Week 22, 2026

📖 Explanation

The SRS 2024 report, released by the Office of the Registrar General of India, shows India’s IMR at 24 per 1,000 live births and crude birth rate at 18.3 per 1,000 population, both significant improvements over 2014 figures of 39 and 21 respectively. However, state-level gaps remain wide: Chhattisgarh’s IMR is 36, MP and UP each 35, while Kerala stands at 8. Rural IMR (27) is also higher than urban IMR (17).

📖 Explanation

The Lokur Committee (1965) laid down five criteria that are still used to identify Scheduled Tribes: primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with the larger community, and backwardness. These criteria are based on community and ethnographic features and do not include religion. The criteria are central to debates around inclusion or exclusion in the Scheduled Tribes list and were referred to extensively in the current discussion on whether religious conversion should affect ST status.

📖 Explanation

Vande Bharat trains currently run only on broad gauge for domestic use. Because most rail networks worldwide use standard gauge, a standard-gauge platform is needed before the trains can be exported. This widens the potential market to countries in South Asia, Latin America and Africa, reflecting India's shift toward exporting high-technology rail products.

📖 Explanation

China dominates global processing of rare earths and several other critical minerals and is a major presence in Indo-Pacific port infrastructure. The Quad's port and minerals decisions, along with the India-US rare earths framework, are diversification moves that aim to give partner countries alternative supply chains and logistics nodes. The Quad has explicitly avoided becoming a treaty alliance, and the cooperation is meant to complement, not replace, multilateral institutions such as the WTO.

📖 Explanation

RBI's Basic Statistical Return-1 for end-March 2026 shows total bank credit growth accelerated to 14.1 per cent year-on-year, up from 11.1 per cent a year earlier. The share of female borrowers in individual bank credit edged up to 24.7 per cent from 23.8 per cent. The share of loans carrying interest rates below 9 per cent rose to 64.2 per cent from 43.9 per cent, signalling effective transmission of rate cuts. Metropolitan branches held 58.2 per cent of credit, while personal loans grew 12.9 per cent and accounted for 30.7 per cent of total credit. Loans to private corporates grew much faster at 15.5 per cent.

📖 Explanation

China's crude imports have fallen to multi-year lows in 2026, leaving extra barrels of Russian, Venezuelan and Gulf-origin oil available in the Asian market. Indian refiners, with deep ties to discounted Russian and Venezuelan grades and active diversification away from Hormuz-route oil, have absorbed much of this supply. There has been no formal SPR release for India nor any bilateral transit deal with Iran, and OPEC's production decisions are based on its own market management, not country-specific guarantees.

📖 Explanation

The kill switch is intended to be a single-tap control that immediately stops all outgoing transactions from an account, while the channel-level on/off feature would let users disable specific payment routes such as UPI, IMPS or card payments without freezing the account fully. Together they are designed to break the urgency that 'digital arrest' scammers rely on, giving customers time to verify the call. They do not promise automatic refunds, do not control telephony, and cannot override judicial orders.

📖 Explanation

A committee headed by K. Radhakrishnan was set up by the central government after the 2024 NEET controversy and made more than 95 recommendations. These spanned strengthening the NTA’s capacity, improving exam security, and reducing the stakes of the exam, including a possible shift to computer-based testing. NEET-UG is the single national exam for medical admissions, with over 2.2 million candidates.

📖 Explanation

Solar generation collapses after sunset, which is exactly when the evening peak hits, so storage is needed to time-shift daytime solar to evening hours. The Nature study shows cleaner air would also raise daytime solar output, easing the daytime load that thermal plants must currently carry. Building large new thermal capacity is slow and worsens the pollution problem; banning AC use is impractical and inequitable; and scrapping the domestic content requirement would weaken India's solar manufacturing base without addressing the storage gap.

