Current Affairs – May 22, 2026

{GS1 – IS} World Cities Report 2026 *

Context (HT): UN-Habitat released the World Cities Report 2026.

Key Highlights of the Report

Global Crisis: Around 40% of the global population, or ~3.4 billion people, face critical housing shortages. Over 1.1 billion people live in overcrowded informal settlements and slums with limited access to vital utilities.
Affordability Decline: Price-to-income ratio rose from 9.3 in 2010 to 11.2 in 2023, while 44% of households spend over 30% of income on housing.
Climate Hazards may destroy 167 million homes by 2040; housing alone accounts for 17–21% of global carbon emissions.

India-Specific Findings

Affordability: Fell from 52% in 2018 to 17% in 2025. Price-to-income ratios reached 16.8 in Central and South Asia, including India, with severe stress in megacities like Mumbai (14.30) and Delhi (10.1).
Homelessness Rate: 13 per 10,000 people, lower than China (21) and the United States (20).
Policy Success: Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) expanded subsidised housing access from 0.3% of households in 2010 to 7% in 2023.

Key Drivers of Global Housing Crisis

Market Inefficiencies: Treating housing as a speculative asset diverted capital to luxury projects, while high land costs make affordable housing unviable.
Urban Expansion: Rapid urbanisation outpaces municipal housing capacity, with cities expected to house two billion more people by 2050.
Forced Displacement: Conflicts, violence, and human rights violations caused 64 million urban evictions between 2003 and 2023.
Climate Risk: Increasing climate shocks are destroying vulnerable housing and driving climate-induced migration into already strained cities.

Recommended Pathways

Public Housing: Expand public housing, cooperative models, and non-profit rentals to reduce dependence on private markets.
Climate Mandates: Adopt zero-emission building codes, passive cooling, and fossil fuel phase-out in residential energy systems.
Inclusive Planning: Integrate migrants, displaced people, and marginalised communities to build economically vibrant cities.

{GS1 – A&C} PM Showcases India’s Cultural Heritage Through Diplomatic Gifts*

Context (DDN): During his five-nation tour, Prime Minister gifted world leaders an array of culturally significant Indian items highlighting the nation’s diverse heritage.

Items/Products Gifted By PM

Kalamkari: It is an ancient textile printing art, that originated in Andhra Pradesh. There are two main styles of Kalamkari in India i.e., hand painted style and block printed. Both styles are awarded GI tag.
Pattachitra: It is traditional, cloth-based scroll painting, based in Odisha, and West Bengal. It is known for its intricate details as well as mythological narratives and folktales inscribed in it.
Kamal Talai Pichwai Painting: Kamal Talai, often depicted in Pichwai paintings, represents the lotus pond. The painting reflects the devotional artistry of the Nathdwara tradition of Rajasthan.
Bidri Silver Work (Bidriware): It is a metal handicraft from the city of Bidar in Karnataka. It was developed in the 14^th century C.E. during the rule of the Bahmani Sultans. It received GI tag in 2006.
Blue Pottery: It is widely recognized as a traditional craft of Jaipur. The name ‘blue pottery’ comes from the eye-catching blue dye that is used to colour the pottery. No clay is used in this pottery.
Meenakari and Kundan: Kundan is a form of jewellery making and Meenakari is the intricate process of coloring and ornamenting a metal surface. They are often combined on a single piece of jewellery. Both originated in the royal courts of Rajasthan.
Madhubani Painting: Also known as Mithila art, it is a style of painting practiced in the Mithila region of India (Bihar) and Nepal. It is Traditionally practiced by women and received GI Tag.
Muga Silk: Muga silk is a variety of wild silk geographically tagged to Assam. Due to its golden nature, it has now come to be known as the Golden Silk of Assam.
Shirui Lily: It is a rare Indian species of plant found only in the upper reaches of the Shirui hill ranges in the Manipur. They are seasonal flowering plants.
Pacchikari Art: It is a marble inlay art which is inspired by Pietra Dura (Stone inlay technique). The craft has been awarded a GI tag to protect its unique heritage in the Agra region.
Pashmina: Pashmina is a fine fabric made from the undercoat of the Changthangi goat, primarily found in Ladakh. It has been awarded a GI tag.
Ice-Axe: The tool carried by Tenzing Norgay during the first successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 with Sir Edmund Hillary.
Convenient Action: Continuity for Change: A book written by PM Narendra Modi highlights the importance of continuity in policy-making while embracing change as a necessary driver for social and economic transformation.

