Current Affairs Quiz 1 August 2026

FACT: Import-linked GST collections grew 28.8 per cent to Rs 66,511 crore in July 2026, nearly three times the 10.1 per cent growth in domestic collections (Rs 1,44,695 crore), against a headline gross figure of Rs 2,11,205 crore (up 15.4 per cent). ANALYSIS: Import IGST is levied on the assessable value of imports, so it rises when import prices rise even if physical volumes do not, meaning a portion of the improved collection during a month of Strait of Hormuz disruption may reflect the same crude-price pressure that worsens India’s current account.

FACT: Samudra Manthan, a Central Sector Scheme under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas with an outlay of Rs 84,084 crore running to FY 2030-31, targets reserve accretion of over 600 million metric tonnes of oil equivalent (MMTOE) through offshore hydrocarbon exploration. ANALYSIS: The scheme is a supply-side response to India’s roughly 88 per cent crude import dependence, aiming not at self-sufficiency, which is not realistically available, but at reducing the marginal import requirement and building exploration capability independent of any foreign supplier or chokepoint.

FACT: PM-SSY requires every floating solar project under the scheme to include a minimum of two hours of energy storage, aggregating to 10,000 MWh, alongside its Rs 5,070 crore outlay and 5,000 MW capacity target. ANALYSIS: This signals a shift from measuring renewable progress in installed-capacity terms toward addressing grid firmness and the duck-curve problem, the steep evening demand ramp that occurs precisely as solar output drops, which is now the binding operational constraint on further solar penetration.

FACT: Pakistan and Bangladesh are both among the 14 members of the permanent Saudi-led maritime defence coalition announced on 30-31 July 2026 covering the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden; India is not a member. ANALYSIS: This creates a genuine strategic trade-off for India, since coalition membership shapes rules, information-sharing norms and command relationships that non-members do not influence, even though staying out is consistent with India’s long-standing preference for autonomous deployments over externally-led coalitions.

FACT: The Supreme Court declined to order a blanket ban, reasoning that forces may use pellet guns in exceptional circumstances under existing police guidelines and asking how pellets could be barred when bullets are permitted in extreme cases, and instead issued notice to the Centre and the Inspector General of the Rapid Action Force, directed preservation of RAF ammunition logs and sought the Delhi Police standard operating procedure. ANALYSIS: The Court’s comparison is intuitively appealing but analytically incomplete: a rifle is aimed at an identified individual whose targeting is reviewable, whereas a pellet cartridge disperses several hundred projectiles over a wide cone and cannot discriminate between a violent actor and a bystander, making indiscriminate injury a design feature rather than a malfunction.

FACT: IMD classifies seasonal rainfall between 90 and 96 per cent of the Long Period Average as “below normal,” so a forecast of below 94 per cent falls within that band, distinct from “deficient,” which is less than 90 per cent of LPA. ANALYSIS: The timing compounds the concern, since August is the kharif grain-filling stage at which yield per plant is determined, meaning an August deficit produces yield loss that later rainfall cannot recover, unlike a June deficit which mainly delays sowing.

FACT: IN-SPACe’s framework requires operators to demonstrate a casualty risk below 1 in 10,000 for any planned atmospheric re-entry, alongside third-party liability insurance where prescribed by IN-SPACe at authorisation, and acceptance of absolute no-fault liability. ANALYSIS: The absolute-liability standard flows directly from the 1972 Liability Convention, under which a launching state bears absolute liability for damage caused by its space object on the Earth’s surface, giving India a sovereign interest in ensuring private operators are both technically competent and financially able to cover resulting claims.

FACT: The Cabinet approved continuation of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi from 2026-27 through 2030-31 with an outlay of Rs 3.15 lakh crore, delivered through Direct Benefit Transfer; the scheme’s long-standing design critique is that eligibility is tied to landholding, which structurally excludes tenant farmers and landless agricultural labourers who are among the most economically vulnerable in the farm sector. ANALYSIS: PM-KISAN remains the world’s largest direct income-support programme for farmers, and its Aadhaar-linked DBT delivery is widely cited as a leakage-reduction success, but the coverage gap at the bottom of the agrarian hierarchy is a genuine equity problem the extension does not address.

FACT: The Zoological Survey of India announced on 30 July 2026 the completion of India’s first comprehensive Lepidoptera catalogue, recording 13,703 species across 3,705 genera, 240 subfamilies, 102 families and 31 superfamilies, after a 12-year effort published as the concluding volume of a 22-volume series in the journal Zootaxa. ANALYSIS: Baseline taxonomy is the precondition for conservation, since a national species inventory is what makes it possible to detect population trends over time, and Lepidoptera are both pollinators and sensitive bioindicators of habitat and climate change.

FACT: Favara is the Maldives Instant Payment System, operated under the Maldives Monetary Authority, and its integration with India’s UPI went live on 30 July 2026, enabling real-time transfers initiated in Maldivian Rufiyaa and credited in Indian Rupees. ANALYSIS: UPI internationalisation functions as Digital Public Infrastructure deployed as foreign policy, and in the Maldives specifically it is a notable warming indicator following the earlier period of strained bilateral relations.

FACT: General V.N. Sharma, the 14th Chief of the Army Staff (1 June 1988 to 30 June 1990), was the younger brother of Major Somnath Sharma, who was awarded independent India’s first Param Vir Chakra posthumously for the action at Badgam in November 1947. ANALYSIS: General Sharma was also the first officer commissioned after Independence to rise to Army Chief, having been commissioned into the 16th Light Cavalry in June 1950, and as Eastern Army Commander he handled the 1987 Sumdorong Chu standoff with China.

FACT: XWG Diesel, developed jointly by the Indian Army and oil marketing companies and launched by Army Chief General Dhiraj Seth on 31 July 2026, remains fluid down to minus 42°C, addressing the waxing and fuel-filter clogging that immobilises vehicles at extreme high-altitude temperatures. ANALYSIS: This is a logistics rather than a platform capability, and it reflects the broader reality that sustained high-altitude deployment is constrained more by fuel, movement and supply than by the vehicles and weapons themselves.

FACT: The IRDAI (Policyholders’ Education and Protection Fund) Regulations, 2026 operationalise the PEPF under Section 16A of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority Act, 1999, funding insurance literacy, grievance redressal strengthening, and the tracing of unclaimed insurance amounts. ANALYSIS: Alongside this, IRDAI replaced periodic renewal of intermediary registrations with perpetual registration under an annual fee regime, and mandated tagging of the authorised salesperson to every proposal, policy and certificate, a direct attack on mis-selling accountability.

FACT: World Breastfeeding Week is observed annually from 1 to 7 August, commemorating the 1990 Innocenti Declaration, and is coordinated by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) in collaboration with WHO and UNICEF. ANALYSIS: The observance’s recurring policy focus is the tension between evidence-based breastfeeding promotion and aggressive commercial marketing of breast-milk substitutes, which the WHO International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes was written to constrain.