Current Affairs — 29 July 2026

1. Western Ghats Eco-Sensitive Area: The Seventh Draft Notification

Core Context: The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has reissued its draft notification proposing to declare a large stretch of the Western Ghats as an Ecologically Sensitive Area, or ESA. This is the seventh such attempt in a little over a decade, after six earlier drafts lapsed without being finalised because of persistent disagreements between the Centre and the states involved.

Latest Developments:

• The fresh draft, published in late July 2026, proposes an ESA spanning roughly 56,825 square kilometres across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
• Goa's share of the proposed area has been kept unchanged at around 1,461 square kilometres, covering 108 villages spread across five talukas.
• The public has been given sixty days from the date of Gazette publication to submit objections and suggestions before the notification can be finalised.
• The recurring cycle of draft notifications traces back to the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel and the High-Level Working Group reports, both of which flagged the ecological fragility of the region after repeated landslide disasters.

UPSC Prelims Pointers:

• The Western Ghats are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the world's eight recognised hotspots of biological diversity.
• An Ecologically Sensitive Area is notified under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, and typically restricts mining, large construction and polluting industries while allowing regulated agriculture and existing habitation.
• Two expert committees have shaped this long-running debate: the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, known as the Gadgil Committee, and the High-Level Working Group, known as the Kasturirangan Committee.
• The Western Ghats run across six states from Gujarat to Tamil Nadu and are geologically older than the Himalayas.

2. India's SHANTI Campaign and the Push for UNSC Reform

Core Context: External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar launched SHANTI, short for Securing Holistic Advancement through Norms, Trust and Integrity, as India's formal campaign for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for the 2028-29 term. The campaign is also being used to reinforce India's older and larger demand for a permanent seat with veto power.

Latest Developments:

• The SHANTI campaign highlights India's record as one of the largest troop contributors to UN peacekeeping missions, having deployed close to 300,000 personnel across around 50 missions since 1948.
• India has previously served eight terms as a non-permanent UNSC member and is projecting this experience as proof of its diplomatic reliability.
• The campaign comes amid renewed friction within the Security Council, where repeated vetoes by permanent members have stalled action on several ongoing crises.

UPSC Prelims Pointers:

• The UNSC was established in 1945 under the UN Charter with five permanent members holding veto power: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China.
• Non-permanent membership was expanded from six to ten seats in 1965, taking total Council strength to fifteen.
• Amending the UN Charter to add permanent seats requires a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly plus ratification by all five permanent members, under Article 108 of the Charter.
• India is part of the G4 grouping along with Brazil, Germany and Japan, formed in 2005 to mutually support each other's bids for permanent membership.
• Non-permanent members serve two-year terms and are not eligible for immediate re-election.

3. RBI's Field Trial of Polymer Currency Notes

Core Context: The Union Government has approved a Reserve Bank of India proposal to conduct field trials of polymer, or plastic, banknotes in the ten and twenty rupee denominations. The government has clarified that this is a trial and not a plan to replace paper currency altogether.

Latest Developments:

• The trial, to be executed through the RBI's currency-printing arm, Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited, will initially involve about one billion pieces of each denomination.
• Polymer notes are expected to last two to six times longer than conventional cotton-paper notes because the synthetic substrate resists dirt, moisture and physical wear.
• Polymer notes will circulate alongside existing paper notes rather than replacing them.
• International experience suggests polymer notes can lower the environmental footprint of currency production, since they consume less energy over their life cycle than paper notes and can be recycled once withdrawn.

UPSC Prelims Pointers:

• Section 22 of the RBI Act, 1934 gives the Reserve Bank the sole right to issue currency notes in India.
• One-rupee notes and coins are issued by the Ministry of Finance, while all other denominations are issued by the RBI.
• Australia was the first country to introduce polymer banknotes, in 1988, and today close to sixty countries use some form of polymer currency, including the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.
• Indian banknotes are currently made of cotton comber and linter fibres rather than wood-pulp paper.

4. The e-Zero FIR System for Cyber Fraud

Core Context: The e-Zero FIR system, designed to speed up police action in cybercrime cases involving financial loss, has now been rolled out across eighteen states and union territories, with more than 12,000 such FIRs registered so far.