📖 Explanation

NFHS-6 found that the share of women who had used the internet at least once rose from 33.3 per cent in NFHS-5 (2019-2021) to 64.3 per cent in 2023-24, almost a doubling. Bank account ownership among women grew from 78.6 per cent to 89 per cent, mobile phone ownership rose from 53.9 per cent to 63.6 per cent, and hygienic menstrual protection use among women aged 15 to 24 moved up from 77.6 per cent to 79.2 per cent. The survey covered around 6.79 lakh households across 715 districts.

📖 Explanation

The three-month deadline addresses delay in delivery of justice, while the SIR ruling allows a legitimate revision exercise to continue but insists on referring contested citizenship cases to the statutory Competent Authority within a fixed timeline. In both, the Court is reinforcing procedural discipline and timelines, not displacing the powers of either High Courts or the Election Commission. There is no suspension of fundamental rights, and High Courts can still reserve judgments — only their delivery is now time-bound.

📖 Explanation

The RBI’s final amendment directions introduce a cooling-off period for directors who complete ten continuous years on the board of an urban or rural co-operative bank. The rule implements the relevant provisions of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, which limit continuous tenure on bank boards. The aim is to bring fresh leadership and strengthen governance.

📖 Explanation

A scheduled bank gains privileges such as eligibility to borrow from the RBI at the bank rate, participate in the clearing house, and obtain currency chest facilities. The flip side is that it must maintain the cash reserve ratio (CRR) with the RBI and is subject to the central bank's full supervisory regime applicable to scheduled banks. The four banks added were Contai Co-op (WB), Prime Co-op (Surat), Shri Veershaiv Co-op (Kolhapur) and The Varachha Co-op (Surat).

📖 Explanation

Recent developments — private launches abroad, foreign government contracts, an Indian space unicorn and the planned PSLV transfer — point to a clear division of labour. ISRO continues to lead deep-space, planetary and human spaceflight missions, while private firms compete in commercial earth observation, small launchers and downstream services. The policy actively encourages tie-ups with foreign launch providers, and missions like Chandrayaan and Gaganyaan remain ISRO-led.

📖 Explanation

India’s TFR has dropped to 1.9, which is below the replacement level of 2.1. Replacement-level fertility (2.1) is the average number of children per woman needed to keep the population stable across generations. The SRS report also showed the infant mortality rate falling to 24 per 1,000 live births and life expectancy at about 72 years.

📖 Explanation

The Philippines became the first foreign buyer of BrahMos in 2022 through a contract worth nearly USD 375 million. India has now confirmed that the Vietnam deal has been signed and that the Indonesia contract, announced in intent in March 2026, is in its final stages. BrahMos is a joint India-Russia supersonic cruise missile developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation and NPO Mashinostroyeniya, and can be launched from land, sea, submarine and air platforms.

📖 Explanation

The 30-day LPG reserve directive responds to the disruption of Gulf shipping routes during the West Asia conflict, while the cotton duty waiver is meant to keep raw material costs low for the export-oriented textile sector. Both are short-term, targeted interventions aimed at shielding households and exporters from external supply and price shocks. They do not signal abandonment of FTAs (Oman FTA in fact begins on 1 June 2026), they are not linked to monetary policy decisions, and neither is part of the PLI scheme.

📖 Explanation

The study used observations from the Dual Frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (DFSAR) on board Chandrayaan-2’s orbiter, which has been operational since 2019. Doubly shadowed craters lie inside permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) and stay extremely cold, making them favourable for preserving water-ice. The team proposed a refined criterion — Circular Polarization Ratio greater than 1 with Degree of Polarization less than 0.13 — to distinguish subsurface ice from rough surface scattering.

📖 Explanation

A PMI reading above 50 signals expansion in business activity, while a reading below 50 signals contraction. The PMI is a survey-based indicator compiled by asking purchasing managers whether conditions improved, stayed the same, or worsened compared with the previous month. A 'Flash PMI' is an early estimate released before the final monthly figure. India's HSBC Flash PMI showed factory and services growth slowing in May 2026 due to the West Asia conflict, though activity remained in expansion.

