Current Affairs – July 2, 2026

{GS1 – Geo} Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) *

• Context (TH): In 1997, a strong positive IOD saved India from drought despite forecasts for Super El Nino. While 2026 forecast point to Super El Nino, IOD has so far remained neutral.

What is IOD?

• The Indian Ocean Dipole is the temperature difference between western and eastern halves of Indian Ocean.
• The phenomena was discovered in 1999.
• It measured by the Dipole Mode Index (DMI), which compares sea-surface temperature differences between the western and southeastern Indian Ocean.
  • A positive DMI means the western Indian Ocean is warmer.
  • As of late May, the index stood at minus 0.34 degrees Celsius, well within neutral territory.

Phases of IOD and its Impact on India

{GS1 – IS} Social Media Ban for Children **

• Context (TH): United Kingdom announced a policy to ban social media for children under-16. Similar announcements were made earlier by Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, France, and Canada triggering debate on its effectiveness in India.

Benefits of Social Media Ban for Children

• Immediate Protective Benefits: Rising levels of anxiety, sleep disruption, and cyberbullying linked to intensive social media use can be effectively tackled. (UNICEF).
• Excessive Usage: Fifteen‐year‐olds worldwide spend an average of 7 hours a day on digital devices, with a third of 11‐ to 15‐year‐olds continuously connected to social media (OECD).
• Behavioural Changes: Many young people become addicted to seeking likes and approval on social media, tying their self-worth to online engagement. This can cause disappointment, unhealthy comparisons, and negative changes in their behaviour and identity.
• Vulnerability of Youth: Many minors lack the critical thinking skills needed to distinguish true information from misinformation, making them vulnerable to online influence and propaganda.

Negatives of Social Media Ban for children

• Reduced Access to Information: When used responsibly, social media can support learning, creativity, communication, digital literacy, and meaningful connections.
• Restrict Children’s Freedom of Expression: Restrictions may limit children’s freedom of expression without addressing problems like addictive platform design and poor media literacy.
• Widen Digital Divide: Social media bans can widen the digital divide especially in developing countries by increasing inequalities in digital skills, access, and opportunities.
• Difficult to Enforce: Adolescents can easily bypass them using VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) and may shift to unregulated online spaces, increasing exposure to risks like grooming and extremism.

Read More> Karnataka’s Ban on Social Media for Children Under-16 I Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban

{GS1 – IS} Civil Registration System (CRS) Report 2024

• Context (TH): Office of the Registrar General of India released the Civil Registration System Report 2024.

Key Highlights of CRS 2024

• Near Universal Registration Achieved: Birth and death registrations in India crossed 99% of estimated births and deaths for the first time in 2024.
• Sex Ratio at Birth (SRB): India’s national sex ratio at birth stands at 917 females per 1,000 males.
  • SRB measures the number of girl children born for every 1,000 boys.
• State Level Disparities: Top performers include Kerala (970), Arunachal Pradesh (1,050), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (984), Meghalaya (974), and Mizoram (972), while Nagaland and Lakshadweep (865 each) and Jharkhand (890) recorded the weakest figures.
• Masculine Skew at Birth: Haryana and Punjab have recorded the lowest child sex ratios at birth. In the 2011 Census, Haryana recorded 834 girls per 1,000 boys, followed closely by Punjab at 846.
• Stillbirths: 81,117 stillbirths were recorded in 2024, with 69% occurring in urban areas.

{GS2 – Governance} SHE-LEAPS

• Context (PIB): SHE-LEAPS platform was launched at Rashtriya Gramin Vikas Sammelan held in New Delhi.

• SHE-LEAPS (Self-Help Entrepreneur-Livelihoods and Enterprise Application for Prosperity and Sustainability) is a digital platform for empowering women associated with Self-Help Groups (SHGs) across rural India.

