Current Affairs – January 10, 2026

{GS2 – MoC} Private Participation in Monument Conservation **

• Context (IE): The Ministry of Culture is ending the Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI) sole control, allowing private agencies to undertake monument conservation works.

• The Ministry will empanel Heritage Conservation Architects, allowing private donors to directly hire implementation agencies.
• Eligibility Criteria: The implementing conservation agencies must have prior experience in conserving heritage structures over 100 years old.
• Supervision: The ASI retains regulatory oversight, including mandatory approval of all Detailed Project Reports (DPRs), while private agencies implement projects.
• Funding: Conservation funds are routed through the National Culture Fund (NCF); all contributions qualify as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) expenditure with 100% tax exemption.

About Monument Conservation in India

• The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (AMASR) Act, 1958, provides the legal framework for monument protection and archaeological excavations.
• AMASR Amendment: The 2010 amendment designates a 100-metre “Prohibited Area” (no construction) and a 200-metre “Regulated Area” (construction with permission) around protected monuments.
  • It created the National Monuments Authority (NMA) to manage the prohibited & regulated areas.
• Constitutional Provisions: Article 49 obligates the State to protect nationally important monuments, while Article 51A(f) imposes a duty on citizens to preserve heritage.

{GS2 – Vulnerable Sections} Counting Women’s Invisible Labour

• Context (TH): A large share of women’s work in India remains unpaid, unmeasured, and undervalued, despite being central to household functioning, labour productivity, and economic stability.

Reasons for Undervaluation of Women’s Labour

• GDP Bias: National income accounting considers only market-based activities as “productive,” excluding unpaid care and domestic work that support labour productivity and long-term economic growth.
• Gender Norms: Women perform over 80% of unpaid domestic and care work in India, reinforcing the belief that such labour is a natural social obligation rather than an economic contribution.
• Policy Blind Spots: Public expenditure on childcare, elder care and social care services remains below 1% of GDP, shifting the bulk of care responsibilities onto households and women.
• Statistical Gaps: Labour force surveys undercount unpaid and home-based work, leading to an underestimation of women’s work participation by nearly 20–25%.

Consequences for India

• Low Female LFPR: India’s female labour force participation is ~37%, far below global averages.
• Income Inequality: Women earn approximately 28% less than men on average, further affected by an unpaid work burden.
• Intergenerational Poverty: Care burdens shift to poorer women, with over 70% domestic workers belonging to socially marginalised groups.
• Growth Loss: McKinsey estimates India could add $700 billion to GDP by 2025–30 by enabling women’s full economic participation.

Way Forward

• Income Security: Provide social security credits for caregivers; E.g., Germany’s pension system counts child-rearing and caregiving years as contributory periods for old-age pensions.
• Welfare Boards: Strengthen State-level Domestic Workers’ Welfare Boards; E.g., Tamil Nadu Domestic Workers Welfare Board (2007) provides pensions, maternity aid and education support.
• ILO Alignment: Ratify ILO Convention 189 to align rights with global labour standards; E.g., ratifying countries show higher wage compliance and social security coverage for domestic workers.
• Contract Mandate: Ensure written contracts specifying wages, hours, leave, and benefits; E.g., Uruguay legally mandates employment contracts for domestic workers, reducing wage exploitation.
• Gender Sharing: Promote shared domestic roles; E.g., Sweden’s parental leave policy reserves non-transferable paid leave for fathers, sharply increasing male participation in caregiving.

{GS3 – Envi} Integrating Grasslands into National Climate Action Frameworks **

• Context (TH): As the United Nations observes 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, researchers emphasise the inclusion of grasslands in national climate plans.

Significance of Grasslands

• Carbon Storage: Grasslands store nearly 90% of carbon underground in root biomass and soil organic carbon (SOC), making them resilient, long-term carbon sinks.
• Albedo Effect: Grasslands reflect more solar radiation than dark forest canopies, resulting in a net surface cooling effect.
• Hydrological Regulation: Grasslands act as natural sponges, improving infiltration, recharging groundwater, reducing erosion, and limiting flash floods.
• Biodiversity Hotspots: They support endangered species, like the Great Indian Bustard (GIB), the Lesser Florican, and pollinators essential for 35% of global crop production.
• Livelihood Support: Often termed global “breadbaskets,” grasslands sustain pastoral and nomadic communities, providing fodder essential for milk and meat security.

Key Challenges Faced by Grasslands

• Wasteland Label: India’s Wasteland Atlas historically classified grasslands as unproductive, enabling diversion for industry, infrastructure, and solar projects.
• Afforestation Bias: Tree-plantation in grasslands under climate policies, like the Green India Mission, often damages local ecology and releases stored soil carbon.
• Climate Finance Gaps: Global climate finance prioritises forests over grasslands despite similar mitigation potential; e.g. COP30 focused on forests via the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF).
• Overgrazing Pressure: Livestock numbers exceeding carrying capacity lead to soil compaction, loss of palatable grass species, desertification, and increased flood vulnerability.
• Invasive Species: In Banni grasslands, Prosopis juliflora now covers over 50% area, suppressing native grasses and reducing soil carbon by nearly 25%.
• Governance Fragmentation: Grasslands lack a dedicated regulatory body; in India, responsibilities are divided among 18 ministries, causing policy incoherence.

