Current Affairs Quiz 5 September 2026

The World Heritage Convention, 1972, requires that a site sit on a country’s Tentative List for at least one year before it can be nominated for inscription on the World Heritage List. India ratified the Convention in 1977 and has 45 inscribed sites as of 2026, the most recent being the Ancient Buddhist Site of Sarnath, inscribed in July 2026.
The nominating criteria most relevant to the Ahom ensemble are Criteria (iii), unique testimony to a cultural tradition, and (iv), outstanding example of an architectural ensemble. The Ahom kingdom was founded by Sukaphaa in 1228 and ended with the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826.

The New Development Bank is headquartered at Shanghai and was established in 2015 with an initial subscribed capital of USD 50 billion and an authorised capital of USD 100 billion. Its Board of Governors was chaired at inception by the Finance Minister of the founding country by rotation.
Its current President since 2023 is Dilma Rousseff of Brazil. India holds the rotating BRICS chairship in 2026 and hosts the 18th Leaders’ Summit at Bharat Mandapam on 12 and 13 September 2026, with a BRICS Chief Justices’ Forum held immediately before it.

Radhakrishnan was born at Tiruttani on 5 September 1888 and died on 17 April 1975. He was a philosopher of Advaita Vedanta, wrote the two-volume Indian Philosophy and was the first Indian Vice Chancellor of Andhra University.
The National Teachers Awards are conferred annually by the President at Vigyan Bhawan, administered by the Department of School Education and Literacy under the Ministry of Education, through a three-tier (district, state, national) selection process. The National Education Policy, 2020 devotes Chapter 5 to teachers, and NISHTHA, launched in 2019, is the National Initiative for School Heads and Teachers Holistic Advancement.

ANRF was recommended by the National Education Policy, 2020 as a national umbrella body for funding, mentoring and building research capacity across universities, colleges, research institutions and R&D laboratories. It works across the natural sciences, engineering, humanities and social sciences.
The Prime Minister is the President of the Foundation ex officio, and the Union Ministers of Science and Technology and of Education are Vice Presidents. India’s Gross Expenditure on Research and Development (GERD) is approximately 0.65 per cent of GDP, against a target of 2 per cent.
The Prime Minister Research Chair Scheme is one operational instrument to attract Indian-origin researchers based abroad.

The International Earth Science Olympiad is held annually since 2007 under the International Geoscience Education Organization, one of twelve International Science Olympiads. India’s participation is coordinated by the Geological Society of India, Bengaluru, with mentoring from INCOIS. The PRITHVI (Earth System Sciences) umbrella scheme was approved by the Union Cabinet on 5 January 2024 with an outlay of Rs 4,797 crore for the period 2021 to 2026 to integrate ocean, atmospheric, hydrospheric, cryospheric and solid earth research under a single programmatic frame.

The US FDA accelerated approval pathway allows drugs for serious conditions that fill an unmet medical need to be approved based on a surrogate endpoint, in this case progression-free survival, that is reasonably likely to predict clinical benefit. In India, the analogous conditional approval route is available under the New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules, 2019, administered by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in Indian women per the National Cancer Registry Programme of the Indian Council of Medical Research, National Centre for Disease Informatics and Research. The Union Budget 2025-26 exempted 36 life-saving cancer drugs from Basic Customs Duty.

India was the first country to make CSR spending statutory. Amendments in 2019 and 2021 made unspent CSR liable to be transferred to a Schedule VII fund (like the PM CARES Fund or the Swachh Bharat Kosh) if not spent on an ongoing project.
Charitable activity in India is regulated by the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 as amended in 2020, administered by the Ministry of Home Affairs, and Sections 12A, 12AB and 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. The International Day of Charity is observed globally on 5 September under UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/67/105 of 2012, marking the death anniversary of Mother Teresa.

The corporatisation followed the recommendations of the Empowered Group of Ministers on OFB restructuring. It is distinct from privatisation because the Government of India remains the sole shareholder in the seven DPSUs.
Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) was launched in April 2018 under the Department of Defence Production to fund defence startups, MSMEs and academia. Positive Indigenisation Lists are issued by the Department of Defence Production and bar foreign procurement of listed items after a phased timeline.
The current defence procurement framework is Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020.