Key Features

• It promotes livelihood creation, enterprise development, and financial inclusion by supporting both farm and non-farm enterprises, thereby fostering a resilient and sustainable rural economy.
• Digital Services for Enterprise Development: It captures real-time operational data across sectors and tracks the complete livelihood journey, from beneficiary profiling to enterprise creation, income generation, and enterprise performance.
• Strengthens the Lakhpati Didi Mission by providing end-to-end tracking of beneficiaries’ income growth and enterprise performance.
• Implementation: The SHE-LEAPS mobile application has been developed by the Digital India Corporation and is implemented under the LokOS platform, a digital system for capturing the activities of Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) across India.
• Objectives:
  • Empowering rural SHG women entrepreneurs nationwide.
  • Creating and strengthening women-led enterprises in rural areas.
  • Integrating rural producers with formal value chains.
  • Enhancing the financial inclusion of SHG households.
  • Enabling data-driven rural entrepreneurship.

{GS3 – Agri} Green Urea *

• Context (PIB): Department of Fertilisers held a pre-Expression of Interest meeting at Projects & Development India Limited (PDIL), Noida, to establish Green Urea plants in India.

About Green Urea

• Green Urea is conventional urea, CO(NH₂)₂, produced using renewable hydrogen and captured CO₂ instead of fossil-derived feedstocks. It retains the same formula, nutrient value, and white appearance as grey urea; “green” denotes its production pathway.
• Production Pathway: Green hydrogen is produced by water electrolysis powered by renewable electricity, then combined with atmospheric nitrogen to form green ammonia for urea synthesis.
• Carbon Dependence: Urea synthesis via the Bosch-Meiser process still requires an external CO₂ stream; captured CO₂ from cement, steel, and thermal power plants supplies the carbon input.
• Green urea reduces manufacturing‑phase emissions but does not address post‑application nitrous oxide emissions from soil volatilisation and leaching. Transitioning to green urea could reduce freshwater withdrawal intensity by 40%.

{GS3 – Envi} Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) *

• Context (TH): World Bank Board has retired the CCAP’s 45% climate co-benefits target and the original 35% target to replace fixed financing quotas with outcome-based development metrics.

• Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP), established in 2021, is the World Bank Group’s strategic framework for integrating climate adaptation and mitigation into all development financing programmes.
• It initially required 35% of total World Bank financing to be allocated to projects with climate co-benefits. This target was raised to 45% at COP28 in 2023.
• CCAP operates through 3 pillars: (1) aligning climate and development via new diagnostics, (2) prioritising key system transitions, and (3) mobilising finance.
• The plan advances the World Bank’s Green, Resilient, and Inclusive Development (GRID) approach by targeting five systems responsible for over 90% of global emissions: (1) Energy, (2) Agriculture, food, water and land, (3) Cities, (4) Transport, and (5) Manufacturing.
• Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs), introduced under the CCAP, diagnose integrated climate-development pathways across 93 economies to identify investment priorities.
• From July 2023, all new IBRD and IDA operations were required to align with the objectives of the Paris Agreement and with client countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

Read More> World Bank and World Bank Group

{GS3 – Infra} India’s Energy Sector **

• Context (TH): The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) proposed a ‘Unified National Energy Policy Framework’ to achieve India’s energy self-reliance by 2047 and net-zero emissions by 2070.

Key Challenges

• Import Vulnerability: India’s high import reliance on crude oil (88%) and natural gas (51%) exposes it to risks from Strait of Hormuz disruptions, raising trade deficit and inflation.
• Grid Instability: Inadequate battery storage and transmission delays create regional imbalances in renewable energy, while heatwaves strain grids.
• Coal Dependence: Coal still dominates over half of India’s electricity generation, constraining decarbonisation despite rising non-fossil capacity.
• Asset Underutilization: About 25 GW of gas-based generation capacity remains stranded or severely underutilised despite rising electricity demand.
• Financing Gap: India requires over $20 trillion to achieve its net-zero transition by 2070, exceeding current domestic green finance capacity.