Way Forward

• NDC Recognition: Explicitly recognise grasslands as distinct carbon sinks in Nationally Determined Contributions under UNFCCC.
• Balanced Planning: Adopt ecosystem-based planning in climate strategies, balancing forests, grasslands, wetlands, and mangroves.
• Rio Convention Synergy: Aligning the goals of UNCCD (Desertification), CBD (Biodiversity), and UNFCCC (Climate) to prevent “extinction by afforestation.”
• Reclassification: Remove the “wasteland” tag from official land records and recognise grasslands as Open Natural Ecosystems (ONEs).
• Community Management: Expand pastoralist-led systems like the “Wada” model (in Banni), combining invasive species removal with rotational grazing.
• Flagship Conservation: Protect keystone species like the GIB as umbrella species to support wider grassland conservation.

{GS3 – IE} SEBI (Stock Brokers) Regulations 2026 **

• Context (TH): SEBI notified the Stock Brokers Regulations, 2026, shifting brokerage regulation from compliance-heavy controls to an investor-centric framework.

• Objective: It replaces the 1992 framework to align brokerage rules with modern digital trading practices.

Key Provisions of the 2026 Regulations

• Expanded Scope: Brokers may undertake activities regulated by RBI, IRDAI, or IBBI through a single entity, subject to SEBI conditions.
• Record Retention: Books of accounts and records must be maintained for 8 years instead of five.
  • Digital Records: They can be maintained electronically to simplify audits and inspections.
• Board Governance: Every brokerage firm must appoint one Designated Director residing in India for at least 182 days annually.
• Whistleblower: Brokers must have a written whistleblower policy with a confidential reporting system.
• Entry Experience: New applicants need at least two years’ securities trading or dealing experience.
• QSB Criteria: Norms for Qualified Stock Brokers are streamlined to enhance oversight of large-client, high-volume entities.
• Return Ban: Brokers are explicitly prohibited from promoting schemes that promise indicative, guaranteed, or fixed investor returns.
• Primary Oversight: Stock exchanges are acknowledged as the primary regulators of stockbrokers, with increased reporting responsibilities.
• Brokerage Caps: Brokerage fees paid by Mutual Funds are capped at 6 basis points in cash markets and 2 basis points in derivative transactions.

Significance of the Regulations

• Business Ease: The regulations reduce the administrative burden by simplifying regulatory compliance.
• Flexibility: Stockbrokers are permitted to offer multiple financial services on a single platform.
• Redundancy: Outdated provisions like physical share delivery are removed to match current practices.
• Investor Protection: It reinforces fiduciary accountability and brokers’ duty to protect clients’ interests.

Read More: Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)

{GS3 – Agri} Alternate Wetting and Drying Method of Rice Cultivation

• Context (IE): Rice farmers can increase incomes and reduce methane emissions by adopting the Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) method.

• Traditional rice cultivation accounts for about 10–12% of global anthropogenic methane emissions.
• Emission Process: Continuous flooding creates anaerobic soils, in which methanogenic archaea decompose organic matter and emit methane.

About Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD)

• AWD is a sustainable water management practice for rice cultivation that replaces continuous flooding with periodic drying and reflooding of the field.
• Periodic flooding creates aerobic (oxygen-rich) soil conditions, suppressing methane-producing microbes while sustaining rice growth.
• Mechanism: Farmers re-irrigate after the water level in the paddy field drops to a certain threshold (usually 15 cm below the soil surface).
• Monitoring Tool: A low-cost water tube of perforated PVC or bamboo is installed in the field to monitor subsurface water levels visually.

Key Benefits of AWD

• Methane Reduction: AWD cuts emissions by 30–50%, with some studies showing up to 85% reduction.
• Water Conservation: It saves 25–40% of irrigation water compared with the traditional method.
• Input Savings: Reduced irrigation lowers labour requirements and pumping costs (fuel or electricity).
• Yield Effect: Properly implemented AWD remains yield-neutral and can even increase yields by up to 20% through improved root aeration.
• Health Safety: Periodic soil drying reduces the accumulation of toxic heavy metals, such as arsenic (up to 64%) and cadmium, in rice grains.
• Economic Benefit: AWD enables income generation through carbon credits; it reduces emissions by 2.5 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, yielding ₹3,000–4,000 per hectare per crop cycle.

Key Challenges of AWD

• Weed Pressure: Drying removes the natural water layer that suppresses weed growth, leading to higher weed growth and increased management costs.
• GHG Trade-off: Alternating wet–dry cycles can stimulate nitrifying bacteria, increasing Nitrous Oxide emissions, a greenhouse gas about 300 times more potent than CO₂.
• Infrastructure Gap: India’s gravity-based canal systems, with a “field-to-field” flow, restrict individual farmers’ ability to dry fields without affecting neighbours.
• Pricing Disincentive: Flat-rate or free irrigation offers little financial incentive for farmers to conserve water through AWD.

