Current Affairs Quiz 2 November 2026

Capital acquisition for the armed forces runs through stages. The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), chaired by the Raksha Mantri, first accords an Acceptance of Necessity (AoN), which is only an in-principle administrative approval of a proposal.

Bids and negotiation follow, and only then is a contract signed. The Next Generation Corvette programme shows the gap: the AoN came in 2022, the contracts only in November 2026.

Under the Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020, the Buy (Indian-IDDM) category is reserved for Indian vendors and needs at least 50 per cent indigenous content, calculated on the base contract price. Two Defence Public Sector Undertakings under the Ministry of Defence won the work: GRSE in Kolkata, a Navratna DPSU that built the four Project 28 (Kamorta class) corvettes, and Goa Shipyard Limited at Vasco-da-Gama.

The Navy’s in-house design organisation, the Warship Design Bureau, has supported the design and construction of more than a hundred warships in Indian yards, a 2025 government backgrounder says. The pattern is Navy design, DPSU construction and Indian content; PIB does not name the procurement category.

Part II, Chapter I of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 governs foreign awards under the New York Convention. Section 44 defines a foreign award: one on differences considered commercial under Indian law, made on or after 11 October 1960, under a written arbitration agreement, in a territory the Central Government has notified as reciprocating.

Section 47 lists what the applicant must produce: the award, the arbitration agreement and proof that the award is foreign. Section 48 sets out limited grounds on which enforcement may be refused, among them incapacity of a party, lack of proper notice, an award beyond the scope of the submission, an irregular tribunal or procedure, an award not yet binding or set aside at the seat, and public policy.

Since the 2016 amendment, public policy is limited to fraud or corruption, the fundamental policy of Indian law and the most basic notions of morality or justice, with no review on the merits. Section 49 makes an enforceable award a deemed decree.

India signed the Convention on 10 June 1958 and ratified it on 13 July 1960; it entered into force for India on 11 October 1960.

The Limitation Act, 1963 fixes the time within which a claim may be brought before a court. The question of which Article governs a foreign award came to the Supreme Court in the Ravva dispute itself.

In Union of India v. Vedanta Ltd., (2020) 10 SCC 1, a Bench of Justices S. Abdul Nazeer, Indu Malhotra and Aniruddha Bose held that a petition to enforce a foreign award under Sections 47 and 49 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 falls under Article 137, three years from when the right to apply accrues. The Court rejected Article 136, because a foreign award is not a decree of a civil court in India.

The logic follows Section 49: the award becomes a deemed decree only after the Court is satisfied that it is enforceable, so before that stage it is an award, not a decree. Applying this, the Delhi High Court on 1 July 2026 held that the limitation clock began with a show cause notice of 10 July 2014 and that the enforcement petition was in time.

As Bar & Bench reported, the Supreme Court dismissed the Centre’s appeal on 2 November 2026.

The Periodic Labour Force Survey of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) measures employment with two yardsticks. Usual status looks back 365 days: the principal status is the activity on which a person spent relatively long time, and the subsidiary status adds economic activity of 30 days or more in that year, written together as ps+ss.

Current weekly status looks back only the last 7 days and is used in the monthly and quarterly bulletins. The three headline ratios are the labour force participation rate, the worker population ratio and the unemployment rate.

On usual status (ps+ss), age 15 and above, the unemployment rate for persons fell from 6.0 per cent in 2017-18 to 3.2 per cent in 2023-24 (men 6.1 to 3.2, women 5.6 to 3.2), while female labour force participation rose from 23.3 to 41.7 per cent. The survey was revamped from January 2025, and MoSPI says the 2025 annual estimates may not be strictly comparable with earlier annual reports.

A falling unemployment rate also says nothing by itself about job quality, which is the decent work question.

Decent work is the International Labour Organization’s idea that a job should be productive and pay a fair income, offer security at the workplace and social protection, allow personal development and let workers organise and take part in decisions that affect their lives. The ILO groups this into four pillars: job creation, rights at work, social protection and social dialogue.

The 2030 Agenda took the idea into Sustainable Development Goal 8, which seeks sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. Target 8.5 aims, by 2030, at full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value; its indicators are average hourly earnings (8.5.1) and the unemployment rate (8.5.2).

Target 8.8 protects labour rights and safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment. For India, the Labour Codes and the PLFS data on job quality are the natural Mains links to these targets.

India protects domestic steel through two different kinds of tool. The first is trade remedies.