Latest Developments:

• The system automatically generates an FIR when complaints filed through the 1930 helpline or the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal cross a specified financial-loss threshold, without requiring the victim to first visit a police station.
• Once generated, the e-Zero FIR is instantly transferred to the police station that actually holds territorial jurisdiction over the case.
• Complainants must visit their local police station within three days to complete verification and convert it into a regular FIR.
• The mechanism allows banks and investigators to move quickly to freeze suspect accounts and stop stolen money from being moved further.

UPSC Prelims Pointers:

• The system rests on Section 173(1) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which allows information about a cognizable offence to be given electronically regardless of location.
• It has been developed by the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre, or I4C, which functions under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
• It integrates the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, state-level e-Crime police stations, and the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems maintained by the National Crime Records Bureau.
• The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 is the law that has replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

5. The European Union's AI Transparency Code

Core Context: Under Article 50 of its Artificial Intelligence Act, the European Union now requires clear labelling of AI-generated content. To help companies comply, EU experts have drawn up a Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content aimed at curbing deepfakes and synthetic misinformation.

Latest Developments:

• The Code introduces a tiered labelling system: an AI-assist icon for AI-assisted content, an AI-generated icon for content produced entirely by AI, and an AI-modified icon for human content that has been altered using AI tools.
• Developers of AI systems are expected to embed machine-readable watermarks and metadata into their outputs, while platforms that deploy such content must display clear, human-visible labels.
• Companies are also expected to make detection tools publicly available so that users, platforms and fact-checkers can verify whether a piece of media is synthetic.
• Non-compliance with the underlying legal requirement can attract penalties of up to fifteen million euros or three percent of a company's global annual turnover, whichever is higher.
• Exemptions have been carved out for law enforcement use, satire and creative work, and minor edits such as colour correction.

UPSC Prelims Pointers:

• The EU Artificial Intelligence Act is widely regarded as the world's first comprehensive, horizontal law regulating artificial intelligence.
• C2PA, or the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, is an industry standard often cited for embedding tamper-resistant metadata in digital content.
• In India, the comparable regulatory approach currently rests on the Information Technology Rules, which place the primary responsibility for removing harmful synthetic content on social media intermediaries rather than on AI developers themselves.

6. Madanapalle's Zero Waste City Model

Core Context: Madanapalle Municipality in Andhra Pradesh is being showcased as a model Zero Waste City under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, built around scientific waste segregation and resource recovery rather than simple landfilling.

Latest Developments:

• Waste is segregated at source into biodegradable, non-biodegradable and reusable categories.
• Wet waste is composted and vermicomposted locally, while dry recyclable waste is processed at Material Recovery Facilities.
• Non-recyclable waste is co-processed in cement plants instead of being dumped, and Reduce-Reuse-Recycle centres give a second life to e-waste, clothes and books.
• Older, unprocessed legacy waste at existing dump sites is being cleared through bio-mining and bio-remediation, freeing up land for green spaces.

UPSC Prelims Pointers:

• Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 focuses on making Indian cities garbage-free and ensuring safe management of faecal sludge and wastewater, going beyond the original mission's focus on toilets and open-defecation-free status.
• Bio-mining refers to the excavation and scientific processing of old, decomposed waste from legacy dumpsites to recover usable material and reclaim land.
• The model touches both urban governance, under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban, and environmental management, under India's solid waste management framework.

7. The Fields Medal 2026

Core Context: The 2026 Fields Medal, often described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics, was awarded to four mathematicians, Yu Deng, John Pardon, Jacob Tsimerman and Hong Wang, at the International Congress of Mathematicians.

Latest Developments:

• Hong Wang became only the third woman to win the medal in its ninety-year history, and along with Yu Deng, one of the first Chinese nationals to be honoured since 1982.
• Yu Deng's work connected fluid dynamics with particle physics by resolving part of Hilbert's sixth problem.
• John Pardon settled a two-decade-old conjecture in symplectic geometry, while Hong Wang, working with a collaborator, solved the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture linking harmonic analysis with geometric measure theory.
• Jacob Tsimerman was recognised for applying mathematical logic to problems in number theory and algebraic geometry.