Indian Traditional Grains (All GI Products)

Red Rice: known as Matta or Palakkadan Matta, it is an indigenous grain from the Palakkad, Kerala.
Gobindobhog Rice: It is a premium, aromatic short-grain rice from West Bengal.
Basmati Rice: Also known as the “Queen of Fragrance,” is a premium long-grain variety originating from the fertile Indo-Gangetic plains.
Joha Rice: It is a premium, indigenous aromatic variety exclusive to the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam.
Kalanamak Rice: Often hailed as the “Buddha Rice,” originated in the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh.

{GS2 – IR} Russia’s Growing Dependence on China **

Context (IE): President Putin’s state visit to Beijing, immediately after Donald Trump’s China visit, highlights the Sino-Russian alliance as a focal point of global diplomacy.

Factors Behind Russia’s Dependency on China

Market Capture: China accounts for over 57% of Russia’s imports, commanding a majority of the automotive sector and a monopoly in the smartphone market.
Crude Exports: Russia relies on China to purchase nearly half of its crude exports. It remains dependent on securing the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline to replace the loss of European gas markets.
Tech Dependency: China sustains the Kremlin’s defence industry by supplying 90% of Russia’s imports of semiconductors, microelectronics, and dual-use components.
Yuan Dominance: The Chinese yuan now settles over 95% of $227.9 billion in bilateral trade, displacing Western currencies as Russia’s dominant foreign asset.

India’s Concern over Russian Dependency on China

Diplomatic Isolation: Russia’s transition to junior-partner status undermines its role as a neutral balancer, leaving India diplomatically isolated from Chinese expansionism in Central Asia.
Strategic Hedge: An intensifying Sino-Russian alliance dilutes the Moscow-New Delhi ‘Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership’, forcing India to hedge toward Western security architectures like the Quad.
Cyber Vulnerability: Deepening Sino-Russian cyber and intelligence collaboration raises risks that sensitive Indian defence data shared with Moscow could be accessed by Beijing.
Corridor Blockage: Russia’s economic submission lets China monopolise Central Asian corridors, potentially blocking India’s INSTC and land-route access to Europe.

Read More> Russia-India-China (RIC) Troika

{GS2 – Polity} Local Governance as a Vehicle of Economic Growth **

Context (IE): With urban local bodies spending less than 1% of GDP and employing just 10% of the public workforce, India’s local governments remain the “stepchild” of federalism.

Role of Local Governance in Stimulating Economic Growth

Industrial Ecosystem: Municipal streamlining of zoning, licensing, and utility provisioning lowers transaction costs to transition isolated MSME clusters into Integrated Industrial Ecosystems.
Competitive Urbanism: Urban Local Bodies optimise municipal bond ratings and ease-of-doing-business metrics to outcompete rival cities for mobile private capital and high-skilled talent.
Aggregate Demand: Panchayat-led execution of over 2.5 billion MGNREGA person-days annually injects rural wage liquidity to accelerate broad-based macroeconomic consumption.
Allocative Efficiency: District Planning Committees integrate bottom-up data to align public capital expenditure directly with hyper-local bottleneck infrastructure, preventing misallocation of state funds.
Human Capital: PRI oversight of Anganwadis and Primary Health Centres closes malnutrition, education, and healthcare gaps to recover India’s ~4% GDP loss to undernutrition.

Structural Impediments to Local Economic Autonomy

Fiscal Starvation: Outdated property tax registries and narrow municipal tax bases restrict ULB’s Own-Source Revenue (OSR) to a dismal ~0.3% of GDP, leaving local bodies dependent on tied grants
Institutional Fragmentation: State-appointed parastatals and Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) bypass citizen participation, imposing homogenised reforms that ignore local economic constraints.
Value Stagnation: Restrictive land-use controls, opaque building by-laws and poor digitisation of land records prevent the fiscalisation of rising urban property values.
Unfunded Mandates: Incomplete devolution of 3Fs (Funds, Functions, Functionaries) reduces Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) to implementing agencies rather than autonomous economic planning units.
Credit Market Exclusion: Weak balance sheets, the absence of accrual-based accounting, and low transparency deny local bodies investment-grade ratings, barring access to the municipal bond market.

