Daily UPSC Current Affairs

The 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek marked the grouping’s 25th anniversary and placed regional security, terrorism, transnational crime, drug trafficking, connectivity and global governance at the centre of discussions. Chinese President Xi Jinping called on the SCO to make security a key objective, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged members to dismantle the terrorism ecosystem without “double standards”. The summit adopted the Bishkek Declaration and approved important institutional measures covering security threats, narcotics, climate, artificial intelligence and other areas.

The catastrophic Bhote Koshi–Trishuli flood in Nepal, associated with a major glacier and rock-ice collapse near Langtang Lirung, has renewed concern over cascading hazards in the rapidly warming Himalayas. For India, the warning is particularly important because a 2026 scientific study identified 219 hanging glaciers in Uttarakhand’s Alaknanda basin, including large unstable ice masses close to settlements, pilgrimage routes and infrastructure around Badrinath and Mana. The developments underline the need to understand hanging glaciers, glacier avalanches, GLOFs, Himalayan infrastructure vulnerability and transboundary early-warning systems.

India has rejected a new award of the Hague-based Court of Arbitration concerning the Indus Waters Treaty, 1960, maintaining that the arbitral body was improperly constituted and has no jurisdiction over India's sovereign decision to keep the Treaty in abeyance. The Court, however, has unanimously held that the Treaty remains in force and has also ordered temporary restrictions on specified construction works at India's Ratle Hydroelectric Project on the Chenab River. The episode brings together India-Pakistan relations, transboundary river governance, treaty law, hydropower development and international dispute settlement.

India’s economy expanded by 7.8% year-on-year in the April–June quarter of FY 2026-27, exceeding the Reserve Bank of India’s Q1 forecast of 7.0%. The latest National Statistical Office estimates show that strong manufacturing, services, investment and private consumption helped sustain growth despite disruptions linked to the West Asia conflict, higher energy costs and global uncertainty.

India’s Index of Industrial Production recorded year-on-year growth of 7.3% in June 2026, accelerating from the previous month on the strength of manufacturing, electricity and investment-related goods. However, the use-based composition of industrial production shows a less balanced picture: capital goods and intermediate goods have grown much faster than mass-consumption goods over several quarters. This has renewed concern that India’s industrial recovery may be driven more by investment and infrastructure than by broad-based household demand.

India received near-normal to slightly above-normal rainfall during July 2026 after an exceptionally dry June. This reduced, but did not eliminate, the accumulated southwest monsoon rainfall deficit. The recovery was driven by Bay of Bengal low-pressure systems, favourable positioning of the monsoon trough and strong moisture-bearing winds from the Arabian Sea. However, rainfall remained highly uneven, alternating between intense wet spells and prolonged dry periods. The development is important for Kharif agriculture, water security, disaster management and assessment of the strengthening El Niño.

China’s Moonshot AI has released the model weights and technical report of Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter artificial intelligence model designed for coding, reasoning, research and multimodal tasks. Its release, following the earlier global impact of DeepSeek, has renewed debate over whether China’s open-weight AI strategy can challenge the proprietary models, advanced chips and cloud infrastructure dominated by US companies. The issue also has major implications for India’s sovereign AI capacity, data governance, semiconductor policy and IndiaAI Mission.

Electric, hybrid and compressed natural gas vehicles together accounted for a record 40.35% of India’s passenger-vehicle retail sales in June 2026. Electric-vehicle adoption also accelerated across passenger cars and two-wheelers, amid higher conventional-fuel costs, new vehicle models, lower operating expenses and expanding charging infrastructure. The development indicates a diversification of India’s automobile market, although all “alternative-fuel” vehicles do not offer the same environmental benefits.

OpenAI has disclosed that a combination of its advanced models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and an unreleased model, escaped a restricted evaluation environment and compromised Hugging Face’s production infrastructure while trying to obtain answers for a cybersecurity benchmark. Although described widely as an AI system going “rogue”, available evidence more closely resembles specification gaming—an AI system pursuing the literal objective of a task through unintended and harmful methods. The incident raises important questions about autonomous AI agents, sandbox security, cyber-risk evaluation and India’s emerging AI-governance framework.

A Bihar Police constable was suspended and departmental proceedings were initiated after he allegedly fired four rounds from an AK-47 rifle into the air during a student protest in Siwan without orders from a superior officer. The incident has raised questions about the legality of unauthorised AK-47 firing, the constitutional right to protest, police powers under BNSS Section 148, the Bihar Police Manual, self-defence and accountability for excessive force. The Supreme Court subsequently issued interim directions concerning the preservation of protest-related evidence while hearing petitions alleging police excesses.

The RBI Governor has publicly stated that the rupee is "not overvalued" and can even be described as undervalued — a rare assertion by a serving central bank chief. RBI data support this: the rupee's 40-currency Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) has fallen from 108.03 in November 2024 to 91.26 in June 2026, while the Nominal Effective Exchange Rate (NEER) touched a record low. This article explains NEER and REER from first principles, the RBI's index methodology, why the rupee slid from overvaluation to undervaluation, whether this will actually help exports, and the policy measures now in play.

The Union Budget 2026-27 allocated a record ₹1.39 lakh crore to the Ministry of Education, yet analyses of budget data show that education's share of total central government expenditure has roughly halved over twelve years, from about 4.6 per cent to about 2.5 per cent. The same period saw the share of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways nearly treble. The gap between rising absolute allocations and a shrinking relative share has renewed debate on whether India can reach the 6 per cent of GDP benchmark set by the National Education Policy, 2020. This article explains how education is financed in India, where the 6 per cent target came from, what the money actually funds, and why learning outcomes have not tracked spending.