UPSC Prelims Pointers:

• The Fields Medal was established in 1936 through a trust set up by Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields.
• It is awarded once every four years by the International Mathematical Union at the International Congress of Mathematicians.
• Only mathematicians younger than 40 years, as on the first of January of the award year, are eligible, since the medal recognises both achievement and future promise.
• There is no separate Nobel Prize for mathematics, which is one reason the Fields Medal is regarded as its closest equivalent.

8. Hepatitis and India's Elimination Goal

Core Context: India has stepped up efforts under the National Viral Hepatitis Control Programme to eliminate viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030, a target aligned with the World Health Organization's global elimination goal.

Latest Developments:

• Hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver, can be caused by five distinct viruses, labelled Types A, B, C, D and E, apart from non-infectious causes like heavy alcohol use and autoimmune conditions.
• Types A and E spread through contaminated food and water, while Types B, C and D spread through infected blood, bodily fluids, or from mother to child at birth.
• Chronic infection with Hepatitis B or C is a leading cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer worldwide, contributing to well over a million deaths every year.
• Vaccines exist for Hepatitis A, B and E, and while there is no vaccine yet for Hepatitis C, modern antiviral medicines can cure more than ninety-five percent of chronic cases.

UPSC Prelims Pointers:

• Hepatitis D is a defective virus that can only infect people already carrying Hepatitis B, since it needs the outer coating of the Hepatitis B virus to survive.
• World Hepatitis Day is observed on 28 July every year to raise awareness about the disease.
• The word hepatitis comes from Greek roots meaning liver and inflammation.

9. The Andromeda Galaxy's Cosmic Middle Age

Core Context: Data from the Hubble Space Telescope has allowed astronomers to map five hundred million years of star formation history in the Andromeda Galaxy, showing that its rate of forming new stars has been dropping sharply, especially over the last forty million years.

Latest Developments:

• Gravitational interaction with its satellite galaxy, M32, appears to have disturbed Andromeda's dust clouds and punched through parts of its stellar disk, creating zones with little recent star birth.
• Remaining star formation is now concentrated in ring-like dust structures within the galaxy.
• The findings suggest Andromeda is transitioning from an actively star-forming galaxy to a quieter, ageing one.

UPSC Prelims Pointers:

• The Andromeda Galaxy, also called Messier 31 or M31, is the nearest major spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and the largest member of the Local Group of galaxies.
• It lies about 2.5 million light-years away and is visible to the naked eye under dark skies.
• Andromeda is moving toward the Milky Way, and the two galaxies are expected to eventually merge into a single giant elliptical galaxy billions of years from now.

10. Kumamoto Earthquake and Ghana in the News

Core Context: A powerful earthquake struck Kumamoto Prefecture on Japan's Kyushu island, causing building collapses, train disruptions and a brief tsunami advisory, while Ghana made headlines for documenting losses suffered by its citizens during unrest in South Africa.

Latest Developments:

• The earthquake, measured at magnitude 7.1 by Japanese authorities, triggered the suspension of Shinkansen bullet-train services and the temporary closure of Kumamoto's airport as a safety precaution.
• Japan lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped zone circling the Pacific Ocean that accounts for a very large share of the world's earthquakes and volcanic activity, explaining the country's frequent seismic events.
• Ghana has begun formally registering properties and businesses lost by its citizens during anti-foreigner violence in South Africa, becoming only the second African country after Nigeria to seek compensation from Pretoria on this count.

UPSC Prelims Pointers:

• Ghana, on Africa's Gulf of Guinea coast, was the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence from colonial rule, in 1957, under Kwame Nkrumah.
• It shares borders with Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east and Cote d'Ivoire to the west, with the Atlantic Ocean to its south.
• Lake Volta, formed by the Akosombo Dam, is one of the largest artificial lakes in the world, while Lake Bosumtwi is Ghana's only natural lake, formed inside a meteorite impact crater.
• Ghana's highest point, Mount Afadjato, lies in the Akwapim-Togo mountain range along its eastern border.