Current Affairs – November 29, 2025

{GS2 – Governance} 50 Years of ICDS Programme **

Context (TH): The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme, a flagship initiative of the Government of India, marked its 50^th anniversary in 2025.

About ICDS

Launched in 1975, it is the world’s most extensive community-based early childhood development programme. It has now been restructured into Mission Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0.
It functions as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme under the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
Objective: to enhance the nutritional and health status of children aged 0-6, support their overall development, and decrease mortality and malnutrition.
Integrated Services: The ICDS scheme provides six core services—supplementary nutrition, preschool non-formal education, nutrition and health education, and immunisation.
Implementation: It is carried out through a nationwide network of Anganwadi Centres (AWC).

Key Achievements

Coverage: ICDS has over 9 crore beneficiaries nationwide with a network of nearly 1.4 million AWCs.
Nutrition Support: Approximately 95% of children registered under ICDS avail supplementary nutrition.
Positive Outcomes: Studies show improvements in early literacy and numeracy among children.

Key Challenges

Funding Strain: The revised 60:40 Centre–State funding pattern (from 90:10 earlier) has increased State-level financial pressure, resulting in implementation disparities.
Infrastructure Gaps: Many AWCs lack permanent buildings, functional toilets, and potable water.
Worker Shortage: Anganwadi workers continue to be underpaid, overburdened, and often assigned to non-ICDS duties.
Technology Issues: Poshan Tracker and facial recognition systems (FRS) encounter issues, risking the exclusion of beneficiaries.
Nutrition Concerns: Quality and adequacy issues persist in supplementary nutrition, as evidenced by high rates of stunting (35.5%) and wasting (18.7%).

Karnataka’s ICDS Innovations as a Model

System Expansion: Karnataka expanded ICDS from a pilot block to 204 blocks, demonstrating planned administrative scaling.
Infrastructure Upgrade: Over 47,720 AWCs now function from government-owned buildings equipped with kitchens, toilets, drinking water, and electricity.
Preschool Reform: Converting 250 centres into government Montessori units connects ICDS preschool education with structured, bilingual, activity-based foundational learning.
Curriculum Standardisation: The Chilipili curriculum offers weekly themes and hands-on activities to boost cognitive readiness and ensure consistent learning.
Childcare Coverage: Koosinamane crèches address the 0–3 childcare gap by providing Anganwadi-linked support for working women in rural and semi-urban areas.
Nutrition Intervention: The Chiguru programme integrates growth monitoring with community-based nutrition counselling, strengthening management in high-burden districts.
Worker Welfare: Enhanced state honorariums and welfare measures improve Anganwadi workers’ motivation, retention, and service delivery.

{GS2 – Polity} Supreme Court Case Pendency **

Context (TH): Chief Justice of India-designate Justice Surya Kant has identified reducing the Supreme Court’s case backlog and clearing long-pending constitutional matters as his foremost agenda.

Pending cases reached 90,225 (as of Nov 22, 2025) – the highest in the Supreme Court’s history, as per the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG).

NJDG: A public dashboard under the e-Courts project that compiles real-time data on case pendency, disposal, and institution across all courts in India.

Reasons for Pendency

Constitutional Docket: Supreme Court (SC) entertains a large share of Article 136 Special Leave Petitions, making it one of the most overloaded apex courts globally (Law Commission).
Bypassing HC: Litigants increasingly approach SC directly due to online access and perceived faster relief, reducing High Court (HC) filtration of cases.
Understaffed Judiciary: Delays in filling SC vacancies reduce bench strength, which affects hearing and disposal rates (Department of Justice data).
Legacy Cases: Long-pending constitutional, land, tax and service matters accumulate due to absence of regular Constitution Bench sittings.
Procedural Overload: Frequent interim applications, reviews, curative petitions & multiple listings inflate judicial time per case.

Article 136 (Special Leave Petition): A discretionary power of the Supreme Court allowing it to hear appeals against any judgment or order from any court or tribunal in India, except military courts.
Constitution Bench: A bench of five or more Supreme Court judges constituted under Article 145(3) to decide substantial questions of constitutional interpretation.

Way Forward

Constitution Bench: Constitute 7-judge and 9-judge benches to settle core legal issues, unlocking disposal of thousands of connected cases.
Prioritise HC: Encourage litigants to approach High Courts first, reinforcing constitutional role of High Courts and reducing SC’s admission load.
Faster Appointments: Compress the Collegium–Government clearance cycle under the Ministry of Personnel timelines and fill vacancies promptly.
Promote Mediation: Expand institutional mediation as Justice Kant calls it a “game-changer”, reducing inflow of civil, commercial and family disputes.