Resilience Roadmap: INSA Framework

• Adequacy: Optimise coal use, scale non-coal resources, and deploy Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) to ensure continuous domestic supply.
• Access: Strengthen decentralised supply networks, expand compressed biogas (CBG), and support community-managed biomass value chains for reliable last-mile power.
• Affordability: Mobilise blended green finance and introduce time-of-day pricing, with regulatory safeguards to protect vulnerable consumers from price shocks.
• Appropriate Sustainability: Adopt circular-economy practices and Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) for hard-to-abate sectors, rejecting a “one-size-fits-all” pathway.

Read More > Clean Energy Transition in India | Electricity Demand in India

{GS3 – S&T} UN Scientific Panel’s Preliminary Report on AI

• Context (BS): UN Independent International Scientific Panel on AI released its Preliminary Report as the first global independent scientific assessment of AI opportunities, risks and impacts.

Key Findings of the Preliminary Report

1. Task complexity in agentic AI systems doubles every 4-7 months, with AI already demonstrating expert-level reasoning in mathematics and science.
2. More than 40 AI governance frameworks and ethical guidelines exist, yet they remain fragmented, inconsistent, and rarely tested for effectiveness.
3. Laboratory evidence shows deceptive AI behaviour, with no current scientific guarantees that highly autonomous agents will obey human safety instructions rather than circumvent shutdown.
4. The US accounts for 75% of computing power, and China for 15%, among the top 500 AI supercomputers.
5. Sycophantic AI behaviour, where responses reinforce beliefs regardless of accuracy, has been linked to severe mental health incidents, including documented deaths.
6. AI lowers barriers to persuasive content at scale, gradually eroding information integrity and weakening public trust, social cohesion, and democratic deliberation.
7. Current AI models are trained on only a small fraction of ~7000 spoken languages. Machine translation of some languages is riddled with errors that can affect health diagnoses and treatment decisions.

Way Forward to Address AI Governance Challenges

• Mandate independent third-party safety testing of frontier AI models before public deployment, moving beyond voluntary company self-disclosure.
• Accelerate the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance to establish shared verification mechanisms and interoperable safety standards for agentic systems.
• Establish common reporting requirements and cross-border incident protocols to ensure accountability for risks spanning multiple jurisdictions.
• Develop rigorous, independent evaluation methods that can detect alignment failures, deception and emergent behaviours in multi-agent settings.

Read More> Global Regulation of AI

{Prelims – Envi} SOP for Notification of Threatened Species

• Context (PIB): National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) has issued a Standard Operating Procedure for scientific identification, assessment and notification of threatened species.

• Legal Basis: SOP was released under Section 38 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.
  • Section 38 empowers the Central Government, in consultation with the State Government, to notify threatened species, regulate/prohibit their collection, and ensure their conservation & recovery.
• Framework: SOP prescribes field-based assessments, stakeholder consultations, scientific validation, notification, conservation planning, monitoring and periodic review.
• Current Status: MoEFCC has so far notified 159 plant species and 173 animal species as threatened.
• Advances the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) 2024–2030 and contributes to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework goal of halting human-induced species extinctions.

{Prelims – Envi} New Green Fan-Throated Lizards

• Context (TH): India added 709 animal species and 353 plant taxa in 2025, reaffirming its status as one of the top mega-diverse nations.

• Major discoveries included Myotis himalaicus, a Himalayan bat species, and two green fan-throated lizard species – Ptyctolaemus namdaphaensis and Ptyctolaemus siangensis.
• Ptyctolaemus namdaphaensis: Small-to-medium, diurnal, mostly arboreal lizard named after Namdapha TR in Arunachal Pradesh, where it was first recorded. It thrives exclusively in tropical evergreen forests of the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot.
• Ptyctolaemus siangensis: Closely related to Ptyctolaemus namdaphaensis. It is found only west of the Siang River in the central-western Eastern Himalayan ecological zones.

