Current Affairs – August 12, 2026

{GS2 – MoHI} PM E-Drive Scheme *

• Context (BL): Govt. extended subsidies under PM E-DRIVE scheme for electric two-wheelers until 31 March 2028. Electric two-wheelers priced up to ₹1.5 lakh will receive ₹2,500 per kWh or up to ₹5,000 per vehicle.

• PM Electric Drive Revolution in Innovative Vehicle Enhancement (PM E-DRIVE) is India’s EV incentive scheme run by the Ministry of Heavy Industries.
• It replaced FAME-II to accelerate EV adoption and expand public charging infrastructure.
• Scope: Incentives apply only to EVs with advanced batteries such as lithium-ion, excluding lead-acid models. The scheme covers electric two- and three-wheelers, ambulances, trucks, and public transportation buses, but excludes the four-wheeled passenger car segment.
• Individual buyers with Aadhaar-linked mobile numbers can claim a subsidy for one EV per category, personal or commercial. Buyers receive an Aadhaar-authenticated e-voucher at the dealership for an instant, upfront price discount on the invoice.
• Truck Scrapping: Fleet operators must obtain a valid scrapping certificate from a Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH)-approved center to claim electric truck benefits.
• Charging Network: A dedicated ₹2,000 crore grant funds the nationwide rollout of 72,300 fast chargers, split across distinct vehicle classes.

Read More> PM E-Drive Scheme

{GS2 – Polity} Appointment of High Court (HC) Judges *

• Context (NOA): Centre notified the appointment of 30 judges for High Courts of Madras, Calcutta, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka, with Madras High Court receiving the largest share of new appointees.

Procedure of Appointment of Judges

• Constitutional Articles: Appointment of Judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts is made under Articles 124 (2), and 217 of the constitution respectively.
• Collegium System: System through which appointment of Judges to the courts is done.
  • SC Collegium: Comprises the Chief Justice of India (CJI) and four senior-most Supreme Court judges.
  • HC Collegium: Comprises the Chief Justice of the High Court and two senior-most High Court judges.
• Initiation: Proposal Initiation for appointment of Judges in the SC vests with Chief Justice of India.
  • While initiation of a proposal for appointment of Judges in the HC vests with the Chief Justice of the concerned High Court.
• Appointment: Names recommended by HC Collegium are sent with views of the Government to Supreme Court Collegium (SCC) for advice.
  • Government appoints only those recommended by High Court Collegium/Supreme Court Collegium.

Read More> Collegium System in India

{GS2 – Social Sector} AI in MedTech **

• Context (PIB): Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare released a knowledge paper emphasizing the need to scale successful AI pilots for widespread clinical adoption and equitable healthcare access.

Applications and Significance

• Diagnostic Accuracy: AI tools rapidly and precisely analyze X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans, assist radiologists, and could reduce global diagnostic errors by up to 40%.
• Rural Access: AI embeds expert skills into portable devices like ECG and diabetic-retinopathy screening tools, expanding diagnostics to Primary Health Centers (PHCs) and addressing specialist shortages.
• Drug Discovery: AI and machine learning improve clinical trials and molecular simulations, reducing pharmaceutical R&D time, failure rates, and costs.
• Precision Care: AI uses genetic, behavioral, and environmental data to predict disease recurrence, including cancer, and tailor individualized treatment protocols.

Key Frameworks and Initiatives

• Strategy for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (SAHI): Launched in 2026, it serves as an apex policy framework for safe, ethical, and equitable clinical AI, governance, and data stewardship.
• BODH Platform: Developed by IIT Kanpur and NHA, it enables researchers to benchmark AI models on real-world Indian health data securely, without revealing patient identities.
• IndiaAI–ICMR Partnership (2026): Launched the AIKosh Dataset Platform, providing startups access to over 3,000 anonymized biomedical datasets and subsidizing GPU infrastructure for researchers.
• MedTech Mitra: An ICMR and CDSCO initiative (under NITI Aayog), to guide domestic innovators through regulation, testing, and clinical trials so indigenous products do not stall before market entry.