Read More> Judicial Pendency in India

{GS2 – IR} Canada’s New Citizenship-By-Descent Bill

Context (IE): Canada has introduced Bill C-3, a new citizenship law, to reform its rules on citizenship by descent.

More About the New Bill

The bill amends the Citizenship Act (2025) to remove the “First-Generation Limit” (FGL) rule.
- The FGL rule prohibited Canadian citizens born or adopted abroad from passing citizenship to their children who were born outside Canada.
It grants automatic citizenship to individuals born or adopted abroad before the law takes effect.
The reform addresses the issue of “Lost Canadians” who were previously excluded under the FGL rule or older citizenship laws.
It introduces a Substantial Connection Test requiring a parent to have resided in Canada for at least 3 years (1,095 days) before the child’s birth or adoption.
Indian Diaspora Benefit: For Canadian citizens of Indian origin working abroad, it eliminates the need to return to Canada for childbirth to secure automatic citizenship for their children.

Indian Diaspora in Canada

The Indian diaspora is about 1.86 million, or 5.1% of Canada’s population (2021).
Around 125,000 Indian students study in Canada, representing 10.8% of all international students.
India was the leading country of birth for immigrants in Canada according to the 2021 census.

Read More > India-Canada Relations

{GS3 – Agri} Agriculture and Carbon Markets

Context (DTE): Agricultural carbon projects face major measurement, credibility, and benefit-sharing barriers, limiting farmer participation and income gains.

Carbon markets are mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by allowing the trade of carbon credits. They create financial incentives for entities to lower emissions or improve energy efficiency.

Significance of Carbon Market in Agriculture

Income Diversification: Carbon credits offer new revenue streams for farmers adopting climate-friendly practices. E.g. India is projected to earn US$20–40 billion from voluntary carbon credits by 2030.
Climate Mitigation: Agricultural practices can lower methane and carbon dioxide emissions while enhancing soil carbon storage, contributing to national climate goals.
Market Expansion: Credible agriculture-based credits strengthen India’s position in global voluntary carbon markets. E.g. 242 agri-food projects registered under leading international standards by 2024.

Issues within Carbon Market in Agriculture

Price Instability: Global carbon credit prices fluctuate widely, making long-term investment planning difficult for project developers. E.g., prices range from US$4 to over US$200 per credit.
Low Market Trust: Agricultural credits are rated lower due to reversal risks and complex monitoring, reducing their market uptake. E.g. only 1.9 million of 3.19 million issued credits retired by 2024.
Slow Approvals: Long processing timelines delay returns to farmers. E.g. Indian agricultural, forestry and land use projects took 1,689 days for approval versus 623 days in the rest of Asia.

Way Forward

Policy Alignment: Link carbon markets with the Green Credit Programme, ecosystem payment schemes and state climate missions for consistent incentives.
Digital Verification: Deploy artificial intelligence sensors, satellite remote sensing and blockchain for low-cost carbon monitoring, aligned with best practices from the FAO EX-ACT tool used globally.
Farmer Collectives: Strengthen farmer-producer organisations to aggregate land, reduce transaction costs and secure better contract terms, similar to the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project.
Transparent Contracts: Adopt clear benefit-sharing norms ensuring predictable farmer income, following global models under Payment for Environmental Services (Costa Rica).

Read More> India’s Carbon Credit Mechanism

Context (BBC | MN): Australia has introduced the world’s first nationwide under-16 social media ban (effective 10 December 2025) requiring platforms to verify ages and remove underage accounts.

Online Harm: Around 7 in 10 children aged 10–15 report exposure to misogyny, self-harm content and violent videos, showing widespread digital harm that passive moderation has failed to prevent.
Cyberbullying Crisis: More than 1 in 2 children in Australia admit they have been cyberbullied, correlating with rising teen depression and self-harm reported by paediatric mental-health services.
Screen-Time Addiction: Children aged 10–15 spend 4–6 hours daily on social media; persuasive design features increase compulsive scrolling by 30–40%, according to behavioural analytics studies.
Mental Health Decline: Australian Institute of Health shows a 13% rise in youth suicide (15–17 yrs) over the last five years, with clinicians linking compulsive screen use to worsening emotional disorders.

Age-Verification Failures: Facial-age estimation tech shows 25–35% inaccuracy for 10–15-year-olds, risking wrongful exclusion of legitimate users and undetected minors bypassing checks.
Privacy Breach Risks: Australia has suffered 10+ million personal-data exposures in recent breaches, intensifying fears that storing ID or biometric data could increase identity-theft incidents.
Circumvention Potential: After the UK age-control rollout, VPN sign-ups rose 1,800%, showing children can easily use similar tools to evade platform restrictions.
Enforcement Gaps: Meta earns about $50 million every 112 minutes, making the $49.5 million fine insufficient as a deterrent for systemic violations across multiple platforms.