{Prelims – Envi} Transcaspian Marinka

• Context (TH): Sangno clan in Arunachal Pradesh has launched an initiative to protect the Transcaspian Marinka (Schizothorax pelzami), from predation by the Golden Mahseer, and promote sustainable traditional community fishing.

• Schizothorax pelzami, commonly known as the Transcaspian marinka, is a ray-finned fish, associated with freshwater habitats. It is locally known as “Ngarsing” in the Nyishi language.
  • Ray-finned fishes form the largest group of fishes, distinguished by fins supported by flexible bony rays rather than fleshy lobes.

{Prelims – Geo} Yamuna Water Project

• Context (PIB): Governments of Rajasthan and Haryana signed a Memorandum of Agreement to implement the Yamuna Water Project, operationalising a three-decade-old interstate water-sharing framework.

• Yamuna Water Project is an interstate initiative to supply surplus monsoon Yamuna water to Rajasthan’s arid Shekhawati region via a 295 km underground pipeline network from Haryana’s Hathnikund Barrage.
• 577 million cubic metres (MCM) will be conveyed annually during the July-October monsoon months from Hathnikund Barrage to the proposed Hansiyawas reservoir in Churu, Rajasthan.
• The project implements the 1994 MoU on sharing utilisable surface waters of the Upper Yamuna Basin, signed by Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, and Delhi. Uttarakhand joined in 2000.
• A Special Purpose Vehicle, Rajasthan-Haryana Yamuna Water Project SPV (RHYW-SPV), will be established to execute, operate, and maintain the pipeline corridor.

{Prelims – IE} Miniratna

• Context (PIB): Ministry of Steel granted Miniratna Category-I status to MECON Limited, a leading engineering and consultancy Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE).

• Miniratna status was introduced in 1997 to give profit-making CPSEs more autonomy. It classifies eligible CPSEs into Category-I and Category-II based on profitability and net worth.
• Conditions: Must not receive government support or guarantees, or default on government loans.

Read More > Maharatna, Navratna and Miniratna CPSEs

{Prelims – Misc} One-Liners

• IR – US Birthright Citizenship (TH): The US Supreme Court upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Trump’s executive order that denied citizenship to children born to parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the country.
  • The US grants near-automatic jus soli (birthplace-based) citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, whereas India applies a predominantly jus sanguinis (descent-based) rule for post-2004 births, requiring both parents to be citizens, or one parent to be a citizen and the other not an illegal migrant.
• Envi – International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) (TOI): Bangladesh became the 27^th member nation of the India-led, treaty-based IBCA (HQ: New Delhi) to foster global cooperation, share scientific research, and implement cross-border conservation strategies.
  • IBCA, launched in April 2023 to commemorate the 50^th Anniversary of Project Tiger, focuses on global conservation of seven big cat species (tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, cheetah, jaguar, and puma) and their natural habitats.
• Initiatives – eSARAS (PIB): Expanded across ONDC and UMANG while launching “SARAS Shakti Collection” for corporate and institutional markets. It is the official online marketplace under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), built by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), for products made by rural women.
  • DAY-NRLM, launched in 2011 by MoRD, restructured from Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana, aims to reduce rural poverty by promoting financial inclusion and livelihoods through SHGs and Community-Based Organisations. It covers 7,627 blocks and has built a community support cadre of 1.51 crore for grassroots enterprises.
• S&T – Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (PIB): The Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (KSO) used AI to analyse over a century of hand-drawn solar observations (1916–2007), enabling scientists to track changes in the Sun’s magnetically active regions and improve understanding of long-term solar cycles.
  • The KSO, established in 1899 at Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, is one of the world’s oldest solar observatories and is managed by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics.
• Initiatives – Mukh Mantri Mawan Dhiyan Satkar Yojana (IE): The Punjab Government launched the Mukh Mantri Mawan Dhiyan Satkar Yojana on 1 July 2026 to provide direct monthly financial assistance to eligible women.