Implementation Challenges

• Data Bias & Health Equity: AI models mostly train on urban or Western data, overlooking India’s socioeconomic and genetic diversity, which can lead to skewed diagnostics.
• Regulatory Ambiguity: India’s Medical Devices Rules, 2017 mainly address static hardware and inadequately cover dynamic, self-learning Software as a Medical Device (SaMD), creating liability gaps.
• Data Fragmentation: Despite ABDM, clinical data remains fragmented across public and private silos, hindering unified, AI-ready datasets needed to train robust models.
• Commercialization Barrier: Healthcare lacks structured public procurement policies and insurance reimbursement mechanisms recognizing AI interventions, hindering scale-up.

Read More > AI in Healthcare

{GS3 – DM} Recurring Floods in Assam

• Context (TE): Assam has faced recurring annual floods for decades, driven by the interplay of intense monsoons and rapid riverbed siltation.

Factors Behind Recurring Floods in Assam

Natural Factors

• Topographical Funnel: Hill-funneled runoff from a 580,000 sq km transboundary basin routinely overwhelms the drainage capacity of Assam’s narrow valley.
• Riverbed Aggradation: An annual deposit of up to 1,000 million tonnes of sediment has elevated the Brahmaputra riverbed above its natural banks.
• Boundary Loss: The erosion of 4.27 lakh hectares by braided river channels since 1950 has stretched the river by more than 15 km in places.
• Precipitation Overload: Cloudbursts delivering rainfall 435% to 490% above normal overwhelm the tributaries within hours during peak monsoon waves.
• Capacity Loss: The 1950 earthquake’s landslide debris has choked the channels with several meters of sediment, permanently reducing the valley’s flood-carrying capacity.

Anthropogenic Factors

• Structural Decay: The expiration of design lives for 295 of Assam’s 423 earthen embankments has left them highly vulnerable to breaching under peak flood conditions.
• Basin Depletion: Encroachment has reduced Deepor Beel from ~4,000 hectares to ~500 hectares, destroying the natural freshwater basins that absorb monsoon overflow.
• Runoff Acceleration: The clearing of 800 sq km of upstream forest in Nagaland between 2013 and 2023 has exposed hill slopes, driving massive runoff into Assam’s rivers.
• Drainage Blockade: Construction across Assam’s 31.05 lakh hectares of flood-prone area has blocked natural drainage paths to force monsoon overflow above existing embankments.

Read More> Floods in India | Monsoon-Driven Disasters

{GS3 – IE} 10 Years of Government e-Marketplace (GeM) **

• Context (PIB): Government e-Marketplace (GeM) has completed 10 years, marking a decade of transforming India’s public procurement,

• GeM is a National Procurement Portal for end-to-end online procurement of common-use goods and services by Central and State Government departments, PSUs, and autonomous bodies.
• Launched in 2016, it is a fully GoI-owned company under the Ministry of Commerce.
• General Financial Rules 2017 make procurement through the portal mandatory for Central Govt entities.

Key Achievements

• Global Stature: The portal has become the world’s third-largest public procurement platform, behind South Korea’s KONEPS and Singapore’s GeBIZ.
• Transaction Scale: It has crossed a cumulative Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of ₹20 lakh crore across more than 3.78 crore orders.
• Fiscal Savings: Studies by World Bank and IIT Delhi confirm an average 10% cost saving over legacy systems and over ₹1.76 lakh crore in net public savings.
• MSME Dominance: Micro and Small Enterprises account for roughly 45.6% of cumulative GMV, expanding their access to government supply chains.
• Social Inclusion: Women-led enterprises secured 5.6% of total order value in FY 2025-26, surpassing the 3% target, while procurement from SC/ST enterprises increased by 28%.

Persisting Challenges

• Working Capital Crunch: Bureaucratic clearing delays beyond the mandated windows cause severe working capital shortages for Micro and Small Enterprises.
• Adoption Disparity: Legacy state rules restrict adoption by Urban Local Bodies and State Governments, unlike the high compliance among Central Ministries and PSUs.
• Vendor Exclusion: Strict cataloging and packaging rules bar rural artisans and SHGs from accessing formal supply contracts.
• Quality Evasion: Large corporations routing products through registered dummy accounts bypass inclusion safeguards and deliver sub-standard goods.
• Market Monopolies: Algorithmic flaws and restrictive bid criteria create localized vendor monopolies in niche technical service contracts.