Social Media Regulation in Other Countries

United Kingdom: The Online Safety Act 2023 requires “highly effective” age checks, imposes large fines, and enables executive prosecution for failure to protect children from harmful content.
European Union: Some countries require parental consent for under-15 access, with France, Denmark and Norway proposing stronger bans or curfews for minors.
Malaysia: Under the Online Safety Act 2025, children under 16 will need government-ID-based digital verification (MyKad, MyDigitalID) starting January 2026.

Way Forward

Layered Age-Assurance Framework: Combine device-level checks, behavioural inference, and optional ID verification to reduce errors and privacy risks. E.g. Multi-layer safety architecture (UK).
Independent Audits: Mandate annual third-party audits to ensure accuracy, privacy compliance and algorithmic fairness in age-verification systems. E.g. EU Digital Services Act’s independent auditors.
Whole-Ecosystem Regulation: Extend safeguards to gaming platforms and AI conversational tools so risk does not migrate to unregulated spaces. E.g. Denmark’s cross-platform child-safety mandate.
Digital-Literacy Mission: Introduce school curricula on cyber safety and parental training to reduce harmful content exposure. E.g. New Zealand’s “Online Safety in Schools” model.

About Social Media Usage in India

India regulates social media through the IT Act, 2000, IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
India hosts 820+ million internet users and 500+ million social-media users, making online safety a national-scale governance challenge.
India recorded a 65% surge in cybercrimes between 2019–2023; child-related cyber offences rose over 400%, per NCRB, highlighting the urgent need for stronger controls.
India reports the world’s highest WhatsApp misinformation spread, contributing to mob violence and public disorder events documented by law enforcement agencies.
Under the DPDP Act 2023, minors (<18) require verifiable parental consent, and platforms cannot track, profile or target-advertise to children, ensuring a privacy-first architecture.
Platforms Obligations under IT Rules 2021:
- Remove unlawful content within 24 hours for sensitive complaints.
- Appoint Grievance Officer, Nodal Officer and Chief Compliance Officer in India.
- Enable traceability of the first originator on significant platforms.

{Prelims – PAN} Nehru Zoological Park Earns ISO Certification *

Context (TH | DC): Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad received a five-star quality rating and ISO 9001:2015 certification for the sixth consecutive year, making it the only zoo in India with this honour.

Telangana also launched the country’s first Tiger Protection Cell, enabling real-time monitoring to prevent poaching and to protect nearby communities from tiger attacks.

International Organization for Standardisation (ISO): A global NGO setting certified benchmarks for quality, safety, and environmental management. Founded in 1947, headquarters at Geneva.

About Nehru Zoological Park

Location: Large urban zoo in Hyderabad, Telangana, spread over ~380 acres near Mir Alam Tank, inaugurated on 6 October 1963.
Governance: Run by the Telangana Forest Department, recognised by the Central Zoo Authority (CZA) under the Wildlife (Protection) Act framework.
Recognition: Only Indian Zoo to receive the ISO 9001:2015 (quality) for six consecutive years and ISO 14001:2015 (environment) certification, plus a 5-star zoo management rating.
Conservation: Houses ~2,184 animals from 198 species, with successful captive-breeding of various endangered fauna like mugger crocodile, Indian mouse deer and vultures.

Zoological Parks (Zoo)

Facilities where wild animals are kept in managed enclosures for public display, research, education, and ex-situ conservation, including captive breeding of endangered species.
Legal Framework: Governed under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, regulated by the Central Zoo Authority (Estd. 1992) and guided by the National Zoo Policy, 1998.
Conservation Role: Support ex-situ conservation, veterinary care, gene-pool preservation, & species recovery; strengthened under the CZA Vision Plan 2021–2031 to reach global standards.

Read More > National Parks of India

{Prelims – Species} Hawfinch Bird Sighted at Jim Corbett National Park *

Context (HT): A Hawfinch was recently sighted at Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand, marking the first confirmed record of the species in India.

About Hawfinch (Coccothraustes coccothraustes)

The hawfinch is the largest finch species in Europe and Asia, known for its massive, conical beak.
Appearance: It has a large round head, a thick neck, and a distinctive black patch on the throat. The bill changes colour with the seasons.
Habitat Preference: It prefers mature deciduous and mixed forests with cherry, hornbeam, maple, and other hard-seed trees.
Partial Migrants: European populations are mostly resident, while the Asian hawfinches migrate south during winter.
Distribution: It is widely found across the Palearctic realm, including Europe, North Africa, and temperate Asia.
Diet: The species is primarily granivorous (seed-eater). Strong bill and jaw muscles crack hard seeds and fruit pits, such as cherry, olive, and plum.
Ecological Engineer: Its selective preference for particular tree species influences seed dynamics and forest regeneration.
Conservation Status: IUCN: Least Concerned.

