibility of life in the universe — is that the search for life should not be confined only to Earth-like conditions. Going forward, scientists are likely to examine how biomolecules behave in other extreme, non-aqueous environments, explore targeted spectroscopic studies of Venus’s clouds, and broaden the habitability criteria used when scanning other planets and moons for signs of life.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1. What is the “POWER” framework mentioned in the 18th BRICS Summit news? “POWER” stands for Principles, Openness, Win-Win cooperation, Engine (economic and technological cooperation), and Responsibility — a five-point agenda proposed ahead of the 18th BRICS Summit being hosted by India in New Delhi on 12-13 September.

Q2. Why is the Rajasthan High Court judicial accountability issue important for UPSC? It ties directly into GS Paper II topics like judicial appointments (the Collegium system), judicial accountability mechanisms, the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, and landmark judgments such as K. Veeraswami v. Union of India (1991) — all frequently tested static-plus-current topics.

Q3. What does a “flat Phillips Curve” mean for India’s inflation-targeting policy? It means changes in economic output have little measurable effect on inflation, which raises doubts about whether raising interest rates to control inflation is effective in the Indian context, especially when inflation is driven by supply-side shocks rather than excess demand.

Q4. Does the Forest Rights Act, 2006 legally require Gram Sabha consent for forest clearance? The Ministry of Tribal Affairs says the FRA’s text has no explicit provision demanding Gram Sabha consent, but government Rules and Forest Conservation Act, 1980 guidelines require the completion of Gram Sabha-related processes before forest land can be formally diverted — making this a live inter-ministerial and policy debate.

Q5. What is India’s target for eliminating rabies deaths, and how does Bhutan’s example help? India’s National Rabies Control Programme aims to bring human rabies deaths to zero by 2030. Bhutan’s success — achieved via mass dog vaccination, dog population management, and its “One Health” approach — offers a practical, tested model India can scale up.

Q6. Why are scientists excited about peptides surviving in sulphuric acid? Because Venus’s atmosphere is covered in clouds of concentrated sulphuric acid, previously considered too hostile to support complex biological chemistry. This discovery suggests such acidic environments may not automatically rule out life-friendly molecules, widening the search for extraterrestrial life.

Previous Current Affairs >>