{Prelims – Envi} Agasthyamalai Biosphere Reserve (ABR)

• Context (TH): Following the SC’s directions in A. John Kennedy v. State of Tamil Nadu & Others (2025), Tamil Nadu has issued eviction notices to households allegedly occupying forest land in the ABR.

• Established in 2001, ABR is named after Agasthya Mala (Agastya Peak), a prominent mountain associated with the Sage Agastya.
• Location: Southern Western Ghats, spanning Tirunelveli and Kanniyakumari districts of Tamil Nadu and the Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam districts of Kerala.
• It includes or overlaps with important protected areas such as Neyyar, Peppara and Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuaries in Kerala and Kalakad–Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve.
• Flora: Encompasses tropical forests, montane forests, & grasslands.
• Fauna: Lion-tailed macaque, Nilgiri tahr, Asian elephant, tiger, leopard and Nilgiri langur.
• Rivers Flowing Through ABR: Thamirabarani, Karamana, Neyyar, and Shendurney etc.
• The reserve is home to Kani tribes from both Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
• Added to the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves in 2016.

Read More> Biosphere Reserves of India

{Prelims – Geo} Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth (CTD) Sensors

• Context (TH): Scientists are testing whether sharks can act as mobile, near-real-time ocean-data collectors to improve hurricane prediction using CTD sensors.

• Researchers attach CTD tags to sharks. These sensors measure salinity, temperature and depth as the shark’s swim and dive. When tagged sharks surface, the sensors transmit the collected data to satellites, providing ocean observations for oceanographic, atmospheric and climate models.

CTD Sensors

• In situ instruments that measure water depth, pressure, salinity, temperature, and density in the ocean.
• Can be deployed on various water-based platforms, including autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), buoys, gliders, and research vessels.
• These sensors typically sample at 30 Hz and can provide accurate measurements at specific water depths, tailored to the researcher’s needs.

{Prelims – Infra} Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme *

• Context (PIB): Union Government proposed the Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme (CMAS) with a ₹10,000 crore outlay over five years.

• CMAS aims to build a self-reliant, globally competitive container manufacturing ecosystem aligning with Make in India and the Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047.
• Nodal Ministry: Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways.
• Key Target: Increase annual container manufacturing capacity to 7.5 lakh Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs), about 10 times India’s current capacity.
• Funding Support: Provides capital assistance for new greenfield plants and brownfield expansion, alongside funding for testing, operations, and skill development.

• Significance: It will reduce India’s dependence on empty-container imports (nearly 2 million annually), strengthening the EXIM logistics chain.

{Prelims – PIN World} Colombia

• Context (TH): A 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit western Colombia, killing over 100.

• Colombia (capital: Bogotá) is located in northwestern South America and has coastlines along both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

• Borders: Panama (northwest), Venezuela (east), Brazil (southeast), Peru (south), and Ecuador (southwest).
• Highest Peaks: Pico Simón Bolívar and Pico Cristóbal Colón. Major River: Magdalena River System.
• Lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where the Nazca, Caribbean, and South American plates interact through complex subduction and faults, making it highly earthquake-prone.
• It is among the world’s 17 megabiodiverse countries and ranks first globally for bird and orchid diversity due to varied climatic and topographic zones.
• Major exporter of crude oil, coal, Arabica coffee, & high-quality emeralds. World’s largest producer of cocaine.

{Prelims – PIN World} Lebanon

• Context (AIR): Lebanon abolished death penalty, making it the 1^st country in the Arab world to replace the sentencing with life imprisonment with aggravated hard labour.

• Location: West Asian country on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Capital: Beirut.
• Bordered by Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south. Political System: Parliamentary republic.
• Mountain Ranges: Lebanon Mountains | Highest Peak: Qurnat as Sawda
• UNs Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has operated in southern Lebanon since 1978.

{Prelims – MIH} Khudiram Bose

• Context (NOA): The nation observed the martyrdom day of Khudiram Bose on August 11.