Govt Initiatives for Local Economic Governance

Spatial Formalisation: SVAMITVA equips Gram Panchayats with drone-mapped data to formalise rural property rights and to establish a property tax baseline.
Capacity Building: Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan (RGSA) trains elected PRI representatives to formulate data-driven Gram Panchayat Development Plans for hyper-local resource allocation.
Fiscal Accountability: The 15^th Finance Commission uses performance-linked grants to compel Urban Local Bodies to publish audited accounts and to notify baseline property tax rates.
Digital Transparency: e-Gram Swaraj integrates Panchayat-level planning, accounting, and reporting to ensure real-time financial transparency and prevent leakage of devolved funds.
Urban Capitalisation: AMRUT 2.0 incentivises Urban Local Bodies to implement property tax reforms and issue municipal bonds to finance independent urban infrastructure.

{GS3 – Agri} Direct Seeded Rice (DSR)

Context (IE): Punjab government is offering a direct cash incentive to promote the Direct Seeded Rice technique to combat severe groundwater depletion.

DSR is a rice cultivation method where seeds are sown directly in the field using precision drills, eliminating nursery raising and transplanting.
Benefits: Saves up to 35% irrigation water, reduces labour requirements, lowers methane emissions, and bypasses transplant shock, allowing earlier crop maturity, facilitating timely sowing of subsequent crops.
Challenges: Greater weed pressure necessitates herbicide management; poor performance in light, sandy soils with low moisture retention & iron deficiency; requires a higher seed rate (10–15 kg/acre than transplanting).
Adoption: DSR currently covers nearly 50% of India’s rainfed rice area, with Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana leading adoption.

Tar-wattar is a resource-conserving variant of DSR developed by Punjab Agricultural University (PAU). Unlike traditional dry-DSR, which irrigates immediately after sowing, the technique sows at optimum soil moisture after a pre-sowing irrigation, delaying the next watering by 21 days.

{Prelims – Envi} UNGA Resolution Endorsing ICJ Climate Advisory Opinion *

Context (TH): UN General Assembly adopted a resolution endorsing ICJ’s 2025 advisory opinion, which held that states have a legal obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions & may incur liability for failing to do so.

Since ICJ advisory opinions are non-binding, Vanuatu tabled a resolution to give it formal political and legal backing to ICJ’s opinion.

Key Provisions of Resolution

The resolution urges all nations to fulfil obligations under international law to protect the climate system from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.
It calls for limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, consistent with the Paris Agreement.

Concerns Raised by India

Elevating a Non-Binding Opinion: The resolution risked elevating a non-binding advisory opinion to binding or quasi-binding status, undermining the foundational architecture of the UNFCCC which recognises the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities.”
Reduced Policy Autonomy: It may subject NDCs to external benchmarks and judicial scrutiny, constraining national climate policy space.
Climate Finance Omission: India raised objections over omission of term climate finance from the resolution.

{Prelims – Geo} Krishna-Godavari Basin

Context (TH): SC refused to stay proceedings on gas migration between adjacent Reliance Industries and ONGC blocks in the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin.

KG Basin is a deltaic plain formed by Krishna and Godavari rivers along Andhra Pradesh and the Bay of Bengal. It covers 15,000 sq. km on land and 25,000 sq. km offshore.
It is India’s largest natural gas reserve, with sediments from the Late Carboniferous to the Pleistocene and contains deep-sea biogenic methane hydrates.
It hosts Olive Ridley Sea Turtle and Coringa WLS, which has India’s second-largest mangrove forests.

{Prelims – IE} WTO Council for Trade in Goods

Context (BS): India has raised concerns at the WTO Council for Trade in Goods meeting in Geneva over the United Kingdom’s new steel safeguard measures restricting tariff-free steel imports.
- The dispute has become a major issue in implementing the India–UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), as India exported steel products worth USD 893.4 million to the UK in 2025–26.

The Council for Trade in Goods (CfTG) is a subsidiary body under the WTO that oversees the implementation and functioning of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) agreement and global trade in goods.
Functions: It monitors implementation of agreements related to tariffs, import regulations, subsidies, anti-dumping measures and safeguards.
Committees: The Council supervises several committees dealing with agriculture, market access, customs valuation, technical barriers and sanitary measures.

GATT is an international agreement that regulates global trade in goods. It was signed in 1947 after World War II to promote free & fair international trade. It served as the foundation for the establishment of WTO in 1995.
Under WTO, GATT 1994 continues to govern international trade in goods and is overseen by the CfTG.

Read More> World Trade Organisation

{Prelims – MoST} UMMID Programme

Context (PIB): Government launched UMMID Dashboard and Compendium to strengthen monitoring under the UMMID Programme.