{Prelims – Health} National Quality Assurance Standards (NQAS)

• Context (PIB): The Government of India has achieved over 50,000 National Quality Assurance Standards (NQAS) certifications for public health facilities.

• The NQAS is a comprehensive framework launched in 2015 by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) to improve healthcare quality in public health facilities.
• Nodal Agency: It is managed by the National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC) as a technical support unit under the National Health Mission (NHM).
• Scope: It initially covered District Hospitals, later extended to other secondary care, primary care, and Integrated Public Health Laboratories (IPHL) (2024).
• Focus Areas: NQAS evaluates facilities across eight ‘Areas of Concern’ aligned with global benchmarks and International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua) accreditation.
• Key Target: The government aims to certify at least 50% of public healthcare facilities by March 2026.
• Significance: The rapid NQAS scale-up aligns with India’s pursuit of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), guided by the National Health Policy 2017.

Read More > Healthcare Sector of India

{Prelims – Eco} Payments Regulatory Board (PRB) *

• Context (NOA): The first meeting of the Payments Regulatory Board (PRB) was held recently under the chairmanship of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, Sanjay Malhotra.

About Payments Regulatory Board (PRB)

• Statutory Body: The Payments Regulatory Board (PRB) is a statutory authority under the RBI, regulating payment and settlement systems in India.
• Establishment: It replaced the Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment Systems (BPSS) in 2025, following amendments to the Payment and Settlement Systems (PSS) Act, 2007.
• Meeting Mandate: The board is legally required to meet at least twice every year.
• Decision Making: Decisions are made by a majority vote, with the Chairperson exercising a casting vote in the event of a tie.
• Institutional Support: The RBI’s Department of Payment and Settlement Systems (DPSS) reports directly to and assists the PRB.

Composition of the Board

• Equal Representation: The PRB consists of six members with equal representation from the RBI and the Central Government.
• Chairperson Role: The Governor of the RBI serves as the ex-officio Chairperson of the Payments Regulatory Board.
• Legal Invitee: The Principal Legal Adviser of RBI attends meetings as a permanent invitee without voting rights.

Key Functions of the Board

• Licensing Authority: It grants and revokes licences for payment systems, including UPI, cards, wallets, and RTGS.
• Standard Setting: The board prescribes technical, operational, and security standards for digital and non-cash payments.
• Supervisory Powers: It inspects payment system providers and issues binding directions to ensure compliance with the PSS Act.

{Prelims – S&T} Hydrogen Molecule Precision Tests

• Context (TH): Recent theory updates allow hydrogen molecule (H₂) predictions to match ultra-precise measurements, making it a benchmark for testing fundamental physics.

Why H₂ is Used as a Benchmark for Fundamental Physics?

• Simplest Molecule: H₂ contains only two protons and two electrons, making it the simplest stable molecule where molecular quantum effects fully appear.
• First-Principles Testing: Its small size allows predictions to be made directly from basic physical laws.
• Multi-Theory Sensitivity: At high precision, H₂ energy levels reflect effects of quantum mechanics and relativity together, unlike simpler atomic systems.
• Experimental Precision: Modern spectroscopy measures H₂ transitions with accuracy of 1 part in 10¹¹, demanding equally precise theory.

Theoretical Challenges Faced Earlier

• Electron Correlation: The two electrons interact strongly with each other, making single-particle or averaged approaches insufficient for accurate energy predictions.
• Nuclear Motion Neglect: Earlier models assumed nearly stationary nuclei, underestimating how proton motion subtly alters electronic energy levels.
• Relativistic Corrections: Electrons move fast enough for relativistic effects to matter, but these were only approximately included earlier.

What Changed in the New Theory?

• Fully Nonadiabatic Approach: The new method treats electrons and nuclei dynamically together, removing the fixed-nucleus assumption entirely.
• Recoil Effect Inclusion: Proton recoil due to electron motion is now explicitly included, correcting small but measurable frequency shifts.
• High-Precision Matching: The refined theory now agrees with experiments at the kilohertz level, eliminating earlier megahertz-scale discrepancies.

{Prelims – Defence} Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LR-AShM) *

• Context (ZN): The Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LR-AShM) is set to be showcased at the Republic Day parade.

• LR-AShM is an indigenous hypersonic anti-ship missile developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
• Speed & Reach: It attains hypersonic speeds up to Mach 10 with a strike range exceeding 1,500 km.
• Flight Profile: It operates as a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV) launched by a solid-fuel booster.
• Guidance System: It uses an advanced radio-frequency seeker and terminal manoeuvres to precisely hit moving naval targets.
• Warhead Capability: It can carry conventional or nuclear payloads of roughly 1,000–2,000 kg.
• Launch Platforms: The system supports land-based mobile launchers and naval vessels, with air-launched variants planned.
• Significance: Induction of LR-AShM places India among an elite group of nations, including the US, Russia, and China, that possess operational hypersonic strike capability.

Read More > Long-Range Hypersonic Missile