• Born on December 3, 1889, in Midnapore, present-day West Bengal, he was influenced by Sri Aurobindo and Sister Nivedita.
• The Partition of Bengal (1905) drew him into the anti-colonial struggle, leading him to join the Jugantar faction of the Anushilan Samiti (founded by Pramatha Nath Mitra).
• He joined the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy (1908) with Prafulla Chaki to assassinate Magistrate Douglas Kingsford, but they bombed the wrong carriage, killing two British women. Chaki shot himself to avoid arrest.
• Khudiram Bose was arrested at Waini Railway Station, tried, and sentenced to death at age 18.

Read More > PMF IAS Modern Indian History

{Prelims – S&T – BioTech} AI-Designed Bacteriophage

• Context (TH): Researchers at Stanford University used genome language models Evo 2 and Evo 1 to generate the first entirely AI-designed functional bacteriophage genomes.

• Mechanism: Unlike LLMs, which predict words to form sentences, Evo 1 and Evo 2 predict nucleotides to form functional genetic structures.
• Application: Built on the ΦX174 phage template, the AI-designed phage cocktail overcame resistance in laboratory E. coli strains engineered to resist the natural phage.

• Significance: Can potentially counter the global antibiotic resistance crisis by enabling rapid creation of phages tailored to specific bacterial hosts.

{Prelims – S&T} Glueball

• Context (TH): Chinese scientists assembled the strongest experimental evidence to date that the resonance X(2370) (a short-lived particle state) is dominated by a pseudoscalar glueball.

• A glueball is a hypothetical subatomic particle made entirely of gluons (force carriers that “glue” matter together), without any valence quarks (the fundamental building blocks inside protons and neutrons).
• Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) predicts that gluons, which carry color charge, can attract and bind each other into a glueball, unlike chargeless photons.
• Like conventional hadrons (ordinary particles such as protons), glueballs are color-singlet states (their internal strong charge cancels to zero) and obey color confinement (color-charged particles cannot exist freely in isolation).
• Glueballs carry standard properties such as spin and parity (intrinsic rotation and spatial symmetry), but possess zero electric charge, zero baryon number, and zero flavor. They have no matter-type identity.
• Identifying pure glueballs in colliders is difficult, because they readily mix with ordinary q̄q mesons (standard two-quark particles) sharing the same physical signatures.

{Prelims – S&T} Moon Base Programme

• Context (TH I AIR): NASA has invited the ISRO to participate in its planned Moon Base programme, further strengthening India–US cooperation in lunar exploration under the Artemis Accords.

• Moon Base Programme envisages building humanity’s first outpost on another celestial body near the lunar South Pole. It will serve as a habitat for astronauts engaged in long-term science missions.
• It is part of NASA’s broader vision for establishing a sustained human presence on the Moon and supporting future deep-space missions.
• The programme will be executed in three phases.

Read More> Artemis Accords

{Prelims – Sci} Myoglobin

• Context (HT): Researchers used “gene gun” to insert pig and cattle myoglobin genes into the chloroplasts of lettuce and tobacco plants, enabling them to produce myoglobin.

• Myoglobin is an iron- and oxygen-binding protein found mainly in the skeletal and cardiac muscles of vertebrates, where it stores oxygen and gives meat its characteristic red colour.

{Prelims – Social Sector} Notifiable Disease

• Context (TH): Supreme Court has directed 19 States and UTs to declare cancer a “notifiable disease” to ensure early detection and proper care of patients.

• A notifiable disease is a disease that healthcare providers, laboratories or other designated authorities are legally required to report to the government or relevant public-health authority when diagnosed or detected.

Possible Benefits of Declaring Cancer Notifiable Disease

• Strengthened Surveillance: Enables standardised reporting, comprehensive cancer registries, and identification of regional disease hotspots.
• Better Health Planning: Supports evidence-based resource allocation, targeted interventions, and improved continuity of care through better linkage between diagnosis, referral, and treatment.

Read More> Cancer as Notifiable Disease

{Prelims – Misc} One Liner

• Polity – Kerala (Alteration of Name) Bill, 2026 (DD): The Lok Sabha passed the Kerala (Alteration of Name) Bill, 2026. It seeks to change the name of the state of Kerala to “Keralam” in the First Schedule of the Constitution. Article 3 empowers Parliament to alter the name, boundaries, or area of States through legislation.

Read More> Alteration of State Name of “Kerala” to “Keralam”