Unique Methods of Management and Treatment of Inherited Disorders (UMMID) was launched in 2019 by the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology.
Objective: It focuses on prenatal and newborn screening, genetic diagnostics, counselling and capacity-building for management of inherited and rare genetic disorders.
NIDAN (National Inherited Diseases Administration) Kendras were established in government hospitals to provide advanced genetic testing, counselling & clinical care.
It promotes genome-based, precision-driven & personalised healthcare based on individual’s genetic profile.

{Prelims – PIN World} Cuba

Context (NOA): United States intensified pressure on Cuba, calling it a failed state and security threat.

Cuba (capital: Havana) is the largest island in the Caribbean and part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the West Indies.
Located at the intersection of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea. It lies south of the USA (Florida), west of Haiti, north of Jamaica, and east of Mexico (the Yucatán Peninsula).
It features Sierra Maestra mountains, Rio Cauto river (longest), and is rich in Nickel and Cobalt.

{Prelims – Polity} Peaceful and Lawful Protest is Everybody’s Right: SC

Context (TH): Supreme Court held that peaceful and lawful protest is everybody’s right, but dissent should not break the peace or occupy public space and bother ordinary citizens.

Constitutional Basis

The right to protest is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Through various SC judgements it has been recognised as fundamental right. It is derived from two provisions of Article 19(1):
- Art 19(1)(a): Guarantees freedom of speech and expression, allowing citizens to voice opinions, criticise government actions and mobilise public opinion.
- Art 19(1)(b): Guarantees the right to assemble peacefully and without arms, enabling collective action through peaceful assembly.
Art 21 (Right to Life and Personal Liberty) has also been read by courts to include the right to dignified dissent.
Reasonable Restrictions: The right to protest is not absolute. Under Articles 19(2) and 19(3), the State can impose reasonable restrictions in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, public order, morality, decency, and friendly relations with foreign States.

SC Judgements

Ramlila Maidan Incident v. Home Secretary (2012): SC held that citizens have a fundamental right to peaceful assembly and protest under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(b).
Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan v. Union of India (2018): SC held that the right to protest in public spaces is a fundamental right but the state can impose reasonable restrictions on time, place & manner.
Shaheen Bagh v. Union of India (2020): SC held that public spaces cannot be occupied indefinitely by protestors. However, reaffirmed that right to protest is a fundamental right under Article 19.

{Prelims – S&T} Vayu Astra-1

Context (TH): Vayu Astra-1 demonstrated endurance flights above 14,000 feet, at Joshimath, Uttarakhand.

It is an indigenous, long-range loitering munition (‘suicide’ or ‘kamikaze’ drone) developed by Pune-based Nibe Limited for Indian Army, using Israeli technology.
Unlike typical single-use kamikaze drones, operators can abort a strike mid-flight and react or recover the drone if mission parameters change or the target moves.
Equipped with infrared night-vision cameras, it can conduct precision strikes up to 100 kilometres and carry a 10 kg warhead for anti-personnel and anti-armour targets.

{Prelims – Misc} One-Liner

Initiatives – Sujal Gram Samvad (PIB): A multilingual dialogue held by the Ministry of Jal Shakti between officials and rural communities to strengthen water governance under Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM).
- JJM, launched in 2019, is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme to provide Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTCs) to all rural households. It was restructured as JJM 2.0 in 2026 to focus on sustainability, community management, and water quality.
IR – Exercise PRAGATI 2026 (AIR): Its first edition is being conducted at Umroi, Meghalaya. PRAGATI stands for “Partnership of Regional Armies for Growth and Transformation in the Indian Ocean Region”. It is a multilateral military exercise hosted by the Indian Army. It involves India & 12 friendly countries, incl. Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
Awards – Goddard Astronautics Award (AIR): ISRO has won the 2026 Goddard Astronautics Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics for its historic Chandrayaan-3 Mission. The award recognises outstanding achievements in astronautics, space science, and space exploration. It is named after Robert H. Goddard, considered the father of modern rocketry.
Envi – International Day for Biological Diversity 2026 (DTE): Observed annually on 22 May to raise awareness of environmental conservation. 2026 theme: ‘Acting locally for global impact’.
- Odisha’s tribal conservation of climate-resilient millet landraces like Bati mandia and Kalaguduli mandia supports this theme. Efforts include community seed banks, the Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), with tribal women as seed keepers, and Krushi Mitras.