Current Affairs Quiz 1 September 2026

The SCO grew out of the Shanghai Five, a border-confidence grouping formed in 1996 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Uzbekistan’s accession in 2001 converted the Five into the SCO. India and Pakistan became full members at the Astana Summit in 2017, Iran joined in 2023 and Belarus in 2024.
The Secretariat is at Beijing and the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure at Tashkent. The official languages are Russian and Chinese.
The Council of Heads of State is the supreme body and meets annually; the Council of Heads of Government handles economic and budgetary matters. The 26th Summit at Bishkek on 31 August and 1 September 2026 adopted the Bishkek Declaration framed on the organisation’s 25th anniversary, and Pakistan took the chairmanship for 2026-27.

Semicon 2.0, the next phase of the Semicon India Programme, was notified on 31 August 2026 with a fiscal outlay of 1,27,500 crore rupees. It is built on six pillars: design, machines and materials, fabs, ATMP and OSAT, research and development, and talent.
The India Semiconductor Mission 1.0 was approved by the Union Cabinet in December 2021 with an incentive framework of 76,000 crore rupees, offering fiscal support of up to 50 per cent of project cost for silicon fabs, compound semiconductor facilities, assembly and testing units and chip design. As of December 2025, 10 projects with total investment of 1.60 lakh crore rupees had been approved across 6 states.
The shift from a fab-first to an ecosystem approach reflects the judgement that India’s comparative advantage lies in design rather than fabrication.

MGNREGA ceased to operate from 1 July 2026, replaced by the Viksit Bharat, Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025. Section 5(1) guarantees 125 days of wage employment per rural household per financial year, against not less than 100 days under MGNREGA, and the base daily wage was raised to 300 rupees.
Wages must be paid within one week, with interest for delay beyond 15 days. On 1 September 2026 the Ministry of Rural Development clarified that all workers stand shifted to the new mission and that e-KYC is not mandatory for seeking employment.
Data released on 9 August 2026 showed July 2026 person-days at 7.67 crore against 15.33 crore in July 2025, a fall of 49.94 per cent, with households availing work down 51.45 per cent. The right to work is a Directive Principle under Article 41.

The Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal was constituted in 1990 under the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 and delivered its final award in February 2007. The Supreme Court modified that award on 16 February 2018, setting Tamil Nadu’s share at 177.25 TMC, reduced from 192 TMC, increasing Karnataka’s by 14.75 TMC and recognising Bengaluru’s drinking water needs.
The basin parties are Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry. On 31 August 2026 the Supreme Court examined Karnataka’s compliance with a CWMA direction for 12,000 cusecs daily for 15 days from 12 August 2026 and adjourned for a week.
Article 262 permits Parliament to provide for adjudication of inter-state river disputes and to bar the jurisdiction of courts; water is Entry 17 of the State List, subject to Entry 56 of the Union List.

The current account of the balance of payments has two halves: merchandise trade, being goods exported minus goods imported, and invisibles, comprising services, primary income such as investment income, and secondary income such as remittances. A current account deficit arises when outflows exceed inflows across both.
Gold is a large, price-inelastic and non-productive merchandise import whose demand tends to rise when households are uncertain, which is often when the external account is already under pressure. Sovereign Gold Bonds were designed to meet the savings motive without the physical metal.
On 1 September 2026 the Prime Minister, speaking from Bishkek after the 7.8 per cent Q1 growth print, urged Indians to avoid overseas weddings, non-essential foreign leisure trips and unnecessary gold purchases, framing the appeal around swadeshi and self-reliance.

Activities in an eco-sensitive zone fall into three classes: prohibited, including commercial mining, sawmills, polluting industries and major hydroelectric projects; regulated, including tree felling, hotels and resorts and major construction; and permitted, including ongoing agriculture, rainwater harvesting and renewable energy. In June 2022 the Supreme Court directed a minimum 1 km zone around protected areas, and in 2023 it relaxed uniform application of that floor citing human-wildlife conflict while retaining the prohibition on mining within 1 km.
The Gauhati High Court recorded on 12 March 2026, in Jiten Engjai vs Union of India, that Assam had submitted neither a final notification nor a draft proposal for Kaziranga. Kaziranga became a National Park in 1974, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985 and a Tiger Reserve in 2006.

The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992 inserted Part IXA and the Twelfth Schedule, which lists 18 functions of urban local bodies. Article 243Q provides for three categories of municipality: a Nagar Panchayat for a transitional area, a Municipal Council for a smaller urban area and a Municipal Corporation for a larger urban area.
Article 243U fixes a five-year term from the date appointed for the first meeting and requires elections to be completed before its expiry, with a dissolved municipality reconstituted within six months. A State Election Commissioner is appointed by the Governor and may be removed only in the manner and on the grounds prescribed for a High Court judge.
Rajasthan polls 309 urban local bodies on 9 and 11 September 2026, with scrutiny of nominations on 1 September and counting on 14 September.

Life insurance nationalisation is a set-piece example of the commanding heights approach of the early planning era: the state took over an industry not because it had collapsed but because it was judged unable to mobilise household savings at scale or to extend beyond the cities. The arc completes with liberalisation.
The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India was established as sector regulator following the opening of insurance to private participation, and LIC’s own initial public offering took place in 2022, partially listing the corporation. The sequence of ordinance in January, statute in June and corporation in September 1956 is itself examinable, as is the composition of the 245 nationalised entities.

