Current Affairs Quiz 5 October 2026

The NSM was launched in April 2015 with an outlay of about Rs 4,500 crore and follows a three-phase “Build approach”, moving from assembling systems with imported parts to designing and making key components in India. About 6,000 indigenous Rudra servers have been deployed and 1,500 more are in manufacture; the mission has also developed indigenous high-speed interconnects and cooling.

Systems run on the National Knowledge Network backbone and serve more than 16,000 researchers in over 400 institutions. Applications include flood early warning in the Mahanadi basin, forest-fire spread modelling in Sikkim, seismic imaging, genomics and drug discovery.

A petaflop is 10 to the power 15 floating-point operations per second; the world’s fastest machines now exceed two exaflops (an exaflop is 1,000 petaflops).

PM-SETU was launched on 4 October 2025 under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. Its core idea is industry-led governance: the anchor industry partner holds the majority in each cluster’s SPV, so courses, equipment and placement are shaped by employers.

A National Steering Committee chaired by the Secretary, MSDE oversees it. The number of ITIs rose from 9,776 in 2014 to 13,888 in 2026, and enrolment from 9.51 lakh in 2014-15 to 14.70 lakh in 2025-26.

ITIs run the Craftsmen Training Scheme under the Directorate General of Training. Long-standing problems are vacant instructor posts, outdated trades and weak placement, which the hub-and-spoke model tries to address by pooling equipment and trainers in the hub.

Agniveers are recruited between 17.5 and 21 years of age. The monthly package rises from Rs 30,000 in the first year to Rs 40,000 in the fourth; 30 per cent goes to the Seva Nidhi, matched by an equal government contribution, and the Agniveer takes home 70 per cent.

They carry Rs 48 lakh of non-contributory life cover. Ex-Agniveers have a 10 per cent reservation in the Central Armed Police Forces and Assam Rifles, with age relaxation and exemption from the physical efficiency test, and 10 per cent in the Coast Guard, MoD civilian posts and 16 Defence PSUs.

Supporters cite a younger force and lower pension bills; critics worry about training depth, unit cohesion and the future of the 75 per cent who leave.

Before Partition, the Brahmaputra and the rivers of East Bengal carried much of Assam’s tea and jute to Calcutta. Partition turned the route into an international one, and river traffic through East Pakistan was suspended after the 1965 war; the 1972 Protocol with Bangladesh reopened it.

The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) was set up in 1986; the National Waterways Act, 2016 brought the total number of national waterways to 111. NW-1 is the Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly system (Haldia to Prayagraj), NW-2 the Brahmaputra and NW-3 the West Coast Canal in Kerala.

Water transport is cheaper and less polluting per tonne-kilometre than road or rail, but on the Brahmaputra it is limited by braided channels, shifting sandbars and low winter depths.

Article 326 was amended by the 61st Amendment Act, 1988, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. The Representation of the People Act, 1950 governs the preparation of electoral rolls and the 1951 Act the conduct of elections.

A distinction that recurs in judgments is between the right to vote (statutory, regulated by the RP Acts), the freedom of voting, that is, the choice expressed by a voter, which PUCL v. Union of India (2003) linked to Article 19(1)(a), and the principle of free and fair elections, which is part of the Basic Structure (Indira Nehru Gandhi v. Raj Narain, 1975). The PUCL judgment of 2013 on NOTA again tied the voter’s expression to free speech.

GST took effect on 1 July 2017, subsuming central levies such as excise duty and service tax and State levies such as VAT. Its structure has CGST and SGST on intra-State supplies and IGST on inter-State supplies and imports.

The weighting means neither the Centre alone (one-third) nor the States alone (two-thirds) can push a decision through. In Union of India v. Mohit Minerals (2022), the Supreme Court held that the Council’s recommendations are persuasive, not binding, on Parliament and the State legislatures.

The September 2025 reform reduced the main slabs to two, 5 and 18 per cent, with a higher rate for a few demerit goods; the new rates took effect on 22 September 2025.

The UN General Assembly designated World Habitat Day in 1985, and it was first observed in 1986. Urban October runs from World Habitat Day to World Cities Day on 31 October.

UN-Habitat estimates that more than 3 billion people lack adequate housing and over 1.1 billion live in slums or informal settlements. India’s responses include the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban 2.0 and Gramin), the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes scheme for migrants, and in-situ slum redevelopment.

Adequate housing, in the UN’s definition, includes security of tenure, services, affordability, habitability, accessibility, location and cultural adequacy, not just a roof.

The 1966 Recommendation set standards on teachers’ rights and responsibilities, initial training and further education, recruitment, employment, pay and working conditions; a separate UNESCO Recommendation on higher-education teaching personnel followed in 1997. World Teachers’ Day has been celebrated since 1994.

The 2026 global event at UNESCO headquarters in Paris is co-convened by UNESCO, the ILO, UNICEF and Education International. For India, the questions are teacher vacancies, contract teachers, training quality and pupil-teacher ratios; NEP 2020 proposed a National Professional Standards for Teachers framework and a four-year integrated B.Ed.

The Kakatiyas ruled from Warangal (Orugallu) between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries; Ganapati Deva and Rudramadevi were among their notable rulers. Kakatiya architecture is known for star-shaped (stellate) platforms, ornate black basalt brackets and pillars, and the madanika (dancing female) figures on the Ramappa temple.