📖 Explanation

The West Asia conflict feeds through into oil and gas (LPG reserves), industrial metals (nickel via Indonesia), and capital flows (FPI selling, MSCI weight shifts). Each channel acts independently, so resilience requires diversifying suppliers, strategic stocks, and a broader investor and export base — not relying on any one buffer. Exchange rate flexibility helps but cannot single-handedly absorb shocks of this scale, and shutting down trade or capital inflows would damage growth without removing the underlying exposure.

📖 Explanation

Ferronickel and nickel pig iron are the primary raw materials for stainless steel production. Nickel also accounts for about 22 per cent of the cost of an electric vehicle battery using nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) chemistry. So a refining crunch in Indonesia raises input costs for India's stainless steel and EV battery sectors most directly. Some battery makers are shifting toward lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells that use no nickel.

📖 Explanation

India and the United States signed a framework to secure the supply of critical minerals and rare earths, covering mining, processing and recycling. The move followed China’s 2025 restrictions on rare earth magnet exports, which disrupted global supply chains. Such minerals are essential for electric vehicles, electronics, defence and clean energy.

📖 Explanation

Mission Drishti — the world's first OptoSAR satellite and India's largest privately developed earth-observation satellite — was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg in California. It is a dual-use satellite supporting defence, agriculture, disaster management, maritime surveillance and infrastructure planning, complementing ISRO's existing 29 earth-observation satellites. The Indian Space Policy 2023 and IN-SPACe authorisation enabled this private sector growth.

📖 Explanation

Cotton duty exemption from 1 June to 31 October 2026 directly reduces input costs for spinners and garment makers, while a weaker rupee makes dollar-denominated textile exports more competitive abroad. MSCI rebalancing and FPI outflows mainly affect equity market valuations and cost of capital for listed firms; they do not by themselves change manufacturing capacity or close FTA-driven markets like UAE and Australia. The two effects together work as a net cushion, not a complete cancellation.

📖 Explanation

India's three-stage nuclear programme begins with Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors fuelled by natural uranium, moves to Fast Breeder Reactors that produce more fissile material than they consume to build up a plutonium stockpile, and finally aims at thorium-based reactors to tap India's vast thorium reserves. This sequence was designed because India has limited natural uranium but plentiful thorium, making long-term energy security through thorium utilisation the strategic goal.

📖 Explanation

The Supreme Court collegium is headed by the Chief Justice of India along with the senior-most judges of the court. It recommends names to the Union government, which then forwards them to the President for the warrants of appointment. This collegium system, evolved through judicial pronouncements, is a recurring polity topic.

📖 Explanation

Listed companies have up to 60 days to report fourth-quarter results, and tax, subsidy and expenditure data from the Controller General of Accounts are finalised only at the end of May. Releasing the GDP figures on the same day made it difficult to use this fresh information. The change pushes the Q4 and provisional annual release to 7 June (or the previous working day), helping the National Statistical Office estimate Gross Value Added with better corporate and government data. For 2026, the release will be on 5 June.

📖 Explanation

The visit, planned for 1–4 June 2026, aims to finalise an interim bilateral trade agreement (BTA) and carry forward wider negotiations on market access, customs and investment. It follows an April 2026 round of talks in Washington DC and a framework agreed in February 2026. A key domestic concern is that US agricultural imports under the deal could hurt Indian farmers.

📖 Explanation

Falling TFR alongside better health, education and digital access for women reflects a classic demographic transition. But the pattern is uneven — southern states moved well below replacement earlier, while some northern and eastern states are still around replacement. Andhra Pradesh's pro-natalist incentives respond to its specific ageing profile. The change in working-age share is gradual and influenced by past births, not immediate, and women's empowerment is closely associated with declining fertility globally.

📖 Explanation

The Supreme Court on 27 May 2026 upheld the SIR but made it clear that deletion from the rolls does not itself amount to a declaration that the person is not a citizen of India. It directed the Election Commission to refer such cases within four weeks to the Competent Authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955, so that the question of citizenship is adjudicated before the next general, assembly or local body elections, whichever is earlier.