State Public Service Commissions are constitutional bodies under Article 315. Members are appointed by the Governor, and the Constitution requires that at least half the members of a Commission be persons who have held office under the Government of India or a state for at least ten years.
The annual report of a State Public Service Commission is laid before the state legislature under Article 323(2), together with a memorandum explaining any case where the Commission’s advice was not accepted. The Bihar Public Service Commission deferred the application process for Teacher Recruitment Examination 4.0, covering 32,388 vacancies under Advertisement No. 14/2026, which was to have opened on 1 September 2026.

The two 2020 Acts replaced the Central Council of Indian Medicine and the Central Council of Homoeopathy, mirroring the National Medical Commission reform in allopathic education. The regulatory question is live because AYUSH education is in a private-sector-led boom: government data for 2024 put 86 per cent of Ayurveda and 85 per cent of homoeopathy colleges in the non-government sector, permitted seats rose 43 per cent between 2021 and 2024, and the Centre’s AYURGYAN allocation grew nearly sixfold in the same window, while the NCISM had denied permissions to 17 private Ayurveda colleges as of late August and the National Commission for Homoeopathy has graded 41 per cent of homoeopathy colleges at its lowest level.

The disaster funds architecture flows from the Disaster Management Act, 2005, with the NDMA chaired by the Prime Minister, and was reorganised by the 15th Finance Commission into response and mitigation windows at both national and state levels. The 16th Commission continued the shift from purely expenditure-based to risk-informed transfers, treating preparedness and capacity-building as pre-disaster activities under mitigation.
The wider argument in the day’s Hindustan Times editorial is that this pre-disaster logic should extend beyond disaster funds into ordinary public budgets through climate risk statements, climate screening of major investments and flexible district-level prevention funds, because most of India’s adaptation will be decided by how ordinary money is spent.

The 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1976 first froze seat allocation on the basis of the 1971 census, with the stated purpose that states pursuing population stabilisation should not lose representation for succeeding. The 84th Amendment, 2001 extended that freeze, and the 87th Amendment, 2003 permitted readjustment of constituency boundaries on the basis of the 2001 census without altering seat totals among states.
Article 81 governs Lok Sabha composition, Article 82 provides for readjustment after each census by law made by Parliament, and Article 170 governs state legislative assemblies. Delimitation Commissions have been constituted in 1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002, and their orders have the force of law and cannot be called in question before any court.
The replacement level total fertility rate is 2.1.

India’s vulture populations fell by about 99.5 per cent by 2007, from an estimated four crore in the 1980s, with the white-rumped, Indian and slender-billed vultures worst affected. All three are Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List and protected under Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.
Meloxicam is the vulture-safe alternative NSAID promoted for veterinary use. Conservation architecture includes the MoEFCC Action Plan for Vulture Conservation for 2020 to 2025, breeding centres such as the facility at Pinjore in Haryana, and the regional SAVE consortium.
The emerging threat is electrocution from expanding transmission and distribution infrastructure, with medium-voltage lines also implicated, since risk depends on structure geometry and the clearance a bird’s wingspan can bridge.

The Electricity Act, 2003 unbundled the erstwhile State Electricity Boards into separate generation, transmission and distribution entities and created independent regulators. The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission regulates inter-state generation and transmission tariffs; State Electricity Regulatory Commissions determine intra-state tariffs; the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity hears appeals from both; and the Central Electricity Authority advises on technical and planning matters.
UDAY, launched in 2015, restructured accumulated distribution company debt onto state balance sheets, and the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme links central assistance to loss reduction and metering. AT&C losses combine technical network losses with commercial losses from unbilled or uncollected supply.
The recurring problem is that interventions address the stock of accumulated dues rather than the flow that generates them.

Real GDP grew 7.8 per cent in April to June 2026 against 6.9 per cent a year earlier, and the estimates were released by the National Statistics Office on 31 August 2026. Gross fixed capital formation grew 11.9 per cent against 5.8 per cent a year earlier, taking the share of capital formation in GDP to 34.3 per cent.
Real GVA in the quarter is estimated at 73.82 lakh crore rupees, with the secondary sector at 8.6 per cent and the primary sector at 2.9 per cent, agriculture and allied activities at 3.6 per cent. The supports behind the quarter, direct tax relief, GST rate reduction and an accommodative monetary stance, are level effects that fade from year-on-year comparisons, which is why sustained private capital expenditure is the variable that would distinguish a genuine investment cycle.

Corporate governance in India is governed by the Companies Act, 2013 on board composition, independent directors and related-party transactions, and by SEBI’s Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements Regulations, 2015 for listed companies, with Regulation 17 dealing with the board of directors. The Kotak Committee on Corporate Governance, constituted by SEBI in 2017, recommended reforms including on board independence.
The analytical question behind succession is the trade-off management theory calls exploration versus exploitation: operational excellence rewards predictability and incremental improvement, while breakthrough innovation requires tolerance for failure and long horizons without revenue, and optimising hard for the first creates selection pressures in budgeting and promotion that crowd out the second.