The Directorate General of Trade Remedies, named in May 2018 as an integrated single window agency for trade defence, handles anti-dumping duty, countervailing duty (CVD) and safeguard measures. In 2025 the government imposed a provisional safeguard duty of 12 per cent for 200 days on certain non-alloy and alloy steel flat products.

Standards are the second tool. Under Section 16(1) of the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 2016 (Act No. 11 of 2016), the Central Government, after consulting the Bureau, may by a Gazette order require goods to conform to a standard and carry the Standard Mark under a licence or certificate of conformity.

Steel Quality Control Orders use this power to bar sub-standard and defective steel from both domestic sales and imports. The column sets out both sides: protection may give an industry that must nearly triple its capacity some breathing room, but it raises input costs for construction, automobiles and small exporters.

Gelephu Mindfulness City is a project of Bhutan that India supports, and it sits near the border with Assam. On 1 November 2026 the King of Bhutan led the raising and consecration of 108 Stupas there.

In a single day thousands of volunteers erected the Stupas, each 15 metres tall and set 108 metres apart, along an 11.7 km stretch of the Aie (Mau) River. Union Minister Kiren Rijiju represented the Government of India.

Stupa No. 76 was dedicated by the King of Bhutan to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his commitment and steadfast support to the city; it is Bhutan’s dedication, not an Indian gift. During his visit from 31 October to 2 November 2026, Rijiju had an audience with King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, met Bhutan’s Prime Minister Dasho Tshering Tobgay and reaffirmed India’s support for the project.

For Prelims, the location question is the likely one: read a map of the India and Bhutan border and place Gelephu against Assam. For Mains, the visit fits the theme of India and its neighbourhood.

The Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) works in part through clusters: under the PMMSY, 34 fisheries production and processing clusters have been notified across the country. PIB calls Soreng District in Sikkim India’s first Organic Fisheries Cluster launched under the scheme.

The cluster aims at ecologically healthy fish farming without harmful chemicals, antibiotics and pesticides, with special emphasis on Amur carp, Indian Major Carps (IMC) and Trout. As PIB reported on 2 November 2026, the Union Minister launched a Standard Operating Procedure for Organic Certification of Fisheries in the Northeastern region and inaugurated projects worth Rs 375 lakh under the PMMSY: hatcheries, feed mills, cold storage facilities and technologies such as Biofloc and the Recirculatory Aquaculture System (RAS).

For Prelims, note the place (Soreng, Sikkim), the scheme (PMMSY) and the three species groups. For Mains, the item links organic certification, chemical-free farming and the development of fisheries in the Northeast.

The Viksit Bharat - Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin), or VB-G RAM G, is the scheme under the VB-G RAM G Act, 2025. Its Grievance Redressal Rules, 2026 set up a structured, multi-tier and time-bound mechanism for grievances about the scheme’s implementation.

State Governments are to establish it at three levels, the Gram Panchayat, the Block and the District, and the District Programme Coordinator oversees grievance redressal at the district level. A worker can file a grievance in four ways: in person with the Grievance Redressal Officer, by speed post with proof of delivery, through the central Digital Public Infrastructure, or by telephone, helpline or another mode set by the State.

A grievance is to be registered the same day, or the next working day if that is not feasible, with an acknowledgement giving the registration number, date and receiving authority, and none can be refused on grounds of format, language or procedural deficiency. The enquiry is to be completed within seven working days and the grievance resolved within 15 days of receipt; an unresolved grievance is escalated to the next higher level, and appeals follow Schedule I to the Act.

Steel is made mainly from iron ore and coking coal, and the two inputs place India very differently. The Ministry of Steel’s draft National Steel Policy Vision 2047 says India is largely self-sufficient in iron ore but imports nearly 92 per cent of its coking coal requirement, and that raw materials make up 65 to 70 per cent of steelmaking costs.

The draft records crude steel production rising from about 89 MT in 2014-15 to 170 MT in 2025-26, and installed capacity of 220 MTPA. For 2047 it aims at 604 MT of crude steel capacity, 505 MT of finished steel demand, 302 kg per capita consumption and 45 MT of exports, with emissions intensity cut to 1.54 tonnes of carbon dioxide per tonne of crude steel.

Stakeholders could comment until 30 October 2026, so it is not yet the policy. The earlier National Steel Policy 2017, approved by the Cabinet on 3 May 2017, projected 300 MT capacity, 255 MT production and 158 kg per capita consumption by 2030-31.