Telangana’s other Kakatiya landmarks include the Thousand Pillar Temple at Hanamkonda and the Warangal Fort’s Kakatiya Kala Thoranam, the arch on the State emblem. World Heritage sites are protected by a buffer zone and a management plan; activity near them, such as mining, raises Heritage Impact Assessment questions under the UNESCO Operational Guidelines and the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958.

Social, green and sustainability bonds are labelled bonds: the issuer commits to use the proceeds for defined projects and to report on them, usually following the International Capital Market Association’s principles. SEBI regulates listed labelled debt in India and has issued a framework for environment, social and governance (ESG) debt securities.

Sovereign green bonds were first issued by the Government of India in January 2023. NABARD was set up in 1982 on the recommendation of the CRAFICARD committee (B. Sivaraman) and regulates and refinances rural cooperative banks and regional rural banks.

Financing household water and toilet connections through microfinance and self-help groups is the model a WASH bond supports.

The UNFCCC was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and entered into force in 1994; COP1 was held in Berlin in 1995. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted at COP3 (1997) and the Paris Agreement at COP21 (2015).

The pre-COP is an informal ministerial meeting that prepares the agenda for the main conference. Australia and Turkiye both bid for COP31; the compromise split hosting and negotiating roles, with a Pacific pre-COP to reflect the concerns of small island states facing sea-level rise.

India offered to host COP33 in 2028.

The first Asian Games were held in New Delhi in 1951; India hosted again in 1982, when the Games were also held in New Delhi. The Olympic Council of Asia, headquartered in Kuwait, governs the Games.

At Aichi-Nagoya, Kumkum Mohod won the women’s individual recurve archery gold, the first by an Indian woman, and Vithya Ramraj broke P.T. Usha’s 1984 national record in the 400m hurdles with 54.75 seconds. India’s support schemes include the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS, 2014) and Khelo India (2017), and the next Olympic test is Los Angeles 2028.

Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of electoral rolls and elections in the Election Commission. In Mohinder Singh Gill v. CEC (1978) the Supreme Court called it a reservoir of power for situations where law is silent.

T.N. Seshan v. Union of India (1995) held that the CEC is first among equals and the Commission decides by majority, a rule now in Section 18 of the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023. Section 16 of that Act bars civil and criminal proceedings against serving or former CEC and ECs for acts done in the discharge of official duty.

A removal motion is governed by Article 124(4) and the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, under which the Speaker or Chairman may admit or refuse it.

Article 343 made Hindi in Devanagari the official language of the Union and allowed English for 15 years; the Official Languages Act, 1963 continued English indefinitely. Article 350A directs States to provide instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage to children of linguistic minority groups, and Article 351 directs the Union to promote Hindi.

The Eighth Schedule began with 14 languages; Sindhi was added in 1967, Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali in 1992, and Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali in 2003. The three-language formula dates from the Kothari Commission (1964-66) and the National Policy on Education, 1968; NEP 2020 requires two of the three languages to be native to India.

The yield on government bonds is a benchmark for all borrowing: when it rises, companies, banks and households pay more. Yields rise when investors sell bonds, which happens when they expect higher inflation, higher policy rates, more government borrowing or greater risk.

Crowding out describes how heavy government borrowing pushes up rates and leaves less for private investment. India’s fiscal framework rests on the FRBM Act, 2003; the fiscal-deficit target for 2026-27 is 4.3 per cent of GDP.

Indian government bonds have been part of the JP Morgan GBI-EM index since June 2024, which brought in foreign investors but also links Indian yields more closely to global ones.

The island chain concept is a Cold War idea later adopted in Chinese naval thinking: the first chain marks the waters China seeks to dominate, the second (Japan’s Bonin Islands, the Marianas including Guam) its longer reach. The US National Defense Strategy of 2026 lists four goals: defend the homeland, deter China, get allies and partners to do more, and rebuild the US defence industrial base.

India’s defence ties with the US rest on the Major Defence Partner designation (2016) and the foundational agreements LEMOA (2016), COMCASA (2018) and BECA (2020). India is not a treaty ally; its strategy combines partnerships with strategic autonomy.

Vineet Narain v. Union of India (1997) arose from the Jain hawala case and directed a minimum two-year tenure for the CBI Director, CVC supervision of the CBI’s anti-corruption work and statutory status for the CVC. Prakash Singh v. Union of India (2006) issued seven directives on police reform: a State Security Commission, a minimum two-year tenure for the DGP and field officers, a Police Establishment Board for transfers, separation of investigation from law and order, Police Complaints Authorities and a National Security Commission.

Amendments in 2021 allow the tenure of the CBI and Enforcement Directorate chiefs to be extended up to five years in total. Courage of conviction and integrity, central to GS4, matter most when institutional protection is weak.

The Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 15 December 2025 and referred the next day to a 31-member Joint Parliamentary Committee (21 Lok Sabha and 10 Rajya Sabha members) chaired by Daggubati Purandeswari. Its councils are the Viniyaman (regulatory), Gunvatta (accreditation) and Manak (standards) Parishads.

NEP 2020 had proposed a Higher Education Commission of India with four verticals, including a separate funding body. Institutes of National Importance such as the IITs, NITs, IISERs and IIMs are governed by their own Acts.

Education moved from the State List to the Concurrent List through the 42nd Amendment, 1976.