The Global Methane Pledge is not a treaty but a political pledge; it has more than 155 signatories in 2026. India’s hesitation is partly linked to enteric methane from the livestock sector, which would be politically sensitive to target, and partly linked to the wider principle that emissions cuts should reflect Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities.
India’s own Nationally Determined Contributions, updated in 2022, target a 45 per cent reduction in emissions intensity of GDP by 2030 below 2005 levels, 50 per cent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2030, and net-zero emissions by 2070.

The Loss and Damage Fund is one of three components of climate finance, alongside adaptation and mitigation finance. It is designed to compensate developing countries for economic and non-economic losses caused by climate change impacts that cannot be prevented by mitigation or addressed through adaptation.
The Fund has its own independent Board and Secretariat but uses the World Bank as a Financial Intermediary Fund host. India welcomed the operationalisation of the Fund.
COP31 is scheduled to be hosted by Türkiye at Antalya in November 2026. The principle of climate justice, invoked by the Indian Express editorial, is rooted in Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities from Rio 1992.

The Dhalkebar-Muzaffarpur 400 kV transmission line, commissioned in 2016, is the principal India-Nepal power link. Nepal exported about 3,880 GWh of electricity in FY 2025-26, a rise of about 63 per cent over the previous year, earning NPR 29.32 billion from exports to India and Bangladesh together.
India has committed to facilitating 10,000 MW of imports from Nepal over the next decade. The Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) grouping was formalised in 2015 to promote sub-regional cooperation.
An integrated electricity market among the four BBIN countries could save around USD 17 billion in capital costs, according to available studies.

India joined the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1928 and is also a party to the TRIPS Agreement, 1994, and the WIPO Copyright Treaty. Section 52 of the Copyright Act contains the fair-dealing exceptions, including for research, private study, criticism, review, reporting current events and educational use.
Recent Indian litigation on AI training on copyrighted texts includes ANI vs OpenAI and Federation of Indian Publishers vs OpenAI, both filed in the Delhi High Court. In the US, Bartz v. Anthropic (2025, N.D. Cal., Judge William Alsup) ruled that training generative AI on lawfully acquired books is fair use.

IRDAI has issued the Expenses of Management (EoM) Regulations, 2023, which cap the total expenses insurers can charge to policyholders at the company level, in place of the earlier product-wise cap on commissions. Individual agents account for approximately 51 per cent of individual new-business life-insurance premium in India; bancassurance accounts for about 33 per cent.
Life-insurance penetration in India is under 3 per cent of GDP. Life Insurance Corporation of India was listed on stock exchanges in May 2022. The Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha (Amendment of Insurance Laws) Act, 2025 was passed by Parliament on 17 December 2025 and commenced on 5 February 2026, raising the FDI cap in Indian insurance companies from 74 per cent to 100 per cent under the automatic route.
The composite licence sought by the industry was dropped from the final Bill and does not form part of the Act.

Ravi Matthai (1927 to 1984) was the first full-time director of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, from 1965 to 1972. He was recruited by Vikram Sarabhai.
In 1975, Matthai launched the Rural University in Jawaja, Rajasthan, an experiment in rebuilding rural craft economies. IIM Ahmedabad was founded in 1961 in collaboration with the Ford Foundation, Harvard Business School, the Government of India, the Government of Gujarat and Indian industry.
Verghese Kurien, the architect of Operation Flood, received the Ramon Magsaysay Award (1963), the Padma Vibhushan (1999) and the World Food Prize (1989). Amul is owned by the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation.
The NDDB was established at Anand in 1965.

Menopause is defined by the World Health Organization as 12 consecutive months of amenorrhoea, when the ovaries produce lower levels of oestrogen and progesterone. The perimenopausal transition can extend over several years and produce hot flashes, sleep disruption, mood changes, joint pain and fatigue.
The National Health Mission was launched in 2013, combining the National Rural Health Mission (2005) and the National Urban Health Mission (2013). India’s Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health plus Nutrition strategy (RMNCAH plus N) has historically focused on the reproductive age group, and menopausal health has had limited coverage in the National Family Health Survey rounds.