Daily UPSC Current Affairs

India's two flagship decentralised solar schemes — PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana (rooftop solar for households) and PM-KUSUM (solar power for farmers) — are running well below their targets, a gap recently flagged by the Parliamentary Estimates Committee. A key reason is the paradox of free and subsidised power offered by several states, which removes the incentive to install rooftop solar. This article explains both schemes in detail, the latest progress figures and the sharp inter-state disparity, the power-subsidy paradox, and why decentralised solar is central to India's clean energy transition and 500 GW non-fossil target by 2030.

With the India-Oman Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) taking effect on June 1, 2026, India now has 15 free trade agreements covering 27 countries, with around nine more pacts under negotiation. As this network rapidly expands, a debate has intensified over whether FTAs are genuinely strengthening India's economy or widening its trade deficits and weakening domestic manufacturing. This article explains what FTAs and CEPAs are, the difference between MFN and preferential tariffs, the concepts of rules of origin, FTA utilisation and inverted duty structures, the key concerns raised by trade analysts, and the case in favour of FTAs — giving aspirants a complete, balanced picture of India's trade-agreement strategy.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has released its Yearbook 2026, estimating that India's nuclear stockpile has grown to about 190 warheads as of January 2026 (up from 180 a year earlier), moving slightly ahead of Pakistan's estimated 170. SIPRI also assessed that India may have begun deploying a small number of warheads on a nuclear-armed submarine conducting deterrence patrols, hinting at a shift in its long-standing peacetime posture. This article explains the report's key findings, India's nuclear doctrine of credible minimum deterrence and No First Use, the structure of India's nuclear triad and second-strike capability, its command-and-control system, and India's position on global non-proliferation treaties.

The Great Nicobar Island Development Project has returned to the spotlight after government sources defended the roughly Rs 81,000-crore plan as a strategically vital national initiative, rejecting the charge that it is "one of the biggest scams" and a crime against the island's natural and tribal heritage. The sources clarified that the existing INS Baaz runway will not be extended to the planned 10,000 feet because of the ecological and tribal costs, and argued that India's wider maritime needs cannot be met by expanding defence assets alone. This article explains the project's components, the strategic geography of Great Nicobar, the logic of a transshipment port at Galathea Bay, and the environmental and tribal-rights concerns at the heart of the ecology-versus-security debate.

The Union government is preparing to reintroduce its constitutional amendment for delimitation and women's reservation, two months after the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026 was defeated in the Lok Sabha in April for want of a two-thirds majority. The reworked plan reportedly seeks to add clarity that every state's existing seat share will be protected even as the House is expanded to around 850 seats, with allocation among states kept proportionate to the 1971 Census — a move aimed at winning over southern states and the DMK. This article explains what delimitation is, the constitutional provisions (Articles 81, 82, 170, 330, 332), the 1971 Census "freeze", the women's reservation link, the North-South federalism debate, and why a Constitution Amendment Bill can fail despite a clear majority.

India is reworking the template for its Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) to make them more investor-friendly while protecting its sovereign policy space, after years of falling net foreign investment and costly arbitration defeats. Reports indicate the Centre is anchoring the new model on three principles: a minimum two-year window for exhausting local remedies before international arbitration, no Most-Favoured Nation (MFN) clause, and exclusion of tax matters. This article explains what BITs are, how India's treaty regime evolved from 1994 to the restrictive 2016 Model BIT, the arbitration losses (White Industries, Vodafone, Cairn, Devas) that reshaped policy, the working of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), and what the proposed changes mean for India's FDI strategy and regulatory autonomy.

The Union Cabinet on 5 May 2026 approved the Mission for Cotton Productivity (2026-27 to 2030-31) with an outlay of about Rs 5,659 crore, aimed at raising India's lint yield from around 440 kg/ha to 755 kg/ha and reaching 498 lakh bales by 2031. The move comes against a sharp decline in cotton output since 2014-15 and a widening yield gap with Australia, China, Brazil and the United States, reigniting debate over Bt cotton, seed-price regulation and the GM regulatory framework. This article explains the Mission, the science and history of Bt cotton in India, the Cotton Seed Price Control Order and the IPR debate, the role of GEAC, and the arguments on both sides — all mapped to the UPSC syllabus.

The Supreme Court, in Prajwala v. Union of India (May 2026), has framed a binding "Victim Protection Plan" for survivors of trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation (CSE), holding that they have a fundamental right to rehabilitation and must never be treated as criminals. Invoking Articles 21, 23, 32 and 142, the Court placed victims' consent and dignity at the centre and distinguished voluntary adult sex workers, for whom forcible "rescue" does not arise. The plan will operate until Parliament enacts a comprehensive anti-trafficking law. This article explains the judgment, the Prajwala case, the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, and the constitutional and international framework on trafficking — mapped to the UPSC syllabus.

With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed and contested amid the 2026 Iran war, energy tankers are increasingly "going dark" — switching off their AIS transponders to cross the chokepoint undetected. Once a tactic of the sanctioned-oil "shadow fleet", dark transits now make up the majority of crossings, raising collision and enforcement risks. This article explains the geography and importance of the Strait of Hormuz, how AIS and the dark/shadow fleet work, the conflict context, India's heavy dependence on the strait for oil, LNG and LPG, India's energy-security response, and the wider issue of maritime chokepoints — all mapped to the UPSC syllabus.

AI authorship is back in the spotlight after the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize was hit by allegations that some winning entries were AI-generated, with an AI detector flagging one Caribbean-winning story as "100% AI". The episode has revived a hard question: can software reliably tell whether a text was written by a human or a machine? This article explains the machine-learning science behind such detectors, the "AI tells" they look for, why the tools are not foolproof (false positives, low-entropy text, code and short text), and what this means for education, writing and publishing — all mapped to the UPSC syllabus.

The first comprehensive Delhi Bird Atlas, released on 5 June 2026, ranks Delhi as the world's second-richest national capital for bird diversity after Nairobi, with 471 species on the city's bird list. Prepared by the Delhi Forest Department with Bird Count India as a citizen-science project, it maps the distribution and abundance of birds using a grid-based method and links Delhi's richness to the Aravalli Ridge, the Yamuna and Sahibi floodplains, and the Central Asian Flyway. This article explains what a bird atlas is, the Central Asian Flyway and global flyways, the species of conservation concern recorded, the citizen-science and eBird method, and India's framework for protecting migratory birds and wetlands — all mapped to the UPSC syllabus.

The newly released National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6), 2023-24 shows that infant and young child feeding practices in Delhi have declined sharply across almost every indicator compared with NFHS-5 (2019-21). Early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding and the share of children getting an adequate diet have all fallen, and underweight has risen — even as several national child-nutrition indicators improved. This article explains what NFHS-6 is, the key breastfeeding and complementary-feeding indicators, what stunting, wasting and underweight mean, India's nutrition schemes and legal framework, and the way forward — all mapped to the UPSC Prelims and Mains syllabus.