{Prelims – S&T} Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) Programme

Context (PIB): India’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence Programme (EIR) was highlighted as a key driver of biotechnology innovation at the BRIC Annual General Meeting in New Delhi.

BRIC: The Biotechnology Research & Innovation Council, formed in 2023, is apex autonomous society under Ministry of Science & Technology, overseeing India’s leading biotechnology research institutions.

About EIR Programme

The EIR Programme is an initiative under the National Initiative for Developing and Harnessing Innovations (NIDHI) to support entrepreneurship.
Objective: Encouraging science and engineering graduates and young researchers to pursue entrepreneurship as a career through incubation and financial assistance.
Implementing Agency: The Department of Science and Technology (DST) through a nationwide network of Technology Business Incubators under the Ministry of Science & Technology.
Key Feature: The programme provides a monthly fellowship of up to ₹30,000 per month for 12 months, extendable to 18 months in deserving cases.
Significance: It bridges the gap between academic research and enterprise to enhance India’s innovation-led start-up ecosystem.

NIDHI is an umbrella programme designed to convert knowledge-based and technology-driven innovations into successful startups, in line with Startup India and Atmanirbhar Bharat.

{Prelims – Diseases} WHO Declares Indonesia Polio-Free

Context (DD | WHO): WHO declared the end of Indonesia’s poliovirus type-2 outbreak after no virus was detected in children or the environment since June 2024, following a nationwide vaccination surge.

WHO: World Health Organisation is United Nations’ global health agency for international public health coordination, disease surveillance, emergency response, & setting global health standards.

About the Announcement

Outbreak closure: WHO confirmed cessation of type-2 poliovirus transmission after sustained zero detection since June 27, 2024, meeting Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) criteria.
Vaccination response: Indonesia administered ~60 million additional polio vaccine doses, including multiple rounds of novel Oral Poliomyelitis type 2 Vaccine (nOPV2) campaigns across affected provinces.
Immunisation gains: Routine Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV-2) coverage increased from 63% (2023) to 73% (2024).
Independent verification: Consecutive assessments by GPEI (2023–2025) validated Indonesia’s response and confirmed transmission closure for the Western Pacific Region

About Polio

Disease profile: Poliomyelitis (polio) is a highly infectious enterovirus disease spread via the faecal-oral route, causing irreversible paralysis in ~1 out of 200 infections.
Virus types: Three serotypes exist-Poliovirus 1, 2 and 3; wild poliovirus type-2 was globally eradicated in 2015, though vaccine-derived strains can still cause outbreaks.
Vaccines: Control uses the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) and the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV); nOPV2 is a genetically stabilised OPV used to stop circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type-2 (cVDPV2).
Global status: As of 2024, wild poliovirus remains endemic only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, per WHO surveillance reports.
India’s achievement: India was certified polio–free in 2014 after its last wild-polio case on 13 January 2011 (Howrah, West Bengal), following nationwide Pulse Polio campaigns.
India’s risk management: India continues environmental sewage surveillance in high-risk cities and uses bivalent OPV (bOPV) plus IPV in routine immunisation to prevent re-importation

Enterovirus Disease: Illnesses caused by enteroviruses-RNA viruses that spread mainly via the faecal-oral route and commonly infect the gut; ranging from mild fever to severe conditions like paralysis.

Read More > Polio

{Prelims – In News} Titanium Windows for Ayodhya Ram Temple

Context (TH): Defence public sector firm MIDHANI has supplied 31 titanium windows for Ayodhya Ram Temple’s Pradakshina corridor – the first use of titanium as a structural material in a monument.

The windows were painted gold using an anodisation process to give them a distinct appearance.

Anodisation: Electrochemical process to thicken the natural oxide layer on metals like titanium and aluminium for increased durability & colour control; used in consumer devices such as iPhone casings.

About Titanium

9^th most abundant element in Earth’s crust, found as Ilmenite (FeTiO3) and Rutile (TiO2) ores. Placer deposit reserves in India in Odisha, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.
Properties: Exceptional strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion & heat resistance, biocompatible, non-toxic, non-magnetic and high longevity.
Applications: Titanium alloys are used in spacecrafts, aircrafts, missiles, ships, medical implants and for structural reinforcement. Titanium Oxide is used in paints, sunscreen, toothpaste, etc.